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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899

Author: Various

Editor: William Jay Youmans

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, JULY 1899 ***

Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899

Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS.

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

JULY, 1899.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND ITS
APPLICATION TO THE BIBLE.
By the Rev. DAVID SPRAGUE, B. D.
"Trained and organized common sense" is Professor Huxley's definition of
science. There is probably no better.
The popular mind persists in thinking that there is a wide difference
between science and knowledge in general. Yes, there is a wide difference,
but it is just the difference that there is between a trained and organized
body of men for the accomplishing of some great work, and a crowd of men
unorganized and undisciplined. What unscientific knowledge has
accomplished may be roughly seen in the condition of savage races to-day;
while the changes wrought by knowledge trained and organized, in
enlarging the sum of knowledge, in extending men's power of perception,
and in increasing the facilities not merely for living, but for living well, are
changes in comparison with which all others recorded in history are trifling.
It will be profitable for us, in order to get a clearer idea of scientific method,
to trace as briefly as possible the history of science and the development of
the scientific idea.
The very beginning of science is beyond our ken. We can form no idea of
just what stage in the intellectual development of the race witnessed the rise
of training and order in men's knowledge. Long before the dawn of history
there must have been some degree of orderliness in men's knowledge—
some grouping of facts, and reasoning from one thing to another. Rude
classification would be made, e. g., among animals, as some were found to
be good for food and others not; so among herbs, as to size, form, color, use
for food and medicine, poisonous qualities, etc.; so among woods, as some
were better adapted than others to use as instruments of war and of the
chase. Men must also, very early in their development, have noticed the
changes that took place in the heavens: the sun by day, the moon and the
stars by night; have grouped the stars into little clusters here and there as

they seemed rudely to resemble forms of things which they knew, and as
some were brighter than the rest; have begun to reckon periods of time
according as position of sun and moon varied. In their observation of the
heavens no other phenomenon would have attracted as much attention as an
eclipse, and for a long time men would have ascribed this occasional
phenomenon to the intervention of some supernatural power. In process of
time, however, as their observations were made with more care and
recorded, some regularity would be noticed in these, as in other phenomena
of the skies; and the period of their recurrence being at last approximately
known by those more learned than the rest, predictions of eclipses would be
made and verified by what would seem to the multitude direct supernatural
aid. Hence the earliest scientific records that have come down to us are of
eclipses observed, and in time regularly predicted, by the Chaldeans; hence
also the reputation that was always given to the Chaldeans of having
magical power. Coming down now to the time when men first seemed to
have a genuine spirit of scientific inquiry, we find it among the Greeks
some five hundred years b. c. Whatever of rudely scientific work had been
done before, seems to have been for practical or religious purposes. About
that time, however, men began to investigate and speculate in order to find
out the truth, and soon we see a class of men, known as philosophers,
whose one aim was to find out, because they loved, the truth. "What they
saw excited them to meditate, to conjecture, and to reason; they endeavored
to account for natural events, to trace their causes, to reduce them to
principles" (Whewell). They set about this, too, in no small, narrow way.
They wanted to go right to the bottom of things, of everything at once, and
to know the great principles, as they called them, of Nature and of life. That
was the reason why the actual scientific results of Greek thought, with all
its splendid powers, were so meager. Two things are the necessary
conditions of science—facts, and the human power of reasoning. Two
processes must be carried out in order to yield any scientific result: facts
must be patiently accumulated, and the mind must set its reasoning powers
to work on them. It was in the first of these that the Greeks were wanting.
They did not realize the need of endless patience in learning the details of
Nature's way of working. They wished to take in all of Nature with one
tremendous sweep of thought. They did a little investigating and a great
deal of reasoning. Occasionally, however, we find an instance of inquiry
into the cause of more definite and limited phenomena, which seems much

more to suggest the true spirit of physical inquiry. We have one recorded by
Herodotus, which is the more remarkable from being so nearly alone. It is
in reference to the fact which he had observed about the flooding of the
Nile—that it was flooded for one hundred days, beginning with the summer
solstice; and that from that time it diminished, and was during the winter
months very low. He tells us that he made pressing inquiries about the cause
of it from many of the Egyptians, but that he found no satisfaction, and
apparently little interest in the matter. Three different theories on the subject
that had been propounded by the Greeks he examines in detail and confutes;
and finally he states a theory of his own. And yet even in this instance of
scientific inquiry he commits the usual fault of the Greeks—he does not
pursue far enough the investigation of the facts of the case, and the absence
of the facts he tries to make up for by exhaustive arguments on words used
in describing the phenomena.
Strange as it may seem at a first glance, it is a very similar trouble that we
find with the reasoning of Aristotle. It seems strange, I say, because we are
accustomed to associate with Aristotle just those things which would seem
to indicate a scientific temper, and to give promise of great results: 1.
Extensive accumulation of facts. Many of those works of Aristotle which
remain to us are vast treasuries of facts collected from almost every field of
Nature, and we have reason for thinking that he made other wonderful
collections of facts which have not come down to us. His work has been a
standing marvel to all time. 2. Extraordinary powers of reasoning. 3. The
fact that he asserted in the strongest terms the need of building up the whole
superstructure of knowledge on experience. And yet throughout his works,
side by side with the evidences of profound knowledge and profound
speculation, there are repeated instances of reasonings which are not only
unsound, but altogether puerile—e. g., in the beginning of his treatise on the
heavens he proves the world to be perfect by reasoning of the following
kind: "The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore
have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number; it is the first
of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number; of two we say both;
but three is the first number of which we say all; moreover, it has a
beginning, a middle, and an end." That is a fair instance of his scientific
incompetency. He has the facts, he is able to reason, but he does not reason
according to the facts; he loses sight of them and builds up great arguments

on words and names. To give one more example: "He is endeavoring to
explain the fact that when the sun's light passes through a hole, whatever be
the form of the hole, the bright image, if formed at any considerable
distance from the hole, is circular. This, of course, is easily seen to be a
necessary consequence of the circular figure of the sun, if we conceive light
to be diffused from the luminary by means of straight rays proceeding from
every point. But Aristotle attempts to explain the fact by saying that the
sun's light has a circular nature which it always tends to manifest. He
employs the vague and loose conception of a circular quality instead of the
distinct conception of rays" (Whewell).
It is a kind of reasoning which may be applied with great show of success to
everything, but which really proves nothing.
And so, as a matter of fact, Aristotle did not leave one single scientific
generalization of value to succeeding ages.
Did not the Greeks then do anything in the way of physical science that was
to stand? Yes, there was a little work that was exact, and therefore lasting.
Archimedes established the fundamental principle on the one hand of the
lever, on the other of pressure in fluids—that is to say, laid the stable
foundation of the sciences of statics and hydrostatics. Euclid developed, if
he did not discover, the law of the reflection of light. Pythagoras
discovered, and his followers developed, some of the fundamental
principles of harmonics. Greater than any of the others in genuine scientific
work was Hipparchus, who, with many erroneous theories, yet really laid
the permanent foundation of the science of astronomy. Only one more name
need be mentioned among the ancients—that of Ptolemy, who seemed
possessed of a genuinely scientific spirit. He accomplished little original
work, made no broad generalization (what is known as the Ptolemaic
system was in reality the system of Hipparchus), but more than any other of
the ancients he is the type of the true scientist in these respects—the
accuracy of his observations, the thoroughness of his work at every point,
and the really great additions that he made to science in the way of
verifying, correcting, and extending the theory he received. He lived in the
early part of the second century a. d.

And the next name to attract our notice is that of Copernicus, more than
twelve hundred years later. What is the meaning of that lapse of time? After
such noble foundations had been laid, was there no great scientific work
built thereon in all those centuries? Absolutely none. It will be well for us to
think for a moment of what were the reasons for that barrenness, for the
same causes are more or less at work at all times to hinder the growth of
science and the extension of scientific method.
1. And what strikes us most forcibly at the outset is a lack of the sense of
the importance of physical science. Through most of that period
Christianity dominated the best thought of Europe, and the tremendous
practical problems that confronted the Church for a long time threw
everything else into the shade; for a long time, I said, during the early part
of this period in especial, when the Church in general seemed to realize its
responsibility to win the whole world to its Master, and every individual
coming into the Church was made to feel that the Church's work was above
everything else in the world. The importance of an exhaustive knowledge of
the facts of Nature seemed trifling when compared with questions of
character and future life, and making the world feel the power of Christ.
Eusebius only expressed the thought of much of his age when he said,
speaking of those who pursued the study of physical science, "It is not
through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of
their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to
the exercise of better things." And with that deliberate turning away from
such subjects there would come of necessity that indistinctness of ideas
about natural things which is fatal to all scientific investigation. Witness
these words of Lactantius: "To search for the causes of natural things; to
inquire whether the sun be as large as he seems; whether the moon is
convex or concave; whether the stars are fixed in the sky or float freely in
the air; of what size and of what material are the heavens, whether they be
at rest or in motion; what is the magnitude of the earth, on what foundations
it is suspended and balanced—to dispute and conjecture on such matters is
just as if we chose to discuss what we think of a city in a remote country, of
which we never heard but the name." As Whewell, from whom these last
two quotations are taken, says, "It is impossible to express more forcibly
that absence of any definite notions on physical subjects which led to this
tone of thought."

2. Contributing, without doubt, largely to that indistinctness of ideas, and to
the low value put upon physical science, was the mysticism common to the
early and the mediæval Church, and to the world at large for many hundred
years—the mysticism, that is to say, the habit of assigning supernatural
agencies to the various phenomena of Nature, and of regarding them as
subject to the vicissitudes of arbitrary will rather than as following out the
workings of a consistent orderly plan. There is no need of any attempt to
show how fatal such a spirit is to science, nor how that spirit seemed for a
long while to dominate the world. "It changed physical science to magic;
astronomy to astrology; the study of the composition of bodies to alchemy;
and even mathematics was changed till it became the contemplation of the
spiritual relations of number and figure." That the Church was not, as has
been often charged, responsible for this spiritualizing temper of the age is
apparent to any one familiar with the development of Greek philosophy and
with the history of the superstitions of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, it
is also true that that temper has been increased in the past and is fostered to-
day by the undue emphasis which the Church has placed upon the
miraculous character of early Christianity.
3. We notice in the history of the thought of this period, both in the Church
and in the world at large, a disposition rather to examine, criticise, and
comment upon the work of others, than to do investigating and thinking of
one's own. That such a spirit should be found in the Church is not to be
wondered at, for the authority of Christ and his apostles would seem to
leave no room for originality of thinking on religious subjects, and the
sacred Scriptures would give abundant scope for the exercise of the highest
learning and of intellectual penetration in interpreting. But the same
tendency is noticed outside of the Church, as the great schools of
interpreters of Aristotle and of Plato, and the large volumes of abstracts and
compilations from preceding writers, bear witness. But when vast learning
and ability are expended, rather on such labors than on investigation into
the secrets of Nature, science does not thrive.
4. And once again we observe the gradually increasing dogmatic tendency
of the Church, the claim to be the repository of all knowledge, the stifling
of thought, and of investigation into what might lead men away from the
truth and the "faith once delivered to the saints."

It seemed best to give in detail these four evident reasons for the barrenness
of science during those centuries, because, as I said, the same things to-day,
though with decreasing force, interfere with the progress of science and the
extension of scientific method. I shall refer to them again a little further on.
The great revival of four centuries ago in art, in learning, in religion,
reached also to science. At last the spell of ignorance, of unreasoning
prejudice, of offensive dogmatism, and of vague mysticism, that had held
the world for so long, was broken. The new life of science was feeble at
first, and remained long in its swaddling clothes. It was about the middle of
the sixteenth century that Copernicus gave his great work to the world; then
no great work again for nearly one hundred years, when Kepler, Galileo,
and Stevinus arise. But the century has not been an idle one. Everywhere
men have been awakening to the new light, have begun to think freely and
fearlessly; are no longer deterred by the cry of magic or the prohibition of
church dignitaries from investigating into Nature for themselves. And so,
when in the seventeenth century those mighty ones appeared, thoughtful
people in great numbers were found to welcome the new truths; and at
almost the same time Descartes by his essay on Scientific Method, and
Bacon by the Novum Organum, were able to give an impetus to scientific
investigation such as the world had never felt before.
The history of the progress of science from that time to this is too complex
to receive any treatment in a paper of this character. How it has been
throughout a record of successive triumphs; how gradually one department
after another of Nature's workings has been mastered and reduced to orderly
system; how all systems have been themselves reduced to one, harmonious
and complete, in the magnificent generalization of evolution; how all the
time not only has the sum of knowledge been steadily augmented, but the
power of acquiring knowledge marvelously enlarged—all of that we know.
That which has accomplished such results is science, and the process
employed has been scientific method. We are in a position now to have a
fairly intelligent idea of it. Look at it and see.
"Scientific method" is not, of course, a technical expression, as are
induction, deduction, etc. Yet it means something very definite. It is that
method of dealing with phenomena which reason declares and experience
has shown to insure the greatest accuracy in results. There are in the

complete process four necessary steps: 1. Observation of facts. 2.
Comparison and classification, or generalization. 3. Deduction. 4.
Verification.
We can see these steps alike in the simplest scientific attempt of our remote
ancestors, and in the work of a Newton or a Darwin.
To use an illustration of the former suggested by the book of Leviticus. In
very early times it was noticed that animals that had both the characteristics
of being cloven-hoofed and of chewing the cud were good for food. A new
animal is discovered having those characteristics. It is argued from the
general principle laid down that this new animal is good for food, and the
matter is verified by experiment. There are the four distinct steps:
observation of the facts, drawing a principle from the comparison of the
facts, deducing as to the particular case, verifying. The result is, of course,
not only a classifying of the particular case, but also the extension of the
principle. So with the generalization of the law of gravitation. Numberless
facts were observed with the greatest care; from them the principle was
generalized; from that again deductions were made as to particular cases;
and the results were verified. But though the steps of the process are the
same in both instances, yet what a vast difference between them! Take the
first step, the observation of facts. All that the thought of the earlier age
could do was to note a few striking resemblances and differences among the
animals that roamed the neighboring forests. What could be done in the
later age, ay, what the scientific temper of the age demanded, was the most
rigidly careful examination of multitudes of facts; examination by a trained
mind and with all the improved appliances which science and art had given
to the world, and then submitted to the searching scrutiny of other trained
minds, with like appliances. Or take the last step, verification. In one case it
meant finding the effect upon the taste and upon the health. In the other,
what it meant may be judged from the account we have of one of Newton's
investigations. In applying his hypothesis of gravitation (it was only a
hypothesis then) to the motion of the moon, there was a very slight
divergence, about two feet a minute, between the time of the revolution of
the moon in its orbit, as he calculated it and as he observed it. He was not
satisfied until, eighteen years after, on account of an improvement made in
the method of taking observations, he was able to obtain what he regarded
as a verification.

And so what we learn from the history of science is the gradual
development of scientific method. Scientific method in the work of
Hipparchus meant a very different thing from the scientific method of the
Chaldeans. Very different still is the scientific method of studying the
heavens to-day. So to an even greater degree is there a difference between
the scientific method of studying the earth to-day and as our fathers studied
it. It is not merely the multitude of facts that we have learned, nor the
marvelous instruments that we have made to aid us in our observations; it is
also, and by no means least, this—that men all these centuries have been
learning to observe, to reason, and to verify.
We may say that science and scientific method have grown and developed
together: the development of one has invariably advanced the development
of the other, and, on the other hand, where one has remained stationary, or
has retrograded, so has the other.
History has enabled us to see this other fact also: that the conditions which
interfered with the growth of science in the past not only interfere with it
always, wherever they exist, but to very much the same degree interfere
with the free application of scientific method. What those conditions were
during one long period of history we saw—a failure to realize its
importance as compared with questions of conduct; a tendency to comment
rather than investigate; a tendency to ascribe everything to spiritual agency
rather than to natural causes; and lastly, dogmatism. We very well know
how, as a matter of fact, those very conditions do interfere with the
application of scientific method to-day.
How far is scientific method applicable to the investigation of the Bible? Is
there any department of human knowledge to which scientific method of
investigation is not applicable? If scientific method is what we defined it to
be, that method of dealing with phenomena which reason declares and
experience has shown to insure the greatest accuracy in results, then there is
obviously no department of knowledge to which that method is not
applicable, for it means simply the method which will bring us nearest to
the truth. When we are dealing with the highest spiritual verities we use that
method which will bring us nearest to the truth; we are bound to use it in
the interest of truth! That does not mean that we are to look for material
causes for spiritual phenomena; nor does it mean that those things which in

their nature appeal to the sensibilities, or have to do with conduct, or require
an exercise of faith, must, in order for us to find out the truth, be removed
from the domain of sensibility, conduct, faith. That would be a most
unscientific method of investigation. The very first canon of scientific
method is that it be appropriate to the matter in hand. And so in
investigating the truths which are distinctly taught in the Bible—truths
which are of the nature of a revelation of God's will and which are designed
to reach and affect the whole nature of man—to take no account of other
faculties in a man besides his power of apprehending intellectually, and of
reasoning logically, would be unscientific beyond hope of pardon.
But what I wish especially to consider is a different kind of investigation of
the Bible—one not concerned with the truths taught in the Bible, but with
the Bible itself, as a collection of writings that has come down to us from
the past. What is the nature of these writings? Who are their authors? Are
there any of them which have more than one author? Are there any which
are compilations from several different sources? What is the age in which
these works were written or compiled? All of those, and similar questions,
are not only the appropriate but the necessary inquiries of a truth-loving
mind. They will continue to be asked until they are satisfactorily answered.
With reference to other writings, the persistence of such inquiries will
depend, except in cases of pure curiosity, upon the importance of such
writings to the world. On that principle there will be no cessation of
inquiries concerning the Bible until they are, as I said, satisfactorily
answered, for no other writings are to be compared, in their importance to
the world, with the writings of the Bible. How can such answers be given?
Where does competency to give answer lie? Does it lie in the authority of
the Church? Not to lay any stress upon the fact, one way or the other, that
the Church, except in certain localities, has never declared on the canon of
the Bible, much less on the questions proposed above, there is no such
authority residing in the Church, unless we grant the claim sometimes made
for her, to infallibility. With those making such a claim we must, within the
limits of this paper, decline to argue.
But if not the Church, what other authority can give us the answers we
seek? The authority of primitive tradition, or of the opinions of great
commentators, or of the great mass of Christian people of modern times?
Authority which is so shadowy in other things that might be mentioned

would surely count for nothing in a matter as grave as this. Or can particular
expressions of the Bible itself be taken to settle the matter once for all? But
as to most of those very questions the Bible itself is silent; and if it had
spoken, yet the question of competent authority would only be put one step
further back. Or, once again, can the answer come from "the spirit which is
in man," guided by God's Spirit? But in this, as in the instance mentioned
above, that which has been shown to be incompetent in so many other
things can not be called competent in this.
There is, there can be, according to the requirement of our minds, only one
answer which will satisfy; it is that which is determined by purely scientific
method—that is to say, according to the nature of the subject, that method
of investigating literary works which reason declares and experience has
shown to insure the greatest accuracy in results. That method is known by
the name of the "Higher Criticism."
What is the history of the higher criticism? One would imagine, from the
language often used by the opponents of its application to the Bible, that it
was an arbitrary method of criticism, invented in these rationalizing times
expressly for the purpose of doing away with the divine character of the
Bible. But higher criticism has been in use in examining the classics and
other (nonscriptural) writings of former ages for fully two hundred years.
The first one to state its fundamental principles was Du Pin, in his New
History of Ecclesiastical Writers, published in 1694. In 1699 Bentley
published his famous examination of the epistles of Phalaris, according to
the methods and principles of the higher criticism. There is no better
instance of scientific investigation as to authenticity. These epistles had
been commonly accepted by scholars as the work of Phalaris, and
accounted of great value. Bentley, by his searching examination of them,
proved them to be the forgery of a sophist, so conclusively that no scholar
worthy of the name has ventured to question the result since. That, I say,
was in 1699.
The first work in the way of higher criticism of the Bible, Eichhorn's
Introduction to the Old Testament, was not published till nearly one
hundred years later.

But that very modernness of the work brings it with some into disfavor. "If
that is the true way of investigating the biblical writings," they say, "why
are we so long in finding it out? Why did not the fathers of the Church—
mighty, indeed, as many of them were, with keenness of insight into the
Bible, with profound knowledge of its characteristics, with substantially the
same evidence before them as we have now—why did not they give us the
principles of the higher criticism, if those principles are true?"
For the very same reason as science in general has not until very lately
begun to do its true work. How meager is all the scientific work done in the
ages of the past in comparison with that done during the last three hundred
years! Men were not up to it; they were only learning the scientific method.
So, the scientific method of examining literature, men have not learned till
within the past two hundred years. Having all the facts before them which
we have now would avail nothing without the knowledge of how to
observe, to classify, to deduce, to verify, any more in the field of letters than
in the field of Nature; any more in the Bible than in other literary works.
Among the immense benefits which science has conferred upon the world,
surely this should not be accounted the least, that it has taught us a method
by which we may find out with ever-growing certainty the truth concerning
the Bible itself.
What, then, should be the attitude of lovers of truth toward the higher
criticism of the Bible? It can be only one—openness of mind to the ready
acceptance of its work. Not that all its present results are to be accepted as
final, for its work is still confessedly incomplete. Moreover, we can not fail
to see that all investigations into the sacred Scriptures have not been
prompted by a genuine love of truth, nor carried on with that judicial mind
that should characterize every one working in the name of science. So that
not all that has been done in the name of the higher criticism has been
according to scientific method. Nevertheless, there are results already
obtained, bearing the stamp of truth—such as the composite character of the
Hexateuch; the double authorship of Isaiah; the post-exilic date of many of
the Psalms—results which to a scientific mind have the practical certainty
of a demonstration, but which the great majority of Christian ministers, who
are supposed to look at such things intelligently, are not ready to accept.

Are not the ministry in general more zealous to do as St. Paul says, "Hold
fast that which is good," than either to do, as he also says, "Prove all
things," or to make sure that what they hold fast is the best? Well,
undoubtedly that is the better way to do, if they are to do only one—to
"hold fast that which is good." And yet it is a blessed thought that every
brave, fearless effort which men make toward finding out the truth, with
every help that they can get from reason and a knowledge of the past, is an
effort after God.

GEOLOGY OF THE KLONDIKE GOLD
FIELDS.[1]
By ANGELO HEILPRIN,
late professor of geology at the academy of natural sciences of
philadelphia, fellow of the royal geographical society of london.

A Bit of Norway in Alaska.—Cascade near
Skaguay.
The gold fields of the Klondike or Troandik district, as officially
designated, lie along or immediately about the waters, whether direct or
tributary, of the Klondike, an eastern affluent of the Yukon, which
discharges into the "father of northern waters" at the site of Dawson. The
Klondike itself, whose upper waters are as yet only imperfectly known,
seemingly carries but little gold, the main quantity of the precious metal and
that which has made the region famous being contributed by one of its
southern arms, the Bonanza, and by a tributary of this, the Eldorado.
Hunker Creek, draining a mountainous district several miles to the eastward
of the Bonanza, and like it a southern affluent of the Klondike, finds
promise of a wealth but little if at all inferior to that of the Bonanza. In a
broader or more popular sense, the Klondike region not only embraces the
special district so designated in the books of the Gold Commissioner, but
also the entire tract which heads up to the sources of the streams that have
before been mentioned, and thereby, with Quartz, Sulphur, and Dominion
Creeks as tributaries of Indian River, takes in the greater portion of the
Indian River mining district, and with Baker, Reindeer, and other creeks on
the west, the official districts indicated by these names as well. With this
limitation the region roughly defines an area about forty miles square,
whose northern boundary lies somewhat to the north of the sixty-fourth
parallel of latitude, and on the west reaches to within about thirty-five miles
of the international boundary, the one hundred and forty-first meridian of
west longitude.
This area of approximately fifteen hundred square miles, which but little
exceeds that of Rhode Island or of the county of Cornwall in England, may
be broadly characterized as being gently mountainous, with elevations of
five hundred to fifteen hundred feet, and in the highest parts of about
twenty-two hundred feet. Its lowest depression is the valley of the Yukon,
which, in itself occupying a position about fourteen hundred feet above the
sea, gives to these points absolute elevations of three and nearly four
thousand feet. Dome Mountain, or, as it is frequently designated, simply
"The Dome," and less often "Solomon's Dome," "King Dome," and "Mount
Ophir," appears to be the culminating point of the entire region; and its
prominent position at the water parting of Bonanza, Hunker, Sulphur, and

Dominion Creeks makes it a noble figure in the landscape, and the most
interesting single feature to the prospector and miner. No absolute
determinations for altitude have as yet been made for it, but when crossing
the summit it seemed to me that it could not be much under four thousand
feet, and I believe that Mr. Ogilvie gives to it about thirty-five hundred feet.
The landscape which this mountain dominates is surpassingly beautiful, and
I know of no finer view from similarly low mountains than that which this
one commands. The sharply incised wooded valleys of the different streams
that head up to it tear the mountain into projecting buttresses, and in the
ridge that leads off from it southwestward contracts it to the extent of
forming for half a mile or more a narrow backbone or saddle. In this respect
it reminded me much of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. On a clear day the
distant main mass of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains is sharply outlined
against the northeastern sky, a most impressive setting to the verdant slopes
that trend off toward it, only to disappear in the belt of plain that separates
the two mountain systems. I was unfortunate in not getting the full benefit
of this view, as at the time of my first crossing the atmosphere was very
cloudy, and on the second it was so surcharged with smoke from forest fires
in the valleys of Gold Bottom, Quartz, and Sulphur Creeks that hardly more
than the foreground was visible.
A succession of five or six knobs runs out from the ridge to which reference
has been made and which trends off in the direction of the head waters of
Eldorado, and these, together with the main Dome, are sometimes spoken
of as the "Seven Domes," but they have no particular significance in the
orographic detail and can not even be said to be clearly defined to the eye.
Dome Mountain is held in a respect bordering almost on veneration by the
Klondikers, inasmuch as it is generally thought to be the mainspring of the
gold supply which is contained in the streams that fall off from it, and this
means nearly all the good and the promising streams of the entire region.
And, in truth, there is for the moment no way of absolutely disposing of the
miner's suppositions, nor can the circumstance that little or no gold has yet
been found in place either on or in the mountain be given much value in the
discussion of the probable origin of the gold, inasmuch as the same negative
condition confronts us in a study of the rocks of all other parts of the same
and adjoining regions. Assuming that alluvial gold is in the main a
derivative from reef gold, it is certainly strange that streams flowing in

well-nigh opposite directions, and yet rising within very short distances of
one another, should be so largely charged with gold, unless they have
obtained it from a common source; nor can the fact, as received and
reported by most miners, but of the full import of which I have not yet fully
made up my mind, that the different streams carry different classes of gold,
be argued away as having no significance in this connection. Claim holders
profess at most times to be able to distinguish between Eldorado gold and
that of Bonanza, between the gold of Bonanza and that of Hunker or
Dominion, and so on; and there is no question that marked differences in
color and in the contours of the coarse flakes and nuggets do present
themselves, and even in narrower limits than has here been outlined. Thus,
the gold from French Hill, abreast of Claim 17 on Eldorado, has a
distinctiveness that is largely its own, and hardly follows the gold of the rest
of the Eldorado tract; and the same is true of the gold of Skookum Hill in its
relations to that of Bonanza, and also of that of Victoria Gulch. Moreover,
the recent assays that have been made by the Bank of British North America
and the Canadian Bank of Commerce, in Dawson, of the gold of the
different creeks and gulches show plainly that marked differences as to
fineness are distinctive qualities—at least they appear to be such at the
present time. Thus, while Eldorado and Bonanza gold generally assays but
about $15.50 or $15.80 to the ounce, Dominion gold shows as high as
$17.80, and Hunker close to $18.50; the gold of Bear Creek, a minor
tributary of the Klondike, is reported to actually give $19.20 to the ounce,
falling only behind the almost pure specimens that have been reported from
American Creek and Mynook, and to which a valuation of nearly $20 has
been given. If these assumed facts continue to be proved true, then they
must argue in favor of a distribution of gold from largely localized spots or
areas, a conclusion that is also pointed to by a number of other
circumstances. On the other hand, there are some facts which point in quite
the opposite direction, and some of these will be referred to later on.
None of the mountains of the region even approximates the snow line,
which would here probably occupy a position not much below six thousand
feet, and on the northern face perhaps even rise to seven thousand feet. Not
a vestige of snow was seen by me when crossing the Dome, not even in the
most sheltered hollows, a condition that at first strikes one as strange,
considering that in so many parts of our own mountains of equal or less

elevation snow may be found lingering through a long period of the
summer months. But here the greatly protracted hours of summer daylight
and heat, together with the correspondingly diminished period of night,
when a regelation might take place or melting at least could be arrested,
have a marked influence in dissipating the winter's snows and ice when
these are not particularly heavy. I did not find the August heat quite so
intense on the mountain tops as I had been led to suppose that it would be,
but there was quite enough of it to satisfy an ample vegetation and to make
heavy garments in walking more than a luxury. Unfortunately, my
thermometer was away from me at this time, and as sensation in this dry
northern climate is so difficult to gauge by the standard of the mercurial
index, I shall not hazard a guess as to the actual reading.

The Vale of Eldorado.
Taking the mountains in their entirety, it is difficult from single points of
view to determine for them any definite relation. There are so many valleys
in close proximity to one another, some very ancient and others relatively
modern, and with trends so opposed in all directions, that in the absence of
a dominant ridge or mass this relation becomes very confused; and I was
not in a position, with the limited time at my command and the deficiency

of rock outcrops, to positively define any main line or axis of uplifts. Yet I
suspect that there is one such, with a generally east and west bearing, whose
trend might correspond with that of the ridge already referred to, which,
with a southwesterly deflection, unites Dome Mountain with the mass that
separates the upper Eldorado from Chief Gulch. What strikes one as
particularly interesting in the conformation of some of these mountains
when seen from an elevation is their hummocky appearance. This is
particularly noticeable in the mountains which close in the Eldorado and
Bonanza Valleys. With considerable actual elevations, they convey the
impression of being merely swells or undulations of an open surface, very
much like magnified morainic knolls in a glaciated country. This depressed
type of mountain structure, with the evidence of its expanded valleys and
gently flowing contours, carries with it the proof of long-continued
degradation, and of a history whose pages read far back into geological
chronology.
With the evidences of antiquity before us, there are yet indications,
amounting, it seems to me, almost to proof, that many of the more
pronounced features of the region date their origin from only a
comparatively recent period. Such is the case with a number of valleys that
are tributary to the main ones, and even the latter appear to have been
modified by late stream displacements. Taking the Eldorado or Bonanza,
with their open U-shaped troughs and in most parts gently sloping banks, as
types of the older valleys, it is surprising to note how many of their
tributaries have the deeply incised and narrow contours; and I am led
almost to conclude that some of these are really of very late construction.
The stream displacements, which, by reason of the indices they give to the
finding of new placers, are now beginning to be so attentively studied by
the miner and prospector, are emphatic in their testimony in this direction.[2]
One has but to note the triangular area that is included between French
Gulch (tributary to Eldorado abreast of Claims 17 and 18) and Adams
Creek (tributary to Bonanza at Claim 6 below Discovery) to be convinced
of the actuality of recent transformations. Most of the miners regard the
high-level gravels of this tract—of French Hill, Gold Hill (opposite to
Grand Forks Village), Skookum Hill, and Adams Hill—so rich in gold as to
make the claims fairly the rivals of the creek claims, as representing the
ancient high-level flow of the Eldorado and Bonanza, but I am convinced

that this is not the case (although it is certain that both streams mentioned
did at one time flow at as high, and even considerably higher, levels). The
materials that so largely distinguish these bench or hillside gravels (placers)
are in greater part rounded bowlders or cobbles of white quartz, with a
marked deficiency of the fragmented schists and slates which make pay dirt
and bed rock in the course of the streams below.

Grand Forks Village.—Valley of the Bonanza.
Per contra, the creek claims of Eldorado and Bonanza contain, as a rule,
only an insignificant quantity of the rounded quartz bowlders, while almost
everywhere where excavations have been made the body and substance of
the output are the flattened and discoid parts of the mother-rock of most of
the region—quartzitic, micaceous, hornblendic, and chloritic schists, and
with them a less quantity of gneissic and dioritic rock. The high quartz-
capped knob to which reference has already been made as marking the
water parting of French, Nine Mile, and Adams Creeks, has large quartz
masses entering into its composition, whether as bosses, dikes, or veins, and
to them, or rather their wasted parts, must we look for the source which has
so generously supplied the materials of the French-Adams Hills benches.
There has been a bad break-up in this quarter, and the materials resulting

from it have been swept into the confluence (delta) of the two streams
which define the main valleys. Furthermore, the descending arcuate contour
lines which are so well marked by terrace slopes on that face of French Hill
which is turned to the corner of Eldorado and French Gulch, show plainly
the receding course, in the direction of south, of French Creek (Gulch). On
the hill slopes south of the position which it now occupies there is none of
that deposit which lies to the north of it; the riches of French Hill are
delimited by French Gulch, and even in the gulch itself there is nothing that
can be compared with what is found on the heights. Again, on the side of
Eldorado opposite to French and Gold Hills there is the same deficiency as
regards the characteristic bench deposits, and this also holds true with the
Bonanza opposite Skookum and Adams Hills. If these high-level deposits
were in fact the ancient waste of the Eldorado and Bonanza, we should
naturally expect to find at least "outliers" on the less favored bank of the
streams, and surely in the case of the Eldorado former evidence of this
deposition ought to be had on the hillsides, similarly contoured to those of
the north, which lie south of and immediately adjoining French Gulch.

Sluicing on the Bonanza.

Through virtually the entire Klondike tract and far beyond it on all sides
there are evidences of high water flows. No more perfect presentation of
high-level terraces can be had than that which defines the first line of
heights, of perhaps one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet, which so
beautifully impress the landscape of the Yukon about Dawson. The
observer, from a still loftier elevation, notes these flat-topped banks, having
the regularity of railroad constructions, following the course of the river as
far as the eye can reach, here perhaps interrupted by a too steeply washed
buttress, elsewhere washed to low level by some stream which has taken a
transverse direction. A somewhat higher line of benches curves around the
still higher points of eminence, and defines the course of water across
country—such, at least, it is to-day. And all the way to the top, scattered
evidences of the recent presence of water can still be found. I met with
rolled or water-worn pebbles so near to the top (the actual summit and not
the position of the signal flag) of the high peak overlooking Dawson that it
may safely be assumed that they also occur on the very apex (about eleven
hundred feet above the present level of the Yukon), a conclusion which is
more than strengthened by the finding of pebbles at even a greater elevation
on the French-Adams Creek knob. While thus presenting the evidence of
high water levels, I am far from convinced that this evidence points
exclusively to river flows. Much more does it appear that, in one part of its
history at least, we are dealing with the evidences of the past existence of
large lakelike bodies of water, perhaps even of a vast inland sea. The
contours of the country in a sort of ill-defined way suggest this
interpretation—an interpretation that is not, however, without evidence to
support it, and which seems also to have been entertained before me by
McConnell and by Israel Russell. The latter investigator has, indeed, given
the name of Lake Yukon to a former extensive body of water, of which the
existing Lakes Lebarge, Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett, with the connecting
Yukon, are only dissociated parts. This lake is assumed to have been about
one hundred and fifty miles in length, with a surface elevated between
twenty-five hundred and twenty-seven hundred feet above the sea.
First in the line of evidence may perhaps be taken the universality of wash
gravel and of terrace débris and the great heights which they occupy. While
I have not myself observed such evidences of water action on the very
summit of the Dome, there is reason to believe that they do or at least did

exist. Most of this summit, in its narrowed form and rapidly descending
slopes, has been, if one may use the expression, more than washed off, and
could hardly be expected to retain for any great length of time
accumulations of loose fragmental material. But at least its far-off
continuation near the source (right fork) of Eldorado Creek bears some of it
on its shoulder, and I have also seen it in an excavation on the loftily
located Claim 71 of that stream. Nearly abreast of the international
boundary, the one hundred and forty-first meridian of west longitude
(Greenwich), McConnell and Russell noted the terrace line of the Yukon
River as high up as seven hundred and thirty feet, which is still about four
hundred feet below the point where I obtained wash gravel on the peak back
of Dawson; but Dr. George Dawson found the terraces on Dease Lake to
rise to thirty-six hundred and sixty feet, and elsewhere he calls attention to
having come across water-rolled gravel at an elevation of forty-three
hundred feet, which would probably exceed by about six hundred feet the
culminating point of Dome Mountain. Such high water could, with the
existing configuration of the land surface, hardly define any other feature
than that of a large interior sea or of a series of lake basins; and while it
may be argued that there has been sufficient degradation of the land surface
since the period of the height of water to permit us to reconstruct a contour
that would be in harmony with altered and reduced river courses, and
relieve us from the necessity of invoking the assistance of lacustrine bodies
in a solution of the problem, it does not seem to me likely that this has been
the case. The physiognomy of the upper Yukon Valley supports this
contention, and even to-day the river has not yet fully escaped from a
lacustrine condition which is merely fragmental of a previous state.
On one point bearing upon the succession of events in the upper Yukon
Valley, and which has its connection with the history of the Klondike
region, my conclusions differ somewhat from those that have been
expressed by Dawson. This pertains to the deposit of volcanic ash which is
so marked a feature of the accumulations of the river's banks. For nearly
three hundred miles by the course of the river a stratum of pumiceous ash,
ordinarily not more than four or six inches in thickness, constitutes almost
without break the top layer but one of the banks on either side, and that
which is above it is generally only the insignificant soil or subsoil which
immediately supports the vegetation. So persistent is this ash layer, and so

uniformly does it hold to an even thickness and to its exact position beneath
the surface, that without further examination one would be tempted to
believe from a little distance that it was merely the ordinary subsoil layer
from which the color had been leached out by vegetable growths. Here and
there, where there have been local disturbances or water washings have
produced concentration, it may have acquired a development of a few feet,
and occasionally it has accommodated itself to flexures or saggings of the
deposits which it normally caps as a horizontal zone. Dr. Dawson, in
commenting upon its occurrence, correctly assumes that it represents one
continuous volcanic eruption, the date of which might fall well within a
period of a few hundred years, and he speculates as to its being possibly
associated with an outbreak from Mount Wrangel or some active cone
which is represented by the Indians to exist in the region of the upper White
River. Beyond this, from the normality of its position, and the assumed fact
that no fluviatile or aqueous deposits have been found overlying it, the same
observer argues that the outbreak must have taken place subsequent to the
formation of the present river courses and their valleys, a conclusion in
which I do not see my way to concur. The only satisfactory interpretation of
this vast uniformly placed and uniformly layered deposit of ash is to me that
which assumes a deposition in a widely extended lake basin, or in shallow
lagoon waters which already in part occupied the present valley surfaces. In
such waters precipitation from long-continued suspension would proceed
gradually and evenly, to the end of shaping a deposit of nearly uniform
development and of vast extent. Such depositions we find in the valleys
lying north of the City of Mexico (Zumpango, Tequixquiac) and in the
lacustrine area of Anahuac, also in the famous fossiliferous basin of
Florissant, in Colorado. With the subsequent formation or reformation of
the river's course we should have this deposit cut through, with the result of
presenting the even layer which is so persistent in its following. This
method would also account for the anomalous position in which we find the
ash deposits; while still holding the same relation to the top surface, it
occasionally rises far above what might be assumed to be its normal height
or level above the water's surface—from four to ten feet—a condition that
would hardly be in consonance with the assumption that the ash was
deposited after the actual river channels had been cut. But other and more
direct proof of aqueous occupation after the laying of the ash is had in the
fact that in one place at least, and doubtless many more such will be found

on closer investigation, lacustrine or fluviatile shells (subfossils) occur in
the layer overlying the ash. A locality of this kind is found on the right bank
not many miles above the Five Finger Rapids. Here, at a height of not more
than four feet above the river, I had the pleasure of determining species of
Limnea and Physa, associated singularly enough with Helix, in the layers
immediately above and below the ash bed, and in both horizons the species
were identical. This isolated fact speaks volumes for itself. Had this been
the region of Helena, Ark., I should have been prompted to class the bed
with a portion of the Mississippi loess. What interested me further in this
connection was the fact that up to this time I had failed to bring to light one
solitary mollusk from the upper Yukon, and to all inquiries regarding the
existence of shellfish in this northern water invariably a negative reply was
received. Only on that day did I again obtain success in my malacological
effort, the almost icy waters rewarding my search with a single specimen—
unfortunately subsequently lost—of a Bythinella, or some closely related
type, so that even to-day my knowledge does not permit me to state if the
subfossil species of the banks have their living representatives, either
specific or generic, in the almost wholly noncalcareous waters of the
existing river. The question from more points than one is interesting, and
deserves more than passing attention. It may be remarked in this place that
the only other fluviatile invertebrate which I found in these waters was a
white siliceous coating sponge, whose statoblasts were well visible to the
naked eye. Unfortunately, the loss of my specimens has prevented
determination, a circumstance the more to be deplored as these fresh-water
sponges are the most northern in habit known to the zoölogist.[3]
There is evidence of another kind pointing to a comparative newness of
much of the present course of the Yukon. The feature has been noticed alike
by nongeographers and geographers, and by geologists as well, that the arm
which carries the greatest volume of water does not everywhere occupy the
main orographic valley. Thus, as Dawson has well pointed out, in coming
up the stream the valley of the Big Salmon appears to be more nearly the
continuation of the main valley below than that which still (and properly)
continues to be designated the Lewes (Yukon) above; and this is still more
markedly the case with the Hootalinqua (Teslin-too or Newberry River) at
the confluence with the Thirty Mile. Even the valley of the Pelly at its
junction with the Yukon, near Fort Selkirk, would perhaps to most persons

suggest itself as the main channel of erosion. There is no hardship to
geological facts in invoking the aid of great displacements to account for a
condition which to my mind is well impressed upon the landscape; for, even
without the proper or fully satisfactory evidence in hand to support the
view, I fully believe that the greater part of the upper Yukon tract only
recently emerged from a lacustrine condition. Nor is it to me by any means
certain that this emergence or final reconstruction of the land surface into
valley tracts need be more than a few hundred years old, or necessarily
older than the deposition of the volcanic ash, which is hypothetically
carried back to Dawson to a possible five hundred years or so. If it should
be objected that we know of no such rapid change in the configuration of a
land surface brought about by aqueous agencies, it might be answered that
the mechanics of erosion in a pre-eminently drift-covered region, under
subarctic conditions and with the influence of a most powerful and
energetic stream near by, have neither been studied nor observed.
Let us examine the possibilities of the case. As an initiatory premise it
might be assumed, without much chance of either affirmation or denial, that
the degradation of the land surface in the immediate valleys of the main
streams is or has been in the past taking place at the rate of half a line per
day; so far as the eye and ordinary instruments of measurement are
concerned this is a quite inappreciable amount, and I see no reason why it
may not be assumed as the working power of the Yukon. With this rate of
erosion a valley trough or contour of about a foot and a third might be
formed in the period of a single year, or of nearly seven hundred feet in five
hundred years; and if we lessen the daily erosion to one quarter of the
amount stated—i. e., to an eighth of a line—we should still have in this
same period of five hundred years, speaking broadly, a trough of about one
hundred and seventy-five feet depth, quite sufficient to have brought about
most marked changes in the aspect of a drift-covered lagoon region, and
perhaps ample to account for those physiognomic peculiarities which have
been discovered. I am fully impressed with the magnitude of the distance
which separates the amount of erosion which I have assumed—an eighth of
a line daily—from the "one foot in six thousand years," which has been
preached categorically from lecturn and text-book for the better part of a
quarter of a century and threatens to make dogma for still another period of
equal length; but the conditions here are entirely different from those of

average continental denudation—in fact, have as nearly nothing in common
as they can have. My observations in the tropics and subtropics have most
impressively taught me the lesson of rapid changes, and with the conditions
that are and have been associated with the Yukon, I am prepared for the
lesson of equal change in the north. But, as a matter of fact, are we not
taught of a removal in the west central United States of some twelve
thousand feet of rock strata in a period not impossibly considerably less
than two hundred thousand years? The one foot in sixteen years has here
likewise nothing in common with the "prevailing" rate of continental
destruction.
While stalled on a bar on the Yukon River, about two miles above Fort
Selkirk, I was much impressed with the mechanical work of the stream. The
gravel and pebbles were being hurried along rapidly under the lash of a five
to six mile current, and their groans were audible frequently when they
themselves were invisible. Every few minutes our steamer would swerve
from her seemingly fixed position by the undercutting of the bar, and
perhaps it would be not far from the truth in saying that we should be to-day
in very nearly the same position that we were in then had it not been for this
undermining action of the stream. Let it be remembered that the Yukon has
a current ranging up to seven miles, or to eight, as some of the navigators
say, and that in certain months it is swiftly ice-bound both on top and at the
bottom, and heavily charged with bowlders, and one may well realize the
work of which it is capable. That with which I have debited it is purely
hypothetical or conjectural, but it may serve a purpose in the elucidation of
the main problem.
In its more distinctively geological relations the Klondike region may be
broadly defined as one composed in the main of schists and schistose rocks,
defining an area of considerable disturbance. Owing to the limited number
of outcrops, by far the greater part of the surface being still buried beneath
vegetation of one kind or another, the variety of rocks included within the
region can best be told from an examination of creek bowlders or the
different dumps that mark hundreds of diggings and prospect holes along
the various valleys and gulches. Some of this output, in which may be
found fragments of quartz and quartzitic schist, of mica, hornblende, and
chloritic schists and slates, of granitic gneiss and gneissose granite,
porphyry, diabase, diorite, and quartz (quartzite), is probably extra-

territorial, having been washed in at a time when a more extensive foreign
water had access to the region; but there is enough of outcrop to show that
most, and perhaps all, of the types here indicated are really a part of the
tract. The schists and schistose rocks, whose age from direct evidence in the
field I was unable to determine, but which are almost certainly the
equivalents in greater part of the Birch Creek series, as described by Spurr
from the American side (Birch Creek and Forty Mile districts), constitute
the kernel of the region. Observation is as yet too limited to permit of a
positive classification of these schists according to their natural relations,
and the reasons that have prompted some to consider them as being in part
of pre-Paleozoic age are not quite clear to me, although they may easily be
such. Of granite and true gneiss in position I saw practically nothing, and
the limestones and marble were not sufficient in quantity to permit me to
identify the heavy beds which are considered to be the distinguishing
element of the Forty Mile series. The beds where exposed show in most
parts steep dips—in places standing almost vertically—but in how far these
dips are uniform or the reverse, or in any way define a line of strike with
anticlinals and synclinals, must be left for future close examination to
ascertain.
Great lumps of white or pinkish quartz, some of them in situ, others washed
or rolled down the open slopes, occur at many points of some of the
mountain elevations, indicating the presence of dikes and gash veins, and in
part of interstratified beds containing this material. I found much of it at
several "horizons" of the slope back of French Hill, and also as a cap
overlying the badly cleaved and fragmented schists of the summit (three
thousand feet?) of the prominent knob which dominates this region. The
same type of "kidney" quartz appears at repeated intervals on the slope
leading up to the Dome, almost immediately after leaving the junction of
Carmack's Fork with the Bonanza, and also on the saddle ridge which might
properly be considered to be a part of the summit of Dome Mountain.
Prospectors have in nearly all cases staked these assumed outcrops of
quartz, recognizing them as ledges, and in a number of them have claimed
the discovery of the "mother lode." So far as visible gold is concerned, I
have in nearly all cases found them to be absolutely barren, and I do not
think at this time that there is much chance of finding anything materially
valuable in them, although events might prove the reverse. Most of the

quartz that has so far been discovered in direct association with the gold—
that is to say, wrapped up with or within itself, as in the case of the quartz-
gold nuggets of French Hill—is of a gray-blue or pinkish tint and of a
granular and nonspathic type, therefore differing materially in aspect and
structure from the quartz of the hillsides and from the greater number of the
quartz bowlders that are contained in the dumps or have been removed from
bed rock. Some of the bowlders or rolled pebbles containing coarse gold are
of the same character of quartz as the quartz of the hillsides. Notably one
such was shown to me as coming from a high-bench claim (Millett's) on
Adams Hill (left "limit" [bank] of Bonanza, between Little Skookum and
Adams Creek), and other similar fragments taken from the rock in situ were
observed on Gay Gulch and the ridge which separates the head waters of
this stream from those of Eldorado. In a dump at the mouth of Gay Gulch (a
right-hand tributary of Eldorado abreast of Claim 37) I found fragments of
rotted quartz which were well sprinkled with fine gold.

APPROXIMATE MAP OF THE KLONDIKE REGION
It does not by any means appear so conclusive to me as seemingly it does to
Professor Spurr that because in some gulches the gold heads up in
increasing quantities the nearer we approach the beginnings (heads) of these
gulches, and that with this approach the coarseness of the grains and
nuggets likewise increases, we are necessarily forced to assume that the
travel of the gold at large has been confined within the boundaries of the
gulches in which it is at present contained, or that its source is to be sought
near by. A number of the most "solid" streams of the Klondike region, such
as the Bonanza and Eldorado, if we are permitted to judge from the
evidence of outputs and of prospects up to the present time, hardly sustain

the conditions of the American creeks. The richest claims on the Eldorado
are, starting from its mouth—the junction of the Bonanza—4, 5, 12, 13, 29,
30, 31, 36, with other claims abundantly rich between these. Number 30 is,
I believe, generally considered to be the banner claim, and it is situated
about three miles up—far enough, perhaps, to sustain in a superficial way
Professor Spurr's generalization as to location—and above it 36 is not
unlikely to show up as well as any of the other creek claims below. But the
valley of Eldorado, whether constricted or open, continues for miles beyond
either of its two head forks—that which is known as Eldorado proper, and
the one, Chief, or Chief Isaac Gulch, which is geographically the
continuation. So little has been found above 36 or 37 that the stream in that
part is ordinarily spoken of as being barren. Again, so far as the tributaries
on either side of Eldorado are concerned, and the possibility that they are
responsible for the gold that is contained in the main stream between 37 and
1 rather than the Eldorado itself—a condition in no way impossible or
improbable—it can only be said for them that up to this time they have,
with the possible exception of Oro Grande (tributary to Eldorado abreast of
Claim 31), yielded very little gold themselves, and have hardly given
indication of containing much of a supply. I have used the words "up to this
time" advisedly, because I am aware upon how little the evil reputation of a
gulch rests, and how prospectors deceive themselves by the character of
their defective prospect holes. Hence, while my argument is drawn from
existing evidence, it can not be assumed that this evidence is by any means
sufficient to warrant a conclusion. It is by no means unlikely that some of
the lateral gulches will really be found to be largely gold-bearing, and of
such Gay Gulch and the left-fork ascending of Eldorado (Eldorado proper
above 47) appear to me the most promising.[4]
The condition of the Bonanza is very similar to that of the Eldorado. Its
greatest wealth, as so far determined, is concentrated in its middle course,
beginning about five miles above its mouth and terminating some six miles
below its source. But very little gold, if the information given to me is
correct, has been taken out from or determined to exist in the tract lying
above Claim 42 above Discovery, or the mouth of Victoria Gulch (left-hand
tributary, whose source is found on a ridge from the opposite side of which
Gay Gulch descends to the Eldorado), and yet the valley continues open and
without material change for at least two miles, and with a certain

contraction for four miles more. Barring the Eldorado and the streams
coming in from the same side nearest to it—Big Skookum, Little Skookum,
and Adams—few if any of the side gulches of the Bonanza are known to be
really rich in gold, and for the moment, at least, they can hardly be looked
upon as having furnished the main supply to the main stream.

THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE UNITED
STATES.
By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,
principal of the tuskegee normal institute.

I have been asked a number of times during the last few months the cause
of and the cure for the riots that have taken place recently in North Carolina
and South Carolina. I am not at all sure that what I shall say will answer
these questions in a satisfactory way, nor shall I attempt to narrow my
expressions to a mere recital of what has taken place in these two States. I
prefer to discuss the problem in a broader manner.
In the first place, in politics I am a Republican, but have always refrained
from activity in party measures, and expect to pursue this policy in the
future; so in this article I shall refrain, as I always have done, from entering
upon any discussion of mere party politics, in the narrow and usual sense.
What I shall say of politics will bear upon the race problem and the
civilization of the South in the larger sense. In no case would I permit my
political relations to stand in the way of my speaking and acting in the
manner that I believe is going to be for the permanent interest of my race
and the whole South, regardless of mere party name and organization.
In 1873 the negro in the South had reached the point of greatest activity and
influence in public life, so far as the mere holding of elective office was
concerned. From this date those who have kept up with the history of the
South have noticed that the negro has steadily lost in the number of elective
offices held. In saying this I do not mean that the negro has gone backward
in the real and more fundamental things of life. On the contrary, he has
gone forward faster than has been true of any other race in history, under
anything like similar circumstances.
If we can answer the question as to why the negro has lost ground in the
matter of holding elective office in the South, perhaps we shall find that our
reply will prove to be our answer also as to the cause of the recent riots in

North Carolina and South Carolina. Before beginning a discussion of the
question I have asked, I wish to say that this change in the political
influence of the negro has continued from year to year, notwithstanding the
fact that for a long time he was protected politically, by force of Federal
arms and the most rigid Federal laws, and still more effectively, perhaps, by
the voice and influence in the halls of legislation of such advocates of the
rights of the negro race as Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Butler, James A.
Garfield, Oliver P. Morton, Carl Schurz, and Roscoe Conkling; and on the
stump and through the public press by those great and powerful negroes,
Frederick Douglass, John M. Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, John R. Lynch,
P. B. S. Pinchback, Robert Browne Elliot, and many others; but the negro
has continued for twenty years to have fewer representatives in the State
and national legislatures. The reduction has continued until now it is to the
point where, with few exceptions, he is without representatives in the
lawmaking bodies of the State and of the nation.
Now, let us find, if we can, a cause for this. The negro is fond of saying that
his present condition is due to the fact that the State and Federal courts have
not sustained the laws passed for the protection of the rights of his people,
but I think we shall have to go deeper than this, because I believe that all
agree that court decisions, as a rule, represent the public opinion of the
community or nation creating and sustaining the court.
At the beginning of his freedom, it was unfortunate that those of the white
race who won the political confidence of the negro were not, with few
exceptions, men of such high character as would lead them to assist him in
laying a firm foundation for his development. Their main purpose appears
to have been, for selfish ends in too many instances, merely to control his
vote. The history of the reconstruction era will show that this was
unfortunate for all the parties in interest.
It would have been better, from any point of view, if the native Southern
white man had taken the negro, at the beginning of his freedom, into his
political confidence, and exercised an influence and control over him before
his political affections were alienated. In the light of present experience, I
think all will now agree that the ballot would have meant more to the negro
and would have been more lasting in its results, would have caused less

opposition, if it had been given to him gradually, as he came into possession
of education.
The average Southern white man has the idea to-day that if the negro were
permitted to get any political power all the mistakes of the reconstruction
period would be repeated. He forgets or ignores the fact that thirty years of
acquiring education and property and character have produced a higher type
of black man than existed thirty years ago.
But to be more specific for all practical purposes, there are two political
parties in the South—a black man's party and a white man's party. In saying
this, I do not mean that all white men are Democrats, for there are some
white men in the South of the highest character who are Republicans, and
there are a few negroes in the South of the highest character who are
Democrats. It is the general understanding that all white men are
Democrats, or the equivalent, and that all black men are Republicans. So
long as the color line is the dividing line in politics, so long will there be
trouble.
The white man feels that he owns most of the property, furnishes the negro
most of his employment, that he pays most of the taxes, and, besides, has
had years of experience in government. There is no mistaking the fact that
the feeling which, in some way, has heretofore taken possession of the
negro—that to be manly and stand by his race he must oppose the Southern
white man with his vote—has had much to do with intensifying the
opposition to him.
The Southern white man says that it is unreasonable for the negro to come
to him, in a large measure, for his clothes, board, shelter, and education, and
for his politics to go to men a thousand miles away. The Southern white
man argues that when the negro votes he should in a larger measure try to
consult the interests of his employer, just as the Pennsylvania employee
tries to vote for the interests of his employer.
The Southern white man argues, further, that much of the education which
has been given the negro has been defective in not preparing him to love
labor and to earn his living at some special industry, and has, in too many
cases, resulted in tempting him to live by his wits as a political creature, or
by trusting to his "influence" as a political timeserver.

Then there is no mistaking the fact that much opposition to the negro in
politics is due to the circumstance that the Southern white man has not got
accustomed to seeing the negro exercise political power, either as a voter or
as an officeholder. Again, we want to bear it in mind that the South has not
yet reached the point where there is that strict regard for the enforcement of
the law against either black or white men that there is in many of our
Northern and Western States. This laxity in the enforcement of the laws in
general, and especially of criminal laws, makes such outbreaks as those in
North Carolina and South Carolina of easy occurrence.
Then there is one other consideration which must not be overlooked: it is
the common opinion of almost every black man and almost every white
man that nearly everybody who has had anything to do with the making of
laws bearing upon the protection of the negro's vote has proceeded on the
theory that all the black men for all time are going to vote the Republican
ticket, and that all the white men in the South are going to vote the
Democratic ticket; in a word, all seemed to have taken it for granted that the
two races are always going to oppose each other in their voting.
In all the foregoing statements I have not attempted to define my own views
or position, but simply to describe conditions as I have observed them, that
might throw light upon the cause of our political troubles.
As to my own position in all these matters I do not favor the negro's giving
up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by
the Constitution of the United States. It is not best for him to relinquish any
of his rights; nor would his doing so be best for the Southern white man.
Every law placed in the Constitution of the United States was placed there
to encourage and stimulate the highest citizenship. If the negro is not
stimulated and encouraged by just State and national laws to become the
highest type of citizen, the result will be worse for the Southern white man
than for the negro. Take the State of South Carolina, for example, where
nearly two thirds of the population are negroes. Unless these negroes are
encouraged by just election laws to become taxpayers and intelligent
producers, the white people of South Carolina will have an eternal millstone
about their necks.

In addressing the Southern white people at the opening of the Atlanta
Exposition, in 1895, I said:
"There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:

"'The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.'

"Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one
third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one third of its
intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one third to the business and
industrial property of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death,
stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic."
Subsequently, in an open letter to the State Constitutional Convention of
Louisiana, I wrote:
"I am no politician; on the other hand, I have always advised my race to
give attention to acquiring property, intelligence, and character, as the
necessary basis of good citizenship, rather than to mere political agitation.
But the question upon which I write is out of the region of ordinary politics:
it affects the civilization of two races, not for to-day alone, but for a very
long time to come; it is up in the region of duty of man to man, of Christian
to Christian.
"Since the war no State has had such an opportunity to settle for all time the
race question, so far as it concerns politics, as is now given to Louisiana.
Will your convention set an example to the world in this respect? Will
Louisiana take such high and just grounds in respect to the negro that no
one can doubt that the South is as good a friend to the negro as he possesses
elsewhere? In all this, gentlemen of the convention, I am not pleading for
the negro alone, but for the morals, the higher life of the white man as well;
for the more I study this question, the more I am convinced that it is not so
much a question as to what the white man will do with the negro as to what
the negro will do with the white man's civilization.

"The negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South
that restriction be put upon the ballot. I know that you have two serious
problems before you: ignorant and corrupt government on the one hand,
and on the other a way to restrict the ballot, so that control will be in the
hands of the intelligent, without regard to race. With the sincerest sympathy
with you in your efforts to find a good way out of the difficulty, I want to
suggest that no State in the South can make a law that will provide an
opportunity or temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold
the opportunity or temptation for an ignorant colored man without injuring
both men. No State can make a law that can thus be executed without
dwarfing for all time the morals of the white man in the South. Any law
controlling the ballot that is not absolutely just and fair to both races will
work more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.
"The negro does not object to an educational and property test, but let the
law be so clear that no one clothed with State authority will be tempted to
perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation upon it for the
white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South,
and you will find that where there has been the most dishonesty in the
matter of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition of
both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly with the negro's
ballot. From this it was an easy step to act dishonestly with the white man's
ballot, to the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a negro, and
then to the murder of a white man, and then to lynching. I entreat you not to
pass a law that will prove an eternal millstone about the necks of your
children.
"No man can have respect for the Government and officers of the law when
he knows, deep down in his heart, that the exercise of the franchise is
tainted with fraud.
"The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the last thirty
years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It has been as one groping
through the long darkness into the light. The time is not far distant when the
world will begin to appreciate the real character of the burden that was
imposed upon the South when four million ex-slaves, ignorant and
impoverished, were given the franchise. No people has ever been given
such a problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the wilderness

that could be followed. For thirty years we have wandered in the
wilderness. We are now beginning to get out. But there is only one road out,
and all makeshifts, expedients, profit-and-loss calculations, but lead into
swamps, quicksands, quagmires, and jungles. There is a highway that will
lead both races out into the pure, beautiful sunshine, where there will be
nothing to hide and nothing to explain, where both races can grow strong
and true and useful in every fiber of their being. I believe that your
convention will find this highway; that it will enact a fundamental law that
will be absolutely just and fair to white and black alike.
"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot box against
the ignorant you open the schoolhouse. More than one half of the
population of your State are negroes. No State can long prosper when a
large part of its citizenship is in ignorance and poverty, and has no interest
in government. I beg of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We
are not aliens. You know us; you know that we have cleared your forests,
tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected your families. There
is an attachment between us that few understand. While I do not presume to
be able to advise you, yet it is in my heart to say that if your convention
would do something that would prevent for all time strained relations
between the two races, and would permanently settle the matter of political
relations in one Southern State, at least, let the very best educational
opportunities be provided for both races; and add to this an election law that
shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time providing that
in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they
will be given the right of citizenship. Any other course will take from one
half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become
intelligent producers and taxpayers, to become useful and virtuous citizens.
Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death.
"The negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the white people of your
State pay the greater portion of the school taxes, and that the poverty of the
State prevents it from doing all that it desires for public education; yet I
believe that you will agree with me that ignorance is more costly to the
State than education; that it will cost Louisiana more not to educate the
negroes than it will to educate them. In connection with a generous
provision for public schools, I believe that nothing will so help my own
people in your State as provision at some institution for the highest

academic and normal training in connection with thorough training in
agriculture, mechanics, and domestic economy. The fact is that ninety per
cent of our people depend upon the common occupations for their living,
and outside of the cities eighty-five per cent rely upon agriculture for
support. Notwithstanding this, our people have been educated for the most
part since the war in everything else but the very thing most of them live by.
First-class training in agriculture, horticulture, dairying, stock raising, the
mechanical arts, and domestic economy would make us intelligent
producers, and not only help us to contribute our proportion as taxpayers,
but would result in retaining much money in the State that now goes outside
for that which can be as well produced at home. An institution which will
give this training of the hand, along with the highest mental culture, would
soon convince our people that their salvation is largely in the ownership of
property and in industrial and business development, rather than in mere
political agitation.
"The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to
extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. A race, like an individual, lifts
itself up by lifting others up. Surely no people ever had a greater chance to
exhibit the highest Christian fortitude and magnanimity than is now
presented to the people of Louisiana. It requires little wisdom or
statesmanship to repress, to crush out, to retard the hopes and aspirations of
a people, but the highest and most profound statesmanship is shown in
guiding and stimulating a people, so that every fiber in the body and soul
shall be made to contribute in the highest degree to the usefulness and
ability of the State. It is along this line that I pray God the thoughts and
activities of your convention be guided."
As to the cure for such outbreaks as have recently hurt North Carolina and
South Carolina, I would say that the remedy will not come by the Southern
white man's being merely cursed by the Northern white man or by the
negro. Again, it will not come by the Southern white man merely depriving
the negro of his rights and privileges. Both of these methods are but
superficial, irritating, and must in the nature of things be short-lived. The
statesman, to cure an evil, resorts to enlightenment, to stimulation; the
politician to repression. I have just remarked that I favor the giving up of
nothing that is guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the United States, or
that is fundamental to our citizenship. While I hold to these views as

strongly as any one, I differ with some as to the method of securing the
permanent and peaceful enjoyment of all the privileges guaranteed to us by
our fundamental law.
In finding a remedy, we must recognize the world-wide fact that the negro
must be led to see and feel that he must make every effort possible in every
way possible to secure the friendship, the confidence, the co-operation of
his white neighbor in the South. To do this, it is not necessary for the negro
to become a truckler or a trimmer. The Southern white man has no respect
for a negro who does not act from principle. In some way the Southern
white man must be led to see that it is to his interest to turn his attention
more and more to the making of laws that will in the truest sense elevate the
negro. At the present moment, in many cases, when one attempts to get the
negro to co-operate with the Southern white man, he asks the question,
"Can the people who force me to ride in a Jim Crow car, and pay first-class
fare, be my best friends?" In answering such questions, the Southern white
man as well as the negro has a duty to perform.
In the exercise of his political rights I should advise the negro to be
temperate and modest, and more and more to do his own thinking, rather
than to be led or driven by a political "boss" or by political demagogues.
I believe the permanent cure for our present evils will come though a
property and educational test for voting that shall apply honestly and fairly
to both races. This will cut off the large mass of ignorant voters of both
races that is now proving so demoralizing a factor in the politics of the
Southern States.
But most of all it will come through industrial development of the negro! It
is for this reason that I have believed in General Armstrong's theory of
industrial education. In the first place, industrial education makes an
intelligent producer of the negro, who becomes of immediate value to the
community rather than one who yields to the temptation to live merely by
politics or other parasitical employments. In the next place, industrial
development will make the negro soon become a property-holder, and when
a citizen becomes a holder of property he becomes a conservative and
thoughtful voter. He is going to think about the measures and individuals to
be voted for. In proportion as the negro increases his property interests he

becomes important as a taxpayer. When the negro becomes a large taxpayer,
he will see that it is to his interest to consult with his white neighbor about
the measures to be voted for. There is little trouble between the negro and
the white man as to matters of education, and when it comes to the negro's
business development the black man has implicit faith in the advice of the
Southern white man. When the negro gets into trouble in the courts, which
require a bond to be given, in nine cases out of ten he goes to a Southern
white man for advice and assistance. Every one who has lived in the South
knows that in many of the church troubles among the colored people the
ministers and other church officers apply to the nearest white minister for
assistance and instruction. As soon as we have grown to the point where we
shall consult the Southern white man about our politics as we now consult
him about our business, legal, and religious matters, there will be a change
for the better in the situation.
The object lesson of a thousand negroes in every county in the South
owning neat and comfortable homes, possessing skill, industry, and thrift,
with money in the bank, who are large taxpayers and co-operate with the
white men in the South in every manly way for the development of their
own communities and counties, will go a long way in a few years toward
changing the present status of the negro as a citizen as well as the attitude of
the whites toward the blacks.
In proportion as the negro grows along industrial and business lines he will
divide in his politics on economic issues, just as the white man in other
parts of the country now divides his vote.
In proportion as the South grows in business prosperity the whole South
will divide its vote on economic issues, just as other portions of the country
divide their vote. When we can enact laws that result in honestly cutting off
the large ignorant and nontaxpaying vote, and when we can bring both races
to the point where they will co-operate with each other in politics in matters
of business, religion, and education, the problem will be in a large measure
solved, and political outbreaks will cease.

Colonel George Earl Church, speaking of the Indians of the country
of the Amazons, relates of the chief of a horde of Yocaré savages
whom he met among the falls of the Madeira, a young fellow twenty-
five years old, that "he appeared to know everything that was going on
around him. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, so acute
were his senses. His hearing appeared to indicate, and his mind to
define, the thousand things which were occurring in the tropical forest
around us. Instinctively, he classified and estimated them at their true
value as if they were under close and accurate analysis. As he sat
dining with me at my camp table, in the simplicity of his nature and
modesty of his nakedness, I could not help thinking that, in the
evolution of man, many magnificent qualities have been sacrificed
upon the altar of civilization."

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH
AMERICA.
By Dr. CHARLES C. ABBOTT.
The claim of satisfactory evidence of the extreme antiquity of man in the
valley of the Delaware River has been soberly discussed and intemperately
ridiculed until the public, both scientific and general, have become tired of
hearing the subject mentioned; but this is no valid reason why the truth
should not be ascertained. If man in a paleolithic stage of culture did exist
on the Atlantic seaboard of North America, then we have a basis upon
which to build—a tangible starting point from which to date a history of
human activities on this continent. As it is, we have but an immense array
of facts, largely unrelated, and the greater portion sadly distorted and
misleading because of the reckless theories set forth with them by their
discoverers, and undoubtedly there never has been, in the whole range of
scientific agitation of a simple question, as great a volume of reckless
assertion, illogical deduction, and disregard of exact statement. The main
question was often wholly lost sight of, and the author's sole purpose that of
demonstrating some one else in error. Predetermination on the part of many
has been fatal to the value of their field work. Convinced on theoretical
grounds, such are necessarily blinded when on the spot where positive
evidence occurs. He who does not desire the object searched for seldom
finds it; and, later in the day, pride declines to accede to the just demands of
candor—the admission of having reached a wrong conclusion.
There probably would not have been as much attention paid to the subject
of man's growth in culture on this continent had not the proposition of a
sequence from paleolithic to Indian, with an intervening period, seemed to
necessitate a dating back to the Glacial epoch, which naturally brought
geological erudition to bear upon the question, and since then, most
surprisingly, there has been confusion worse confounded, rather than a
flood of light. Much has been written, but we can not yet be confident
which author is most nearly correct; and the latest report, showing sad

evidences of haste, is vitiated by evident determination to modernize every
trace of man, whether the facts warranted such procedure or not.
What is held, primarily, to be an evidence of paleolithic man is a wrought
stone implement, that in Europe was characteristic of his handiwork. Here,
in the valley of the Delaware, this same form of implement has been
confidently asserted to be a rejected piece of stone—usually argillite—that
failed to lend itself to reduction to a finished blade or spear point. If this
could be established as of invariable application, however the supposed
"reject" occurred, then the whole matter would be brought to a quick
conclusion. But the "reject" theory has utterly failed of establishment. The
typical paleolithic implement is not characteristic of the refuse of an arrow-
maker's workshop site, and the familiar arrow points of small size, nor even
the long, thin blades of several times their length, were reduced from
masses greatly larger than the desired form. The refuse of many a chipping
site shows this conclusively; and, as hundreds of failures demonstrate,
many an arrowhead was made from a pebble but a trifle larger than the
finished object.
But admit, for argument's sake, the identity in shape of a "reject" and a
"paleolithic" implement; this does not prove their identity in age and origin,
and it is not an unwarranted or illogical suggestion to draw a distinction
between the two, where the conditions under which they occur suggest a
possibility of diverse history. Rather than demonstrating that all rudely
chipped stones are "failures," it should be shown that paleolithic man, as we
know of him in Europe, could not possibly have existed here. This has not
only never been attempted, but the conditions during and immediately
subsequent to the glaciation of the river valley have been asserted, time and
again, to have been favorable for man's existence. Furthermore, it has not
been shown that a typical paleolithic implement could not have been
available on this continent, as it undoubtedly was in Europe, as an effective
weapon, and it must be remembered that the fauna of the Delaware Valley
was, in glacial times, very like that of parts of Europe in what we may call
the reindeer period. Like conditions may not have produced like results in
the case of early man, but what was practicable in Europe was certainly so
in America, and the question resolves itself into that of determining if any
trace of man that has been discovered in the valley of the Delaware can be
dated back to a time preceding the Indian as he was when first he came in

contact with the European. Did, in other words, the Indian bring his art with
him from Europe or Asia, or did he experience a growth in culture from
paleolithic simplicity to neolithic complexity?
The whole subject hinges on the distribution of these traces of man. If from
the first day of his occupancy until the European replaced the Indian the
immediate valley of the river had undergone no change, then the
imperishable relics of the first and last savage would remain associated, and
position alone would tell nothing concerning any particular object's age or
origin, but, at the present day, except the contents of graves, not a stone
implement of the Delaware Indians rests where chance or the intention of
its one-time owner placed it. Indeed, save a few bowlders of the largest size,
few natural objects on the immediate shores of the river are as first seen by
William Penn and his associates. This fact has not been duly considered,
and unwarranted conclusions have been published as established truths—
all, of course, eliminating antiquity from the Indian history of the region.
The fact that a so-called paleolithic implement was found lying on the
surface of the river's shore has resulted in a pen picture of a modern Indian
attempting to fashion a blade and tossing the pebble aside in disgust. Why,
indeed, could not an Indian walk on exposed gravel and pick up a pebble as
well as we can to-day?
There are two considerations to which we must give heed when this
question is asked. We are, in the first place, tacitly informed that the Indian
was given to chipping stone in this haphazard way to supply a sudden need
upon the spot, all of which is not only not a reasonable assumption, but
absolutely incorrect, as argillite bowlders and pebbles, which are not
abundant in the gravels, were not habitually used, but, instead, the mineral
was systematically mined and selected with skill, so that failures were
reduced to a minimum. Then, again, if the object as found has been lying
undisturbed on the river shore for centuries—two centuries at least—why is
it that the chips are not there also? These are never found under such
circumstances. In fact, they are very rarely found at all in the gravel where
the implement itself occurs, and in numbers they exceed the "reject" or
finished object at least as ten to one. Furthermore, we are asked to believe
that the river shore where we find rude implements is the same to-day as
when the Indian wandered along it centuries ago. Fig. 1 shows clearly how
the never-resting tidal flow wears away the shore, carrying sand and fine

gravels from one point and spreading it elsewhere to form a sand bar, it may
be, and turning the channel from one side of the stream to the other, and so
exposing long reaches of the shore to wasting, that for many a year had
been fixed and apparently secure. Often the mud is entirely removed from
the underlying gravel, and abundant traces of Indian occupation are brought
to light, and, less frequently, so strong a current attacks a given point that
even the gravel is moved and deep holes are formed, to be filled in time
with the wasting shore from a point perhaps a mile away. This is the story
of the river of to-day, and so it has been for centuries; and yet we are asked
to believe that we can fill the moccasin prints of the Indian by walking now
along the water's edge. I submit that it is asking a great deal too much.

Fig. 1.—Wasting River Shore due to Tidal Flow.
It has been suggested that rudely chipped implements, when found on the
gravelly shore of the river, have fallen out from the bank and rolled down
from where they had long been lying. This is not at all improbable; but how

does this modernize the object, when the gravel extends quite to the
surface? The pebbles and bowlders at the top of the bank are clearly as
much a part of the deposit as are those at its base, and while the surface may
be—is, in fact—less ancient than the deeper gravels, still they can not be
dissociated; and it is a significant fact that we find, on the gravel at the foot
of the bluff or other exposure, only the rude argillite objects at the water's
edge or on the flat laid bare at low tide, and not a general assortment of the
Indian's handiwork, including pottery; and we must not overlook the fact
that the "gravel-bed" implements bear evidence of all the conditions to
which the gravel itself has been subjected—this one stained by manganese,
that incrusted with limonite; this fresh as the day it was chipped, because
lost in sand and water and not subsequently exposed to the atmosphere; that
buried and unearthed, rolled, scratched, and water-worn until much of its
artificiality has disappeared. The history of almost every specimen is
written upon it, and not one tells such a story as has been told about it by
the advocates of the "Indian-reject" theory.
Much has been written on the natural history of the gravel that is so marked
a feature of the river valley, particularly at the head of tide water, and
almost every essay differs in more or less degree from its fellows in the
matter of the gravel's age as a well-defined deposit. Its origin no one can
question, nor the agencies by which it was brought to where we now find it.
Ice and water did the work, nor have they ceased entirely to add to the bulk
transported in strictly glacial times—perhaps it were better to say in
superlatively glacial time, as the river even now can be positively glacial
upon occasion, as Fig. 2 demonstrates. The main channel has often been
completely blocked with ice and the water forced into new directions and
spread over the lowlands or flats, which it denudes of its surface soil, and
once within recent years the stream found an old channel, deepened it, and
for a time threatened to leave a flourishing riverside town an inland one. Ice
accumulated in this way year after year must necessarily affect the river's
banks, and yet the extent of "damage" is trifling usually, in comparison with
that of the water, particularly when agitated by passing steamboats or
violent winds; and now, too, the ice of our present winters does not
transport coarse pebbles to any significant extent. I am convinced of this
since the examination I gave acres of ice, when the river was gorged with it,
some years ago. It was possible to walk for miles over the ice, as shown in

Fig. 2, and to see it under exceedingly favorable circumstances, and a most
careful search failed to reveal a stone larger than a pigeon's egg incased in
this ice, which was all gently floated from far up the stream and stranded
here; and where piled up upon the shores it usually remains until melted,
and really acts as armor plate, protecting the ground from abrasion when the
floods incident to the "break-up" prevail. Such are the present-day
considerations, and they have a direct bearing upon the question of man's
antiquity here because, first, the river valley has not varied for hundreds of
years, except in becoming wider, the low shores receding, and the stream
becoming broader and more shallow. In earliest Indian times the river was
subject to freshets and ice gorges as now, but never did the water become so
dammed up as to overflow the broad plateaus, areas of glacial gravel, that at
the close of the Glacial period were within the boundary of the river. The
Delaware was a very different stream then—crescendo for thousands of
years, and diminuendo for thousands since—until now it barely hints at
what once was. But not even in the height of its glacial activity was the
climate so severe that the waters contained no fish, nor the forests of the
high surrounding hills harbored no game. Never was it as bleak as the arctic
region of to-day, and as man maintains a footing there, why should he not
have done so here, where life was ever more easily sustained? True; but did
he live here in glacial time?

Fig. 2.—Ice-Gorged River.
Reproducing on a small scale the conditions of the Glacial epoch.
It has been stated in the most positive manner, which only positive evidence
could warrant, that so-called paleolithic implements have not been found in
situ in gravel deposits at a distance from the river, and such, if there were
such, as appeared to be in the gravel, were recent intrusions. This statement,
in its several parts and its entirety, is absolutely incorrect, and no excuse can
be offered for its publication. It is to be explained, however, because
avowedly predetermined. Wherever the glacial gravel of the Delaware tide-
water region is found, there paleolithic implements occur, as they also do on
and in the surface of areas beyond the gravel boundary. We accept,
notwithstanding the unscientific source of the suggestion, the statement that
post-glacial floods inhumed all traces of man found beneath the superficial
soils, and find that, if these traces are considered in that light, some
mysterious power was behind the senseless flood, and always buried

argillite paleolithic implements far down in the gravel, and then selected
argillite artifacts of more specialized forms for the overlying sands and
reserved the pottery and jasper arrow points for the vegetation-sustaining
soil. This, as stated, is absurd, but such is the order of occurrence of the
traces of early man in the upland fields, and these are to be considered
carefully before a final conclusion can be reached. The broad, elevated
plateau extending eastward from the present bank of the river offers
facilities for studying the evidences of man's occupancy in this region such
as are to be found in few localities. The principal reason for this is that
almost no local disturbance has occurred since the original deposition of the
sand that overlies the gravel and underlies the soil. The natural history of
these underlying sands has recently received a good deal of attention,
because, unlike the deeper gravels, there is perfect accord as to the
occurrences therein of artificially chipped objects; and the suggestion that
they are of intrusive origin being set aside as untenable, the geologists are
now divided on the question whether the sand is wind-blown, a modified
dune, and so not necessarily old even in years, or the result of intermitting
overflow of water, usually carrying a considerable amount of sand and often
heavy with washings from some distant clay bank. The objections to the
"eolian" theory are that pebbles and bowlders, even of considerable weight,
are scattered at all elevations through the sand, and these pebbles, as a rule,
do not present any evidence of exposure to eroding sands, but are smooth
and glassy, or the typical water-worn pebbles of a brook or the river bed,
and more significant is the fact that the sands themselves are of different
degrees of fineness, layer upon layer, and are nowhere clean or free from
clay; and finally the thin layers of clay are clearly continuous over such
extensive areas that in no sense can they be called segregations of that
material. On the other hand, a carefully instituted comparison of the sand
from the surface of the field to its junction with the gravel proper shows its
identity with a deposit made by water in comparatively recent times. No
difference whatever could be detected. The sand dune, modified by rains
and finally leveled to a plain, presents, in section, no such appearance as the
sands that overlie the gravels of glacial origin. Without a scintilla of reason,
however, many geologists declare that no deposit of sand can be of any
geological significance if it contains traces of man not clearly intrusive. The
latter fact necessitates the former claim, all of which, I submit, is nonsense.

Fig. 3 illustrates how artificially chipped pebbles occur in this underlying
sand. The upper portion shows the superficial soil removed to its point of
contact with the sand. This is determined by the change of color from dark
brown to light yellowish brown, and it is generally so very abrupt a change
that no doubt arises as to where the soil ends and the sand begins. The sand
proper is shown by the position of the object—the measuring rule and
trowel. It will be noticed that the implement is lying flat, as such an object
would almost necessarily be if transported by water, and not perpendicular,
as would be the case if it had fallen down some root-hole, animal's or
insect's burrow, or opening in the earth from any cause, and now
obliterated.

Fig. 3.—Occurrence of an Argillite
Implement in Glacial Stratified Sand.
The presence of these artificial flakes, blades, and other forms of simple
implements can only be explained by considering them as a constituent part
of the containing bed, having been brought hither by the same agency that
brought the sand, pebbles, and clay. When standing before a newly made
section of this implement-bearing deposit it is easy to picture the slow
progress of its accumulation. The broad plain has been subjected to
overflow, now of water bearing only sand, and then of muddy water; now
with current strong enough to roll small pebbles from some distant point,

and then periods when the sun shone on the new deposit, dried it, and the
loose sand was rippled by the wind. Floods of greater volume occasionally
swept across the plain, and ice-incased pebbles were dropped upon its
surface, and with this building up of the plateau to a higher level there were
also brought to it traces of man's handiwork. Of this, I think, there can be no
doubt now. Years ago I endeavored to show from the distribution of rude
argillite implements of specialized forms, as arrow points and small blades,
trimmed flakes and scrapers, that these objects were older, as a class, than
jasper and quartz implements and weapons, and that pottery was made only
in the rudest way before "flint" chipping—jasper and quartz—was
established. The more exhaustively this subject was followed up, the
proposition became more evidently true, and to-day it is unqualifiedly
confirmed by the results obtained from systematically digging deeply over
wide areas of country. The fact that argillite continued in use until the very
last does not affect this conclusion.
As the high land, now forty or more feet above the river and beyond the
reach of its floods of greatest magnitude, was once continually overflowed
and gradually built up by the materials the water spread upon it, it is evident
that the conditions were materially different when such things happened
from what now obtains, and the whole configuration of the country to-day
points to but the one conclusion: that these plateau-building floods occurred
so long ago as when the river flowed at a higher level and possessed a
greater transporting power than at present. This, it is true, was long after the
coarse gravel and huge bowlders were transported from the hillsides of the
upper valley, but it was before the river was confined to its present channel,
and more significantly before what may be called the soil-making period,
itself of long duration and the time of the Indian as such. Not an argillite
chip from the sands beneath the soil but speaks of the distant day when this
plateau was an almost barren plain, and man saw it, roamed over it, and
perhaps dwelt upon it, when but the scantiest vegetation dotted its surface,
and only upon the hills beyond its boundary were there trees and herbage.
Even if we consider the agency of the streams that now are but insignificant
inflowing brooks in spreading, during their freshet stages, sand over level
areas, we must still go back to a time when they were streams of infinitely
greater magnitude than they have been for many centuries, and before, too,
the Indian was a skilled chipper of jasper and a potter of taste, else why the

absence of these products of his skill in the deeper sands? It matters not
how we look at it, whether as geologists or archæologists, or whether it is
all post-glacial, or the starting point is still so distant as ice-age activities,
the sequence of events is unaffected. We still have paleolithicity in the
gravel, argillite and the discovery of pottery synchronous with the
deposition of the gravel-capping sand, and, lastly, the Indian.
The record is not a difficult one to read, and never has been, and the
manifold attempts to modernize all traces of man on the eastern coast of
North America can safely be relegated to the limbo of misdirected energy.
Studied in the proper spirit and after the needful preliminary study of
archæology as a whole, the student will find himself, when in the field—
ever a more desirable place than the museum—face to face with evidences
of an antiquity that is to be measured by centuries rather than by years.

THE USE OF ACETYLENE.
By EDWARD RENOUF,
collegiate professor of chemistry, johns hopkins university.

It is now five years since the use of acetylene as an illuminant was
suggested to the public, and it may be of interest to give a sketch of what
has been done during this time, especially as it seems that with the year
1899 the tentative period which must characterize every new industry is in
some respects passed, and a period of solid and well-directed industrial
effort, backed by ample capital, has begun. The knowledge gained during
this tentative period by the laboratory experiments of scientific men, and by
the practical work of inventors and promoters, has made it possible for the
industry to enter on its new phase. To understand its present and to foresee
its future importance it is necessary briefly to review the work of the last
years.
In May, 1892, Mr. Thomas Willson, a Canadian electrician, tried to make
the metal calcium in an electric furnace in his works at Spray, North
Carolina, by heating a mixture of lime and coal dust. He thought that the
lime (calcium oxide) would act on the coal (carbon) to form calcium and
carbon monoxide. He did not succeed in getting calcium, but found in the
furnace a brown, crystalline mass, which was decomposed by pouring water
on it, yielding an inflammable gas. Willson is not a chemist, and he
therefore sent specimens of the material to several men of science to
determine its nature. It was shown to be calcium carbide, a compound of
calcium and carbon, formed by the action of the carbon on the calcium
oxide. The reaction expressed in chemical symbols is CaO + 3C = CaC2 +
CO. The gas formed by the action of water was acetylene, a compound of
carbon and hydrogen. The reaction is CaC2 + H2O = C2H2 + CaO; calcium
carbide and water form acetylene and lime. If water enough is added, the
lime is slaked, and slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH2), is formed.
Neither calcium carbide nor acetylene was a new discovery; acetylene was
discovered by Edmund Davy in 1836, and its properties were studied by

Berthelot in 1862. Impure calcium carbide was first made in 1862 by
Wöhler, who described its decomposition by water into acetylene and lime.
What was there new, then, in Willson's discovery? Two important facts: (1)
He was the first to make carbide by a method applicable commercially; (2)
he was the first to make crystalline carbide. Wöhler's carbide was impure
and amorphous; Willson's, nearly pure and crystalline, so that he succeeded
in obtaining United States patents for crystalline carbide, and, as all carbide
made by commercial processes is crystalline, its manufacture is covered by
Willson's patents.
In the same year, 1892, Prof. Henri Moissan, of Paris, announced the
discovery of crystalline calcium carbide. Moissan's discovery, too, was an
accidental one. He was reducing refractory metallic oxides in an electric
furnace made of lime. At the close of the article in which he reports his
work to the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus de l'Académie
Française, vol. cxii, page 6, December 12, 1892) he refers in two lines to
the formation of an ill-defined carbide of calcium by the action of the
carbon electrodes on the lime of which his furnace was made.
As is common with most important inventions, there is a dispute as to the
priority of making carbide by an electric furnace; and the wonder is, not
that there is a dispute, but that there are so few claimants. A few words of
explanation of the electric furnace will show why. The enormous heat of the
electric furnace (2000° to 3000° C.) is caused by an electric arc, formed by
currents playing between carbon electrodes; carbon is often used in the
furnace processes; here we have one constituent of calcium carbide. Lime,
the material for the other constituent, withstands heat better than any other
common substance excepting magnesia; naturally, inventors would use it, as
Moissan did, as a refractory lining to the furnace. Electric furnaces were not
new. The conditions then were such that the discovery of the carbide was
fairly forced on experimenters, and, as we have seen, the discoveries of
Willson and Moissan were both accidental.
American priority was claimed by Willson, French priority by the friends of
Moissan, German priority by Professor Borchers, of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Fortunately for Willson, among those to whom he had sent specimens of
carbide was Lord Kelvin, the famous English physicist, whose reply to
Willson, stating that the substance received was calcium carbide, was dated

October 3, 1892, two months before Moissan's first publication. Borchers's
claims are too vague to waste space on. Willson's priority is now generally
recognized excepting in France. The German Government has
acknowledged it, and has annulled the German patent granted to Bullier.
Commercial carbide is essentially an American discovery, and it was
developed industrially by Willson's associates before industrial action began
abroad. Messrs. Dickerson and Suckert, of New York, were the first to
undertake the industrial liquefaction of acetylene. Dr. G. de Chalmot,
chemist, and Mr. J. M. Morehead, electrician, worked up the details of the
furnace process in the early days at Spray, North Carolina, and the purity
and the yield from a given weight of material of their carbide have never
been excelled, though cheaper working furnaces are now in use.
Carbides of other metals can be made in the electric furnace, but, owing to
the cheapness of the new material, calcium carbide is the only one of these
which has industrial value as a source of acetylene. One pound of pure
carbide yields 5.89 cubic feet of acetylene.
Thus far carbide has been found industrially valuable for two other
purposes. The one is for carbonizing steel; experiments in Germany show
that iron or soft steel takes up carbon more readily when it is heated with
carbide than when it is heated with coal dust or charcoal. Some steel works
are now using carbide for this purpose. The other use of carbide is more
important. It is found to be a valuable germicide. It is said to be the most
effectual preventive of black rot, and to destroy the Phylloxera, the two
worst enemies of the grape. The action of the carbide as a germicide
depends on its decomposition by the moisture of the soil, forming
acetylene, which kills the Phylloxera. If the use of carbide on a large scale
substantiates the claims made for it, this is a discovery of vast importance.
The ravages caused by the Phylloxera in the vineyards of southern Europe,
of Africa, and Australia must be ranked as great national calamities.
A temperature ranging from 2000° to 2500° C. (3600° to 4500° Fahrenheit)
is required to make carbide. It is probable that this temperature can be
economically attained only by the electric furnace using water power as the
source of the electric current, and this is the only method used for making
carbide, with the exception of the Walther process, which does not use

electricity but depends on the intense heat generated by burning acetylene
under pressure. In electric furnaces the formation of carbide depends simply
on the heat of the arc, which fuses the mixture of lime and coke. The latest
improvements on the first very simple forms of furnace have secured
continuity of work and economy of electric energy. In the United States
carbide is made exclusively in the Horry furnace. This furnace consists of a
huge short cylinder or hollow wheel, mounted to revolve slowly on a
horizontal shaft. The periphery of the cylinder is closed by removable cast-
iron slats. As the cylinder is partly revolved on its axis from time to time,
the slats are taken off from one side and replaced on the other, thus leaving
the top always open. The cylinder is filled on one side with the powdered
mixture of coke and lime. Into the mixture two vertical carbon electrodes
project downward through the open top of the cylinder. As the carbide is
formed, the cylinder is revolved, lowering the mass from the electrodes.
The fused carbide cools, hardens, and is broken off and removed as it rises
on the other side of the slowly revolving cylinder; new material is
constantly fed in to maintain the level around the electrodes. The process in
the Horry furnace is continuous; the furnace can be run without arresting
the current until repairs are necessary. It is said to combine the different
theoretical improvements referred to, and to reduce the cost of production.
The Horry furnace is in use at Niagara Falls and at Sault Ste. Marie. At St.
Catherine's, Canada, Willson is using his own furnace. Abroad, the older
types of furnace, the Willson, Bullier, and Héroult, are those chiefly in use.

Horry Furnace, showing Electrodes.[5]

Horry Furnace, showing Gearing.[5]

Horry Furnace, showing Carbide just removed.[5]
The actual ingot of good commercial carbide is nearly pure—ninety-six to
ninety-nine per cent—but the ingot is surrounded by a crust of carbide
mixed with unchanged material, containing forty to seventy per cent of
carbide. Foreign makers break and blend ingot and crust to standard size,
the best makers guaranteeing their carbide ninety per cent pure, giving five
cubic feet of acetylene per pound (pure carbide gives 5.89 cubic feet). Eight
to nine pounds of carbide per horse power in twenty-four hours, averaging
five cubic feet of acetylene, is considered satisfactory work. The Union
Carbide Company, which controls the sale of carbide in the United States, is

selling graded carbides under guarantee, the first grade being the nearly
pure ingot, the lower grade the crust.
As the moisture of the air decomposes the carbide, it must be broken up as
soon as made, and packed in air-tight tin cans, varying in size from one to
four hundred pounds.
The present price of carbide abroad averages $96.80 in large lots, and $7.26
per hundredweight in small lots, packing included; in the United States, $70
per ton in large lots, and $4.50 per hundredweight in small lots, packing
included. In 1898, 4,650 tons are said to have been made in the United
States and Canada, and a much larger amount abroad. The output for 1899
is estimated at 12,000 tons for the United States, with a capacity in the new
works in erection at Sault Ste. Marie and at Niagara Falls of 41,000 tons.
The new works building in Europe, to be finished in 1899-1900, have a
capacity for making 80,000 metric tons. These figures will justify the
statement made at the beginning of this article, that the new industry has
found ample capital.
The statement is still current that acetylene attacks copper and brass,
forming an explosive compound. This is not true. Exhaustive experiments
by Moissan and by Gerdes, keeping these and other metals in contact with
acetylene for months at a time, have shown that the metals were not
affected. The conditions under which the explosive copper acetylide is
made in laboratories can not well occur in generators or gas holders. It has
been said that acetylene is very poisonous; the experiments of many
observers, and especially those of Gréhant, do not confirm this statement.
Gréhant experimented on dogs, causing them to breathe mixtures of
acetylene, air, and oxygen, which always contained 20.8 per cent of oxygen,
this being the percentage of oxygen in pure air. By this device he was able
to discriminate between the poisoning caused by acetylene and suffocation
caused by insufficient oxygen. A mixture containing twenty per cent
acetylene inhaled for thirty-five minutes did not seem to trouble the animal.
A sample of the dog's arterial blood contained ten per cent of acetylene. A
dog which inhaled a mixture containing forty per cent of acetylene died
suddenly after fifty-one minutes, having inhaled one hundred and twelve
litres of the mixture; the arterial blood contained twenty per cent acetylene.
Gréhant proved that acetylene simply dissolves in the blood plasma, while

carbon monoxide forms a compound with the hæmoglobin of the blood. A
dog breathing a similar mixture of air, oxygen, and illuminating gas
containing only one per cent of carbon monoxide quickly showed
convulsive movements, and died after ten minutes; its blood contained
twenty-four per cent of carbon monoxide. Thus acetylene, while slightly
poisonous, is less poisonous than coal gas, and vastly less than water gas,
which contains a high percentage of carbon monoxide.
A pressure of thirty-nine atmospheres and three quarters at 20° C. converts
acetylene into a liquid weighing one third as much as the same volume of
water, while one cubic foot of the liquid when released from pressure gives
five hundred cubic feet of gas.
Hitherto acetylene is used only as a source of heat or as a source of light;
yet with very cheap carbide it would prove useful in many ways in chemical
industry, and its use would have the most wide-spread effect on industry
and agriculture. For instance, a method of making alcohol from acetylene is
patented abroad, and by another patented process it is proposed to make
sugar from acetylene. With the present prices of alcohol, sugar, and carbide,
these processes have no commercial value.
Acetylene may be made from the carbide in gas works and delivered to the
consumer through mains like ordinary illuminating gas; or it may be
liquefied at a gas works and delivered to the consumer in the liquid form
under pressure; or the consumer may purchase carbide and generate
acetylene for his own consumption. All three of these methods are in use.
To understand the attitude of insurance companies and of consumers toward
liquid acetylene it will be well to examine its record for the last few years.
Those interested in methods for liquefying acetylene, and for reducing the
pressure of the liquid at the place of consumption so that the consumer
actually uses it as a gas under a water pressure of six inches or less, may
find processes described in detail in the Progressive Age, and in other
technical journals. Suffice it to say that the methods in use in this country
and abroad are simple and effective. The purified acetylene is delivered in
strong steel cylinders, which may be placed in a special building or case
and need not be handled by the consumer. It has been proved by the
exhaustive experiments of the eminent French chemist Berthelot that

liquefied acetylene in cylinders can not be exploded by blows or shocks to
the closed cylinder. If it is exploded, however, by causing a spark within the
cylinder, the explosive force is very great, being about equal to that of gun
cotton.
The use of the liquefied acetylene is so simple and clean that the attention
of inventors was first turned to this mode of supply. It may in future come
again into prominence despite the present strong feeling against it, its use in
many cities being prohibited. This feeling was caused by a number of
explosions, accompanied by loss of life. Three of these explosions occurred
in factories for liquefying acetylene; one in a factory where liquid acetylene
regulators were made; several in buildings of consumers. In October, 1896,
Pictet's works in Paris were wrecked by the explosion of a cylinder filled
with liquid acetylene; evidence proved that the cylinder was held in a vise,
and that the two workmen killed were at the ends of a wrench, closing or
opening the valve, supposing the cylinder to be empty. The explosion was
caused either by a spark from friction in turning the screw, or by the too
sudden opening of the valve and releasing the pressure, causing a shock
sufficient to decompose the liquid. In December, 1896, the works of G.
Isaac, in Berlin, were destroyed by an explosion in the condenser where the
cooled acetylene was liquefied by pressure; Isaac and three workmen were
killed. Evidence showed that through carelessness warm water instead of
cold water was in contact with the condenser, thus warming the liquid and
increasing the pressure to a point which burst the condenser. In December,
1897, the works of the Dickerson & Suckert Acetylene Gas Liquefying and
Distributing Company in Jersey City were destroyed by fire caused by the
explosion of a cylinder filled through carelessness of workmen with a
mixture of air and liquid acetylene—i. e., with an explosive mixture—
killing the superintendent and a workman. In the explosion at the regulator
factory at New Haven, January, 1895, the valve of the cylinder, on which
one of two workmen killed was working, broke; a large volume of
acetylene escaped and ignited from a lighted candle. In all four cases the
explosions were caused by ignorance or carelessness incident to the
beginnings of a new industry, and could be avoided by experience and skill.
It should be stated that in the explosion at Paris all of the full acetylene
cylinders were dug out of the ruins unhurt. The same was true at Berlin,
where five full cylinders were blown against the wall of the building by the

explosion of the condenser, but did not explode. At Jersey City sixty filled
cylinders were exposed to the heat of the fire following the explosion; they
were fitted with safety diaphragms of fusible metal; forty-eight remained
intact, the acetylene burning off quietly as it escaped through the fused
diaphragm, and twelve exploded, either on account of imperfection of the
diaphragms or stoppage of the air passage leading from the diaphragm. The
explosions of liquid acetylene in buildings of consumers have been due in
every case to gross carelessness and ignorance on the part of the consumer.
Although one of the chief points in favor of the liquid acetylene is its
portability, yet it can be shown that it is still easier to carry carbide to the
consumer. One cubic metre of acetylene is compressed to two litres in
liquid form; two litres of carbide weigh 4.44 kilogrammes, which will
produce a cubic metre and a third of acetylene, reckoning three hundred
litres to the kilogramme, which is the average guaranteed yield of carbide.
The light tin carbide cans occupy less space and weigh less than the heavy
steel cylinders, while the generation of the gas is simple and, with proper
generators, perfectly safe. On the other hand, the generators must be cared
for, must often be filled with fresh carbide, and from time to time must be
cleaned. With the generator system acetylene is as safe as or safer than
illuminating gas. Berthelot has shown that at pressures below two
atmospheres a vessel filled with acetylene can not be exploded by the
explosion of a cap of fulminating mercury within the vessel, nor by heating
a wire which extends into the vessel to a white heat by an electric current.
The reason is that the acetylene can not explode unless it is decomposed
into its elements, carbon and hydrogen; to decompose it requires a certain
amount of energy. While the energy of the glowing wire or of the exploding
cap causes a local decomposition at the point of contact, it is not sufficient
to spread the decomposition further. Acetylene forms an explosive mixture
with air; so does illuminating gas. The odor of acetylene is unpleasant; so is
the odor of the water gas used generally in the United States, and the
acetylene can be cheaply deodorized.
As the generator system, then, is the general one, the most important
question to the consumer is what generator to buy, and it is a perplexing
question. The carbide manufacture is so organized that it is everywhere
under the control of powerful and responsible companies which sell a
guaranteed product. The burners now in use are nearly all good. With

generators it is different; the market is flooded with them at all prices,
ranging in value from worse than useless to very good, as regards safety,
economy, and quality of light. As the generator question is by far the most
important and the least understood in the whole acetylene industry, it will
be well to give a full account of the results of the experiments which have
been made within the last two years on this question. The most exhaustive
experiments are those of the English expert, Professor Lewes, and his
results agree with those of other observers.
Lewes first determined the amount of heat developed by the decomposition
of carbide by water, and the conditions which tend to lessen or increase the
intensity of the reaction. The average result of the experiments as to the
amount of heat was 446.6 calories for pure carbide, and a little less for
commercial carbide (to state this differently, one pound of carbide, when
decomposed by water, gives off heat enough to raise the temperature of
446.6 pounds of water 1° C., or to raise the temperature of one pound of
water 446.6° C.). As the intensity of the heat developed determines the
highest temperature attained during the decomposition, and is a function of
the time needed to complete the action, and as the decomposition of carbide
in contact with water is extremely rapid, it is evident that the temperature
developed may be so high as to cause disaster. All the generators at present
before the public may be classified under three heads: 1. Those in which
water is allowed to drip or flow slowly on a mass of carbide, the evolution
of the gas being regulated by the stopping of the water. 2. Those in which
water in considerable volume is allowed to rise in contact with carbide, the
evolution of the gas being regulated by the driving back of the water by the
increase of pressure in the generating chamber. 3. Those in which the
carbide is dropped or plunged into an excess of water.
The conclusions deduced from a large number of experiments were that
when, as in type 1, water is allowed to drip or flow in a fine stream upon a
mass of carbide, the temperature rapidly rises until after eighteen to twenty-
five minutes the maximum is reached, which varies from 400° to 700° C.
(720° to 1120° Fahrenheit), and it is probable that in some of the mass the
higher limit is always reached, as traces of tar are usually found in the
residual lime, in some cases in sufficient quantity to make the lime yellow
and pasty, while vapors of benzene and other polymerization products pass
off with the gas. Leaving the question of temperature in this type of

generator, another important question is the length of time during which the
generation of gas continues after the water supply is automatically cut off. It
is found that gas is evolved with increasing slowness sometimes for an hour
and three quarters after the water supply has ceased, the total volume of gas
so evolved being large.

Type I.
Type of Generator.[6]
The experiments showed that in any automatic generator of this type the
cut-off should be so arranged that one quarter of the total capacity of the gas
holder is still available to store the slowly generating gas.
The second class of generators bring about contact either by water rising
from below to the carbide suspended in the cage (II, A), or by a cage of
carbide suspended in a movable bell which, as it falls, dips the carbide into
water, withdrawing the carbide from the water as the excessive generation
of gas lifts the bell (II, B). Lewes found that under certain conditions
generators of the type II, B were far worse than those of type I.

Type II, A. Type II, B. Type III.
Types of Generators.[6]
The trials were made with a movable glass bell, with counterweights,
containing a half-pound of carbide. The maximum temperatures reached in
four trials were 703°, 734°, 754°, and 807° C. Excessive heating took place
in every case; in the last mentioned the temperature was far above the point
at which acetylene is decomposed into carbon and hydrogen, a thin black
smoke being formed immediately around the carbide while tar vapor poured
out. On removing the residue after cooling it was found to be coated with
soot and loaded with tar. On several occasions the charge was removed
from the generator just after the maximum temperature was reached, and
was found to be at a bright red heat.
These experiments are of the greatest practical importance. At 600°
acetylene begins to polymerize—i. e., to form more complex hydrocarbons,
which are liquid, or solid, at ordinary temperatures. Probably in the
generator acetylene is first given off so rapidly that the heat does not act on
it, but as decomposition advances into the center of the mass of carbide, the
acetylene generated has to pass through the external layers, which, as
shown, may be at high temperatures, above that at which acetylene

decomposes; thus a considerable amount of gas is lost, and the tar formed
may distill into the generator and tubes, clogging the tubes. A more serious
evil is the deterioration in the illuminating quality of the gas. Samples of the
gas were taken as the maximum temperature was approached, and analyzed
with this average result: Acetylene, seventy per cent; other hydrocarbons,
eleven per cent; hydrogen, nineteen per cent. This reduces the illuminating
value from two hundred and forty to one hundred and twenty-six candles.
The hydrocarbons consist largely of benzene, which requires three times as
much air for complete combustion as acetylene does. The best possible
acetylene burner smokes when the acetylene contains benzene.
At first sight these experiments would seem absolutely to condemn
generators of class II, yet the fact remains that some excellent generators
are of this type. Under certain conditions excessive overheating may be
avoided. The rising bell shown in II, B should be discarded. Generators in
which the water rises from below, and slowly attacks the carbide, can be
made safe if the water is never driven back from the carbide, and the
carbide is in separated layers as in II, A. Under these conditions the water is
always in excess at the point where it attacks the carbide, so that the
evaporation, by rendering heat latent, keeps the temperature down, the
temperature of the melting point of tin, 228° C., being rarely reached in
good generators where these conditions are met.
Undoubtedly the best generators, and the only ones which from a scientific
point of view should be employed, are those of class III, in which carbide
falls into an excess of water. In such generators it is impossible to get a
temperature higher than the boiling point of water, 100° C., while with a
properly arranged tank the temperature never exceeds that of the air by
more than a few degrees. Under these conditions the absence of
polymerization and the washing of the nascent and finely divided bubbles
of gas by the limewater in the generator yield acetylene of a degree of
purity unapproached by any other form of generator.
When acetylene is burned in air under such conditions that the flame does
not smoke, it has been proved by Gréhant that there is no carbon monoxide
among the combustion products; the acetylene combines with the oxygen of
the air to form carbon dioxide and water (C2H2 + 5O = 2CO2 + H2O). One
cubic foot of acetylene requires two and a half cubic feet of oxygen.

Supposing a room to have an illumination equal to sixty-four standard
candles; this amount of light from candles would use up 38.5 cubic feet of
oxygen from the air, and would give off forty-three cubic feet of carbon
dioxide; petroleum requires, in cubic feet, twenty-five of oxygen, and gives
off forty of carbon dioxide; gas burned with a flat flame requires about
twenty-five oxygen and gives nineteen carbon dioxide—with an Argand
flame a little less, while with the Welsbach burner gas requires only three
oxygen, and gives off 1.8 carbon dioxide; acetylene requires five oxygen
and yields four carbon dioxide. So that, light for light, acetylene fouls the
air less than any ordinary illuminant excepting the Welsbach gas burner.
(With incandescent electric light there is no combustion and no fouling of
the air.)
Under the best conditions five cubic feet of acetylene give a light of two
hundred and forty candles for one hour, or we may speak of acetylene as a
two-hundred-and-forty-candle gas. Yet this statement, though strictly true,
may be misleading. When ordinary illuminating gas is tested with the
photometer, it is burned from a standard flat-flame burner, burning five
cubic feet per hour. Now the amount of light given by such a gas flame is
no greater than is pleasant to the eye; it is true that if we burn five cubic feet
of acetylene from a suitable flat-flame burner, a light of two hundred and
forty candles is given, but it is unfair to take this ratio as representing the
actual relative illuminating value of the two lights, because we neither need
a light of two hundred and forty candles, nor is such an amount of light
issuing from one burner endurable to the eye. One-foot or one-half foot
acetylene burners are used for domestic lighting; light from the best one-
foot burners averages thirty-two to thirty-five candles per cubic foot. With
acetylene, as with every other illuminating gas, the smaller the burner and
consumption, the less light per cubic foot of gas is obtained. Another
important point is that while these figures represent the best practical
illumination obtained from acetylene by the burners hitherto in use, the
standard flat-flame burner does not give the best gaslight; with a good
Welsbach burner a cubic foot of illuminating gas will give a seventeen-
candle light as an average. The comparison, to be fair, should be between
acetylene and the Welsbach light.
The reader will ask whether it is not possible to burn acetylene with other
forms of burner, or to use it with Welsbach mantles. Successful acetylene

burners of the Argand or of the regenerative type have not yet been
introduced; but in Germany a new acetylene burner with Welsbach mantle
promises good results. Experiments in England with an acetylene Bunsen
burner and Welsbach mantle gave a light of ninety candles per cubic foot of
acetylene used. It remains to be seen whether it is necessary to modify the
composition of the mantles because of the intense heat of the acetylene
Bunsen flame, which gives a temperature of 2100° to 2400° C. (3812° to
4397° Fahrenheit).
It would extend this article to undue length to speak of the various uses of
acetylene as an enricher of other gases, but a mixture of acetylene and
Pintsch oil gas now in use on all the Prussian state railways deserves
mention, as it is a success, and ten thousand tons of carbide will be used this
year for lighting cars by this system. Lewes's new invention of a very cheap
methane water gas which is enriched by acetylene, carried to the consumer
through mains, and burned in ordinary burners, is also promising.
Insurance and police regulations vary for every country. As a rule,
restrictions are put on the use of liquid acetylene, and on the amount of
carbide to be kept in storage. Generators must stand in separate buildings,
which, in towns, must be fireproof.
The Willson patents cover the manufacture of crystalline carbide in the
United States, Canada, and the South American states; and, as all carbide
made by the electric furnace is crystalline, no carbide can be made
independently of these patents in these countries.
In conclusion, it may be predicted that within the next few years acetylene
will prove a factor in giving us an improved and cheaper light. Whether this
will be an acetylene-Welsbach light or whether the acetylene will be chiefly
used as an enricher of cheaper gases the future will show.

THOUGHTS ABOUT UNIVERSITIES.
By WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS,
professor of zoölogy in the johns hopkins university.

You are aware that the pedagogue is no longer treated with that deference
and respect which he feels to be due to his love of learning. Past is all his
fame. Past is the day when the village all declared how much he knew.
Nowadays he is accustomed to be told by the rustics, who once gazed and
wondered, that he is old-fashioned and out of place in our modern world;
that he does not represent the nation; that the love he bears to learning is at
fault; and that the university the people want must be universal like an
omnibus, with a place for all, either for a single square or to the end.
He is also used to hearing from those successful people of whom all must
speak with reverence—those who have demonstrated their superiority by
laying their hands on everything they think worth the getting—that he is a
mere "bookish theorist," and that they are much more able to show him the
path to success than he to tell them anything to their advantage.
Unless he can minister to their comfort or entertainment, or make smooth
the royal road to learning, or at the very least help to maintain the patent
office, he is told to be content with such treatment as they think good
enough for him, and to keep himself to his work of teaching the lower
classes to be lowly and reverent to all their betters.
I have been much interested of late by two books on certain aspects of
modern society. One treats of the dangers which threaten liberal culture and
constitutional government, and all the best products of civilization, through
the increasing prevalence of the belief that our institutions have been
devised by a few for their own selfish ends. So long as men differ in natural
endowments the ignorant and the incapable and the unsuccessful must
outnumber those whose industry and energy and foresight insure success.
As those who have little have always outnumbered those who have much of
the desired fruits of civilization, this writer says that one of the great

questions of the day is whether, in last resort, the world shall be governed
by its ignorance or by its intelligence. He is alarmed by the diffusion of
belief that our established institutions do not represent the people, and that
they are hostile to the best interest of mankind, and by the prevalence of the
opinion that the true way to reform the world and to secure rational progress
is to intrust the organization and administration of government and of
education and of all matters of public interest and importance to the
majority.
The danger so clearly pointed out is real, beyond question; but I can not
agree with the author that it is exclusively or distinctively modern. If some
in our day interpret the belief that the voice of the people is the voice of
God, as conviction that the loudest voice is most divine; if they assert that
the man with pure and lofty ideals of education and duty and loyalty is a
public enemy; we must remember that so wise a man as Aristotle taught, in
the day of Athenian democracy, that the man who is virtuous in undue
measure is a moral monster, as justly repugnant to his neighbors as one pre-
eminent in vice.
If the first book calls Aristotle to mind, one must often think of Jeremiah
while reading the second, for its author is a dismal prophet, who holds that,
formidable as unbridled democracy seems, it is helpless in the struggle with
organized plutocracy, and that its efforts to shake off the restraints and
limitations of social existence can end in nothing but a more crushing
despotism, while submission may bring such rewards of merit for good
behavior in the past and such prizes for good conduct in the future as seem
to the givers to be good investments.
Both writers draw many of their illustrations from the history of our own
country, and they hold that our great political contests are struggles between
those who wish to maintain our institutions for the sake of what they can
themselves make out of them, and those who seek to wreck the ship of state
for very similar reasons.
Some hold that, these things being true, they can show the learned professor
how he may win back, through the struggle between these two great classes
of mankind, some of that confidence in his wisdom which his predecessors
enjoyed. They tell him he may make his learning represent the people if he

will extend his university until it becomes as universal as the kindergarten,
and that he may at the same time increase his popularity with the select if he
will devote more of his time and more of his energy to that branch of
learning which was in olden times pursued in that secluded cloister called
the campus, although it is better known to the polite society of our day
through the banjo club, the football team, and the mask and wig club.
If he will cultivate these two fields, and, refraining from the theoretical
pursuit of empty generalities, will enter upon a three months' campaign of
education at some time when men's minds are stimulated by the heat of
faction to welcome calm discussion of the principles of common honesty
and good citizenship, he can not fail to win the respect and confidence of
all.
When I wrote this last sentence I thought that it was all out of my own head,
and I was proud of it; but as I laid down my pen in my satisfaction for a
moment's rest, my eye fell upon this passage in the prospectus of a new
university—one which is said, in the prospectus, to be not only universal,
but cosmopolitan: "When a question arises which divides scholars, like the
tariff, the causes and course of the Reformation, money, etc., the student
will be referred to the ablest exponents of the opposing sides."
No professor can plead ignorance of the way to enter this new career of
usefulness. One can scarcely pick up a college catalogue or a magazine or a
newspaper without learning how to make the university universal. One of
the simplest plans, with which all are familiar, is to send to men with a
reputation for learning a ruled form and a request that each will write, in the
proper columns, the price, publisher, and title of the best book on his own
subject—mathematics, astronomy, moral science, or whatever it may be—
or, if he knows of no such book, that he will write one. An accompanying
circular tells how these lists are to be scattered through the innumerable
homes of our land, and how diplomas are to be distributed as prizes to those
who, after purchasing the books, prepare and submit the most exhaustive
permutations of their tables of contents.
Learned men who do not approve this plan are offered a choice from many
others: six-week courses in law, medicine, and theology; summer schools
for the promotion of science and the liberal arts; questions and answers in

the educational column of some journal for the home; or a national
university so universal that it shall supply lunches and learning for all out of
the public chest, with no doorkeeper to examine passports.
The way to extend the university in this direction is so well understood that
I will turn now to another part of our subject, for some may be less familiar
with our opportunity to construct a royal road to learning for those who are
entitled to use it.
A recent writer on education, who says American universities impose "upon
young men in the nineteenth century a curriculum devised by dead-and-
gone priests for the young men of the twelfth," calls upon the teachers of
America to reconstruct their curriculum on psychological principles. I
myself am no psychologist, and while I fail to see how this fact concerns
the public, it has recently been pointed out in print, although no one has
ever charged me with lack of reverence for the psychologist. In truth, he is
to me what the good old family doctor is to many, for I am convinced that it
would be hard to name one among all the educational ills that flesh is heir
to that he would not be able to throw on the spot, with a good collar-and-
elbow hold. I have a prodigious respect for those fine big words curriculum
and psychological principles, and I welcome the plan for reconstructing the
curriculum on psychological principles the more eagerly because it is
extremely simple and not hard to understand, like some psychological
utterances. In fact, it is so very simple and easy that it is sure of enthusiastic
indorsement by innumerable children, for this reformer's plan is neither
more nor less than the abolition of the pedagogue.
"If," he says, "I was director general of education for all America" (which at
the present moment he is not), "I would abolish colleges, but send American
youths to travel for two years in Europe. In my opinion," he says, "a father
who has sons and daughters of a proper age to go to college will do better
by his children if he sends them for two years to travel in Europe than if he
sends them for three years to an American or English university."
Admirable and simple as is this plan for ascending Parnassus in vestibuled
trains of drawing-room cars, personally conducted by Grant Allen, this
psychologist seems to me to err in thinking it new, for it was in high favor
in England during the reign of that merry monarch who was always so

furious at the sight of books that his queen, who loved reading, had to
practice it in secret in her closet.
Euphranor having asked, in the reign of George II, "Who are these learned
men that of late years have demolished the whole fabric which lawgivers,
philosophers, and divines have been erecting for so many ages? Lysicles,
hearing these words, smiled and said he believed Euphranor had figured to
himself philosophers in square caps and long gowns; but, thanks to these
happy times, the reign of pedantry was over. Our philosophers, said he, are
of a different kind from those awkward students. They are the best-bred
men of the age, men of the world, men of pleasure, men of fashion, and fine
gentlemen. I will undertake a lad of fourteen bred in the modern way shall
make a better figure and be more considered in any drawing-room or
assembly of polite people than one at four-and-twenty who hath lain by a
long time at school and college. He will say better things in a better manner,
and be more liked by good judges. I say, when a man observes and
considers all this, he will be apt to ascribe it to the force of truth and the
merits of our cause, which, had it been supported by the revenues and
establishments of the Church and universities, you may guess what a figure
it would make by the figure it makes without them. People begin to open
their eyes. It is not impossible but the revenues that in ignorant times were
applied to a wrong use may hereafter, in a more enlightened age, be applied
to a better."
"The money that went to found the Leland Stanford or the Johns Hopkins
University," says the modern reformer, "would have been immeasurably
better spent in bringing St. Marks at Venice and the Uffizi at Florence into
the lives of innumerable young Americans. Here, then, is the opportunity
for a wiser Cornell."
A few years ago an acquaintance of my own, himself an accomplished
psychologist, brought with him to Washington a young man, a native of
north Greenland, that he might take into his life the best substitute for St.
Marks at Venice that this country affords. While limited in range, the results
were as definite as one could wish, for two of the most refined delights of
our wonderful civilization—rum and horses—were at once taken into the
life of Eskimo Joe with all the fresh enthusiasm of youth. In his boyish
impetuosity he could not see why a hired horse should not have the

fleetness of Santa Claus's reindeer and the endurance of wild dogs; and as
few horses survived the first lesson, the psychologist soon reconstructed the
curriculum, for Joe's progress in rum and oysters was most gratifying. You
who have attended my lectures in anthropology will remember that Nature
has bestowed on the Eskimos two endowments which are not elsewhere
found united, although they are exhibited separately in high perfection by
the anaconda and the camel. Joe was able to load himself with food and
drink like a pirate ship victualed for a long cruise, and he became so
proficient in three months that a two-year course seemed unnecessary, so he
was shipped off to Labrador at the first opportunity, and was left there to
carry St. Marks at Venice into the homes of Greenland as best he might. It is
clear that our psychological reformer's plan is not new, but he says our
curriculum is some thousand years behind the times, and he asks, "Will
somebody one day have the wisdom to perceive that the education which
sufficed for the mediæval England of the Plantagenets is not absolutely
adapted to the America of the nineteenth century?" I myself know so little
of the curriculum of that day that this charge may, for all I know, be well
founded, and if so it were a grievous fault. For all I know the dead-and-
gone priests of the twelfth century may have read Homer in the original
Greek, and carried on their studies in trigonometry and navigation with the
aid of logarithms and the nautical almanac, although it has come in my way
to know something of their method of teaching zoölogy, for my studies
have led me to examine a text-book on this subject, which was written early
in the twelfth century for the education of the young Queen Adelaide, who
was married to Henry I of England in 1121. The dedication is as follows:
"Philippi de Thann into the French language has translated the Bestiary, a
book of science, for the honor of a jewel, who is a very handsome woman,
Aliz is she named, a queen is she crowned, Queen she is of England, may
her soul never have trouble! In Hebrew in truth Aliz means praise of God. I
will compose a book, may God be with the commencement!"
As a sample of the zoölogical curriculum of the twelfth century take this
chapter:
"Onager by right is named the wild ass; of it the Physiologus says, in his
speech, when March in his course has completed twenty-five days, then that
day of the month he brays twelve times, and also in the night for this

reason, that that season is the equinox, that is that night and day are of equal
length; by the twelve times that it makes its braying and its crying, it shows
that night and day have twelve hours in their circuit. The ass is grieved
when he makes his cry, that the night and day have equal length; he likes
better the length of the night than of the day. Now hear without doubt the
signification of this. Onager signifies the devil in this life; and by March we
understand all the time that we have; by the day we understand good
people, by right, who will go in light; and by night we understand those
who were Neros; and by hours we understand the number of people. And
when the devil perceives that his people decrease, as do the hours which are
in the night, after the vernal equinox which we have in March, then he
begins to cry, to deplore greatly, as the ass does which brays and crys."
One need not go back to the middle ages for a measure of progress, for all
who remember the American college of thirty years ago know there has
been notable improvement in this short time, and they also know that every
change has not been an improvement. All who are concerned with
education see many defects, and wish to do what they can to remedy them,
and to increase the efficiency and usefulness of our whole educational
system in all its branches from the lowest to the highest, although I believe
they still find much wisdom in the advice of the prophet of old, "that we
make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us and discover
what is the straight and right way, and so walk in it."
Many who are now before the public as reformers seem to me to fall into
error through belief that our educational system has been devised by some
one, either in the twelfth century or at some other time, and that they may
therefore hope to devise a better. All who know that it is a highly complex
and delicate organism which has grown up imperceptibly and naturally in
accordance with many needs, fulfilling many different purposes and acting
in many diversified and far-reaching ways, know also that while reform
always has been and always will be needed, organic change is quite another
matter. They know, too, that a disposition to pull it to pieces in the interest
of some theory or speculation must inevitably end in disaster, for they must
agree with Bacon that "it were good, therefore, that men in their innovations
would follow the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly,
but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived."

The complaint that learning is no longer treated with due deference is not
exclusively modern, for it was enumerated long ago among the things that
are not new under the sun; and he who for his own pleasure or distinction
devotes himself to work in fields that yield nothing but the interest of the
exploration should look to his own pleasure for his reward, since learning is
no more exalted by turning it into an aristocratic and exclusive pleasure
ground than by making it a shop for profit. While no weak and foolish
brother of the laboratory should be permitted to think that he belongs to a
favored class or has any claims to support or respect except for service
rendered, it is the duty of our graduates to teach the world, by the example
of their lives, what the work of the university is.
Lyceum lectures and summer schools and systematic courses of reading are
good things, and the common school and the home are the foundation of all
education. Travel is a most valuable adjunct, but those who are to profit by
it must first know what they go out to see, "for else shall young men go
hooded and look abroad little."
No school or college can improve its work by calling itself a university,
although the prevalence of belief that its work is the work of a university
may bring harm incalculable; for that university is universal, in the best
sense of the word, where students are inspired with enthusiasm for truth by
the example of those whose minds are "as a mirror or glass capable of the
image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof as
the eye joyeth to receive light."
What nobler task can our graduate undertake than to teach the world that
while the benefits which learning confers are its only claim to
consideration, these benefits will cease so soon as they are made an end or
aim? All men prize the fruit; but who else is there to tell them that the tree
will soon be barren if they visit it only at the harvest, that they must dig
about it and nourish it and cherish the flowers and green leaves? What
better service can he render than to point out that the gifts of learning are
like health, which comes to him who does not seek it, but flies farther and
farther from him who would lure it back by physic or indulgence?
The two authors I referred to at the beginning can not both be right, and
both may be partly wrong, for it is possible that neither plutocracy nor a

democratic majority makes a state. No university need humble itself to seek
the favor of either plutocracy or democracy if its graduates can convince
mankind, by their own lives, that its aim is not to gain deference or success
or distinction or reward of any sort, but solely to propagate and diffuse
among mankind "that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity,
which is a greater possession than much learning, a nobler gift than the
power of increasing knowledge."

IN THE LITTLE BROOK.
By DAVID STARR JORDAN.
Long ago, in the old Devonian times, when life was very leisurely, all the
beasts and people that there were lived in the sea together. The air was dull
and murky on the land. It was so light that it gave no support to the body,
and so those that ventured about in it had to lie prone on the ground all the
time wherever they went. So they preferred to stay in the water, where
motion is much easier. Then, too, water is so much better to breathe than
air, if one has gills fitted for it! He has only to open his mouth and the water
rushes in. Then he has only to shut his mouth and the water rushes out
backward, bathing his gills on the way. Thus, the air dissolved in the water
purifies all the little drops of blood that run up and back through the slender
tubes of which the gills are made.
But in those days, besides the gills, some of the beasts of the sea had also a
sac in the throat above the stomach in which they could stow away air
which they took from the atmosphere itself. This served them in good stead
when they were in crowded places, in which the air dissolved in the water
would fail them.
And those which were so provided used to venture farther and farther out of
the water, pushing their way heavily on the ground. And those which could
put forth most effort survived, until at last their descendants were able to
maintain themselves on the land altogether. These gave rise to the races of
reptiles and birds and mammals, the ancestors of all the land beasts that you
know, as well as men and women and all the monkey people. But it was
very long ago when this happened, and because these ancestors came
finally out of the water they have no part in the story I am trying to tell to-
day.
Those that remained in the water grew more and more contented with their
condition. Because the medium in which they lived was as heavy as their
bodies, they swam without much effort, and effort not being needed, it was
not put forth. As there was food enough in the water, they did not need to go

on land. As they did not go on land, they did not use their lungs for
breathing, the air sac gradually shrank away, or was used for some other
purpose, and all the parts of the body became adjusted for life in water, as
those of their cousins who left the sea became fitted for the life in air. Being
now fishes for good, all the progress since then has made them with each
succeeding century more and more decidedly fishy.
And because they are fishes they are contented to live in little brooks,
which would not satisfy you and me at all. But our ancestors in the early
days were more ambitious, and by struggle and effort won what seems to us
a larger heritage.
So it happened one spring when the ice melted out from some little brook
that flows down from somebody's hills somewhere toward some river that
sets toward the Mississippi, the little fishes began to run.
And first of all came the lampreys, but they hardly count as fishes, for they
have yet to learn the first principles of fishiness. A fish is a creature whose
arms and legs are developed as fins, having cartilaginous rays spreading out
fanlike to form an oar for swimming. But the lamprey has no trace of arm
or leg, not even a bone or cartilage hidden under the skin. And its ancestors
never had any limbs at all, for the earliest lamprey embryo shows no traces
of them. If the ancestors ever had limbs, the descendants would never quite
forget it. Some little trace would be kept by the clinging force of heredity,
and at some time or another this rudiment would appear. And the lower jaw
they lack too, for that is really another pair of limbs joined together in front
—as it were, a pair of short hands clasped together and never unlocked.
But though the lampreys have no limbs and no jaws and are not fishes
anyhow, they do not know the difference, and come up the brook in the
spring, rushing up the rapids, swirling about in the eddies, just as if they
were real fishes and owned the brook themselves. They are long, slender,
and slippery, shaped like eels, without any scales and with only a little fin,
and that along the back and tail, an outgrowth from the vertebral column.
The vertebral column itself is limp and soft, the vertebræ only imperfectly
formed and made of soft cartilage. In front the lamprey seems to be cut off
short, but if we look carefully we see that the body ends in a round disk of a
mouth, and that this disk is beset by rows of sharp teeth. A row of the

sharpest of these is placed on the tongue, and two of these are above the
gullet, for the tongue to scrape against them. And the rest are all blunt and
are scattered over the surface of the mouth, which has no lips nor jaws, but
is surrounded by a belt of fringes. When the lamprey is hungry he puts his
mouth against the side of some fish, exhausts the water between, and then
the pressure of the outside water holds him there tightly. When this is done,
the fish swims away and the lamprey rides with it, giving no thought to
where he is going, but all the while scraping away the flesh with his
rasplike teeth. When he has filed off enough fish flesh to satisfy his hunger
he lets go, and goes off about his business. The fish, who does not know
what hurt him, goes off to get well if he can. Usually he can not, for the
water of the brook is full of the germs of little toadstool-like plants, and
these fasten themselves on the fish's wounds and make them bigger and
bigger, until at last the cavity of the abdomen is pierced and little creatures
of many kinds, plant and animal, go in there and plunder all this fish's
internal organs, to carry them away for their own purposes.
But when the lampreys come up the April brook it is not to feed on fishes,
nor is it to feed at all. Nature is insistent that the race should be kept up, and
every animal is compelled to attend to the needs of the species, even though
it be at the sacrifice of all else. If she were not so, the earth and the seas
would be depopulated, and this is a contingency toward which Nature has
never looked.
The lampreys come up the stream to spawn, and while on this errand they
fasten their round mouths to stones or clods of earth, that the current may
not sweep them away. When so fastened they look like some strange dark
plant clinging to the bottom of the brook. When the spawning season is over
some of them still remain there, forgotten by Nature, who is now busied
with other things, and they wear their lives away still clinging—a strange,
weird piece of brook-bottom scenery which touched the fancy of Thoreau.
When the young are hatched they are transparent as jelly, blind and
toothless, with a mouth that seems only a slit down the front end of the
body. These little creatures slip down the brook unobserved, and hide
themselves in the grass and lily pads till their teeth are grown and they go
about rasping the bodies of their betters, grieving the fishes who do not
know how to protect themselves.

The lamprey is not a fish at all, only a wicked imitation of one which can
deceive nobody. But there are fishes which are unquestionably fish—fish
from gills to tail, from head to fin, and of these the little sunfish may stand
first. He comes up the brook in the spring, fresh as "coin just from the
mint," finny arms and legs wide spread, his gills moving, his mouth
opening and shutting rhythmically, his tail wide spread, and ready for any
sudden motion for which his erratic little brain may give the order. The
scales of the sunfish shine with all sorts of scarlet, blue, green, purple, and
golden colors. There is a black spot on his head which looks like an ear, and
sometimes grows out in a long black flap, which makes the imitation still
closer. There are many species of the sunfish, and there may be a half dozen
of them in the same brook, but that makes no difference; for our purposes
they are all as one. They lie poised in the water, with all fins spread,
strutting like turkey-cocks, snapping at worms and little crustaceans and
insects whose only business in the brook is that the fishes may eat them.
When the time comes, the sunfish makes its nest in the fine gravel, building
it with some care—for a fish. When the female has laid her eggs the male
stands guard till the eggs are hatched. His sharp teeth and snappish ways,
and the bigness of his appearance when the fins are all displayed, keep the
little fishes away. Sometimes, in his zeal, he snaps at a hook baited with a
worm. He then makes a fierce fight, and the boy who holds the rod is sure
that he has a real fish this time. But when the sunfish is out of the water,
strung on a willow rod, and dried in the sun, the boy sees that a very little
fish can make a good deal of a fuss.
When the sunfish goes, then the catfish will follow—"a reckless, bullying
set of rangers, with ever a lance at rest." The catfish belongs to an ancient
type not yet fully made into a fish, and hence those whose paired fins are all
properly fastened to the head, as his are not, hold him in well-merited scorn.
He has no scales and no bright colors. His fins are small, and his head and
mouth are large. Around his mouth are eight long "smellers," fleshy feelers,
that he pushes out as he crawls along the bottom in search of anything that
he may eat. As he may eat anything, he always finds it. His appetite is as
impartial as that of a goat. Anything from a dead lamprey or a bunch of
sunfish eggs to a piece of tomato can is grateful to him. In each of the fins
which represent his arms is a long, sharp bone with a slimy surface and a
serrated edge. These are fastened by a ball-and-socket joint, and whenever

the fish is alarmed the bone is whirled over and set in place; then it sticks
out stiffly on each side. There is another such bone in the fin on the back,
and when all of these are set there is no fish that can swallow him. When he
takes the hook, which he surely will do if there is any hook to be taken, he
will swallow it greedily. As he is drawn out of the water he sets his three
spines, and laughs to himself as the boy pricks his fingers trying to get the
hook from his stomach. This the boy is sure to do, and because the boy of
the Mississippi Valley is always fishing for catfish is the reason why his
fingers are always sore. The catfish is careless of the present, and sure of
the future. After he is strung on a birch branch and dried in the sun and
sprinkled with dust and has had his stomach dug out to recover the hook, if
he falls into the brook he will swim away. He holds no malice, and is ready
to bite again at the first thing in sight.
The catfish uses his lungs as an organ of hearing. The needless lung
becomes a closed sac filled with air, and commonly known as the swim
bladder. In the catfish (as in the suckers, chubs, and most brook fishes) the
air bladder is large, and is connected by a slender tube, the remains of the
trachea, to the œsophagus. At its front it fits closely to the vertebral column.
The anterior vertebræ are much enlarged, twisted together, and through
them passes a chain of bones which connect with the hidden cavity of the
air. The air bladder therefore assists the ear of the catfish as the tympanum
and its bones assist the ear of the higher animals. An ear of this sort can
carry little range of variety in sound. It probably gives only the impression
of jars or disturbances in the water.
The catfish lays her eggs on the bottom of the brook, without much care as
to their location. She is not, however, indifferent to their fate, for when the
little fishes are hatched she swims with them into shallow waters, brooding
over them and watching them much as a hen does with her chickens. In
shallow ponds the young catfishes make a black cloud along the shores, and
the other fishes let them alone, for their spines are sharp as needles.
Up the brooks in the spring come the suckers, large and small—coarse,
harmless, stupid fishes, who have only two instincts, the one to press to the
head of the stream to lay their eggs, the other to nose over the bottom of the
stream wherever they go, sucking into their puckered, toothless mouths
every organic thing, from water moss to carrion, which they may happen to

find. They have no other habits to speak of, and when they have laid their
eggs in a sandy ripple they care no more for them, but let go of life's
activity and drop down the current to the river whence they came. There are
black suckers and white suckers, yellow ones, brown ones, and mottled, and
there is more than one kind in every little brook, but one and all they are
harmless dolts, the prey of all larger fishes, and so full of bones that even
the small boy spits them out after he has cooked them.
Then come the minnows, of all forms and sizes, the female dull colored and
practical, laying her eggs automatically when she finds quiet water, and
thinking no more of them afterward. The male, feeble of muscle, but
resplendent in color, with head and fins painted scarlet or purple, or silver
white, or inky black, as may be most pleasing to his spouse. His mouth is
small and without teeth, for he feeds on creatures smaller than fishes, and
his head in the spring is covered with coarse warts, nuptial ornaments,
which fall off as soon as the eggs are properly disposed of. In the little
brook which comes to my mind as I write two kinds of minnows come up
the stream together before the others realize that it is verily spring. The one
is small, dainty, translucent, and active, swimming free in the water near the
surface and able to take care of itself when pursued by a sunfish or bass.
Along the side of its body are two black stripes not quite parallel, and
between and below them the silvery scales are flushed with fiery scarlet.
The fins are all yellow, with scarlet at base, and as the male passes and
repasses before the female all these colors, which she has not, grow brighter
than ever.
The next is a larger fish, clumsy in form, hugging the bottom as he swims.
The whole body of the male is covered with coarse white warts, and across
each fin is a bar of black, white, and orange. This minnow feeds on mud, or
rather on the little plants which grow in mud, and his intestines are
lengthened out proportionally. In fact, they are so long that, to find room for
them, they are wound spool-fashion about the air bladder in a way which
happens to no other animal.
Of the other minnows, the one attracts his female by a big, jet-black head;
another by the painted fins, which shine like white satin; another by his
deep-blue sheen, which is washed all over with crimson. In fact, every
conceivable arrangement of bright colors can be found, if we go the country

over, as the adornment of some minnow when he mates in the spring. The
only exception is green, for to the fishes, as to the birds, green is not a color.
It only serves to cover one, while the purpose of real color is to be seen.
And there are fishes whose colors are so placed that they are hidden from
above or below, but seen of their own kind which looks on them from the
side.
The brightest fishes in the world, the "Johnny darters," are in our little
brook. But if you look at them from above you will hardly see them, for
they are dull olive on the back, with dark spots and dashes like the weeds
under which they lie. The male is only a little fellow, not so long as your
finger and slim for his size. He lies flat on the bottom, half hidden by a
stone, around which his tail is twisted. He will stay there for hours, unseen
by other fishes, except by his own kinsmen. But if you reach down to touch
him with your finger he is no longer there. The tail straightens out, there is a
flash of blue and scarlet, and a foot or two away he is resting quietly as
before. On the bottom is his place, and he seems always at peace, but when
he moves his actions are instantaneous and as swift as possible to a creature
who lives in the water. On the bottom, among the stones, the female casts
her spawn. Neither she nor the male pays any further attention to it, but in
the breeding season the male is painted in colors as beautiful as those of the
wood warblers. When you go to the brook in the spring you will find him
there, and if you catch him and turn him over on his side you will see the
colors that he shows to his mate, and which her choice through ages has
tended to develop in him. But do not hurt him. He can only breathe for a
moment out of water. Put him back in the brook and let him paint its bottom
the colors of a rainbow, a sunset, or a garden of roses. All that can be done
with blue, crimson, and green pigments in fish ornamentation you will find
in some brook in which the darters live. It is in the limestone brooks that
flow into the Tennessee and Cumberland where they are found at their
brightest, but the Ozark region comes in for a close second.
There will be sticklebacks in your brook, but the other fishes do not like
them, for they are tough and dry of flesh, and their sharp spines make them
hard to swallow and harder still to digest. They hide beneath the
overhanging tufts of grass, and dart out swiftly at whatever passes by. They
tear the fins of the minnows, rob the nests of the sunfish, drag out the eggs

of the suckers, and are busy from morn to night at whatever mischief is
possible in the brook.
The male dresses in jet-black when the breeding season is on, sometimes
with a further ornament of copper-red or of scarlet. The sticklebacks build
nests in which to hide their eggs, and over these the male stands guard,
defending them with courage which would be dauntless in any animal more
than two inches long. Very often he has to repel the attacks of the female
herself, who, being relieved of all responsibility for her offspring, is prone
to turn cannibal. Even the little dwellers of the brook have their own
troubles and adversities and perversities.
Last of all comes the blob, or miller's thumb, who hides in darkness and
picks up all that there is left. He is scaleless and slippery, large of head,
plump of body, and with no end of appetite. He lurks under stones when the
water is cold. He is gray and greenish, like the bottom in color. He robs the
buried nests of eggs, swallows the young fishes, devours the dead ones, and
checks the undue increase of all, not forgetting his own kind. When he has
done his work and the fall has come and gone, and the winter and the spring
return, the brook once more fills with fishes, and there are the same kinds,
with the same actions, the same ways, and the same numbers, and one
might think from year to year, as the sun is said to do, that these were the
selfsame waters and the selfsame fishes mating over and over again and
feeding on the selfsame food.
But this is not so. The old stage remains, or seems to remain, but every year
come new actors, and the lines which they repeat were "written for them
centuries before they were born." But each generation which passes changes
their lives just a little, just as the brook and the meadow itself is changing.

WHITE WHALES IN CONFINEMENT.
By FRED MATHER.
The dolphin family (Delphinidæ) contains nine genera, with only one
species in each, but the most interesting one is the white whale
(Delphinapterus leucas of Pallas, or D. catodon [Linn.] of Gill), because it
is the only one that can be kept in confinement and its habits observed
under semi-domestication. It has fallen to my lot to care for several of these
animals in confinement, and to have a chance to note their peculiarities.
"The Great New York Aquarium," at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street,
New York city, was built by Messrs. Coup and Reiche, and opened in 1876.
Mr. Butler was the superintendent. I supervised fish culture, and when not
otherwise engaged made collections of fishes and invertebrates in Bermuda
and in other parts. In 1877 I had charge of their branch aquarium at Coney
Island. At both places we had many white whales at different times, for the
management would keep whales penned up on the St. Lawrence River to
replace those which died, and would never show more than two at a time,
claiming that they were rare animals and only to be had at "enormous"
expense. The aquarium was a private concern; admission fifty cents; and as
the owners were W. C. Coup, a former circus proprietor and once the
business manager of Barnum's Circus, and Henry Reiche, an animal dealer,
who would sell you giraffes, elephants, or white mice, the attractions were
duly exaggerated by the press agent, no matter what the facts might be. This
is why we kept a reserve stock of white whales. It would never do to have
the public know that they were common during the summer in the St.
Lawrence, and when one was getting weak another would be sent down,
and the public supposed that the same pair was on exhibition all the time.
This species is common in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Arctic
Oceans. According to the late Prof. G. Brown Goode, "stragglers have been
seen in the Frith of Forth, latitude 56°, while on the American coast several
have been taken within the past decade [1880] on the north shore of Cape
Cod. They are slightly abundant in New England waters, but in the St.

Lawrence River and on the coast of Labrador are plentiful, and the object of
a profitable fishery. They abound in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, and
ascend the Yukon River, Alaska, to a distance of seven hundred miles. The
names in use are beluga and whitefish among whalers, porpoise, dauphin
blanc, marsouin or marsoon in Canada, and keela luak with the Greenland
Eskimos" (Fisheries Industries).
The white whale grows to be sixteen feet long; we never had one over ten
feet in length, but they were billed, showman fashion, to be much longer.
An adult will yield from eighty to one hundred gallons of good whale oil,
besides several gallons of more valuable oil from the head which is used on
clocks and watches under the trade name of "porpoise-jaw oil," which is
sent in a crude state to manufacturers on Cape Cod, who refine it and free it
from all tendency to gum. The skins make a leather that is waterproof and
stands more hard service than any other known leather. Large quantities of
it are sent to England and made into "porpoise-hide boots" for sportsmen,
and in Canada the hides are converted into mail bags. The flesh is eaten to
some extent by the fishermen, fresh, salted, and smoked.
Zach. Coup said: "I have eaten the fresh steaks several times, and found the
meat a fair substitute for beef when the choice was between fish and bacon
as a continuous diet, down on the islands where these three things were the
only possible variation in the line of animal food, and a very limited choice
in the vegetable line, comprising dried beans and rice, for when I was with
them there was a scarcity of potatoes for seed, and canned goods had not
attained their present popularity, even if these poor fishermen had been able
to buy them."
The fat, oily blubber is an overcoat, a nonconductor of heat, and is between
the muscle and the skin, as is largely the case with the hog, and, like the
latter animal, there is savory muscle which may be cut into succulent steaks
below it.
At first the white whales were not in my care, but, being strange animals,
were watched with curiosity. The whale tank was as nearly circular as a
twenty-sided tank could be whose glass plates were four feet wide with iron
standards between, making a pool of about thirty feet in diameter. The pool
was of cement and tapered down to an outlet about three feet below the

floor, for drainage, and on the floor the cement basin arose two and a half
feet, while the panes of one-inch glass were six feet high, with the water
line two feet below the top of the glass. This gave the spectators a view of
the animals below water, and of their backs as they came up to blow. The
white whale and the harbor porpoise (Phocæna brachycion), known as the
herring-hog, etc., do not make as much of a "spout" as the larger whales do;
they roll up and exhale either less strongly or with less water over the blow-
hole than their larger relatives. They merely send a mist into the air which
can not be seen at a distance of a thousand yards, while the "blowing" of the
larger whales may be seen for miles. Half a century ago we boys were
taught by the text-books that the whale—there was only one mentioned—
drew in water through its mouth, strained out the jellyfishes and other life,
and then ejected the water, after the manner of a fire engine, through the top
of its head. That this nostril, equipped with the best water-tight valve ever
invented, enabled an air-breathing mammal to exhale and inhale, without
getting much water into its lungs, we never suspected. If we thought about
it at all we looked at the whale as a fish, having gills somewhere, and let it
go at that. As our laws speak of "whale fisheries" and "seal fisheries" in
connection with these great aquatic mammals, it would be just as correct to
speak of all animals which frequent the water as "fishes," and legislate on
the "muskrat fisheries," "mink fisheries," etc.; there is really no difference.
I have seen newspaper reports that about thirty years ago a white whale,
brought there by a Mr. Cutting, lived in captivity in Boston for two years.
Beyond the fact that one was brought there by a Mr. Cutting, and was on
exhibition about that time, is all that I have been able to learn, and it is
doubtful if it lived one year (see Fisheries Industries, section 1, page 19).
One was exhibited at Barnum's old museum, at Broadway and Ann Street,
New York, that is said to have lived nine months and was then burned up
when that building burned, in March, 1868. As these animals only come
into the St. Lawrence, where all live ones have been captured, in May and
June, there is no reason to doubt that it did live in confinement for nine
months, but none that have been exhibited since that time have survived
more than half as long, and I have had personal knowledge of every one
since Barnum's.
Coup's Broadway Aquarium opened on October 11, 1876—too late to get a
white whale that year. But early next spring Mr. Coup sent his brother to the

St. Lawrence River for specimens. This brother, "Zach.," had never seen a
whale, but he had full instructions concerning their care from Professor
Butler, who had charge of the one at Barnum's Museum. There was an air of
mystery about the expedition, and in May "Zach." brought a solitary
specimen and at once went for more. The town was billed, the daily press
was worked in true circus fashion, the crowd came and expressed various
opinions. Standing by the tank, I heard strange comments:
"Do you call that little thing a whale?" This to an attendant.
"Yes, sir, it's a white whale from the northern coast of Labrador, the only
one ever captured or ever seen by the oldest whaleman. It was reported to
have been seen near the entrance to Hudson Bay, and Mr. Coup fitted out an
expedition and captured it at an expense of over one hundred thousand
dollars." He had evidently been reading what the press agent had stuffed
into the newspapers.
The visitor took another look and remarked: "The papers said it was twenty
feet long; I should think it might be six feet, but no more."
"Well," answered the attendant, "water is mitey deceivin', an' that whale is
more'n three times as long as it looks. The fact is, the papers did report it to
be longer than it is, for when we drew off the water to clean the tank
yesterday we put a steel tape over the whale and it measured just nineteen
feet eleven inches and a half."
Then a rural couple came, and she remarked: "Oh, I'm so glad we came
here, and can tell the folks that we've seen a real live whale!"
"Lucy," said he, "this city is full of all kinds of cheats, an' I don't believe
that thing is alive more'n Methuselah is; it's some indy-rubber contraption
with clockwork in it that makes it go round and puff in that way."
After the season for hatching trout and salmon was over, in April, I was
detailed to build a branch aquarium at Coney Island, with instructions to
construct a whale tank the first thing, in order to be ready for the next
arrivals. I employed a maker of beer vats, and he brought three-inch planks
for the bottom, staves eight feet high, and iron for hoops. The tank was to
be twenty-five feet in diameter, with a "chime" nine inches below the
bottom, making the tank seven feet deep inside. It was to set with its top

eighteen inches above the soil, which was to be the water line, giving the
whales five feet and a half of water—little enough when we realize that a
ten-foot animal has a diameter of nearly three feet. Heavy timbers were laid
under the bottom of the tank, carefully leveled, for no weight can be borne
by the staves in a tank of that size.
All this was planned, as well as the engine and pumps, and was well under
way, when I received an order from Mr. Coup to go to Quebec and bring
down two whales while Zach. went for more. Then I learned the secrets of
the live white whale trade. The first whale had been kept back until it could
be delivered at night, and its transportation was a mystery intended to
arouse the curiosity of the public.
At the railroad station at Quebec two boxes were turned over to me. They
were about fifteen feet long, four feet wide, and four feet deep. They were
upholstered with "bladder wrack," a most soft cushion, and in each box a
white whale lay on these pneumatic cushions. A plug in the bottom of each
box had let the water out while the boxes were being lifted by the rope
handles on the sides, but when on the cars the plugs were replaced and
water to the depth of a foot was poured in; this served to keep the under
parts moist, while frequent sponging or the use of a dipper served to keep
the skin from drying. The nostril, or "blow-hole," needed the most attention,
for it has a valve which must not be allowed to get even partially dry, and a
saturated sponge was kept suspended over this all the time during the
journey by rail to New York.
The white whale is a very timid animal, and comes up the St. Lawrence in
May and June, when the young are brought forth; it is believed that they
then go to the river to avoid their enemies, among which is the "killer" or
orca whale. Their food, according to Professor Goode, is "bottom fish, like
flounders and halibut, cod, haddock, salmon, squids, and prawns." From my
knowledge of this whale in confinement I am surprised at the above list, for
those under my observation not only preferred live eels, but could not
swallow one whose diameter was over one inch, and it was difficult to get
quantities of eels as small as three quarters of an inch in diameter,
especially when an adult whale would consume about twenty pounds in a
day. When larger eels were placed in the tank they would be taken out dead
in a day or two with their sides scratched and torn by the small teeth of the

whale which had failed to swallow it. We tried other food, for eels are quite
expensive in New York city, costing fifteen and eighteen cents per pound,
but the whales refused small flatfish, flounders, etc., and the only other food
they ate was small tomcods. They refused dead herrings and all fish that
were cut in pieces.
The animals are captured at the small French fishing village of Rivière
l'Ouelle, on Isle aux Coudres, seventy miles below Quebec, where life is as
primitive as it was two hundred years ago in this, one of the oldest of
Canadian settlements. Luke Tilden, one of our aquarium men, who went up
with Zach. Coup, told of the capture of the whales, and the following is
from notes taken by me as Luke told it: The men all fish and the women do
a little gardening, but their harvest is the marsouin, a name common to the
white whale and to the black porpoise. A fair white whale will weight eight
hundred pounds and yield nearly one hundred gallons of oil worth fifty
cents per gallon, so that when they trap twenty in a season it means
prosperity to the colony; in 1874 they took one hundred, but the catch has
fallen off since. "When we reached the island," said Luke, "we went straight
to Father Alixe Pelletier and donated ten dollars to the Church for prayers
for our success, and it was well invested. The good old man is the head of
that colony and keeps everything straight. In 1863 there was an epidemic of
indifference to the Church, and the men went to the bad, got drunk, fought,
fished on Sundays, and reviled the priest, withholding all dues to him. Then
he said, 'God is angry with you, and to punish you will send no more
marsouin until you repent.' They laughed at him, and for three years no
marsouin came to them, and they were very poor. They went to the father
on a Christmas day and implored him to intercede for them, and he did. The
next spring there was a great catch of marsouin, and the men have remained
faithful since.
"The tides here rise and fall some twenty feet, and the whales are trapped in
an inclosure made of poles, the entrance to which is closed when a school
enters. The pound is about a mile square, and is made of slim poles put two
feet apart, space enough to let a whale through, but they will not attempt it.
The tide falls and leaves them on the mud, quaking with fear. When we
want live ones the boxes are made, padded with seaweed, shoved out over
the mud, tipped on one side, and the whale rolled into it, where its struggles

soon put it on an even keel, and then it gives up and does nothing but
breathe as the boxes are taken on board a schooner for Quebec."
I was fortunate in getting the above story from Luke Tilden, for a few
weeks afterward he died in the aquarium; and Zach. Coup would tell
nothing that could be relied on, not even to the locality where the whales
were caught.
The white whale is the only one of its tribe that can be captured in the
manner related, because of its cowardly timidity. The harbor porpoise, or
"herring-hog," would jump nets and break barricades or die. It would not
bear the confinement of an aquarium, for it would leap out of the tanks or
dash its brains out in trying to do so; but, once placed in a tank of either salt
or fresh water, the white whale starts to circle it, always to the left, with the
sun, and contentedly blows at intervals of from five to fifteen minutes, and
seems as contented as a canary bird in its cage.
The whale does not always swim in circles to the left when free, and why it
does so in confinement is a question. I merely assert the fact. Perhaps wiser
men know why perfectly still water in a washbowl will rotate to the left
with an accelerated motion when the plug is withdrawn, but I do not. As the
motion to the left is invariable there must be a rule for it, but, granting that
this motion has some relation to the motion of the earth, the question of
how this affects the voluntary movements of an animal remains to be
answered. I have watched over a dozen white whales in captivity, dumped
into tanks from the most convenient side without regard to the direction of
their heads, and every one turned and circled to the left. The question arises,
Why do they do this? At the new aquarium now at Battery Park, New York
city, the big sturgeon always circles to the left except when feeding.
The two whales at Coney Island were good-sized ones, nearly ten feet long,
and they raced around, side by side, and played for nearly two hours before
they began to take the eels which had been in the tank several days,
although the large mammals had been without food for at least seven days.
On the way down I had noticed a difference in the sound of their breathing,
that of the female being sharp and clear, while her mate seemed to have a
hoarseness, and occasionally gave something like a cough. I called attention
to this and told Mr. Coup that the animal had some lung trouble. He

consulted a man who professed to know about these animals, and then
reported his opinion that the cough was nothing to fear, "merely a little
water in the blow-hole."
"This may be true," I replied; "I'm not a medical man, but I've heard many
consumptives cough, and that whale imitates them. I doubt if it lives a
month."
It lived just twenty-six days after its arrival at Coney Island. The last five
days of its life it took no food, and its labored breathing was annoying to all
who knew the cause of it. Then came a touching display of affection. The
female slackened her pace day by day to accommodate it to that of her
constantly weakening companion, and as the end neared she put her broad
transverse tail under his and propelled him along. He stopped breathing at
10 a. m., but his mate kept up her efforts, occasionally making a swift run
around the tank, as if to say, "Come, follow me," and then slowing up at his
side, resumed the work of sculling him along, as before. Rude men
expressed pity for the living one, and after my men had rigged a derrick and
hoisted her mate from the pool she would rise higher out of water when she
came up to blow, remembering that he had gone out over the top of the
tank. An autopsy by local physicians, whose names have been forgotten,
assisted by a medical student then in my employ, now Dr. J. R. Latham, 126
West Eleventh Street, New York city, disclosed the fact that the whale died
of pneumonia.
A white whale which reached the Broadway aquarium about July 1st, after
mine came, lived seven months, dying January 28, 1878. My whale was
either diseased when captured or took a cold at Isle aux Coudres. The New
York one was sound all summer, and I told Mr. Coup that it might live for
years, but the artificial heat of the aquarium in winter was not what a
subarctic animal could endure, and it succumbed as most of Peary's
Eskimos did in New York last winter. The autopsy on this whale was
performed by Dr. F. D. Weisse, professor of practical and surgical anatomy
of the medical department of the University of the City of New York,
assisted by Prof. J. W. I. Arnold, of the same university, and Dr. Liautard,
superintendent of the Veterinary College. They agreed that pneumonia was
the cause of death, induced by a change of temperature of the water in
which the animal had been kept. The official measurements of this female

specimen, whose organs were kept in the two institutions named, were: nine
feet six inches from snout to tail tips; three feet between tips of caudal fins,
with a body breadth of twenty inches and a head breadth of thirteen inches.
The lungs, weighing twenty-two pounds, presented on dissection the
appearance of having been affected with chronic catarrhal pneumonia. The
liver weighed nineteen pounds. The four stomachs were all free from any
trace of previous disease.
In looking up the life history of the white whale when opportunity offered,
during the last twenty years I have consulted many old whalemen, and they
all say that whales of all kinds take their babies on their flukes and scull
them along as my female sculled her dying and dead partner. This must be a
fact, for the little one could never swim with its parent. But another
question arises: Is this purely a female instinct to provide for its young,
which was, in the case of my pair, developed into a desire to preserve a
companion? or, in other words, would a male have done this, or would a
female have done it if she were free and had other companions? Was it love
for her mate, or a feeling of selfishness at her lonely position? My female
was afterward sent to England in the old transportation box, and was nine
days without food, for they will not swallow food in transit, and it lived
four days in London, clearing more than enough to pay for the animal and
all expenses.
When the free aquarium at Battery Park, New York city, was opened,
December 10, 1896, there was talk of getting white whales the next spring,
but there was no way to employ men to go for them at a stated salary, as
they would have to pass a civil-service examination and become regularly
appointed employees of the city. In this emergency Mr. Eugene G.
Blackford came forward and advanced the money for the expedition, and it
started early in May. On June 4th Professor Butler delivered a pair of them
to the superintendent, Dr. Bean. I was aware of their coming, and was at the
aquarium, and so was Dr. Latham. The male was lead-colored, was said to
be a year and a half old, and was nine feet long. The female was of the
usual cream-color, ten feet and a half long, and was said to be a year older
than her mate. It is known that young and immature specimens are darker
than adults, but I am skeptical about the ages, especially as there is a half
year credited to each at the exact time the young are brought forth, and do

not know on what the ages are based further than that the young are darker
in color for a time.
"How does the breathing of the big one sound to you?" the doctor asked.
"Like ours at Coney Island that died from lung trouble," I replied, "and I
would not have brought that animal down unless it was the only one to be
had during the season."
"I think I'll give her about ten days to live," replied the doctor.
As these were not my whales, I declined to talk of their prospects of life to
several reporters who knew me, and the whale in question died of
pneumonia on June 11th, just a week after its arrival in New York, and
several days before the trained ear of Dr. Latham had allotted its span of
life.
The male came to its death by an accident at 9 p. m. on June 24th, just
twenty days after arrival. An eel got into its blow-hole and it drowned.
According to an account published in the New York Sun of Monday, July
26, 1897, said to be obtained from Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, director of the
aquarium, the whale "was as healthy a one as ever spouted until late on
Friday afternoon, the 24th, when one of the keepers noticed that something
was wrong. His attention was attracted by the loud wheezing that
accompanied each blow that the whale made when he came up for air. The
wheezing could be heard all over the aquarium. Dr. Bean was sent for. He
was certain that the whale's lungs were all right. He cited a fact, known to
the custodian and to all the keepers, that the mammal for the past month had
remained under water a little longer after he came to the surface to blow.
This convinced Dr. Bean that the whale's lungs were sound and that some
other cause of illness must be found."
Then the whale coughed out a piece of an eel that it had bit in two, and as it
came up to blow again there was another piece hanging from the blow-hole
which could not shut, and so let water into the lungs. Dr. Bean ordered the
water drawn off the tank in order to get at the animal, but a former
superintendent, who had planned the tanks, had put in such small drainage
pipes that by the time the water was drawn down so that the men could get
at the whale it was dead.

I do not believe that a white whale lived two years in Boston, because this
subarctic animal could not endure the extremes of Boston's temperatures
without contracting lung disease in some form. Think of such an animal
living through climatic conditions that an Eskimo can not stand, and in a
public institution where thousands of people are vitiating the air!
Animals which live wholly in water are more susceptible to changes of
temperature than those which live on land. The white whale can be kept the
year round in New York city if it can have a refrigerating plant to give it the
temperature which it needs, and proper food.
We bring polar bears to New York which suffer in summer, if not in our
comparatively mild winters, and tropical animals which barely survive, but
these land mammals are not so susceptible to climatic influences as are the
fishes and the purely aquatic mammals, like the whales. These can never be
kept long by the crude means which have been employed. From the purest
air they have been changed to the more or less vitiated air where thousands
of human beings are crowded and in a temperature which is unnatural. If we
would keep them we must give them better chances for living than in open
tanks in the summer temperature of New York.

UNUSUAL FORMS IN PLANTS.
By BYRON D. HALSTED.
The unexpected is apt to occur. Along with the regularity in living things,
which we call "uniformity of Nature," there is so strong a tendency to vary
that one almost expects to find a turn in the avenues of life sooner or later,
and that gradual or sudden, as the case may be. We will not stop to discuss
the open question of whether we are possessed by an inherent quality of
variation, or as creatures of circumstances, subject to the controlling forces
of our environment.
Yesterday while looking at a row of seedling peaches, all from the same lot
of pits, one of the miniature trees was found to be bronze or copper colored
throughout. This set me to thinking. Here was a "sport," as it is termed, and
if I take good care of the abnormity, bud it into common stock, etc., the
landscape architects and ornamental gardeners may thank me for the
novelty that will please their wealthy patrons.
Leaving aside the abnormal as met with in the animal world, for much of it
is more painful than otherwise to contemplate, let us glance at some of the
unusual things occurring among plants.
One first thinks of some strange forms in leaf, and if the eyes are opened to
them they may be met with upon every hand. The "four-leaf" clover is
lucky perhaps only because the finder is sharper-eyed than others, and
stands a brighter chance of seeing success as it crouches almost invisible in
the wild grass, the tilled field, or wherever the eyes may be set to find it.
The child who brings me the oddities of vegetable forms is knowing in the
normals of his class of curiosities, or else he would not see the novelties
from the finding and exhibiting of which he gains so much pleasure. The
person who is familiar with the striking beauty of the cardinal flower
(Lobelia cardinalis) is the one who rejoices at the variations that may occur
in the tints of the bright corolla. His delight would reach a high pitch should
the conspicuous spikes be found upon dry ground, and not by the bank of

some stream half hidden by the overhanging grass. But should the
wandering plant display white flowers, then an albino of a most interesting
kind has been met with, and some reason for it is sought in the unusual
locality. Only a few days ago a white variation of the Lobelia syphilitica,
cousin to the cardinal, was seen by the writer treasured in the Botanical
Garden at Cambridge, Mass., and it called to mind the rage for pink water
lilies, that twenty years ago were only met with wild in ponds at Plymouth,
Mass. I asked an expert recently if there was any call for the pink or
"Plymouth" lilies, and he informed me that the fad had died out with the
transplanting and widespread culture of the pink "sports" of the nymphæa
ponds.
Abnormal colors in flowers are among the most common freaks in wild
plants, and none are more frequent than the albinos. One could fill a page
with instances of this sort. Some of our most common weeds, as the moth
mullein (Verbascum blattaria), have a large percentage of the plants with
white blossoms, and the patches of the white interspersed with the normal
yellow-flowered plants in poorly kept meadows and neglected land has led
the writer to gather seed of each to test the truth of the opinion that the
white strain may be transmitted to the offspring, but the proof is not yet at
hand.
The writer knows where there is a patch of the hound's tongue
(Echinospermum) with a good sprinkling of plants producing white corollas
instead of the normal deep maroon. The two colors make a good subject for
students who are gaining an elementary knowledge of the stability of
species, and the range of striking variations that must be allowed for them.
Next to the albinos the instances where the floral parts approach leaves in
size and color are the most common. A few weeks ago while passing
through a field once devoted to corn, but now overgrown with weeds, and
therefore of special interest to a botanist, my eyes fell upon a daisy plant all
the heads of which were with olive-green ray flowers instead of the
ordinary pure white ones. These rays were smaller than the normal and
quite inclined to roll, as shown in Fig. 1, and form quills, as seen in some of
the fancy chrysanthemums. By the way, our common field daisy is a
genuine chrysanthemum, and that which is produced in one species under

the guiding, fostering hand of the skilled gardener was here shadowed forth
in the field of waste land.

Fig. 1.—Green and Normal Oxeye Daisy
Heads.
A week or so later, while going through a similar field in an adjoining
county to the one where the daisy freak was found, I came upon nearly the
same thing as seen in the heads of the "black-eyed Susan," or cone flower
(Rudbeckia hirta L.). Here were the two leading weedy daisies, the white
and the yellow, the former coming to our fields from the East and across the
sea, while the latter, as a native of our Western prairies, journeys to make a
home here and help to compensate by its pestiferous presence for the vile
weeds that have gone West with the advance of civilization. Both of these
daisies revealed that tendency in them to vary in their floral structures that
if made use of by the floriculturist might result in forms and colors as
attractive and profitable as met with in their cousins the chrysanthemums of
the Orient.
Perhaps the season which we have had, with its excess of moisture and
superheat, has made the abnormal forms more abundant than usual. The
even current of life has been met by counter streams, so to say, and the
channels were broken down. In walking through a meadow in early June it
was a common thing to find the spikes of the narrow-leaved plantain

(Plantago lanceolata L.) branched and compounded into curious shapes.
Some of the normal and malformed spikes are shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.—Malformed Heads of Plantago Lanceolata.
As a tailpiece to this portion of the subject it is a pleasure to introduce a
freak among the native orchards, as shown in Fig. 3. A word of explanation
is needed of the normal form of the lady's slipper here shown. As found in
the moist woods, the plant above ground consists of two leaves and a single
pink and strange-looking blossom terminating the stalk. This is the rule, and
it has been strictly adhered to, so far as the writer knows, for centuries with
a single exception, and that exception is the one here presented. It is as
remarkable as a double-headed dog, and as difficult of explanation as the
twin thumb.

Fig. 3.—A Twin-Flowered Cypripedium Acaule
(Ait.).
Perhaps the best way is to make no attempt to account for the freak, and
leave the subject open for those who have a gift of insight into the secrets of
the abnormal and the unexpected. Other species of cypripediums regularly
bear more than one flower; this one may have done so in former ages, and
here is the link that binds our pretty unifloral species to its remote and
possibly extinct ancestor. On the other hand, a double-flowered form is
possibly in embryo, and before the next century closes the Cypripedium

acaule Ait. may need to have its description changed so as to embrace two
flowers.
The influence of moisture, heat, and light is very great upon vegetation, and
one only needs to observe the same species of plant as grown in a moist,
shady place, as compared with the ones that are located in the full sun
where the soil is dry. Size and shape of parts, and even their color and the
surface, are different, and this all leads us up to the cultivated plants where
variation is the rule and constancy the exception.
Among wild plants where similar surroundings obtain for all members of
the species the albino is noted, and any replacement of stamens by petals, as
in the wild buttercup, is the rare exception. But the cultivated plants have
led a charmed life, and we scarcely wonder that the plants in the bed of
sweet peas or gladiolus, canna or dahlia, are as diverse in form and color as
the pieces in a crazy-bedquilt. Man, with all his ingenuity and skill, has
been at work molding the plant clay made plastic by generations of special
culture.
In one sense the greenhouse, the garden, orchard, and even the cultivated
field are all dealing with monstrosities. The well-filled horticultural hall at a
State or county fair is a vast collection of unnatural curiosities—that is, they
do not occur in Nature, but are truly the creations of the mind of man as
worked out along lines of vegetable physiology and stimulated plant
production. For dinner this very day the writer ate a slice of a modern
watermelon. What a triumph of horticultural art was exhibited in that giant
fruit, each seed of which was filled with the accumulated tendencies of a
generation of high breeding! There was represented the influence of soil
and selection, of crossing and of culture, until the wild melon, which none
of us sees or cares to see, is gone and a special creation takes its place, with
its great demands upon any one who would attempt to grow it to perfection.
The art of breeding might possibly have deprived it of seeds had there been
some other convenient method for propagation, as is true of many of our
tree fruits, the navel orange being a striking example. Along with the
absence of seeds and the presence of fine flavor there is truly a monstrous
form, in that one orange is within and at the "navel" end of the other.

Should we glance at some of our garden vegetables, as, for example, the
cabbages in their various races, every one will be struck with the
strangeness, to say the least, of the forms produced. In contrast with the
head of the true cabbage, where leaf is folded upon leaf until a mass of
metamorphosed foliage as large as a half bushel is produced, there is the
cauliflower, with the edible substance stored in a fleshy inflorescence that
has lost its normal function and become truly monstrous. Were it not so
tender and delicate a food we might be disposed to smile at the absurdity of
the whole thing, or at the kohl-rabi, with its turniplike bulb in the stem just
above the surface of the ground. It is certainly a plastic species that will
give such diverse and fantastic forms—so far from the wild state, and for
that reason so useful to man.
In the same manner a comparison of our orchard fruits with the forms from
which they came would lead to the thought that man has made them to his
liking, and not for service to the plant species. They are abnormal, judged
by all standards in Nature; monstrous in size and in many cases have lost
their essential structure as seed-producing organs.
Coming to the ornamental grounds, the disguises are largely swept away,
and there is but little hope of judging what the original plants may have
been from which have descended the favorites of the flower bed and the
conservatory. Species have been split into a thousand and one varieties,
each with its peculiarities and each with the potency for greater deviation.
Where shall we cast the line and land an example? The rose show of June is
only surpassed by the chrysanthemum exhibition in autumn. There must be
the new sorts brought out each year, whether the fancy be for a special
shade or color or a striking new shape of bud or form of bloom. Would you
realize what a novelty means to those in the craft who watch a group of
carnation growers as they hang over the exhibit of a "new" rival, and
consider all the merits and defects of the candidate for a certificate?
All the beauties of the flower garden are so familiar to us that it is not
expected that they will be considered unnatural. If the hydrangea makes a
panicle larger than it can bear, man helps it out with a string or stake, for by
overdoing it is not undone any more than is the coddled peach tree held up
at fruiting time by a dozen poles, or the forced lily with a weak back
supported upright by an artificial green stem at church on Easter morning.

But even here there are monstrosities in the true sense. The asparagus or
sweet potato stem occasionally broadens out into a ribbon, and it passes as
an abnormity. The same thing takes place in the flower cluster of
cockscomb (Celosia cristata), and if it failed to produce a strange fan-
shaped and highly colored and crested top the owner would complain that
her seed had given her only an inferior pigweed, and therefore not come
true to name. The attractiveness of the cockscomb resides in the strange
habit the plant has of broadening the upper end of the flower stalk out into a
form that is truly monstrous. And this brings me to speak of a form that
attracted my attention during the present season, samples of which are
shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.—Monstrous Blossoms of Foxglove.
The striking feature of the specimens of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)
under consideration is the production of an enormous somewhat bell-shaped
flower at the extremity of the long racemose inflorescence, and at a time
when only a few of the lowermost blossoms upon the stem have opened.
The normal digitalis flower has a large pendant purple corolla much spotted
upon the middle lobe of the larger and lower lip. On the other hand, the
truly monstrous flowers, two to three inches across, are borne terminally
and are quite uniformly bell-shaped, with the lobes from twelve to fourteen
and spotted evenly over all the surface. The four stamens of the normal

flower have increased to twelve in three examined and to thirteen in
another. These stamens are normal in size and situated upon the corolla
tube, except that there is no indication of their being in long and short pairs.
The single pistil is many times enlarged in the monstrous blossom—in one
instance two thirds of an inch in diameter for the ovary. Within the outer
ovarian wall there was a circle of five petaloid pistils, some showing the
placentæ and ovules intermixed with the pink and purplish petaloid
expansions.
Within the circle above mentioned there was a second pistil, tipped like the
original with petal-like lobes instead of a stigma. The column was found so
closely built up that the parts would not separate, and a cross-section was
made through it, which showed that the pistil had a greenish central stalk
around which the ovarian cavities were scattered quite irregularly, all
bearing numerous ovules. In the flowers with twelve stamens there were
four tips to the stigma, and the eight cavities were to be distinguished in the
ovary, although they were not arranged in any regular order and not uniform
in size. In short, the transections of these resembled the seed cavities seen in
a slice of a large tomato of the "trophy" or "ponderosa" type.
The florists' catalogues advertise in a few instances this "Digitalis
monstrosa," and it is presumed that the specimens from which the
engraving was made were from a packet of this "strain" of seed. As but a
small percentage of the plants in the bed examined were monstrous, letters
were addressed to some German growers of the seed, with questions as to
this commercial monstrosity. One reply contained the statement that the
form known as "monstrosa" had been in the market about ten years, and that
about fifty per cent of the plants produce the strange terminal flowers.
Another correspondent recalls the form in question as having been
catalogued for more than forty years, and that it is described in a work upon
gardening published in 1859, in which it states that the seed of this variety
must only be gathered from the capsules of the monstrous flowers in order
to preserve the abnormity. Concerning this last my correspondent said that
it is all the same whether the seed is taken from the capsules of monstrous
flowers or from the whole spike. Seed taken in this way will give from
twenty-five to thirty-five per cent of the monstrous flowers, but the ratio
varies from year to year.

There are some advantages to the floriculturist in the monstrous form as the
first bloom in it is uppermost and very conspicuous, while in the normal
form the blooms appear from below upward, and the drooping tip of the
spike is the last to produce flowers. The case in hand is a remarkable
deviation from the type in many ways, but most interesting of all is the fact
that floriculturists have by selection developed a variety that, in a packet of
a hundred seeds, is quite certain to give some plants of the type
"monstrosa," which it bears as its trade name.

MALAY LITERATURE.
By R. CLYDE FORD.
The Malay has a literature peculiarly his own, and in it comes to light all
that subtle appreciation of Nature which marks him as a Naturmensch, but
not a savage. This lore of his race he carries mostly in his memory, for to
reduce it to writing has been, until recently, a task at once laborious and
scholarly, and the ordinary Malay, living in the ease of perpetual summer, is
neither. Still, there are dog-eared old manuscripts which circulate from one
village or campong to another, and these are often read aloud in the
evenings to eager companies. And it makes a scene never to be forgotten, to
see a dozen people seated in the shadows around some old man and to listen
to the mellow cadences of his voice as he reads to them a tale of the olden
time, of the great days of his race, before the foreigner's ships had scared
the fish from the bays or turned them into noisy harbors; the sparkling stars
peep through the ragged, whispering fronds of the palm trees, the yellow
light of the damar torch shines on eager faces, crickets chirp in the grass,
and from afar comes the booming of the sea borne on the soft breath of the
night wind.
Malay literature, like most literatures, has had an ancient and a modern
period. In the former we behold a primitive people dominated by Sanskrit
life and civilization, and naturally enough the literature of this time is
mostly translations of Sanskrit poems and romances, or at least productions
inspired by such, and full of allusions to Hindu mythology. Probably to this
early time may be traced such works as Sri Rama, a free translation of the
Ramayana; the Hikayat Pancha Tantra, an adaptation of the Hitaspodêsa;
Radin Mantri, a history of the love affairs of a Javan royal prince; the Shaïr
Bidasari, an epic; and several other such epics and romances.
One must not think that the language of these works is old-fashioned or
obsolete, as Beowulf and Chaucer are to us, or the Niebelungen Lied in
German. On the contrary, they are full of Arabic words and many other
marks of recent composition; but it is the matter, the conditions of life

described, the evident antiquity of the very feeling of the productions, that
lead one to refer them to the early period.
There are also some works that are genuinely Malay in origin and
inspiration, and probably of a date that would put them between the ancient
and modern periods. Of such is Hong Tuah, a story of a prince of Malacca
who was a kind of King Arthur of his day. This work exists in several
manuscripts, some of which are in England, one in Leyden, and one or two
in the East Indies, and the date of the oldest is not before 1172 of the
Hegira. Considering the fact that the year 1317 of the Mohammedan era
does not commence till May 12, 1899, we thus see that many of the
manuscripts of Malay literature are of no great antiquity. Another of these
intermediate works is the Sejarat Malayu, or Malay Annals, which narrates
the history of the Malays of Malacca, and their heroic defense against the
Portuguese in the year 1511. It is divided into chapters, and is about the
only notable historical composition in the language.
The modern period is that period which marks the domination of Islam in
the far East, the period in which the Malay mind has adjusted itself to a new
faith and a new education. It is hard to tell when Mohammedanism first
obtained a real foothold among the Malays, but probably not much before
the fourteenth century. However, the conquest when once effected was
complete, and to-day the people of Tanah Malayu are among the strictest
followers of the Prophet.
In a certain sense this period of the literature has been fruitful, but not so
fruitful as the former one. Originality has been checked and imagination
deadened, and the result is seen in a loss of sprightliness and vivacity.
Works of morals and philosophy and compilations of Mohammedan law,
have flourished. Still, we find some prose works of this period which are
commendable; they even have some of the spirit of the earlier writings by
which, no doubt, they were inspired; among these may be mentioned the
Tadju Elsalathin, or Crown of Kings, by a mendicant monk, and the
Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim, a religious romance of some beauty and pathos.
Within the last seventy-five years the prose literature has received some
notable additions through the writings of Abdulla bin Abdulkadir, a famous
moonshi of Singapore, who attained to some distinction under the Straits

Government, being sent once or twice on missions to native states. He was
born in Malacca toward the close of the last century, of Arab-Malay
parentage, and received the ordinary education of a Malay lad of good
family. After Singapore was founded, in 1819, he moved thither, where he
thenceforth spent most of his life. His most important works are the Hikayat
Abdulla, an autobiography, the Pelayaran Abdulla, an account of his trip for
the government to Kelantan, and a narrative of his pilgrimage to Mecca
made in the year 1854.
Without a doubt Abdulla was the most cultured Malay who ever wrote. In
his capacity as teacher he was often called upon to help missionaries with
their translations of the Bible into Malay; though a devout Mohammedan,
he was more than ordinarily liberal in belief, and quite willing to see the
contest between Christianity and Islam go on fairly and on its merits. He
once assisted a Mr. Thompsen, of Malacca, in translating portions of the
Scriptures, but it was a thankless task, for the missionary was obstinate, and
thought he knew more about the language than the moonshi himself. As a
result, such wretched Malay got into the work that Abdulla felt called upon
in his autobiography to set himself right before the world. This is what he
says:
"... But let it be known to all gentlemen who read my autobiography that
where there are wrong expressions or absurd Malay phrases in Mr.
Thompsen's translation they must consider well the restraint put upon me,
wherein I could neither add nor subtract a word without the concurrence of
Mr. Thompsen. Now, because of all the circumstances mentioned here, let
no gentleman rail at my character, for I was merely Mr. Thompsen's
moonshi or instructor. I acknowledge I am not destitute of faults, but truly
by God's grace I am able to distinguish between right and wrong in all that
relates to the idiom of the Malay language, for I have made it my study. I
did not attain it by hearing, nor by the way, nor in the bustle of the crowd."
But it is in poetry that we must look for whatever of originality and beauty
there is in Malay literature, a fact not to be wondered at if we consider the
softness and mellifluence of the language, which lends itself easily to the
requirements of rhyme and rhythm. Two chief forms of poetry are
recognized—the pantun and the shaïr.

The Pantun.—The pantun in Malay literature corresponds to the lyric verse
of Western lands. It consists of one or many quatrains, as the case may be,
the lines usually from ten to twelve syllables in length. However, if worse
comes to worst, the Malay poet with true poetic license suits himself in
preference to others, and frequently employs as few as six or as many as
thirteen syllables in a line. The length of a syllable is determined by tonic
accent, but penult syllables not ending in a consonant are long, those ending
in silent i are short. But here, too, the Malay often departs from theory, and
his rhymes, instead of being always exact, are constructed for the eye and
not for the ear; and as for the short lines, they have to be drawled out into a
legitimate scansion. The lines are not written one below another as with us,
but the second opposite the first, the third under the second and opposite the
fourth, and so on.
The pantun is much employed in improvisation, the stanzas being recited
alternately by the two taking part. To the Malayan mind the beauty of this
kind of verse lies in the artistic perfection of each quatrain by which it is
made to veil some charming metaphor, which in turn serves in the last two
lines to point a moral or express some sentiment of love or friendship,
depending on the allegory of the preceding. To illustrate:

Tinggih tinggih pokok lamburi
Sayang puchok-nia meniapa awan
Habis teloh puwas kuchari
Bagei punei menchari kawan.

Bulan trang bintang berchaya
Burong gagah bermakan padi
Teka tuan tiada perchaya
Bela dada, melihat hati.

The lamburi tree is tall, tall,
Its branches sweep the sky;
My search is vain, and o'er is all,
Like a mate-lorn dove am I.

Clear is the moon, with stars agleam,
The raven wastes in the padi field;

O my beloved, when false I seem,
Open my breast, my heart is revealed.

The waves are white on the Kataun shore,
And day and night they beat;
The garden has white blossoms o'er,
But only one do I think sweet.

Deeper yet the water grows,
Nor the mountain rain is stilled;
My heart more longing knows,
And its hope is unfulfilled.

In poetry of more pretentious style, and in improvisations also, each stanza
contains a key-word or line which becomes the text, so to speak, of the
next. As artificial and unnatural as this may seem, it is, nevertheless, an
ingenious way of keeping the thread of one's discourse when other
inspiration fails. The best results of Malay verse come from it. A beautiful
example may be cited from the Asiatic Journal of 1825:

Cold is the wind, the rain falls fast;
I linger, though the hour is past.
Why come you not? Whence this delay?
Have I offended, say?

My heart is sad and sinking too;
O break it not—it loves but you!
Come, then, and end this long delay;
Why keep you thus away?

The wind is cold, fast falls the rain,
Yet weeping, chiding, I remain.
You come not still, you still delay—
O wherefore can you stay?

Adelbert von Chamisso, the German poet, who has another claim to fame,
however—his scientific career was charmingly described in the Popular
Science Monthly for December, 1890—includes in his published poems
three songs, In Malay Form, for which he doubtless obtained inspiration
during his voyage to the far East in 1815 to 1818. They are so faithful in
spirit and style to their source that we can not forbear quoting one in
translation. It is called The Basketmaker, and is in the form of a dialogue,
each stanza having the usual "key" line:

The shower's gone by, the sun shines bright,
The weather vanes now gayly swing;
We maidens here in merry plight
Quick beg of you a song to sing.

The weather vanes now gayly swing,
Through fire-red clouds the sun shines fair;
Right gay and quick to you I'll sing
A song that's full of dread despair.

Through fire-red clouds the sun shines fair,
A bird sings sweet and lures the bride;
Pray what concerns your dread despair
To maidens fair and dear beside?

A bird sings sweet and lures the bride,
A net for fishes there is spread;
A maiden fair and dear beside,
A sprightly maiden would I wed.

A net for fishes there is spread,
The moth's wings burn in bright flame hot;
A sprightly maiden wouldst thou wed,
But thee the maiden chooseth not.

The Shaïr.—The shaïr is very different from the pantun; the latter is lyric,
the former epic in its nature; the shaïr may be heroic or romantic, the
pantun never. However, it employs the same measure as the pantun, but all
the lines of each stanza rhyme, instead of by pairs, as in the quatrains of the

lyric verse. It is to the shaïr that we must look for the really great works of
Malay poetry, where some are bold enough to declare we may find passages
of Homeric beauty. The most famous works of this nature are Radin Mantri,
Kin Tambouhan, and Bidasari. The first two of these tell the story of the
love of a prince of the royal house of Nigara for a maiden of his mother's
court. It is a beautiful tale, abounding in parts of striking eloquence and
pathos, and the characters are strong and well portrayed.
The Bidasari is the longest poem in the language, and typically Malayan.
Its author is unknown, likewise the time and place of its composition. The
only hint as to the writer is in the opening lines:
"... Listen to this story of the history of a king in a province of Kambayat. A
fakir has turned the narrative into a poem."
And again at the conclusion, where it says:
"This poem is weak and faulty because my knowledge is imperfect. My
heart was troubled—for that reason have I written it. I have not made it
long, because I was sad; but I have finished it and thereby obtained many
blessings."
Internal evidence, however, indicates that the poem is old, of a time long
before the Europeans first came to the East, possibly before the
Mohammedan conquest. It shows plainly the influence of Hindu theology,
yet in the customs and scenes described, and the mode of life and the
manner of thinking, it is essentially Malay, and so worthy, perhaps, of a
somewhat extended notice.
"There was once a king, a sultan, handsome, learned, perfect; he was of the
race of noble kings; he caused the land of merchants and strangers to be
swallowed up. From what people of his time say of him he was a valorous
prince who had never yet been thwarted. But to-morrow and the day after
to-morrow are uncertain." Such is the beginning of Canto I, as given in the
French translation by Louis de Backer. The king marries, but just as joy and
happiness are to be his, a griffinlike garuda sweeps down upon his land and
ravages it. Terrified, the monarch deserts his throne, takes his royal consort
and flees for his life. On the flight the queen gives birth to a child, which,
however, must be deserted, much to the mother's grief.

In Canto II a rich merchant is introduced—a man whose goods and
treasures are immense, whose slaves numerous, prosperity constant, but
who, alas! is childless. One morning as he and his wife are walking by the
side of a stream they discover a boat drifting near them, and in it a child of
such radiant beauty that they are moved to adopt it.
The lord of the region is Sultan Mengindra, whose queen is beautiful, but
unhappy, through constant looking forward to the day when she shall be
displaced by some woman more beautiful than she. At last she has a costly
fan made, and sends out spies to offer it for sale in every village and town,
but not to tell its price. If they discover a woman of rare beauty they are to
return and notify her.
In course of time the spies come to the old merchant's home, and see
Bidasari, the handsome adopted child. After some delay she is brought to
court, where she has to undergo much studied ill treatment from the jealous
queen. By a subterfuge the girl escapes and is then removed by the
merchant to a secret place in the desert.
Canto III tells how Sultan Mengindra goes to hunt in the desert, and there
finds a sleeping beauty whom he awakens and consoles with the music of a
pantun.
In Canto IV the story returns to the King of Kambayat. He and his queen
have succeeded in reaching a distant part of their kingdom, but the fate of
the young princess whom they so shamefully deserted oppresses them.
Finally, the king's son, stirred by his mother's tears, sets out to search for
this sister whom he has never seen. In his search he meets with Bidasari's
adopted brother, who detects the resemblance between the young prince and
his sister. Together they go to obtain audience of the sultan and Bidasari,
who is now queen.
Canto V. Convinced that the story of the prince is true, Sultan Mengindra
dissuades him from returning, but bids his minister write a missive in letters
of gold and dispatch it at once, with presents and jewels, to the King of
Kambayat.
In Canto VI we have the last chapter. The King of Kambayat receives the
letter, which, however, makes no mention of Bidasari, and at once

accompanies the messengers to Sultan Mengindra's court. He makes his
entry into the strange capital with becoming splendor, and is received with
great honor. The queen now makes herself known to her father, who is
moved to tears. Banquets and great tournaments follow, and happiness
pervades the court. The king returns after a time to his own land, but
continues as long as he lives to send gifts and goods to his daughter and her
royal lord.

THE COLORS OF FLOWERS.
By HENRI COUPIN.
Much might be said, from an artistic and poetic point of view, concerning
the colors of flowers. It is in the corolla that they reveal themselves in their
most minute delicacy. The tints so widely diffused among animals, even
those of butterflies, are coarse as compared with them, and the painter's
palette is powerless to reproduce them. They run through the whole gamut
of the solar spectrum, even to its most minute details. Some naturalists have
striven to establish a classification of them, and it will be convenient to be
acquainted with their efforts, though they are not decisive and are somewhat
artificial, like all classifications. We give one of the most ingenious of them:

Green.
Greenish-blue. Yellow-green.
Blue. Yellow.
Cyanic series. { Blue-violet. Yellow-orange.
Violet. Orange.
} Xanthic series.
Violet-red. Orange-red.
Red.

The type of the cyanic series is blue, and that of the xanthic series yellow.
The first is sometimes denominated the deoxidized series, and the second
the oxidized, but these designations have hardly solid enough foundations
to be preserved. De Candolle, who publishes the table in his Vegetable
Physiology, appends some interesting remarks to it.
It will be noticed by the inspection of the table that nearly all the flowers
susceptible of changes of color, as a rule, simply go up or down the scale of
shades of the series to which they belong. Thus, in the xanthic series the
flowers of the Nyctago jalapa may be yellow, yellow-orange, or red; those
of Rosa eglantina yellow-orange or orange-red; those of nasturtium from
yellow to orange; the flowers of Ranunculus asiaticus present all the colors
of red up to green; those of the Hieracium staticefolium, and of some other

yellow Chicoraceæ and of some Leguminosæ like the lotus, become
greenish-yellow when dried, etc. In the cyanic series the flowers of many
Boraginaceæ, especially of Lithospermum purpureo-cæruleum, vary from
blue to violet-red; those of hortensia from rose to blue; the ligulate flowers
of the asters from blue to red or violet; those of the hyacinths from blue to
red, etc.
There are, however, a few apparent exceptions to this rule. Thus, although
the hyacinths usually vary only in the blues, reds, or white, yellowish
varieties, indicating an approach to the xanthic series, are sometimes found
in gardens. The auricula, which is originally yellow, passes to reddish-
brown, to green, and to a sort of violet, but never reaches pure blue; and
single petals occasionally give suggestions of both series in distinct parts of
their surfaces.
Some surprise may be felt that white does not figure in De Candolle's table.
This is because an absolutely white color does not seem to exist in any
flower. The fact may be shown by placing some flowers supposed to be of
the purest white, like the lily, the white campanula, or the wood anemone,
on a leaf of clear white paper. It will be found that the white of the corolla is
really washed with yellow, blue, or orange, according to what flower is
taken. If the tint does not appear distinct, infusions of the corollas in alcohol
will present tones unmistakably yellow or red, etc. White flowers are
therefore flowers with tints appertaining to one of De Candolle's series, but
albinized, as if they were etiolated. A small number of flowers begin white,
and are subsequently colored under the action of light. The Cheiranthus
chameleo passes from white to citron-yellow and a slightly violet-red; the
Ænothera tetraptera, at first white, becomes rose and then almost red; the
petals of the Indian tamarind are white the first day and yellow the second;
and the corolla of the Cobea scandens comes out greenish-white and turns
to violet the second day. The most remarkable plant in this respect is
Hibiscus mutabilis, which Rumph calls the hourly flower, because it starts
white, turns flesh-color toward noon, and becomes red at sunset.
In his recent work on Plants and their Cosmic Media, M. Costantin has
some remarks concerning the precocity of various races and the tint of their
flowers. Hoffmann made observations on this point for several years. He
remarked, as the result of eight years' observation, that the common lilac

with white flowers blooms on an average six days earlier than the normal
form with purple flowers. This might be a curious anomaly with no bearing,
but the more we advance in the study of Nature the more we perceive that
all phenomena, even the most insignificant, deserve to be examined. Similar
results have been observed in varieties of radish (Raphanus raphanistrum)
and of saffron (Crocus vernus); in the former the white flowers expand on
an average of sixteen days earlier than the yellow ones (twelve years of
observation), and in the latter plant the difference is four days.
These changes of tint sometimes appear to depend on the temperature.
Thus, the white lilac was obtained by horticulturists under the influence of a
temperature of between 30° and 35° C. We can not, however, affirm that
spontaneous races with white flowers originated in the same way as the
white lilac. It will be enough to point out a few facts that may contribute to
the guidance of persons who are seeking to learn the origin of these colored
varieties. The Papava alpinum has a very stable variety with yellow
flowers, which, according to Focke, has been observed in the polar regions,
while the white varieties have been seen in Switzerland. The cultivation of
the same species at Giessen, Germany, has made it possible to obtain
specimens with white flowers by metamorphosis from specimens with
yellow flowers, but it is impossible to say whether or not heat is the agent
that produces the changes in these cases. The experiments of MM. Schübela
and Bonnier have shown that flowers become darker without changing their
color in high regions and in those near the pole; but this phenomenon is one
of light and not of color. Be their origin what it may, these white and
colored forms have remarkable fixedness.
It will be observed that black does not figure in the table of the
classification of colors given above. Absolute black, in fact, does not exist
in any flower. If some parts appear black, it is only because their tint is
excessively dark. The black of the petals of Pelargonium triste and of the
bean is yellow, and that of the Orchis nigra is a brown. Apparent blacks are,
moreover, extremely rare.
The gamut of the reds is much more varied than that of other colors. The
reds of the xanthic series are generally more lively-hued, carnation or
flame-colored; those of the cyanic series present tints more nearly
approaching violet. These two reds may furthermore give rose-colors, but a

little skill will divine their origin. The rose of the hydrangea inclines to
blue, while that of the rose tends rather toward yellow. Blue colors are the
most variable, and readily pass to violet and red, but most frequently to
white. The most tenacious hues are those of yellow, and we might affirm
that the bright and glistening yellow of the buttercup may be said never to
change. The paler yellows change more easily, but rarely pass to anything
but white. Green flowers, not being readily distinguished from the foliage
around them, need not be specially mentioned. They are believed to be
much rarer than they really are.
Horticulturists are able, by cultivation, selection, and hybridization, to cause
the colors of flowers to vary in considerable proportions. Not much is
known of the laws of these variations, chiefly because gardeners who might
tell botanists of them if they would have not the scientific spirit. We cite
here what MM. Decaisne and Naudin[7] say respecting the variations of the
color of flowers:
"Change in this respect is effected in two ways: sometimes there is a simple
discoloration, drawing the red, yellow, or blue tints of the corolla toward a
more or less pure white; sometimes there is a radical substitution of one
color for another. Flowers in which red or blue are the dominant tints are
most subject to turn white, but the change may also be observed on some
flowers that are naturally yellow, such as the disk of the daisy, the dahlia,
and the chrysanthemum when those flowers suffer ligular transformation.
Nothing, on the other hand, is more common in our gardens than white
varieties of pink or of red roses, lilac, scarlet runners, larkspur, purple
digitalis, Canterbury bells, etc.—in fact, nearly all plants with lilac, rose,
red, purple, blue, or violet flowers. There are some flowers, however, in
these categories the coloration of which is very persistent, and rarely fades
perceptibly—as may be seen in the purple petunias, the hue of which does
not lose its vivacity even when it is crossed with the white variety.
"The radical substitution of one color for another, whether over the whole
corolla or only on some of its parts, in the form of spots, stripes, or
variegations, is also of frequent occurrence, and is one of the sorts of
modifications which horticulturists have used with great advantage. A
considerable number of 'fancy' plants derive almost all their importance
from the facility with which the liveliest colors replace one another, blend,

and intermix in a thousand ways and in relative proportions of which
nothing is fixed, so that we can not find in these collections, when they are
well chosen, two plants out of a hundred that are exactly alike in the tone
and distribution of their colors. These multicolored varieties, all the
offspring of cultivation, are generally perpetuated true by cuttings, while the
seedlings compensate for the uncertainty of what they will produce by the
certainty that they will give rise to new combinations of colors. This is not
the case with single-colored varieties, which, unless they are crossed with
others, tend to perpetuate themselves through their seedlings. The yellow,
white, and purple varieties of the four-o'clock, for example, when they are
pure, reproduce themselves constantly; when crossed with one another they
give rise to intermediately colored flowers, and more frequently to
variegated ones."
Mr. Hughes Gibb observed, in the mild winter of 1897-'98, that flowers
blooming out of season were liable not to have the same color as regularly
blooming ones.
The cactus dahlia, usually red, has put out flowers almost orange and with
exterior florets sometimes nearly yellow. On the other hand, these dahlias
have often shown a marked tendency to return to the simpler form.
A species of nasturtium, habitually of a bright scarlet-red, has given in the
cold frame late flowers of a bright yellow, a red band near the center of the
petals remaining the only vestige of the normal color. In both cases the
change of color began on the edges of the petals. The flower of the
myosotis, normally bright blue, has become almost clear rose, without the
slightest trace of blue; and a pure blue phlox has shown a tendency toward
greenish-yellow.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La
Nature.

FOLKLORE OF THE ALLEGHANIES.
By FRANCES ALBERT DOUGHTY.
The West Virginia mountaineer lives very close to Nature, and viewed from
many standpoints the relation is characterized by pleasing amenities: juicy
berries refresh him along the road; nuts drop into his path; "sang" (ginseng),
which makes one of his sources of revenue, reveals itself to his eye as he
follows the cows to pasture; a cool brook springs up to quench his thirst
when weary of following the plow; pine knots are always within reach to
make light as well as warmth; mud and stones easily combine in his hand to
shape a daub chimney; and a trough dug out of an old tree furnishes a
receptacle that is as good for dough at one end as for a baby at the other.
Often, however, this close relation to Nature assumes a war attitude, fierce
and uncompromising. If hungry wolves no longer howl furiously at the
back fence after nightfall, or gnaw at the log pens which secure the stock,
and if panthers are seldom bold enough to spring at a horse's flanks as a
man rides along in the daytime, bears are still numerous enough to devour a
large number of sheep every year in spite of precautions, and they have a
pronounced taste for sweet young corn. The living wrested from the soil in
the short and changeable summer months must cover the winter's need as
well; it is generally so scant and uncertain that the mountaineer feels a
chronic discouragement toward agriculture as a pursuit and resource. He
must depend on it, and yet as far back as he or his father can remember
there has always been some reason why "a good crop" could not be made
that year. The West Virginian lives in a large and thinly settled game
preserve, but the fleet deer usually contrives to escape the hunter's chill wait
in the autumnal dawn, the coy wild turkey is overshy of his lure, and the
wary trout requires a very patient rod. In the long winter deep snows cover
the fences, groups or "bunches" of cows and sheep often perish in the drifts,
and the human prisoners in their cabins, huddling around the wood fires, are
nearly always, as they express it, "short of" some article which would be
considered a necessity in the average city home.

The varying, defiant, and incalculable moods and phases of Nature bring so
many chances into the humble lot of the mountaineer that it is not surprising
he should interpret her phenomena as having a distinctly personal import.
Anciently, around Olympus the talk was of "omens," "auguries," and "fate";
dwellers along the chain of the Alleghanies to-day talk of "signs," "spells,"
and "luck," and these words held their significance for hundreds of years in
the ancestral stock of the first settlers in the region, most of the folklore
being directly traceable to a Scotch-Irish strain of blood. The mountain
pattern taken far from cities probably differs little either mentally or
physically from that of the colonial mountaineers. Even with the railroad
traversing a limited area, and the influx of summer visitors during three
months of the year, the only perceptible change wrought in the natives is a
little sharpening of their wits from the barter of fruit and furs at the hotels in
the extensive mineral-spring section. The Alleghany mountaineer, ignorant,
narrow-minded, honest, brave, and hospitable, remains what he was when
the eagle soared from the inaccessible eyrie above his head to be chosen as
the tutelary genius of the unconquerable young republic. The chief
distinction in the temperament of the sexes is that the men are frank and
talkative, the women shy and uncommunicative. Beings approaching the
legendary fauns and satyrs, clad in the skins of wild animals, are sometimes
discovered by the solitary horseman in the wild mountain fastnesses; they
gaze at him as an apparition from a strange world, never having seen a
village or heard a railroad whistle.
There is a curious and persistent survival of the belief in witchcraft through
this mineral-spring belt in West Virginia. To draw out the natives on this
mysterious subject they must be approached sympathetically; if twitted with
their credulity they will shut up like clams, for with all the simplicity of the
unlettered their intuition often arrives at a correct understanding of the
estimate placed upon them by more fortunate persons. When satisfied that
he is not expected to pose as a "freak," but is met on the equal plane of
human intercourse, the mountain story-teller seems to enjoy recounting the
traditions and beliefs of his people and their forefathers. Leaving himself a
loophole of escape, he is very likely to finish his yarn with—
"'Tain't that I believe them things myself. I know they ain't nawthin' but
superstition; but I kin qualify that right round here, not many miles away,
there's people that believes in witches."

In a little cottage on a much-traveled thoroughfare one woman admitted to
me with bated breath, as though not quite sure her tormentor was dead, that
she had been bewitched. Her account was given in these words:
"I kep' seein' an old woman with a cow's hoof in her hand; sometimes she
was by my side an' sometimes she was there on the wall. At last she come
up close to me, an' she was goin' to clap the cow's hoof over my mouth, but
I slapped at her right hard an' she went away. She ain't never come again.
Yes, I know I was bewitched."
A cow's hoof is a frequent accessory, and animals that are brought into the
magic circle are always of a domestic character, completely subservient to
the power of the witch.
It is noticeable that the exercise of witchcraft is generally ascribed to
women; and that of witch mastery, the superior attribute, to men.
The form of a judicial process found favor with the Puritan temperament in
old Salem, although by a grim mockery the verdict was decided in advance.
The independent mountaineer likes to take the law in his own hands, as the
following story illustrates:
"A farmer believed a woman was bewitching his stock. He drew a picture of
her and set it up as a target; then he sunk a piece of silver in his bullet with
an awl, that being the charm for shooting a witch. He aimed to shoot the
picture through the heart, but fired a little too low. On that very day the
woman herself fell flat on the ground, and a deep, awful hole was found in
her side. From that minute she suffered extreme agony, and died in a week."
The narrator had heard this grewsome tale from his grandmother, who said
that she had seen the hole.
One of the oldest inhabitants of Monroe County is responsible for the
ensuing chronicle; he dates it in the "forties" of the present century:
"'Tain't so very long ago there was a woman livin' near the Sweet Springs
who used to be always seen with a cap and bonnet on; nobody ever saw her
without the cap. She was a hard, grim-lookin' monster. If anybody was
watchin' to see her ontie her cap strings, somehow they never could see any
more until the clean cap was on—now that's so, there ain't any mistake

about that! When she come over here from Botetourt County the report
followed her that she lived pretty close to a man whose chillun went to
school, an' a calf had been in the habit of attackin' 'em an' bitin' em. The
father concealed himself one day and was watchin' to catch the calf. On that
occasion it come out an' attacked the chillun on a bridge across a little
stream o' water. He ran and caught the calf and cut off his ears with a knife.
They always believed that the old witch had turned herself into that calf,
and so when she turned back into a woman she wore the cap to hide that she
didn't have any ears. There was three sisters of 'em; it was reported they was
all witches, possessed of some uncommon art. John and Harriet had two
little pet pullets they thought a good deal of. The cap-woman wanted 'em;
they just fluttered an' fluttered till they died. Her name was Nancy L——.
Well, she wanted the carpenter to make her a piece of furniture out of an old
dirty plank she had, an' he wouldn't do it. He said it was gritty and it would
ruin his tools. Then she got mad and said, 'I'll make you suffer in the flesh
for that!' One day soon after that he was at his hog pen feedin' the hogs,
when suddenly he was struck down perfectly helpless, so he couldn't speak.
He thought it was paralytic or rheumatism. In those days there was an old
doctor in Staunton, Augusta County, who had a kind o' process to steam
people and boil 'em in a big kettle, for rheumatism. He put sump'n fireproof,
a paste or ointment, all over 'em, like the fireproof you put on buildings, an'
boiled 'em an hour or two hours, as the case might be. The carpenter went to
consult him, an' he put him in a kettle that was big enough for him either to
stand or sit down in it; a collar was fitted tight round his neck so the hot
water couldn't get into his face and eyes. The boilin' didn't seem to do him
any good. When he got home he halted about for twelve months or more.
First he felt a pain in his hip, and then he felt a pain by the side of his knee
as if it was gradually workin' down; then one day there was sump'n jaggin'
in the calf of his leg. He put his leg up on a bench and an old gentleman
seen sump'n stickin' out. He took a pair of nippers an' ketched holt an'
pulled out a big shirtin' needle. Hugh kept the needle as long as he lived,
and he believed Nancy the old witch shot him with it. He halted on that leg
the balance of his days. I've seen the needle; it's God's truth!"
A spice of profanity seems to have the virtue of embalming a witch story in
the mountain memory. A rustic maiden who lives with her family on one of

the loneliest hilltops in the Alleghanies, only to be reached on foot or
horseback, makes this contribution to the folklore of the region:
"An old lady not far off had three daughters, and she was going to learn 'em
to be witches. They had to sit on the hearth by the fire and take off their
shoes and grease their heels so as to go up the chimney, and they were not
allowed to speak. The mother was to go first and the girls were to follow.
The old lady and the two foremost ones had all got up safe, but the last girl,
when she was in a narrow place in the chimney, said, 'This is a d—d tight
squeeze!' With that she fell back and was burned up."
The value of silence and self-control appears to be the only touch of
morality in the witch logic. Manifestations of the black art frequently take
place by or over running water. These characteristics are observed in
another story from the same maid of the mountain:
"Two witches were going to rob a store in the night, and they took a young
man with them as a partner. They put the greased witch cap on his head so
he could go through the keyhole. They all started out, and presently they
came to a river. They saw some calves in a field, and caught three of 'em;
they mounted the two that were heifers and the boy got on the steer calf.
They charged him of all things not to speak on the journey. The witches
jumped the river on their calves without makin' a sound, but just as he was
jumping across he cried out, 'That was a d—d good jump for a steer calf!'
Well, they all went on, and when they got to the store they passed through
the keyhole one after another, the young man too. They took all the money
they wanted, but when the time came to leave he couldn't get out of the
keyhole, because he had spoken, and the spell was broken. He was found in
the store the next morning, and had to take all the punishment."
It is interesting to note as an offset to all these diabolic attributes and
potencies that a firm faith exists in a beneficent Power back of them which
under given conditions will prevail over evil. "God is always stronger than
the devil" is the mountain way of expressing this dependence, and there are
charlatans who take advantage of it by going about as "witch masters." One
of these died a few years ago, and another farther back, an Irishman named
"Mosey," is quoted yet for his successes as "master of all the witches and all
the devils."

When the cows had been eating mushrooms and their milk became too
bitter to make good butter, Mosey was sent for at once to "cure the
witchcraft" and "take off the spell." He took his regular beat through his
part of the mountain country once in a while. An old man who oscillates
between the "White" and the "Sweet," selling canes, remembers him well.
He tells of one woman's experience who "filed a complaint" that her cow
wouldn't give much milk, and that the milk wouldn't "gether" for butter.
"'Woman,' says Mosey, 'your cow's bewitched, and badly bewitched!'
"'Can you do anything for her, Mosey, and what will you charge?'
"'Yes, I can cure her if you'll pay me five dollars and give me five pounds of
butter to take home with me to burn in the fire to cap the climax and burn
out the spell.'
"Then he want through his enchantments over the cow, and took the money
and the butter home with him. One day when he had been drinking a little I
asked him if he really burned all that butter. 'Divil a grain of it did I burn; I
ate it with my pertaties.' It was on that same trip when Mosey was curin' the
cow that a man who lived near by sent for him. 'I feel mighty quare, Mosey,'
says he, 'an' I can't describe exactly how I do feel!' 'You're bewitched, sir,'
says he, 'and badly bewitched!' (he always used those words). 'Faith, an' I'll
try and cure ye! Have ye got any blue yarn about the house?' The man's
wife went to look for some, and she came back with a hank of blue yarn.
Mosey wound off enough of it to make a cord about the size of his finger;
they twisted it together, he pretending to put some enchantments on it, and
then he told the sick man to fasten it round his waist next to his skin. 'Don't
you lose it on peril of your life,' says he, 'or you're a dead man!' 'Peggy, get
a needle and sew it on me!' he says to his wife, an' she done it. He gradually
got well—may be he'd a got well anyway. I can't vouch for that."
When asked if such things were still happening, the cane-seller replied:
"Not three weeks ago a woman thought her cow was bewitched because her
butter wouldn't gather, and she het an old horseshoe hot and dropped it in
the churn of milk. When she churned again the butter on that occasion
gathered, and it was the same milk that was in the churn to burn the witch.
You can put that down for June, '93."

The Potts Creek neighborhood is said to be a center for the witch
superstition. It is also a favorite place for "bush meetings," to which the
natives come from a distance in their wagons with picnic dinners of salt-
risen corn pone and sliced bacon, and there they listen approvingly to fervid
exhortations that are based on orthodox Baptist and Methodist doctrines.
The West Virginia mountaineer is profoundly religious in temperament, and
considers that he has scriptural ground for a belief in witchcraft.

Prof. H. E. Armstrong has described how, by taking incidents from
suitable story books, children aged respectively seven and a half, ten,
and twelve and a half years were set to work to test the physical facts
mentioned, and how, by the systematic use of the balance, measuring
instruments, and simple apparatus, or even household utensils, a true
spirit of scientific research was engendered. Evidence of the good
effect was exhibited in the notebooks made by the children, which
demonstrate clearly how well the juvenile investigators have mastered
the scientific method of observation.

ORIGIN OF ANCIENT HINDU ASTRONOMY.
By the Count GOBLET D'ALVIELLA.
It is manifest that India is indebted for some of its astronomy to the Greeks.
Not that it had not astronomy and astronomers from an epoch anterior to the
invasion of Alexander. It had, in fact, been necessary to make observations
of the heavens in order to fix a calendar that would enable the sacrifices of
the Vedic ritual in connection with the return of the seasons and the
revolutions of the stars to be celebrated at the right dates. Further, the belief
in astrology, or the influence exercised by the movements of the planets on
physical phenomena and all the events of human life, would lead, in India
as elsewhere, to the observation and anticipation of everything relating to
the conjunction and opposition of the heavenly bodies.
The Rig-Veda has allusions to the phases and stations of the moon. The
stations (nakshatras) consisted, according to a tradition preserved by the
Brahmans, of twenty-seven constellations (afterward twenty-eight) which
the moon was supposed to traverse successively in the course of its sidereal
revolution. A lunar zodiac and a primary division of time into months were
thus obtained. The moon, moreover, bears in the Veda the name of month-
maker (mâsakrit). Each station was assigned a uniform length of 13° 20' on
the ecliptic, and a denomination, generally derived from mythology. The
month, in turn, took its name from the constellation that had the honor of
harboring the moon. Manon and the Djyotisha (a special treatise included
among the Védângas, or commentaries on the Vedas) tell us that the year
was composed of twelve months, the month of thirty days, the day of thirty
hours, the hour of forty-eight minutes, all strictly sexagesimal subdivisions,
like our own measures of time. The Djyotisha also teaches the art of
constructing a clepsydra, or water-clock.
The adjustment of the solar year to correspond with the lunar year and of
the two with the civil year dates from this period. The month was still
composed of thirty days, but the solar years were grouped into quinquennial
periods, in the middle and at the end of which the lunar month was doubled.

Combining these quinquennial periods with the revolutions of the planet
Brihaspati (Jupiter), which was calculated as occupying about twelve years,
the Indian astronomers computed an astronomical cycle of sixty solar years.
As the same cycle is found with the Chaldeans, where, according to
Berosus, it was called the Sossos, we have to inquire how far Brahmanic
astronomy was influenced by the systems which were originally formed in
ancient Chaldea. The presumption of such an influence furnishes a simpler
and more probable hypothesis than the effort to trace the earliest
astronomical ideas of the Hindus, as M. W. Brennand has recently
suggested, to a period when the ancestors of the Aryans, the Semites, and
the Chinese were wandering together over the plateaus of central Asia!
We know now, from the cuneiform inscriptions, that the Chaldeans had, at a
period far anterior to the entrance of the Aryans into India, invented a
double calendar, solar and lunar, with intercalary periods; discovered the
proper motion of the planets; calculated the return of eclipses; and
constituted a double metrical system, decimal and sexagesimal; and, as was
done, too, in India, had divided the circumference into three hundred and
sixty degrees of sixty minutes each. It is impossible to draw the lines
exactly between the astronomical discoveries which the Hindus borrowed
from abroad and those which they drew from their own resources prior to
the invasion of the Greeks, but we need in no case go farther than
Mesopotamia for the source of the borrowed data.
The ancient literature of India contains observations of the positions or
conjunctions of some of the stars that carry us back to positive dates in the
history of the sky. The astronomers Bailly, Colebrooke, and Bentley, and,
more recently, M. Brennand, have found notes relative to astronomical
phenomena that took place in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and even the
twenty-first centuries b. c. Max Müller, however, advises prudence and
reserve in accepting these calculations, some of which may have been
afterthoughts, and others offer only apparent agreements.
In any case, the advent of Buddhism, by depreciating the religious practices
and astrological speculations of the Brahmans, contributed to bringing on a
decline of astronomy at the very time it was taking its most vigorous stand
among the Greeks. We learn from a passage in Strabo that the Pramnai
regarded the Brahmans as boasters and mad because they were interested in

physiology and astronomy. Now, there really exists an ancient Buddhist
treatise in which the predictions by the Brahmans of eclipses of the sun and
of the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets, and their discussions of
the appearance of comets and meteors, are treated as despicable arts and
lies.
It was just at this age that Hellenic culture was developed in northwest
India. It held astronomy, and astrology too, in great esteem. The Milinda
Panda mentions the royal astrologer as one of the principal functionaries of
Menander. No doubt there were, among the Gavanas (Ionians) of Taxila and
Euthydêmia, minds versed in the knowledge of the principal cosmological
systems formulated among the Greeks from Thales to Aristotle, and also
acquainted with all the progress in the physical and mathematical sciences
that had been achieved by the Alexandrian astronomers in the last centuries
before Christ. To comprehend the extent of the influence of Hellenic
science, we have only to inquire what Hindu astronomy had become again
at the time of the restoration of the Brahmans in the sixth century a. d.
Aryabhatta teaches the rotation of the earth around its axis; maintains that
the moon, naturally dark, owes its light to the rays of the sun; formulates
the true theory of eclipses; assigns an elliptical form to the planetary
epicycles; and demonstrates the displacement of the equinoctial and
solstitial points. Varâha-Mihira devotes himself especially to astrological
labors, but also has the merit of having condensed into a vast encyclopædia
the Pantcha Siddhântikâ, the principal astronomical treatises that were
current in India. And Brahmazoupta is especially famous for his revision of
an older treatise, the Brahma Siddhânta.
In the opinion of the most competent critics, these works, which are chiefly
empirical methods of determining the positions of the stars, are inferior to
those which the Alexandrians have left us. Yet, in matters relating to the
measurement of arcs and to spherical trigonometry, they reveal a more
advanced state of the science. It is impossible to determine at what period
this new astronomical science was constituted in India. Some of its theories
squarely betray their indebtedness to Greek science, as, for instance, that of
the displacement of the equinoctial and solstitial points by a periodical
vibration or tremor. We can also say as much of the solar zodiac, the names
of the constellations of which strikingly resemble the Greek names in form
as well as in significance, and the same of the names of the chief planets.

Other expressions are found, notably in the works of Varâha-Mihira, which
indicate, if not a borrowing, a contact, at least, with the works of the Greek
astronomy, of which Mr. Burgess gives a fairly complete list in his Notes on
Hindu Astronomy and the History of our Knowledge of it, in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society. Among these terms, some are Greek words which
have been utilized in naming constellations or astronomical measures;
others have retained the special significations which they had in the works
of the Alexandrian astronomers. It would certainly be an exaggeration to
insist that the adoption of a foreign term of necessity implies the borrowing
of the idea which it expresses. It is, nevertheless, probable that the Sanskrit
writers would not have made use of so many of these exotic denominations
if the ideas they represent had already found their expression in the
languages of India.
Further, among the fine Siddântas which Varâha-Mihira collected and
condensed as including all the astronomical science of his time, there are
two, the Romaka and the Pauliça, the names of which suggest directly—the
first the scientific culture of the Roman world, and the other Paulus, a
celebrated Alexandrian astronomer of the third century a. d.[8]
We apparently find, likewise, the names of Manetho (fourth century a. d.) in
Manittha or Manimda; of Spensippus in Sporedjivadja; and of Ptolemy in
Asoura Maya, whom the Sounya Siddhânta designates as the founder of
astronomy, and who another treatise says was born at Romakapouri, "the
city of the Romans."
In this order of ideas the natives of India have never tried to deny their
sources. The Gavanas, we read in the Gargí Samhitâ, are barbarians; but
this science (astrology) has been constituted by them, and they must be
revered as saints. M. Weber affirms that a treatise on astrology bearing their
name, the Gavana Çastra, was reputed to have been written in the land of
the Gavanas by the god Sourya in person, when, expelled from heaven by
the resentment of his divine rivals, he came down and was born again in the
city of the Romans.[9]
We find, further, that the Greek calendar appears to have survived Hellenic
domination in northern India. General Cunningham, in 1862, read in the
inscriptions of the Indo-Scythians the names of the Macedonian months

Artemisios and Appellaios. Since then the names of two other months of
that calendar—Panemos and Daisios—have been found in inscriptions in
the Kharosthis character.
Another era of Grecian origin, that of the Seleucidæ, seems likewise to have
furnished the Hindus their first historical computation.[10] It should be
observed, in fact, that their most ancient era, that of the Mauryas, dates
from the year 312 b. c., or the beginning of the era of the Seleucidæ. This
had been adopted by the Grecian sovereigns of India, as is attested by a coin
of Plato, struck in the year 166 b. c.
Beginning with the Indo-Scythians, India generally adopted the era of the
Cakas, which began, not, as had been long supposed, with the expulsion of
the Scythians, but with the coronation of their principal sovereign,
Kanichka.[11] Nevertheless, the inscriptions offer still other historical
computations, as, for instance, that of the Gouptas era, which began in the
year 240 of the Çaka era, and that of Vikramâditya, which was made to
begin retrospectively fifty-six years b. c. Hence arise complications of a
nature to make the task of paleography and history no lighter.—Translated
for the Popular Science Monthly from Ciel et Terre (from the author's
essays on Classical Influences on the Scientific and Literary Culture of
India).

SKETCH OF WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS.
The old problem of Nature versus nurture that meets us in studying the life
history of any organism becomes especially interesting in dealing with the
biography of men of eminence. Are their achievements the inevitable
expression of the natural forces innate in them at birth, or the product of
environmental influences, or some resultant of these two factors? And how
much may we in each case assign to one factor or to the other?
These difficult questions naturally suggest themselves in glancing at the life
of the subject of this sketch. Like so many men who have won prominence
in comparatively new countries, he seemed, in an environment that had no
apparent relation to his future, to grow from innate tendencies toward
something not suggested by the circumstances about him, even to grow in
opposition to the molding influences of these, and to conquer them. Later,
however, we find him surrounded by influences that made a particular mode
of self-expression easy, if they may not be said to have forced such
expression. It was then that the casual observer might say that the
circumstances made the man; yet, looking backward, we can trace the
initiative in the man that led him into the congenial environment. A
selection of proper environment to express Nature has been rightly claimed
as a potent factor in all organic life; nurture, then, comes as a secondary
power to mold, or rather to translate, the inherent power.
William Keith Brooks, the second son of Oliver Allen Brooks and
Eleanora Bradbury, daughter of the Rev. Phineas Kingsley, was born in
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848. In 1877 he married Amelia Katherine, daughter
of Edward T. Schultz and Susan Rebecca, daughter of David L. Martin. He
has two children.
Brooks grew up amid the stimulating influences of a relatively new country,
where freedom of development was not so sharply restricted but that all
paths of life seemed equally open to one who would work. As a boy he was
not one of those precocious naturalists of the common sort whose collecting
instincts find expression in the hoarding of dead animals or plants rather

than the neater postage stamp; names and authorities, classes and species,
neatly arranged mummies, were not his delight. At first there seemed no
sign that zoölogy would claim him as a most ardent admirer. Yet he was
fond of live things and their ways, and introduced into his home that most
delightful microcosm, the fresh-water aquarium (so much neglected in this
country), in which he could observe at ease the habits and slow changes of
living things when their native haunts were not accessible. Such early
interest in the essential wonders of livingness rather than in man's artificial
classification of phenomena was thus prophetic of much of his later
originality of thought and view.
He has never forgotten how much he owes to the instruction of the earnest
and broad-minded teachers in the public schools of Cleveland.
His college life began at Hobart, where two years left a deep impression
from an acquaintance with Berkeley's thought, gained in browsing in the
library, and long treasured up to produce fruit in philosophic views of
maturer years. Then at Williams College, where the notable Natural History
Society was sending out its expedition across South America, his love of
Nature matured and specialized for two years longer, until he received the
A. B. degree in 1870. It was Williams also that later, in 1893, bestowed
upon him the LL. D. degree. For him the completion of college life was
truly the "commencement" and not the finish of his intellectual training. His
strong trend toward pure science and abstract mental life forced him onward
into post-graduate work. But this required funds, and America was not
Germany; the struggle for existence was not here so intense that one might
not win bread in many walks of life without special training, and parents
did not need to extend the larval period of support for offspring beyond the
completion of college life to gain for them a place in any rank, social or
intellectual. Now, a rapidly increasing need for the Ph. D. degree as
entrance to professional life, necessitating several years of post-graduate
study, often forces parents to take up their share in the increased burden.
Then, however, few were agreed as to the advisability of prolonging an
unpractical life devoted to study beyond what seemed the maximum limit of
unproductive preparation for life—the day of graduation at college. Beyond
that the young man must make his own way as best he might. The subject of
this sketch chose to work his way by his own unaided efforts into the fullest
measure of academic training.

That was before the day of competition between universities, and there was
no temptation to go here rather than there in order to live a semi-parasitic
existence as scholar or fellowship holder.
First in his father's counting house, and then at a boy's school near Niagara,
young Brooks bravely gained the means to pursue higher branches of
natural history, and to devote himself to research. In the former position he
realized how futile for him would be a life given to money-getting, and he
palliated the uncongenial nature of that life by such abstract thought as
seemed useful, one immediate result of which was the invention of a
mechanical device for computing interest and discounts in sterling money,
that had considerable circulation. This, though it scarcely indicated a
stronger bias for mathematics than for Nature study, showed a latent
possibility that was not to be developed. In the latter position, which
brought him in close contact with the wonders of time action, so plainly
read in one of Nature's books for the blind—Niagara Falls—he found food
for thought, as well as a deep interest in the action of young minds. Here
was much material for philosophical study of wood life too, as well as for
growth of conceptions of the way to learn and to teach.
Free, after serving three years, to follow his genius, Agassiz's romantic
venture at Pennikese drew this young naturalist, as it did so many of that
epoch; and henceforth marine life, with its revelation of fundamental
problems, fascinated him. Working on at Agassiz's museum, learning its
collections by heart, absorbing from this center of American natural history
and from its founder both stimulus and method, influenced deeply also by
the unobtrusive teachings of McCrady and others who helped to make
Cambridge the Mecca of naturalists, he was already an active contributor to
the discussion of problems in the embryology of animals when he won his
Ph. D. degree in 1875.
Quiet, diffident, slow to speak, leaving hasty action, too, for those of other
constitution, with thoughtful brow and keen eye to look outward, as well as
to regard inner thought, this young man with flowing beard was a
noticeable person. At this time he was to be seen always accompanied by
his faithful "Tige"; for, wiser than Ulysses, he shared all the hardships and
joys of life with this loved companion.

Now he sought his true environment, and found it in the new university
starting in 1876—the Johns Hopkins University. There he was appointed
Fellow, an honor subsequently won by many who are well known to
biological science, as W. T. Sedgwick, E. B. Wilson, K. Mitsukuri, A. F. W.
Schimper, H. H. Donaldson, H. L. Osborn, J. McKeen Cattell, H. H.
Howell, A. T. Bruce, E. S. Lee, H. E. Nachtrieb, W. Noyes, J. Jastrow, E. B.
Mall, H. V. Wilson, C. E. Hodge, S. Watase, and T. H. Morgan. Like C. O.
Whitman, in 1879, he did not enter upon the privileges of that position, but
as instructor and associate became at once a guiding element in the new
growth. In the freedom from old traditions, from fixed conventions and
routines offered by this new university, this peculiar original mind found its
best environment, and while the opportunity doubtless did much for the
man, the man certainly reacted most favorably for the welfare of the highest
ideals of his new home.
We find him at once outspoken in emphasis of the philosophical aspect of
animal morphology, contributing thoughts upon "inductive reasoning in
morphological problems," upon "the relation between embryology and
phylogeny," upon "the causes of serial and bilateral symmetry," and upon
the "rhythmic nature" of the cleavage of an egg. Yet this period was also,
and pre-eminently, one of acquisition of hard-earned and detailed facts. The
development of Pulmonates and Lamellibranchs, of Crustacea and of
Medusæ, as well as of the marvels of Salpa's life history, became absorbing
studies.
This great field of the morphology of nonvertebrates could be properly
worked only with access to the marine fauna, and at that date there were
few facilities for seaside study in America. A true disciple of Louis Agassiz,
Professor Brooks saw the need of a marine laboratory, and devoted himself,
as Dohrn did at Naples, to the accomplishment of an end so necessary for
the advance of natural science. Encouraged by the aid of a few citizens of
Baltimore, in 1878 there was started an experiment—"The Chesapeake
Zoölogical Laboratory," at Fort Wool, Va., with Professor Brooks as
director. With the absolute devotion of its director to research as example,
and with the liberal aid of the trustees of the Johns Hopkins University, this
laboratory became a most important adjunct to the university and a virile
center of zoölogical study. So great was its success as a factor in the
advance of zoölogical knowledge that the trustees bravely continued to

support it whenever financial disaster did not rob them of the last penny.
For eight years in the Chesapeake, or in the remoter waters of North
Carolina, the station flourished; then, in 1886, we find the director, with a
few enthusiastic students, venturing in a small schooner to the but little
known Bahama Island, Green Turtle Cay, there to enlarge their experiences
with such delightful realization of naturalists' dreams of the tropics as
Haeckel experienced in his Journey to Ceylon. Subsequent annual
expeditions to Nassau, the Bemini Islands, and to various parts of Jamaica
served as marked eras in the lives of many young naturalists who will not
soon forget the contact with life thus obtained.
From these sources and from his connection with the United States Fish
Commission, as director of the Marine Station at Woods Holl, Mass., in
1888, Professor Brooks drew inspiration and fact for the work and thought
by which he is so well known to the working naturalist. There are few great
divisions of the animal kingdom that have not excited his special interest
and claimed his long-sustained labor upon the problems they express. Like
McCrady, deeply fascinated by the Hydromedusæ and their wonderful
changes, many smaller papers, as well as the Memoir of the Boston Society
of Natural History, entitled The Life History of the Hydromedusæ and the
Origin of Alternation of Generations, testify to his success in unraveling
plots that thickened with new discoveries.
An early interest in the mollusca, shown by his doctor's dissertation upon
the embryology of the fresh-water mussels, printed in part in the
Proceedings of the American Association, 1875, continued to be expressed
in his contributions to many problems in the embryology of the fresh-water
Pulmonates, of Gasteropods, of Lamellibranchs, and of the Squid. The
Crustacea also rightly claimed a large share of the attention of a philosophic
naturalist, bringing him face to face with the rigid formulations of law
which these creatures present. The discovery of the very exceptional
method of cleavage in the egg of the decapod Lucifer, and the
demonstration of the existence of a free Nauplius stage there (published in
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1882), marked a
most important advance in the morphological interpretation of all
Crustacea, and brought its author to the first rank as an authority upon this
much-studied group. Studying and capturing at Beaufort those phantom-like
sand burrowers, the Squilla, gained him an insight into and an interest in

this strange division of Crustacea that enabled him to undertake that
difficult task, the description of Stomatopods collected by the Challenger
Expedition—a task completed in 1886. The report, published in such a
magnificent series as only the British Government could have
consummated, is noticeable for the author's clear, free illustration of the
creatures described and classified. In it we find a classification of the
numerous, weird, glassy larvæ, agreeing with the classification of the adults
and marking the success of the solution of the problem—the reference of
chance collections of various stages of many species to their proper places
in the life history of each species.
When the fever for ancestral trees had spread among naturalists in a much
more virulent form than that endemic in Wales, and when the Ascidians
were brought into line as ancestral vertebrates, it was no wonder to find
Professor Brooks laboring upon these interesting creatures, but his work in
this group started from a different point of view. As early as 1875, when
studying in the laboratory of Alexander Agassiz, he contributed to the
Boston Society of Natural History a description involving a most novel
interpretation of the embryology of a remarkable Ascidian, Salpa. This form
is known to many not naturalists as that beautiful animal chain which is
sometimes so common in the clear waters of Newport Harbor as to be
dipped up in every bucket of water, but more often not there at all. The
female buds forth male branches and gives each an egg (which is fertilized
to form a second generation of females). There is thus no alteration of
sexual and non-sexual generations at all; and, with characteristic
appreciation of a paradox, Professor Brooks subsequently emphasized the
fact that the poet naturalist Chamisso, in discovering, in 1814, "Alternation
of Generations" in Salpa, had discovered a phenomenon where it did not
exist, though subsequently found common enough in many other animals.
With the continuity of interest so marked in him, the life history of Salpa, as
thus revealed, continued to be one of the living thoughts in Professor
Brooks's mind for a long period of years, and, with the accumulation of
material and results of researches afforded by his summer work, culminated
in the monograph Salpa—a quarto of nearly four hundred pages and fifty
odd plates—published in 1893, or after nearly twenty years of sustained
interest in this complex problem. In this volume we find first a coherent
view of the intricate life history of this animal illuminated by such

metaphors as make the necessary technicalities both readable and thinkable.
For instance, "A chain of Salpa may be compared to two chains of cars on
two parallel tracks, placed so that the middle of each car on one track is
opposite the ends of two cars of the other track, and each joined by two
couplings to the car in front of it on its own track, and in the same way to
the one behind it, and also to those diagonally in front of it and behind it on
the other track." Again, in speaking of that startling process of egg
development that makes the embryology of Salpa one of the apparently
insoluble problems of this branch of inquiry, he says: "Stated in a word, the
most remarkable peculiarity of the Salpa embryology is this: It is blocked
out in follicular cells, which form layers and undergo foldings and other
changes which result in an outline or model of all the general features in the
organization of the embryo. While these processes are going on the
development of the blastomeres is retarded, so that they are carried into
their final position in the embryo while still in a rudimentary condition.
Finally, when they reach the places they are to occupy, they undergo rapid
multiplication and growth and build up the tissues of the body, while the
scaffolding of follicle cells is torn down and used up as food for the true
embryonic cells. An imaginary illustration may help to make the subject
clear. Suppose that while carpenters are building a house of wood the brick-
makers pile clay on the boards as they are carried past, and shape the lumps
of clay into bricks as they find them scattered through the building where
they have been carried with the boards. Now, as the house of wood
approaches completion, imagine the bricklayers build a brick house over the
wooden framework and not from the bottom upward, but here and there
wherever the bricks are to be found, and that as fast as parts of the brick
house are finished the wooden one is torn down. To make the analogy
complete we must imagine that all the structure which is removed is
assimilated by the bricks, and is thus turned into the substance of new
bricks to carry on the construction."
Following that descriptive portion of the work comes a most interesting
interweaving of facts gathered in wide experience with a scientific
imagination possible only to one who had lived and thought in close
sympathetic contact with tropical marine life. It is an account of the present
conditions of life along tropical shores and the probable steps that led to the
evolution of the innumerable sedentary and creeping things from the

ancestral forms that floated on the surface of the ocean before there were
shores. Charming reading for the layman, and for the specialist a
broadening poetic insight into life as it is and as it was when the world was
young and the pelagic forbears of the vertebrates competed with their
simpler associates in the annexation of the bottom as a vantage ground for
the "benevolent assimilation" of later immigrants. The third portion of the
work follows a most commendable plan: "Scientific controversy is so
unprofitable that I shall try to make it as subordinate as possible, that the
reader may devote all his attention to the life history of Salpa, without
interruption at every point where my own observations confirm or
contradict the statements of others." This section deals with the refutation of
criticism of the author's interpretations, and endeavors to harmonize the
discords that in this, as in all complex morphological research, make
progress slow though surer.
The above brief references to the research work of the subject of this sketch
would be too incomplete did we omit mention of his papers upon that very
interesting and extremely ancient inhabitant of the Chesapeake, the Lingula,
or of the beautifully illustrated memoir of the National Academy of
Sciences, describing the crania of the Lucayan Indians, an unfortunate race
of gentle beings discovered by the Spaniards and treated as part of the live
stock of the New World and soon annihilated, leaving but a few bones, and,
as Professor Brooks tells us, our familiar and pleasant word "hammocks,"
as evidences of their having been.
Coming to maturity in the period of general acceptance of the Darwinian
hypothesis of organic evolution, Professor Brooks was naturally deeply
influenced, and no one who has read his works can doubt his allegiance to
natural selection as a powerful factor in the formation of the present order
of living things. In the American Naturalist for 1877 he published the first
outlines of a provisional hypothesis of pangenesis that sought to "combine
the hypotheses of Owen, Spencer, and Darwin in such a way as to escape
the objections to which each is in itself liable, and at the same time to retain
all that renders them valuable." In 1883 the same hypothesis—that
variations are perpetuated chiefly through the male line by special
gemmules, and that the female is essentially conservative—was elaborated
in book form under the title of The Law of Heredity.

Thenceforth, in intervals of research work, Professor Brooks has
contributed to various periodicals, notably the Popular Science Monthly,
such essays upon kindred topics as spontaneously arose in his mind in
connection with current work here and abroad. Some of these of a general
philosophical interest have been incorporated with lectures, originally given
to students in Baltimore, as The Foundations of Zoölogy, brought out this
year by the Macmillan Company as Volume V of the Columbia University
Biological Series. This, it will be noted, is dedicated "To Hobart College,
where I learned to study, and, I hope, to profit by, but not blindly to follow,
the writings of that great thinker on the principles of science, George
Berkeley," and its keynote might be said to be difficult to hold, expressing
the standpoint of one who says "The proof that there is no necessary
antagonism between mechanical explanations of human life and belief in
volition and duty and moral responsibility seems to me to be very simple
and easy to understand."
Though thus active in pushing forward the limit of fact and theory in the
domain of pure science, Professor Brooks has not shirked the duty that falls
to every member of society, but has labored earnestly to build a sound basis
for immediate practical application of zoölogical research. In 1876 he
organized a summer zoölogical laboratory for teachers and others in
Cleveland, with the co-operation of two other young Clevelanders—A. H.
Tuttle, now Professor of Biology in the University of Virginia, and I. B.
Comstock, Professor of Geology in the University of Arizona.
Identifying himself with the interests of the community in which he had
cast his lot, he interested himself in the establishment of such educational
influences as that of a public aquarium, and it was through no fault of the
sower that the seed laboriously sown fell upon stony ground. In the winter
of 1880 he gave a course of lectures and of laboratory work for teachers in
the schools of Baltimore.
Again, his early studies of the development of the oyster (for which he was
awarded the medal of the Société d'Acclimatisation of Paris in 1883), his
discovery that the American oyster could be reared like fish from artificially
fertilized eggs, since he found it to have a different life history from its
European fellow, led him to realize the greater possibilities that awaited our
oyster industries when they should be based upon scientific fact. Living

amid a population dependent to no small extent upon these industries,
Professor Brooks threw himself with enthusiasm into the problem of
warding off the ruin that comes to every enterprise expanding faster than its
capital is replenished, and eagerly sought the means to magnify without
deterioration so important a factor in the existence of the Commonwealth.
As chairman of the Oyster Commission appointed by the General Assembly
of Maryland in 1882, he drew up the long, detailed, and well-illustrated
report, issued in 1884, which set forth the condition of the oyster beds in the
Chesapeake Bay and their deterioration from overwork, and suggested a
legislative remedy in the form of a bill designed to remove this industry
from that primitive, barbaric stage in which our communal ownership of
migrant birds and fish still remains, and to place it upon the secure basis of
personal ownership underlying other live-stock business. But it is difficult
to change the customs of centuries' standing, and prophets rarely see the
fulfillment of their predictions. Many lectures and the issue of a popular
book—The Oyster, 1891—were necessary labors assumed by Professor
Brooks before the public mind was educated to some appreciation of the
nature of the problem, and the fruits of his labors are yet to be matured and
gathered.
But it is not so much by discovery of new facts or by aid to the community
in which one may chance to live that a man exerts his best influence upon
mankind; rather by his success in inspiring others to see whatever of good
there may be in his point of view and method of attack upon old problems,
that his followers may keep alive and enlarge what he stands for in the
growth of civilization. As a teacher Professor Brooks has exerted a
powerful influence by the stimulus of example in his whole-hearted
devotion to research, by originality of suggestion, and by his clear intuition
of the essential factors in morphological problems. Convinced that
naturalists, like poets, are born and not made—or, if so, then self-made—
his teaching has been free from that too easily acquired hallucination that
the forcible introduction of facts, and frequent extraction of words by
means of examination, are a possible means to the making of zoölogists, or
what you will to order, to be ticketed and branded as such after a fixed term
of the above process. Those who are strong enough to grow in the open
have found in him a genial sunshine, but those needing hothouse forcing

have sometimes missed, perhaps, the care necessary to bring them to a
marketable state.
Many who have followed his lectures will recall the clearness and
simplicity with which complex and puzzling questions were presented to
their minds; the skull of the bony fish soon lost its terrors, while the
homologies of the limb bones were brought to the mind in a graphic way,
sure to leave a deep impression. Directness and lucidity, with freedom from
investment of unessentials, are characteristics of his teaching and prominent
features in his too little known Handbook of Marine Zoölogy, which,
despite technical faults, was so original and honest, so free from closet
natural history, that it marked an era in the advance of biological
instruction. It was a direct appeal to the concrete study of living animals at a
time when zoölogy for students was still the learning of text-books, and
text-books were too often in spirit but modernizations of Pliny or of
Aldrovandus.
It is this removal of the impeding paraphernalia of custom-bound authority,
and a direct, childlike communion with Nature in search of truth by one's
unaided labor, that this man has to offer to those who come under his sway
as teacher; with what success will be evident from the work of those who
recently united to honor his fiftieth birthday with a portrait that might recall
him to them as he taught them, and from the work of those who, in coming
years, will enjoy the privilege of contact with his genius and be led to "seek
admission to the temple of natural knowledge naked and not ashamed, like
little children."

Forestry, Professor Fernow said in his paper at the American
Association, is not, as it seems to be popularly believed, "Woodman,
spare that tree," but "Woodman, cut those trees judiciously." The
handling of a slowly maturing crop like forest trees requires especial
consideration of a problem quite unlike any other that presents itself to
the business man. The trees ripen slowly, a full century often being
necessary to the complete development of growth. Obviously it would
be inadvisable to cut down the product and then wait a hundred years

for further income from the land; another system is necessary, where
merely the interest is taken, in trees which are in a condition to cut,
while the principal, the forest itself, remains always practically intact.

Editor's Table.
PRIMITIVE MAN.

Two articles contributed to the April and May numbers of the Fortnightly
Review by Mr. J. G. Frazer, the learned author of The Golden Bough, and
more recently of a monumental edition of Pausanias, are worthy of the close
attention of all who are interested in the early history of mankind. The
articles are entitled The Origin of Totemism, and the object of the writer is
to show that on this obscure subject a flood of light has been shed by the
lately published researches of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen into the beliefs
and practices of the native tribes of central Australia, those tribes being
perhaps the best representatives now anywhere surviving of the most
primitive condition of the human race. Mr. Baldwin Spencer, formerly a
Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, is at present Professor of Biology in the
University of Melbourne, while Mr. Gillen is a special magistrate in South
Australia, charged with the protection of the aborigines. In their work, Mr.
Frazer observes, "We possess for the first time a full and authentic account
of thoroughly primitive savages living in the totem stage and practically
unaffected by European influence. Its importance," he adds, "as a document
of human history can, therefore, hardly be overestimated."
Evolution, it has often been remarked, and is again remarked by the writer
of these articles, is an outcome of the struggle for life, and is rapid and
vigorous or slow and feeble, according to the intensity of the struggle and
the number and variety of the competing elements. Among the great land
masses of our planet Australia is the smallest; and, owing to this
circumstance, and also to its physical conformation, which renders large
areas unfit for the maintenance of life, population has been much restricted
and competition has been at a minimum. Hence the extremely backward
and undeveloped condition of its native tribes, a condition which enables
us, as Mr. Frazer observes, to detect humanity in the chrysalis stage, and
mark the first blind gropings of our race after liberty and light.

The account given of these tribes contains indeed some very remarkable
details. For example, "though they suffer much from cold at night under the
frosty stars of the clear Australian heaven, the idea of using as garments the
warm furs of the wild animals they kill and eat has never entered into their
minds." They attribute the propagation of the human race wholly to the
action of spirits, to whom they attribute a fecundating power, treating as
wholly irrelevant to the matter any contact of the sexes. The idea of natural
causation seems to be one which they have no power to grasp. They believe
that various results are dependent on special antecedent conditions, but it is
a pure matter of accident what they shall conceive the conditions in any
case to be. Here we come to the origin of totemism. Heretofore totemism
has been considered, broadly speaking, as the identification of themselves
by some group of savages with a particular plant or animal or other
manifestation of the powers of Nature, accompanied by a complete or
partial taboo, so far as the group in question is concerned, of the animal or
other object adopted as totem, and also by a rule prohibiting marriage
within the group. What Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have succeeded in
doing has been to observe and detect the significance of certain practices of
the Australian tribes which have never been observed, or at least never
understood, before.
At a certain time of the year, it appears, each totemistic tribe goes through
elaborate ceremonies of a purely magical character for the purpose of
promoting the growth and multiplication of the particular animal or plant, if
it be one useful for food, with which the tribe is identified, or of
antagonizing its evil effects if it be of a hurtful character. As "there is
scarcely an object, animate or inanimate, to be found in the country
occupied by the natives which does not give its name to some totemic group
of individuals," the general scheme of things is pretty well looked after in
the various ceremonies that are practiced by the different groups. Attention
is here drawn to the essential difference between religion and magic,
religion being an attempt to propitiate or conciliate the higher powers, while
magic undertakes to coerce them. "To the magician," as Mr. Frazer
observes, "it is a matter of indifference whether the cosmic powers are
conscious or unconscious, spiritual or material; for in either case he
imagines that he can force them by his enchantments to do his bidding."
The ceremonies of the native Australians, as we have said, are wholly

magical. They have the same kind of faith in their incantations and other
strange performances that the modern man of science has in the
preparations he makes for a physical experiment. The difference is that
imagination or the crudest kind of symbolism has suggested the methods of
the savage, while a careful scrutiny and comparison of facts has dictated
those of the man of science. The proprium of the savage mind is an utter
insensibility to evidence, or rather a lack of all power of conceiving what
evidence is, and therefore a total incapacity for feeling any need of it. The
scientific man, on the other hand, feels that he needs it every hour and every
moment.
It may be interesting to quote the description given by Mr. Frazer, after
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, of the ceremonies performed by the men whose
totem is the "witchetty grub," a creature much prized as an article of diet by
the natives.
"The men of the witchetty-grub totem repair to a shallow cave in a ravine
where lies a large block of quartzite, surrounded by some small rounded
stones. The large block represents the full-grown grub; the small stones
stand for the eggs. On reaching the cave the head man of the totem group
begins to sing, while he taps the large block with a wooden trough, such as
is used for scooping the earth out of burrows. All the other men at the same
time tap it with twigs of a particular gum tree, chanting the while. The
burden of their song is an invitation to the insect to go and lay eggs. Next,
the leader takes up one of the smaller stones, representing an egg, and
strikes each man in the stomach with it, saying, 'You have eaten much food,'
after which he butts at the man's stomach with his forehead.... Ceremonies
of the same sort are performed at ten different places. When the round has
been completed the party returns home. Here, at some distance from the
camp, a long structure of boughs has been got ready; it is designed to
represent the chrysalis from which the full-grown insect emerges. Into this
structure the men, each with the sacred design of the totem painted in red
ochre and pipe clay on his body, enter and sing of the grub in the various
stages of its development. After chanting thus for a while they shuffle out of
the mock chrysalis one by one, with a gliding motion, singing all the time
about the emergence of the real insect out of the real chrysalis, of which
their own performance is clearly an imitation."

The Emu men have their own ceremonies, equally elaborate and quite as
well adapted to promote the multiplication of emus as those of the
witchetty-grub men to produce an abundance of witchetty grubs. The
earnestness which is thrown into these ceremonies is beyond all question;
and it seems to be clear that each totemic group in turn takes up its own
burden of social responsibility: each has its duty to the tribe as a whole, and
performs it to the best of its ability. Through their united efforts, as they
firmly believe, the various processes of Nature are maintained in
satisfactory activity; the succulent grub comes forth in due season and in
reasonable quantity; the emu, the kangaroo, the bandicoot, and other useful
animals keep up their numbers and continue to furnish food for the
community; the hakea flower and the manna of the mulga tree grow in
normal abundance; the winds blow; the streams flow; the clouds yield rain
and the sun goes on shining by day and the stars by night, with, on the
whole, an admirable regularity. A more satisfactory system it would really
be difficult to conceive. How absurd, not to say profane, it would be for any
one to suggest that ceremonies which were so abundantly justified by
results might without danger be omitted! Skepticism is indeed very much
out of place in certain stages of human development.
The interesting feature, however, as Mr. Frazer holds, in the descriptions
given by the two Australian writers we have named is the proof they afford
that totemism, instead of being an irrational, unexplainable aberration of the
nascent intellect of man, was really a scheme for securing the greatest
possible multiplicity of benefits for the savage community. The whole tribe
was divided into groups, and each group undertook to look after some
function of Nature and keep it up to the mark. Here was a notable step in
the direction of division of labor. How it came about that the particular
animal or plant which was the totem of a group became wholly or partially
taboo to the group is not very easily explained; but it seems not impossible
that some sense of tribal duty, gradually developed, kept those who were
credited with providing any particular food element from being themselves
greedy consumers of it. So far as that article was concerned they may have
felt themselves as sustaining somewhat the character of hosts or entertainers
of the tribe, and it may thus have become the custom that they should either
not partake at all of that special thing, or partake of it only sparingly. If so,
we find the foundations already laid both of politeness and of morality. It is

an interesting question how far the notions which have been described have
died out of modern civilized society. That they are wholly extinct it would
be rash to affirm. There are many traces, indeed, of the surviving influence
of symbolism, and here and there lingering tendencies toward a belief in
magic are easily discoverable. Perhaps the wisest of us may learn to
understand ourselves a little better by studying the operations of the human
mind in its very earliest stages, before reason had yet shaken itself free from
the random suggestions of sense.

THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY AND SCIENCE.

Apropos of the recent notable issue, by the Boston Public Library, of a
comprehensive Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology of Europe,
to accompany Professor Ripley's Races of Europe, the twofold and
diversely opposed interests of a great institution of this sort are called to
mind. On the one hand are its manifold obligations to the great mass of the
public, to the average reader, to the ubiquitous novel and fiction consumer,
to private clubs, and to school children. A field of activity and value in
popular education is involved, scarcely secondary to that of the public
schools, appealing to the general reader, the taxpayer, and, above all, to the
well-wisher for democratic political institutions and representative
government in the future. In stimulating work of this character in Boston, in
bringing the Public Library into deserved prominence among the
educational institutions of the community, Mr. Herbert Putnam achieved
great and deserved success during his administration, winning
commendation upon all sides.
The second aspect of public library duty is revealed by the recent
undertaking at Boston above mentioned. It concerns the relations of great
libraries to science, to original research, not to the average reader, but to the
specialist. Instead of the purchase of twenty copies of David Harum, or
perhaps of A Bloodthirsty and Self-laudatory History of the Recent Spanish
War, by One who killed fifty men with his own hand, to meet a sudden
demand on the part of readers, the expenditure of perhaps an equal sum of
money for some rare and costly work in a foreign language, intelligible to
but half a hundred men in the entire city, is involved. Such obligations do
not of course rest upon libraries of secondary size and importance. Their

path of duty is clearly marked out for them in the interests of the public,
both on the score of financial ability and of demand as well. With the
leading libraries of the country the case is different. Our universities are fast
taking rank with the very best in Europe. Specialists in science and
technology, the peers of those abroad, are plentiful on every hand.
Oftentimes their private means are as limited as their appreciation and
ambition are great. Without these rare books—the tools of their trade—they
are powerless. In former days they were denied the opportunity for
research, or else were obliged to spend months of study in Europe. We have
the men and the minds here in America now; there is every indication that
the books and apparatus are speedily becoming available as well.
This Bibliography of the Boston Public Library is a case in point. A
collection of works relating to the physical history, the origins, migrations,
and languages of the peoples of Europe is indicated upon its shelves, in all
probability, we venture to predict, superior to any single one existing in
Europe. This startling statement is based upon several considerations
familiar to any specialist. Scientific book materials are of two classes. The
first are the expensive and compendious volumes, generally to be found in
great libraries, although oftentimes the paucity of their scientific collections
is very surprising, especially in all that concerns the newer sciences of
biology, anthropology, and the like. The second order of publications, often
rarer and scientifically more valuable than the first, are the scattered
monographs or pamphlets published in all manner of forms and by
societies, oftentimes ephemeral and of all degrees of eminence. This second
class of materials is generally richly represented in the collections of the
various scientific societies, especially in the form of reprints presented by
the authors. But the great and expensive tomes are seldom thus presented,
and the societies can seldom afford to purchase them. Thus it comes about
that these two classes of raw materials have to be separately hunted down,
being rarely found together. For example, the library of the Société
d'Anthropologie at Paris, judging by its printed catalogues, while abounding
in scattered monographs and reprints, contains very few of the expensive
volumes. One must seek these, and if they be in English or German, very
likely in vain, in the Bibliothèque Nationale.
The Public Library of the city of Boston has apparently tried an experiment
in this direction, and is certainly to be congratulated upon the result. To a

very rich collection of standard works has been added, by co-operation with
a special investigator, a large part of the flotsam and jetsam which is of such
extreme value to the student of original sources. The library has set a
worthy example of encouragement to research; it has offered definite proof
of the ability of our American institutions to rival their European
contemporaries. And a peculiarly appropriate rounding-out to the successful
career in the distinctively popular phases of administration of the institution
of the late librarian, Mr. Herbert Putnam, is afforded in this work, the last at
Boston officially, perhaps, to bear his signature and the stamp of his
approval.

OUR RACE TROUBLES.

The article which we publish in the present number of the Monthly, under
the title of The Race Problem in the United States, is a sequel to one which
appeared in the May number entitled The Negro Question. Both writers
have a special acquaintance with the subject, and are widely known as
active workers for the elevation of the negro race—Mr. Booker T.
Washington, the writer of the second article, being himself one of its most
distinguished representatives. While both manifest abundant sympathy with
the negro, and a deep sense of the pressing nature of the problems to which
the presence of a large negro element in the population of certain of our
States gives rise, they virtually acknowledge that it is extremely difficult in
discussing the subject to do more than present a few broad general views.
That there is a very bad condition of things in some of our Southern States
no one will dispute. The crimes which have been committed by white men,
in avenging real or supposed crimes committed by black men, stamp a
character of utter savagery on the communities in which they have
occurred, and in which they have remained unpunished. At the same time
there is no doubt that the existence of so large a negro element in the South
constitutes a serious obstacle to the moral and intellectual as well as to the
economic development of that part of the country, and tends to keep alive a
dangerous condition of public feeling. Our contributor, Dr. Curry, states
significantly that he could give very impressive details on this point, were it
not that it would furnish altogether too unpleasant reading.

What are we going to do about it? No doubt we have before us an
illustration of the old adage, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge." The South had its "peculiar institution" for
some generations, and held to it with extraordinary tenacity—went to war
rather than give it up. Now, by the simple force of events, the old
patriarchal and slaveholding system is broken up, and there the former
slaves and their descendants are—emancipated citizens who have their
rights under the Constitution, and who therefore have to be reckoned with.
They can not be deported against their will; they have the same right to live
in the country that any white man has.
Manifestly there is but one honorable way of dealing with the blacks, and
that is to treat them with absolute justice. Upon this point we are in entire
agreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. If a black man is excluded from
the suffrage on account of his ignorance, let the equally ignorant white man
be equally excluded. We have great faith in the educative effect of justice,
and a firm administration of law. It would at once raise the self-respect of
the negro to know that what was law for the white man was law for him,
and vice versa; and self-respect is a sure ground for further advance. In the
matter of education, we hold that education for the colored race should be
almost wholly of a practical kind. We go further, and say that the education
given to white children everywhere might with great advantage be much
more practical than it is. The proper education for any individual is that
which will tend to make him more efficient, successful, and self-sufficing in
the position which he is called to occupy. This principle, far from implying
a stationary condition of the individual, is precisely the one which provides
best for his advancement. It is the man who is thoroughly competent for the
work he has at any given moment to do who passes beyond that work to
something better. The misery of existing systems of education is that to so
large extent they educate for a hypothetical position beyond that for which
an immediate preparation is necessary. The result is that the schools unload
upon the community year by year a levy of adventurous youths who at once
begin to live by their wits in no very creditable sense, and who constitute a
distinct menace to the stability of society.
We would therefore urge most earnestly upon all who take an interest in the
education of the colored race to keep in view above all things the
importance and necessity of fitting the negro to take an active part in the

practical industries of the country, and above all in agriculture. An
education directed mainly to this end would do far more to develop his
intelligence than one of a more abstract and ambitious character and would
furnish a far better foundation for success in life. Far from tying the negro
down to manual occupations, it would prepare the way for his eventual
participation in all occupations. But occupation for occupation, where is
there one that can reasonably be rated higher than the intelligent and
successful cultivation of the soil? If the negro problem can not be solved by
common sense and common honesty it can not be solved at all. Before
giving it up as insoluble we should make full proof of these homely
specifics. We have long been proclaiming that the negro is a man and a
brother; let us therefore treat him as such, and if we find out anything that is
particularly good for his moral and intellectual improvement, let us try a
little of it ourselves. It surely will not do us any harm.

Scientific Literature.
SPECIAL BOOKS.

The Lesson of Popular Government[12] is a fruit of thirty years' study, by
Mr. Bradford, of certain peculiarities in the political workings of our
institutions. The book is not for those who consider it patriotic to shut their
eyes to whatever is going wrong, but for those whose regard for the Federal
Constitution and the organization of our governments is only increased by
the consciousness of the strain to which they are exposed, and who feel
strongly that while the principles of the Government and the character of
the people "are still sound and reliable, some modifications and
readjustments of the machinery must take place, unless we are to drift
through practical anarchy and increasing corruption to military despotism."
For the sake of putting the subject in a clearer light, the three more
prominent approaches to democratic government in modern times—those
of England, France, and the United States—are studied comparatively in the
former part of the work. The carrying on of governments in accordance
with the expressed wish of the people is spoken of in the beginning as the
appearance of a new force which has changed the whole face of society, and
points to still greater changes in the future. How it has worked in the three
countries in which it has been in operation for a little more than a century,
and what it has done, are the questions which the author undertakes to
answer. In England, popular government has taken the form, with a
powerless hereditary sovereign commanding universal loyalty, of a ministry
responsible to a Parliament, which is directly responsible to the people. In
France, the executive is controlled by a legislative body chosen by universal
suffrage, the majority of which is held together by party discipline. The
virtue of this government is undergoing a supreme test in the Dreyfus case,
the right issue of which would show a greater proportional advance in true
liberty and the justification of popular government than has taken place in
any other nation. In the United States, power is passing more and more into
Congress, a body chosen separately from the President, whose members are
actuated by personal, local, and partisan motives, and rarely rise to the

conception of broad national views or look further than to the immediate
present, while the nation at large and the Executive are without
representation such as insures the co-operation of the ministry and
Parliament in England. In all other respects than appointments to office,
which must be made "in strict subordination to the demands of members of
his party in both Houses of Congress," the recognized power of the
Executive is confined within very narrow limits. In matters of legislation he
has no voice whatever beyond general recommendations, such as are open
to any citizen, and to which Congress pays little or no attention. In fact, that
body resents anything like an expression of opinion from the President. The
system is not encouraging to the filling of the office by men of the first
rank, and men of that rank seldom reach it. The House of Representatives,
meeting every two years a new body, suffers from its entire want of
coherency and the absence of a qualified leader, and falls an easy prey to
the lobbyist and the boss. So, while "there are still many, perhaps the
majority, of men of good character in public life, the tendency is steadily
downward." It has been customary in some quarters to charge the evils we
suffer upon universal suffrage, but Mr. Bradford maintains that it is this
which to-day is keeping up the character of the Government, and that but
for the restraints imposed by it our political condition would be a great deal
worse than it is. Further light is sought upon the situation, and further
pictures are given of the conditions existing in comprehensive reviews of
the State and municipal governments of the country. In considering
proposed remedies the referendum is dismissed as tending to destroy
personality and diffuse responsibility even more than is done now—the
reverse of the concentration of executive power as the only really
indispensable part of the Government, which should be sought. The
enforcement of this principle of executive supremacy with immediate
responsibility is the purpose of the book. Mr. Bradford would obtain this by
giving the representatives of the administrative departments seats in the
House, with power to suggest legislation, make explanations, and
participate in debate. His final argument is that it can not be charged that
democracy is a failure; but, "with a wholly new force introduced into the
world, the proper machinery for its application has not yet been employed.
In its nature it is reasonable, sound, and, on the whole, beneficent." Using
the words of an English writer, "the failures of government in the United

States are not the result of democracy, but of the craftiest combination of
schemes to defeat the will of democracy ever devised in the world."
We have already published a fairly comprehensive review of Richard
Semon's In the Australian Bush,[13] based upon the German original, by
Prof. E. P. Evans, in the fifty-second volume of the Monthly (November,
1897). But little needs to be added to what Professor Evans has said of the
book besides announcing the appearance of the English edition, the
translation for which was written under the author's own superintendence,
and the contents of which do not differ in any important particular from the
German impression. Professor Semon went to Australia on a special
zoölogical mission, and spent two years there. His purpose was the study of
the wonderful Australian fauna, the oviparous mammals, marsupials, and
ceratodus (lungfish). These animals represent forms which, with a few
notable exceptions, have long since become extinct in other countries,
where they have to be studied in such parts of their bony forms as happen to
have been preserved in the rocks, while here they can be examined alive
and in the flesh—"living fossils," as the author fittingly calls them, links
between the present age and one of the geological periods of the past. His
observations on these subjects are in course of publication in a special
scientific work, not quite half of which has appeared. The present volume
consists in the notes of travel and adventure, the dealing with men, the
anthropological studies, and what we might call the obiter observations of
the expedition. Almost simultaneously with Professor Semon's narrative we
have from the same publishers another book, on The Native Tribes of
Central Australia,[14] which deals more fully, exclusively, and perhaps more
expertly with the anthropology of a part of the Australian continent. Of the
authors, Mr. Gillen has spent the greater part of the past twenty years in the
center of the continent, and as sub-protector of the aborigines has had
exceptional opportunities of coming in contact with the Arunta tribe; and
both of them have been made fully initiated members of that tribe. Though
both about Australia, the two books do not cover the same ground. Australia
is very large, and its physical conditions are such that the groups of tribes
inhabiting the various regions have for a long period of time been isolated
from one another and have followed different lines in development.
Professor Semon's observations were made in the Burnett district of
northeastern Queensland, while those recorded in the work of Spencer and

Gillen were made in the very center of South Australia and of the continent.
Consequently, in reading them we read really about different things. In
addition to the investigation of various customs, such as those connected
with initiation and magic, special attention has been paid by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen to the totemic system and to matters connected with the
social organization of the tribes; and here again the authors insist upon the
differences between the groups of tribes, and that the customs of no one
tribe or group can be taken as typical of Australia generally in any other
sense than as broad outline. Both works deal with considerable fullness
with the institution of marriage among the Australians, and the customs by
which too close intermarriage is prevented. Among other subjects treated
with especial fullness by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are the totems, the
bull-roarers, the Intichuma ceremonies (associated with the totems), the
initiation ceremonies, customs relative to the knocking out of teeth,
traditions, burial and mourning, spirit individuals, medicine men and magic,
methods of obtaining wives, myths, clothing, weapons, implements,
decorative art, and names. Professor Semon formed a moderate opinion of
the capacity of the Australians. Though coarse and heavy, their faces are not
bad looking and have expression. They are "no link between monkeys and
men, but human creatures through and through," though of one of the
lowest types. They have no pottery, no agriculture, no abstract ideas of any
kind, can not count very far, but are clever in learning to write, read, and
draw, are experts in signaling, and have their intellect and senses "brilliantly
developed in all directions bearing on the hunt," with great dexterity in the
use of weapons.

GENERAL NOTICES.

Miss Mary H. Kingsley has given in her West African Studies[15] a book
marked by pungent wit and striking originality in its sketches of adventure
and observation, and containing in the chapters devoted to ethnology results
of her personal studies. She was already known by a record of her
adventures of a young Englishwoman traveling alone through some of the
worst regions of West Africa, embodied in her book Travels in West Africa,
which was published in the latter part of 1898. The present book may be
regarded, as its name implies, as the result and the embodiment of the
afterthoughts of that hazardous journey. It includes, after descriptions in

which the unconventional directness of expression is much to be remarked,
an account of African characteristics and a description of fishing in West
Africa, chapters of a soberer sort on fetich, schools of fetich, witchcraft,
African medicine and the witch doctor, and historical and economical
chapters on Early Trade, French Discovery, Commerce, the Crown Colony
System and some of its incidents, The Clash of Cultures, and African
Property. Miss Kingsley's criticisms of the present system of administration
being regarded as rather destructive, she endeavors to set forth, in a chapter
entitled An Alternative Plan, "some other way wherein the African colonies
could be managed." Special attention is invited by the author to two articles
in the appendix to the volume by M. le Comte C. N. de Cardi and Mr. John
Harford. We are pleased to note the high appreciation which Miss Kingsley
expresses of the anthropological work concerning west-coast tribes of our
former contributor, Colonel A. B. Ellis—Sir A. B. Ellis when he died.

Mr. Frederick Palmer's In the Klondyke[16] is an unpretentious book and
free from the appearance of sensationalism, but gives a clear and graphic
account of the region and its ways and of the getting there at the breaking
up of winter. The author was at Dyea late in February, having intended to go
with a Government relief expedition which had found no occasion to
proceed farther. Being thus left out, he undertook, with dogs and sledges
and two companions who proved congenial, the "untried journey" of six
hundred miles over the ice fields of the Lewes Lakes and the ice packs of
the Yukon River, which had been the contemplated route of the expedition.
The start was made about the 18th of March, with little time to spare,
because the Yukon was expected to become impassable by the 20th of
April. The Chilkoot Pass was achieved in a day, and the rest of the journey
was made "downhill with the current of the river at the rate of eight inches
to the mile," in weather that became very variable, with now hard freezing
and now slush in the middle of the day. The difficulties of the journey must
have been formidable, with considerable suffering, besides a week in a hut
with the measles, but no complaint further than the mention of the incidents
appears in the author's story. On some of the days the thermometer ranged
from 10° to 20° below zero at two o'clock in the morning, to 80° above at
night, and the author "had one ear blistered by the frost and the other by the
sun in the same day." The party arrived at Dawson just four days before the
final break-up of the ice in the river. Accounts corresponding in temper and

vividness with that of the journey are given of Dawson, the miners and
mining, the history of the Klondyke mining enterprise, Klondyke types of
character and adventure, the toils and trials and profit and losses of the
"Pilgrims," the workings of the Government, and the return home to
civilization—which does not appear, after all, to have offered
transcendentally superior attractions to those who had experienced the
pleasure of adventure.

The History of Physics in its Elementary Branches[17] has been prepared by
Professor Cajori in the belief that some attention to the history of a science
helps to make it attractive, and that the general view of the development of
the human intellect gained in reading a history on the subject is in itself
stimulating and liberalizing. The author has had in mind Professor
Ostwald's characterization of the absence of the historical sense and the
want of knowledge of the great researches upon which the edifice of
science rests as a defect in the present method of teaching. The subject is
treated by periods. In ancient times the Greeks, while displaying wonderful
creative genius in metaphysics, literature, and art, being ignorant of the
method of experimentation, achieved relatively little in natural science. The
Roman scientific writers were contented to collect the researches of Greek
professors. Except in a few instances the Arabs did not distinguish
themselves in original research. Writers in the middle ages were only
commentators, and knew nothing of personal investigation. The physicist of
the renascence abandoned scholastic speculation and began to study Nature
in the language of experiment. The seventeenth century was a period of
great experimental as well as theoretical activity. In the eighteenth century
speculation was less effectively restrained and guided by experiments. The
nineteenth century "has overthrown the leading theories of the previous one
hundred years, and has largely built anew on the older foundations laid
during the seventeenth century." The evolution of physical laboratories, first
for teachers and then for students, is the subject of the last chapter.
"The Great Commanders Series" of D. Appleton and Company is enriched
by a biography of General Sherman,[18] whom the author, General Manning
F. Force, styles "the most picturesque figure in our civil war." He was more
than this; he was its scholar and statesman—a man distinguished by the
possession of high military combined with the best civil qualities. Further,
as General Force well says, "his character was absolutely pure and

spotless." In his dealings with the Vigilance Committee in San Francisco he
assumed a position which it required courage of a much higher order than a
soldier's to maintain. While comfortably situated as an honored professor in
the State Military Academy of Louisiana when the Legislature passed the
Ordinance of Secession, he had no hesitation in deciding what to do. He at
once gave in his resignation in a letter that is a model of manliness,
declaring his preference "to maintain allegiance to the Constitution of the
United States as long as a fragment of it survives." His career as a general
in the civil war is described at length. Through it all his foresight, seeking
always to accomplish the most with the least expenditure and ultimate
suffering, to which his strategy was adapted, is conspicuous. At this time
and afterward his supreme thought appears to have been as to what would
best conduce to the permanent good of the republic. To his military ability
and self-effacing patriotism he added a far-seeing wisdom in council that
could always be relied upon. "In his most unguarded words his principle
was always clear, noble, and intensely patriotic, and his careless colloquial
expressions often covered a practical wisdom and insight of a most striking
kind."

In preparing their Text-Book of Algebra[19] the authors, assuming that
mental discipline is of the first importance to every student of mathematics,
have endeavored to present the elements of the science in a clear and logical
form, while yet keeping the needs of beginners constantly in mind. Special
attention is given to making clear the reason for every step taken; each
principle is first illustrated by particular examples, and then rules and
suggestions for performing the operation are laid down. The authors have
endeavored to avoid apparent conciseness at the expense of clearness and
accuracy, and have thereby made their volume somewhat larger than
ordinary text-books. Features to which attention is called are the
development of the fundamental operations with algebraic numbers and the
concrete illustrations of these operations; the use of type forms in
multiplication and division and in factoring; the application of factoring to
the solution of equations; the solutions of equations based upon equivalent
equations and equivalent systems of equations; the treatment of irrational
equations; the discussions of general problems and the interpretation of
positive, negative, zero, intermediate, and infinite solutions of problems; the
treatment of inequalities and their applications; the outline of a discussion

of irrational numbers; a brief introduction to imaginary and complex
numbers; and the great number of graded examples and problems.
The material of the Primary Arithmetic, Number Studies for the Second,
Third, and Fourth Grades, of A. R. Hornbrook (American Book Company),
has been chosen with careful reference to the development of the number
sense of little children, as noticed by the author and as reported by many
other observers. A distinctive feature of the work is the use of diagrams
called "number tables," as a concrete basis for the child's thinking while he
is getting his first ideas of the facts of the addition and multiplication tables.
In them the numbers up to one hundred are presented in columns of tens,
and so handled as to exhibit to the child's conception the relations of the
several digits. By their use he first learns the properties of ten, then of two,
and so on of the others—not presented in regular order, but with a view of
exhibiting special properties—and their relations to one another. The
method is ingenious and appears useful.
The study on Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union, of the
Columbia University Series in History, Economics, and Public Law (The
Macmillan Company, New York), was undertaken by Mr. Frank Greene
Bates in order to ascertain why Rhode Island so long delayed its ratification
of the Federal Constitution. The delay seems to have been largely a matter
of the assertion of State rights, in which Rhode Island appears at that time
to have been but little, if any, behind South Carolina. Liberty "was the
presiding genius of the spiritual life of the colony, and the principle of
freedom of conscience was never lost sight of; and this could not otherwise
than heighten the other characteristics of the colony—individualism." The
course pursued was the natural outcome of the conditions of the times, the
"outcropping of the undying love of the people of the State for democracy
and liberty, and their jealousy of all authority outside their own boundaries."
"No book up to recent date," says the author of Pantheism, the Light and
Hope of Modern Reason, who signs his name C. Amryc, and gives no
publisher's name, "has treated pantheism as consistently as it deserves to be
treated"; and he adds that "it is no creed; it is a logic; it makes absolutely no
demand upon 'belief'; what is not logical is rejected, what is logical to-day
is accepted, no matter whether it was unlogical a thousand years ago or will
be illogical a thousand years hence; we are only responsible for our times."

As pantheism, if it is a true logic, must be applicable to all races, the author
has not chosen his examples from one nation or tribe; and he believes that
the views he expresses are also those of nine tenths of what is called
modern science. Many topics are treated of, some of which would not at
first thought be associated with an exposition of pantheism. The matter and
manner of the book are various. Parts of it are fairly good reading; other
parts strike us as different.
A book on The Principles of Agriculture, prepared by Prof. L. H. Bailey as a
text-book for schools and rural societies, is published as a number of the
Rural Science Series of the Macmillan Company ($1.25). In it agriculture is
treated as a business, not a science, but as a business which is aided at every
point by a knowledge of science. "It is on the science side that the
experimenter is able to help the farmer. On the business side the farmer
must rely upon himself, for the person who is not a good business man can
not be a good farmer, however much he may know of science." The
principle of the intelligent application of knowledge is illustrated in a
remark of the author's about the treating of drainage. The learner is apt to
begin at the wrong end of his problem. In the usual method the pupil or
reader is first instructed in methods of laying drains. "But drainage is not
the unit. The real unit is texture and moisture of soils—plowing, draining,
green cropping, are methods of producing a given or desired result. The real
subject-matter for first consideration, therefore, is amelioration of soil,
rather than laying of drains." Professor Bailey aims throughout this book to
get at "the real subject-matter for first consideration" in matters relating to
soils, the plant and crops, and the animals and stock.
Ideals and Programmes (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 75 cents) is a
collection of thoughtful and suggestive essays, by Jean L. Gourdy, on the
practical side of school life and the teaching of children. The author's ideal
seems to be that the teacher should have a plan for her work, preparing for
it so as to have the whole course marked out on general lines for the entire
school year. Thus, her occupation should be to qualify herself for doing the
work right. These statements of general principles are followed by essays
on reading and plans for teaching, correlation as "the headstone of the
corner of successful teaching, geography, sand modeling, field lessons,
kindergarten training, and discipline." The burden of the whole is by skillful
adaptation to get the best possible out of every lesson, in which a liberal use

of field work assists greatly, and above all to avoid the stiff, formal,
juiceless lessons of the old style of teaching.
There have been several biographies of Faraday, most of them now out of
print; but the life, work, methods, character, and aims of the man—who was
"beyond all question the greatest scientific expositor of his time"—can not
be kept too constantly or too long before the minds of students. Welcome,
therefore, is the easily accessible and convenient volume Michael Faraday:
His Life and Work, which has been prepared by Prof. Sylvanus P.
Thompson, and is published by the Macmillan Company in their Century
Science Series ($1.25). The work by which Faraday contributed so much to
the advancement of knowledge is made prominent, and is illustrated largely,
due regard being had to the limitations of the size of the book, with citations
from his own journal and copies of his drawings.
In American Indians, a book second in order but first in date of publication
of a series of "Ethno-Geographic Readers" (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston),
Prof. Frederick Starr has succeeded in conveying a large amount of
information about our aborigines in a very small space, and has done it in a
clear style and a very satisfactory manner. The book is intended as a reading
book for boys and girls in school, to whose tastes and capacity it seems well
adapted; but the author will be pleased if it also interests older readers, and
hopes it may enlarge their sympathy with our native Americans. Besides the
accounts of the tribal divisions, general customs, manner of life, houses,
and institutions—which when they are counted up are found to be quite
numerous—it has articles on the sign language, medicine men and secret
societies, the mounds and their builders, George Catlin and his work, the
cliff-dwellings and ruins of the Southwest, the tribes of the Northwest coast,
matters of religious and mythological significance, the Aztecs, the Mayas,
and the ruined cities of Yucatan and Central America.
The revision, for the fifth edition, of H. Newell Martin's The Human Body
(Henry Holt & Co., New York, $1.20) was undertaken by Prof. George
Wills Fitz with the idea of bringing the book into accord with the late
developments of physiology, of simplifying the treatment of some parts
while expanding that of others, and of giving additional illustrations. Every
effort has been made to avoid injuring those features of the author's work
which have contributed to making the book so favorably known. The

changes in the first nine chapters are largely verbal; but considerable
alterations and additions have been made in some of the succeeding
chapters. The directions for demonstrations and experiments have been
greatly enlarged and collected into an appendix. They include the new
requirements in anatomy, physiology, and hygiene for admission to Harvard
College and the Lawrence Scientific School.
We have already noticed some of Lucy S. W. Wilson's excellent Manuals on
Nature Study, particularly the one intended for the guidance of teachers. We
now have in the same line the First Reader of a series on Nature Study in
Elementary Schools (New York: The Macmillan Company, 35 cents), a
book composed of original matter and selections which has been prepared
"with the desire of putting into the hands of little children literature which
shall have for their minds the same interest and value that really good books
have for grown-up people." But the author does not expect to accomplish
this by merely giving the book to the child and leaving the reading to work
out its own effect. Each of the lessons is intended to be preceded by a
Nature lesson. During or after the reading a lesson should be given in the
new words introduced, and afterward the lessons should be grasped for the
sake of thought. The lessons, which have appropriate illustrations from
Nature, present some novel features. Among them is an apparent intention
in the original compositions to follow the child's method of thought.
The American Elementary Arithmetic (American Book Company) is
intended by the author, Prof. M. A. Bailey, to cover the first five years' work
(beginning apparently very young) in the study, and is the first of a two-
book series. It is divided into two parts—for the primary and for the three
succeeding grades. It contemplates the use of apparatus, consisting of paper,
pasteboard, toy money, blocks, and splints. The attempt is made to give
every subject twice: first in pictures, and second in the particular form of
printed words. Mathematical conceptions are presented in the first chapter
in the order in which they are supposed to arise in the child's consciousness
—first, once or more, indefinitely; next, how many, by holding up fingers,
laying down sticks, etc.; and then by words, and so on—all introductory
work designed to develop step by step a mathematical vocabulary, and to
form a habit of clear mathematical thinking. The laboratory plan is followed
in the succeeding chapters.

In the Language Lessons of J. G. Park (American Book Company) an
arrangement of the matter is aimed at which will draw upon the student for
such effort as may be expected at a given stage of advancement, which will
cause him to think first and then to express his thought with clearness and
precision. In the succeeding parts are given exercises on language work,
with special drills upon capitalization and punctuation, inductive lessons in
grammar, and, finally, lessons so graded that a student may advance very
readily from them into the higher work of grammar. The study is facilitated
by the use of striking illustrations as the basis of lessons.
The Semi-annual Report of Schimmel and Company (Leipsic and New
York), though primarily a business document, furnishes much information
about the industries in essential oils and fine chemicals, and concerning
progress in the departments of chemical science relating to these. The report
for October, 1898, speaks of much research and many valuable studies as
having been carried on during the preceding six months in the domain of
the essential oils and their constitution, and of ample material for scientific
reports as having been gathered.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Connecticut: No.
128. Commercial Feeding Stuffs. Pp. 12; No. 129. Inspection and Care of
Nursery Stock. By W. E. Britton. Pp. 10. Twenty-second Annual Report,
Part II, Food Products. Pp. 120.—Cornell University: No. 165. Ropiness in
Milk and Cream. By A. R. Ward. Pp. 16; No. 166. Sugar-Beet
Investigations for 1898. Pp. 50; No. 167. The Construction of the Stave
Silo. By L. A. Clinton. Pp. 16.—Hatch Station, Massachusetts Agricultural
College: No. 61. Asparagus Rust. By G. E. Stone and R. E. Smith. Pp. 20.
—Iowa Agricultural College: No. 40. Relation of Acid Fermentation to
Butter Flavor and Aroma. Pp. 12; No. 41. New Orchard Fruits and Shrubs.
Pp. 64; No. 42. Weeds and Potato Scab. Pp. 12.—New Hampshire
Agricultural College: No. 63. Third Potato Report. By F. William Ranes.
Pp. 32; No. 64. The Forest Tent Caterpillar. By Clarence M. Weed. Pp. 24.
—New Jersey: No. 136. Field Experiments with Nitrogenous Fertilizers. By
E. B. Voorhees. Pp. 32.—New York: No. 149 (popular edition). Will Poultry
thrive on Grain Alone? By F. H. Hall and W. P. Wheeler. Pp. 7; No. 151

(popular edition). How Ringing affects Grapes. By F. H. Hall and Wendell
Paddock. Pp. 4; No. 152 (popular edition). Two Apple Pests and how to
check them. By F. H. Hall and V. H. Lane. Pp. 8; No. 153. Director's Report
for 1898. By W. H. Jordan. Pp. 36; No. 154 (popular edition). Profitable
Potato Fertilizing. By F. H. Hall and W. H. Jordan. Pp. 2; No. 155 (popular
edition). Sugar-Beet Success for the Season. By F. H. Hull and L. L. Van
Slyke. Pp. 8.—Ohio: No. 100. The Home Mixing of Fertilizers. By C. R.
Thorne. Pp. 40; No 101. Oats. By J. F. Hickman. Pp. 24; No. 102.
Treatment for Insect Pests and Plant Diseases, etc. By W. J. Green and
others. Sheet; No. 103. The San José Scale Problem. By F. M. Webster. Pp.
24. Newspaper Bulletin No. 192. Bovine Tuberculosis. Pp. 2.—Purdue
University: No. 75. The Sugar Beet. By H. A. Husten and A. H. Bryan. Pp.
20; No. 76. Skim Milk for Young Chickens. By W. B. Anderson. Pp. 8; No.
77. Field Experiments with Corn. By W. C. Latta and W. B. Anderson. Pp.
160.—University of Illinois. Eleventh Annual Report. Pp. 16; No. 84.
Spraying Apple Trees. By J. C. Blair. Pp. 36.—United States Department of
Agriculture. Natural History of the Marias Islands, Mexico. By E. W.
Nelson. Pp. 96.—West Virginia. Nursery Hints. By L. C. Corbett. Pp. 24.
Barber, Edwin Atlee. Anglo-American Pottery, Old English China with
American Views. Indianapolis, Ind.: Press of the Clay Worker. Pp. 175.
Barrett, John. The Philippine Islands and America's Interests in the Far East.
Hong-Kong. Pp. 65.
Binet, Alfred. The Psychology of Reasoning. Based on Experimental
Researches In Hypnotism. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. Pp.
191. 75 cents.
Bridges and Framed Structures. Monthly. Vol. 1, No. 2. May, 1899.
Chicago: The D. H. Ranck Publishing Company. Pp. 92, with plates. 30
cents.
Brooks, William Keith. The Foundations of Zoölogy. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 339. $2.50.
Bullen, Frank T. Idylls of the Sea. With an Introduction by J. St. Loe
Strachey. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 286. $1.25.

Bulletins, Reports, Transactions, etc. American Society of Civil Engineers:
Proceedings. Vol. XXV. No. 4. Pp. 150.—British Columbia, Province of:
Annual Report of the Minister of Mines to December 31, 1898. Pp. 280,
with maps.—Chicago Manual Training School (University of Chicago):
Catalogue, 1898-'99. Pp. 20.—City of Seattle, County of King, State of
Washington: Report of the Chamber of Commerce. Pp. 33.—City Library
Association, Springfield, Mass.: Bibliography of Geographical Instruction.
By W. S. Monroe. Pp. 8.—Geographical Society of Washington:
Presidential Address of Arnold Hague, Minutes for 1897 and 1898, etc. Pp.
48.—Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Annual Report of the President
and Treasurer for 1898. Pp. 96, with plates; Annual Catalogue, 1898-'99.
Pp. 347.—Michigan College of Mines: Catalogue, 1896 to 1898. Pp. 192.—
New York Academy of Natural Sciences: Annals. Vol. XI, Part III.
December 1, 1898. Pp. 230.—Ohio State University, Department of
Zoölogy and Entomology, No. 1: The Odonata of Ohio. By David S.
Kellicott. Pp. 116.—United States Department of Labor: No. 21. Pp. 188.—
United States Life-Saving Service: Annual Report of Operations to June 30,
1898. Pp. 448.—Utah, State of: Second Biennial Report of the
Superintendent of Public Instruction, to June 30, 1898. Pp. 317, with tables.
—War Department of the United States: Customs Tariff and Regulations for
the Philippine Islands. Pp. 40.
Burgess, O. O. A Question of Consciousness. San Francisco. Pp. 40.
Cumulative Index to a Selected List of Periodicals. Third Annual Volume,
1898. Cleveland, Ohio: The Helman-Taylor Company. Pp. 792.
Coming Age, The. A Magazine of Constructive Thought. B. O. Flower and
Mrs. C. K. Reifsnider, Editors. Boston and St. Louis. Vol. I, No. 3. March,
1899. Pp. 112. 20 cents.
Eidlitz, Leopold. On Light. An Analysis of the Emersions of Jupiter's
Satellite I. New York: The Knickerbocker Press. Pp. 12.
Elrod, M. J. The College, Past and Present. Bloomington, Ill.: The
University Press. Pp. 26.
Fay, Edward Allen. Marriages of the Deaf in America. Washington, D. C.:
The Volta Bureau. Pp. 527.

Gardiner, Charles A. Our Right to acquire and to hold Foreign Territory.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 56.
International Express Company, New York. Chart of Express Routes over
the World. Sheet.
Interstate Commerce Commission. Statistics of Railways in the United
States to June 30, 1897. Pp. 687.
Jacoby, Johann. The Object of the Labor Movement. Translated by Florence
Kelley. New York: International Publishing Company (International
Monthly Library). Pp. 36. 5 cents.
Jackson, Frederick G. A Thousand Days in the Arctic. With Preface by
Admiral S. F. Leopold McClintock. New York: Harper & Brothers. Pp. 940.
Jordan, David Starr, with Official Associates and Special Contributors. The
Fur Seals and Fur-Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean. In Two Parts.
Washington: Government Printing Office. Pp. 606, with plates.
Krüger, F. C. Theo. A Step Forward, A Treatise on Possible Social Reform.
New York: Isaac H. Blanchard & Co. Pp. 30.
Lucas, Fred Alexander. The Hermit Naturalist. Trenton, N. J.: William
Hibbert. Pp. 121.
McLaughin, Andrew C. A History of the American Nation. New York: D.
Appleton and Company. Pp. 587. $1.40.
Marsh, O. C. The Dinosaurs of North America. United States Geological
Survey. Pp. 112, with 84 plates.
Marshall, Percival. Small Accumulators, How Made and Used. New York:
Spon and Chamberlain. Pp. 78. 50 cents.
Michigan Ornithological Club, The. Bulletin of, Monthly. Vol. III, No. 1.
January, 1899. Grand Rapids, Mich. 50 cents a year.
Moon, Clarence B. Certain Aboriginal Mounds on the Coast of South
Carolina. (Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.) Pp.
40, with plates.

Moses, Alfred J. The Characters of Crystals. An Introduction to Practical
Crystallography. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. Pp. 211. $2.
Munro, John. The Story of the British Race. (Library of Useful Stories.)
New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 228. 40 cents.
Palmer, Frederick. In the Klondyke. Including an Account of a Winter's
Journey to Dawson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 218. $1.50.
Porter, Robert P. Industrial Cuba, Being a Study of Present Commercial and
Industrial Conditions, etc. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 428. $3.50.
Reprints. Bolin, Jacob. On Group Contests. Pp. 14.—Coulter, John M.
Notes on the Fertilization and Embryology of Conifers. Pp. 4, with plates.
—Grabau, Amadeus W. Moniloperidæ, A New Family of Palæozoic Corals.
Pp. 16, with 4 plates.—Hunter, S. J. The Coccidæ of Kansas. II. Pp. 12,
with 6 plates.—Oliver, Charles A. The Value of Repeated and Differently
Placed Exposures to the Roentgen Rays in determining the Location of
Foreign Bodies in and about the Eyeball. Pp. 4.—Tyson, James, M. D.,
Philadelphia. The Uric-Acid Diathesis from a Clinical Standpoint. Pp. 15.—
Washburn, F. L. Hermaphroditism in Ostrea Lurida. Pp. 3.
The Sanitary Home. A Magazine devoted to Foods, Hygiene, and
University Extension Work. Monthly. Fargo, North Dakota. Pp. 24. 10
cents. $1 a year.
Schimmel & Co., Leipsic and New York. Semi-annual Report (Essential
Oils, etc.). April, 1899. Pp. 68.
Smith, D. T. Philosophy of Memory, and other Essays. Louisville, Ky.: John
P. Morton & Co. Pp. 203.
Smithsonian Institution. Crookes, William. Diamonds. Pp. 16.—Nutting, J.
C. Hydroida from Alaska and Puget Sound. Pp. 12, with plates.
Todd, David P. Stars and Telescopes. A Handy Book of Astronomy. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co. Pp. 419. $2.
Wetterstrand, Otto Georg. Hypnotism and its Application to Practical
Medicine. Authorized Translation. By Henrik G. Petersen. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 166.

Wilkensen, H. E., Acting Secretary, and French, H. A., Acting Secretary. An
Earnest Word to Our Friends. Portland, Oregon. (Home Making there.)
Woodhull, John F., and Van Arsdale, M. B. Chemical Experiments. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 136.

Fragments of Science.
The Gypsies and their Folk Tales.—In the introduction to his collection of
Gypsy Folk Tales Mr. Francis H. Groome describes the wide dispersion of
the gypsy race as extending, in Europe, from Finland to Sicily, and from the
shores of the Bosporus to the Atlantic seaboard; in Asia, from Siberia to
India, and from Asia Minor (possibly) to China; in Africa, from Egypt and
Algeria to Darfúr and Kordofan; and in America, from Pictou in Canada to
Rio Janeiro. Believing that the gypsies, originating in India, left that region
at an unknown date very long ago, he traces their migrations in the past and
shows that a part of the race is still very migratory, passing, among other
routes, between Scotland and North America, and between Spain and
Louisiana. Another migration not mentioned in his book is the annual
oscillation between north and south of the North American gypsy colony,
which is growing healthily. The author finds it at present quite impossible to
fix the arrival of the gypsies in southeastern Europe at a thousand years
before Christ or a thousand years after. If the Komodromoi of the Byzantine
writers were gypsies, then these people must have been a recognized and
familiar element of the Balkan population about as early as the latter date.
Gypsies pass for a very cunning people, and such they are to outsiders, so
that Romany or gypsy guile is a very common expression. Centuries of
suspicion and repression have taught them to arm themselves proof against
confidence in strangers; but to those who become acquainted with them, as
Mr. Groome professes to have done and George Borrow did, they present a
character of simplicity and frankness. There is, as a gypsy woman once said
to a writer in The Athenæum, "somethin' in the mind of a Gorgio that shuts
the Romany's mouth and opens his eyes and ears." Gypsies are active
transmitters of folklore, and have rich funds of stories; and many believe
that the folklore stories of Europe are traceable to Indian sources, whence
they may have been transmitted to Europe. Mr. Groome suggests how some
of these stories may have originated by telling of a gypsy girl he knew who
dashed off "what was almost a folk tale impromptu." She had been to a
picnic in a four-in-hand with "a lot of real tiptop gentry," and "Reia," she
said to me afterward, "I'll tell you the comicallest thing as ever was. We'd

pulled up to put the brake on, and there was a puro hotchiwitchi (old
hedgehog) come and looked at us through the hedge, looked at me hard. I
could see he'd his eye upon me. And home he'd go, that old hedgehog, to his
wife, and 'Missus,' he'd say, 'what d'ye think? I seen a little gypsy gal just
now in a coach and four horses,' and 'Dabla,' she'd say, 'bless us, every one
now keeps a carriage.'"
Educational Work of an Experiment Station.—The survey of the year's
work of Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station in its efforts to
"help the farmer" by dealing with present-day problems includes mention of
its investigations, related in bulletins published or to be published in
reference to fruits, their insect and fungoid enemies, vegetables, flowers,
sugar beets, potatoes, fertilizers, beans, the dairy, veterinary science,
horticulture, and plant disease. Much of the work of the station can not be
published, consisting as it does of correspondence, personal advice,
attending meetings, making records, or the performance of special
illustrative experiments at farmers' homes or in neighborhoods as object
lessons. "It is a pity," the report says, "that every farmer in the State can not
be personally touched at least once in his life by the methods and the
inspiration of a good teacher." The itinerant schools which were held in the
early days of the extension work are regarded as being most beneficial
when the community has been awakened by simpler and more elementary
means, while the larger part of the work can be done more economically
than by them. Yet in particular places and cases they are of greatest value,
and they are still held when suitable conditions prevail. Special dairy
schools, largely of the nature of practical demonstrations, were held at
various places. The report lays much stress on the importance of beginning
the educational work with the children and upon the value of Nature study.
More than sixteen thousand school children have requested and been
supplied with information on the making of gardens.
Flies as Bearers of Disease.—In estimating the relative importance of flies
and water supply in spreading disease, Dr. M. A. Veeder distinguishes
between intestinal and malarial disorders. In the former the infection is a
bacillus of some sort, the presence of which can be traced to contamination
by excretions from a diseased bowel. In the latter the source of infection is
peculiar to marshy or stagnant water, and independent of contamination
from human sources. It is the author's belief that, with relatively

unimportant exceptions, intestinal diseases are spread almost exclusively by
flies and malarial diseases by water, and he supports it by citations from
recent army experiences. Likewise, during the recent British campaign in
Fashoda, which was most carefully planned and took place in a climate that
is exceptionally dry and hygienic, there was no abatement of typhoid fever.
In the case of an outbreak of malignant dysentery described by the author in
a previous paper, taken at its height, not a new case occurred after measures
were adopted that made conveyance by flies impossible, although there had
been fresh ones every day for some time previously. Another more recent
"lively epidemic" of typhoid mentioned by the author was ended in a day by
measures directed against conveyance by water. "When flies are
responsible, there are little neighborhood epidemics, extending in short
leaps from house to house, without reference to water supply or anything
else in common. But when water is at fault the disease follows its use
wherever it may go.... Epidemics spread by flies tend to follow the direction
of prevailing warm winds, as though the fly, wandering outdoors after
contact with the source of infection, had drifted with the wind, but nothing
of the sort is perceptible in the case of water-borne disease."
Pottery Making and Lead Poisoning.—The report of Professors Thorpe
and Oliver on the subject of the employment of compounds of lead in the
manufacture of pottery, especially in its relation to the health of the work
people, has just been issued as an English blue book. It appears that of the
total male workers in the year 1898, 4.9 per cent became "leaded," while of
the female workers the proportion was 12.4 per cent. It is stated that in the
last six months many successful attempts have been made by the
manufacturers to substitute a leadless glaze, and there seems no doubt that
glazes of sufficient brilliancy, covering power, and durability are now
within the reach of the manufacturer. The exclusion of women from certain
parts of the work, except where leadless glazes are used, is advocated, and
also various expedients for preventing the absorption of the lead by the
skin, such as rubber gloves or "dipping" tongs. Their general conclusions
are as follows: "That by far the greater amount of earthenware of the class
already specified can be glazed without the use of lead in any form. It has
been demonstrated, without the slightest doubt, that the ware so made is in
no respects inferior to that coated with lead glaze. There seems no reason,
therefore, why in the manufacture of this class of goods the operatives

should still continue to be exposed to the evils which the use of lead glaze
entails. There are, however, certain branches of the pottery industry in
which it would be more difficult to dispense with the use of lead
compounds. But there is no reason why, in these cases, the lead so
employed should not be in the form of a fritted double silicate. Such a
compound, if properly made, is but slightly attacked by even strong
hydrochloric, acetic, or lactic acid. There can be little doubt that, if lead
must be used, the employment of such a compound silicate—if its use could
be insured—would greatly diminish the evil of lead poisoning. The use of
raw lead as an ingredient of glazing material, or as an ingredient of colors
which have to be subsequently fired, should be absolutely prohibited. As it
would be very difficult to insure that an innocuous lead glaze shall be
employed, we are of opinion that young persons and women should be
excluded from employment as dippers, dippers' assistants, ware cleaners
after dippers, and glost placers in factories where lead glaze is used, and
that the adult male dippers, dippers' assistants, ware cleaners, and glost
placers should be subjected to systematic medical inspection. In the 1893
report the medical members of the committee expressed the opinion that
'many old factories are wholly, or in part, unfit in a sanitary point of view
for occupation,' and they suggested that 'there should be some authority to
close them, or whatever part of them is condemned, on the same principle
as dwellings are declared uninhabitable.' We share this opinion and we
concur in the suggestion. Certain of the factories we have inspected are in
the last stages of dilapidation, and it appears to us to be well-nigh
impossible to introduce into them such rearrangements or additions as are
required by the amended special rules."
The Longevity of Animals.—The following interesting table, showing the
periods of maturity and the full term of life of various animals, was
prepared by E. D. Bell and appeared in Nature for March 23d. The table
was made for the purpose of demonstrating a constant relation (in length)
between these two periods of life, which the author expresses in the
following formula, in which f. t. l. = full term of life, and p. m. the time
required to arrive at maturity:

10.5(p. m.) 3
f. t. l.= 3 , or 10.5 x (p. m.) 8
√(p. m.)

and which seems to be fairly well borne out by the table:

OBSERVATIONS. f. t. l. by
Animal.
Authority. p. m. f.t.l formula.
Mos. Yr. Yrs. Years.
Dormouse Ainslie Hollis. 3 .25 4-5 4.167
Guinea-pig Flourens. 7 .583 6-7 7.33
Loprabbit:
Buck R. O. Edwards, p. m. 9 .75 8 8.67
Doe R. O. Edwards, p. m. 8 .667 8 8.013
Years.
Cat St. G. Mivart. 1 12 10.5
Cat J. Jennings. 2 15 16.67
Goat Pegler. 1.25 12 12.18
Fox St. G. Mivart. 1.5 13-14 13.76
Cattle Ainslie Hollis. 2 18 16.67
Large dogs Dalziel, p. m. 2 15-20 16.67
Eng. thoroughbred
Ainslie Hollis. 4.5 30 28.62
horse
Hog James Long. 5 30 30.7
Hippopotamus Chambers's Encyclopædia. 5 30 30.7
Lion St. G. Mivart. 6 30-40 34.67
Eng. horse—hunter Blaine. 6.25 35 35.63
Arab horse Ainslie Hollis. 8 40 42.00
Camel Flourens. 8 40 42.00
90-
Man Buffon, f. t. l. 25 89.77
100
Elephant Darwin. 30 100 101.4
C. F. Holder and Indian
Elephant 35 120 112.35
hunters.

The Manufacture of Firecrackers in China.—There were exported from
China during the year ending June 30, 1897, 26,705,733 pounds of
firecrackers, all from the province of Kwantung. The exports, however,
represent only a small portion of the number manufactured, as the use of the

cracker is universal all over China. They are used at weddings, births,
funerals, at festivals, religious and civil, and in fact on all occasions out of
the ordinary routine. The United States consul general at Shanghai gives the
following account of the industry: There are no large factories; the crackers
are made in small houses and in the shops where they are sold. In making
them only the cheapest kind of straw paper is used for the body of the
cracker. A little finer paper is used for the wrapper. A piece of straw paper,
nine by thirty inches, will make twenty-one crackers an inch and a half long
and a quarter inch in diameter. The powder is also of the cheapest grade,
and is made in the locality where used. It costs about six cents per pound.
For the fuse a paper (called "leather" in Shanghai) is used, which is
imported from Japan, and is made from the inner lining of the bamboo. In
other places a fine rice paper is used, generally stiffened slightly with
buckwheat-flour paste, which the Chinese say adds to its inflammability. A
strip of this paper one third of an inch wide by fourteen inches (a Chinese
foot) long is laid on a table, and a very little powder put down the middle of
it with a hollow bamboo stick. A quick twist of the paper makes the fuse
ready for use. The straw paper is first rolled by hand around an iron rod,
which varies in size according to the size of cracker to be made. To
complete the rolling a rude machine is used. This consists of two uprights
supporting an axis from which is suspended, by two arms, a heavy piece of
wood, slightly convex on the lower side. There is just room between this
swinging block and top of the table to place the cracker. As each layer of
paper is put on by hand, the cracker is placed on the table and the
suspended weight is drawn over the roll, thus tightening it until no more can
be passed under the weight. For the smallest "whip" crackers, the workman
uses for compression, instead of this machine, a heavy piece of wood fitted
with a handle like that of a carpenter's plane. In filling crackers, two
hundred to three hundred are tightly tied together in a bunch; red clay is
spread over the end of the bunch, and forced into the end of each cracker
with a punch. While the clay is being treated a little water is sprayed on it,
which makes it pack closer. The powder is poured in at the other end of the
cracker. With the aid of an awl the edge of the paper is turned in at the
upper end of the cracker, and the fuse is inserted through this. The long
ends of the fuses are braided together in such a way that the crackers lie in
two parallel rows. The braid is doubled on itself, and a large, quick-firing
fuse inserted, and the whole is bound with a fine thread. The bundle is

wrapped in paper and in this shape is sent to the seacoast. A variety of
cracker which is very popular in China is the "twice-sounding" cracker; it
has two chambers, separated by a plug of clay, through which runs a
connecting fuse. There is also a fuse extending from the powder in the
lower chamber through the side of the cracker. When the cracker is to be
fired, it is set on end and fire applied to the fuse. The powder exploding in
the chamber throws the cracker high in the air, where the second charge is
exploded by fire from the fuse extending through the plug between the two
chambers. In the manufacture of these the clay is first packed in with a
punch to form the separating plug. The lower chamber is then loaded with
powder and closed by turning over the paper at the end. The upper chamber
is loaded and closed with clay. A hole is punched in the side of the lower
chamber with an awl, and the fuse inserted through this opening.
An Enchanted Ravine.—During his archæological researches in the Uloa
Valley, Honduras (Memoirs of Peabody Museum), Mr. George Byron
Gordon made an excursion to the wonderful enchanted ravine, Quebrada
Encantada, which was famous through all the country for its weather
wisdom. It was situated in a deep valley, and, Mr. Gordon says, "sends forth
a loud melodious sound which may be heard many miles away, and is
regarded by the people of the region as an infallible sign of rain. In fact, it is
a regular weather bureau, with this peculiarity, that it is always reliable; for
the sound is so modulated as to indicate by its pitch whether the coming
storm is to be heavy or light. The amount of promised rain is in exact
proportion to the volume of the sound, and thus it proclaims to the
accustomed ear with unerring precision the approach of a passing shower or
heralds the terrific thunderstorm of the tropics; and this is no fiction, but a
fact, which any one may demonstrate for himself by going and listening to
it." Tradition says the ravine was the abode of a golden dragon, and that in
former times "it was lined with golden pebbles and the sands at its margin
were grains of gold, and it was the custom of the golden dragon to rise
occasionally to the margin of the pool and receive the offerings that were
made to him by the people. If they wanted rain, they would bring their
offerings and lay them on the golden sand behind the pool or cast them on
the water; then, while all the people chanted a prayer, the dragon would rise
from the cave where he dwelt in the depths of the pool, and take the good
things that were offered him, and there was never a drought or a famine in

the land. Then, when the Spaniards came and the people were driven from
their homes, the golden pebbles and grains of gold disappeared, and the
golden dragon, retiring into the uttermost corner of his watery cavern,
withdrew forever from the upper world. There he still lives, and, as
formerly, controls the clouds and the winds that bring the rain. The spirits of
the Indians, too, still hold their meetings of an occasional evening by their
accustomed pool, now lost in the solitude of the forest, and it is the sound of
their chanting that makes the voice of the ravine." The pool is formed by a
cataract tumbling down the side of the mountain and making a final fall of
fifty feet, and the sound of the tumbling of the waters forms the basis of the
pretty legend.
The Work of the Field Columbian Museum.—Making only a selection
from the numerous items of general interest in the Annual Report of the
Director of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, for 1897-'98, we find
mentioned the fall and spring courses of nine lectures each, as having been
more largely attended than ever before, hundreds of persons having been
turned away from some of them, and in one case nearly a thousand. The
library contains 9,003 books and 9,630 pamphlets, and has had some
valuable additions, particularly in the department of Americana. The
additions to the collections include specimens from Egypt, Italy (ancient
Etruscan and renaissance Venetian), Portuguese South Africa, Pacific
islands, and Alaska, the department representing which now numbers more
than ten thousand objects. Valuable contributions have been received from
the expedition of the curator of the anthropological (physical) department to
Arizona. The herbarium of the late Mr. M. S. Bebb, added to the botanical
department, represents much of the flora of the Western States, and "about
all" that of Illinois. Numerous other botanical collections and additions to
the geological and zoölogical departments are mentioned. Field work was
prosecuted by Mr. G. A. Dorsey among the Hopi Indians in Arizona, C. F.
Millspaugh in the collection of North American forest trees, and O. C.
Farrington in the Tertiary geology of South Dakota, Nebraska, and
Wyoming. Other excursions were made among the zinc-lead deposits of
southeast Missouri, to the Olympian Mountains of the Northwest, to "a
point beyond which nothing unless provided with wings could go," etc., all
resulting in collections of one kind or another. The museum was visited by
3,963 more persons than in the year before.

A Year at Harvard Observatory.—The director of Harvard College
Observatory reports the addition to the resources of the institution of twenty
thousand dollars bequeathed by Charlotte Maria Haven, and twenty-five
thousand dollars by Eliza Appleton Haven, without further restriction in the
application of the income than that it shall be for direct purposes connected
with astronomical science. In these bequests the legators fulfilled the wishes
of their brother, Horace Appleton Haven, as expressed half a century ago.
By the peculiar organization of the force of the observatory, with a single
director to oversee all and a large force of assistants, each having a special
work and many of them skillful only in that, an increased amount of work
can be done for a given expenditure, and great advantages for co-operation
are secured, but too much depends upon a single person—the director. In
the examination of the spectra of stars photographed in the Draper, Bruce,
and Bache telescopes by Mrs. Fleming, twelve new variable stars were
discovered by means of their bright hydrogen lines, and the spectra of a
considerable number of other stars were determined. Valuable results,
obtained by other examiners, are mentioned. An instrument has been
constructed by which prismatic spectra can be converted into normal
spectra or any other desired change of scale can be effected. By
photographs obtained of stars in the vicinity of the north pole material is
believed to be furnished for an accurate determination of the constants of
aberration, nutation, and precession. Sixteen circulars were issued during
1897-'98. When fifty of these circulars have been issued, a title-page and
index are to be published for binding.
Putting Life in the School.—The discussion of the hygiene of instruction,
said Dr. G. W. Fitz, in addresses which are published in the American
Physical Education Review, brings us at once face to face with one of the
gravest problems of our educational system—the depressing effect of
school routine. In the search for a remedy "the school programme has been
pronounced poor, and efforts have been made to enrich it. The work has
been pronounced abstract and object lessons have been introduced;
uninteresting and bright colors, varied shapes, pictures innumerable, have
been rushed upon the child until he has been bewildered by the multiplicity
of detail, and further exhausted by the demand for more discriminating
attention. The fundamental difficulty has been that too much has been
required of the child in the beginning, and the attempt at enrichment and

greater variety has but increased the burden." Children begin learning to
read before they have acquired experience and ideas to match the text; and
"experience has shown over and over again that the child who begins to
read at eight or even ten years of age is in no wise handicapped in his later
intellectual progress. He has the inestimable advantage of intense interest,
roused by his growing ability to unlock the secrets of books and papers after
the fashion of his elders." Writing is taught before the child has acquired the
art of fine co-ordination, and the effort demanded in the use of the pen
"leads to a degree of nervous exhaustion unapproached by any other school
work." In arithmetic the children "are unable to grasp the numerical
relations involved, and the drill, which makes it a pure exercise of memory,
is necessary. Much of the aversion to arithmetical problems found later is
undoubtedly due to this disheartening primary work. Here again the child
who begins arithmetic at eight or ten years of age finds himself able to take
it up quickly and has the liking for it that easy mastery always gives."
Nature work, on the other hand, "offers wonderfully interesting and
valuable material for awakening the intellectual activities of childhood, and
while its material for study and description is unlimited, its demand upon
the child may be perfectly adapted to his power of observation. We must
remember that physical activity is the supreme factor in the development of
the child." This means spontaneous play under favorable conditions, not
"that nervously exhausting and deadening drill known as the Swedish
gymnastics, which ... adds fatigue to fatigue, by taking the initiative away
from the child and forcing him to pay constant attention to the orders of the
teacher." As to discipline, "the child is self-disciplined when he is held to
his work by the reflex attention of interest. This can always be secured
when the work is adapted to his grasp, when he has the sense of power
which comes with easy conquest, when he is not exhausted by the
imposition of a sequence logical to the adult mind but meaningless to him,
when his attention is not dulled by a demand for attention continued beyond
a physiological limit."
Beautifying the Home Grounds.—The Horticultural Division of the
Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station has been making efforts
during the past few years, under the auspices of the agricultural extension
work, to improve the surroundings of rural houses, a part of which consists
in the publication of bulletins giving hints as to how improved conditions

and simple adornments may be obtained without great expense. One of
these indicates as one of the means of making the home attractive and
"keeping the boy on the farm" the brightening of the place with flowers.
Assuming that the main planting of any place should be of trees and shrubs,
the flowers are then used as decorations. They may be thrown in freely
about the borders of the place, but not in beds in the center of the lawn.
They show off better when seen against a background, which may be
foliage, a building, a rock, or a fence. "Where to plant flowers is really
more important than what to plant. In front of bushes, in the corner by the
steps, against the foundation of the residence or outhouse, along a fence or
walk—these are places for flowers. A single petunia plant against a
background of foliage is worth a dozen similar plants in the center of the
lawn.... The open-centered yard may be a picture; the promiscuously
planted yard may be a nursery or a forest. A little color scattered in here and
there puts a finish to the picture. A dash of color gives spirit and character
to the brook or pond, to the ledge of rocks, to the old stump, or to the pile of
rubbish." The flower garden, if there is one, should be at one side of the
residence or at the rear, "for it is not allowable to spoil a good lawn even
with flowers."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Of the twelve genera and fifty species of known North American frogs and
toads, Mr. William L. Sherwood says, in his paper in the Proceedings of the
Linnæan Society, New York, that five genera and fifty species are found in
the vicinity of New York city. Some of these are less secretive in habit than
salamanders, and therefore much better known. As ponds and ditches have
been drained, the aquatic forms have removed to greater distances from
human dwellings, and only the more terrestrial toad and arboreal tree frogs
have remained. All of our species have been described, but the author
believes that the first mention of the cricket frog being found in this region
is in a paper on salamanders, read by him in 1895. The breeding habits of
these animals vary, but all lay their eggs in water or moist places. The
purely amphibious and really aquatic species are three. Of the other eight
species, one is burrowing, five tend to be terrestrial, inhabiting the woods
and fields, and two are arboreal. The eggs are laid in gelatinous envelopes,
which swell after leaving the adult. At the time of hatching the young

tadpole has three pairs of external gills, but no mouth or anal opening. Two
small suckers, just back of where the mouth is to appear, enable it to cling
to aquatic plants and prevent its dropping to the bottom of the pond and
getting smothered in the mud. It soon develops into a tadpole, and proceeds
to its development; but if prevented from coming to the surface of the water
no metamorphosis takes place, and the changes are delayed by cold and
dark.
At a meeting recently held in Berlin in behalf of a German antarctic
exploration, Dr. von Drygalski, speaking of the scientific, practical, and
national importance of the enterprise, said that from a geographical point of
view the fundamental problem attached to the south polar region—the
verification or disproof of a polar continent—is still unsolved. No less
important questions likewise await solution with respect to the geological
structure and character of the southern lands—so important in connection
with a knowledge of volcanic action and the supposed former connection of
South America and Australia—and with respect to the conditions of inland
ice. Even the study of the floating ice broken away from the main mass may
lead to important conclusions as to its mode of origin and the nature of the
land from which it comes. Other problems to be investigated are the origin
of the cold ocean currents that take their rise in the south, the conditions of
the atmospheric pressure and temperature in that region, and the questions
relating to terrestrial magnetism, which have a very important bearing on
the practice of navigation. The present seems to be a particularly favorable
period for the resumption of south polar research by reason of the unusual
amount of drift ice which has within the last few years broken away from
the main mass, and because, according to Supan, we are passing through a
warmer temperature period.
Over and above the statistics and the bare record of facts the annual reports
of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind afford a
continuous and growing interest to friends of suffering mankind in their
stories of the development of mental life and illumination. Pupils come
there blind and deaf, and apparently without any avenues of intelligent
communication with the outer world, and are there brought to full
consciousness and keenness of intellect that would be remarked even in
many persons possessed of all their senses perfect from birth. The record
began with Laura Bridgman, was continued with Helen Keller, and has been

occupied for five or six years past with the wonderful mental growth of
Elizabeth Robin, Edith M. Thomas, and Tommy Stringer. Before Dr. Howe
began with Laura Bridgman, such things would have been deemed
impossible and not to be thought of.

NOTES.

The Swiss Association for the Protection of Plants, which was formed in
Geneva in 1883, has more than 900 members, and publishes 1,500 copies of
its bulletin, which is sent, besides the members of the association, to the
libraries of foreign Alpine clubs, the press, botanists, curés, and
municipalities in countries harboring plants that require protection. Under
its care, or the influence of its work, gardens have been created in various
places and devoted especially to the cultivation of such plants as are most
threatened with extinction. Of these are the Linnea Garden in the Valais,
5,500 feet above the sea; the Chanousia, founded five years ago by R. P.
Chanoux, rector of the Hospice of St. Bernard, 6,800 feet; and the
Rambertia, at the foot of the Rochers de Naye, 6,500 feet above the Lake of
Geneva. Lectures are given under the auspices of the association, and no
occasion for informing the public is lost. A neat chromo-poster calling
attention to the association and its purpose has been prepared to be put up in
railroad stations and hotels, to which is appended a motto emphasizing the
importance of caring for rare plants.
The report of Heinrich Ries on the Kaolins and Fire Clays of Europe,
published in the reports of the Geological Survey, is based largely on notes
collected by the author during visits in 1897 to most of the important kaolin
and clay deposits. To these such facts of importance concerning the clays as
have already been published have been added. Some manufacturers have
claimed that the foreign kaolins are superior to the American, but the
evidence, Mr. Ries says, does not seem to bear out the statements. Notes are
added respecting the clays and clay-working industries in the States of
Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, New York, and North Carolina.
According to the report of the Commission Internationale des Glaciers for
1897, thirty-nine out of fifty-six glaciers observed in Switzerland are
retreating, five are at a standstill, and twelve are growing. Of the Italian
glaciers, those of the Disgrazia and Bernina groups and the glaciers of Mont

Canin in the Julian Alps show a marked retreat. Retreat seems to be almost
universal in the Scandinavian glaciers. The report includes also information
from the Caucasus, Altai, and Turkestan, and notes on a few glaciers in the
United States and Mexico, concerning which we have not the particulars.
In a book on social types among the French people, M. Edmond Demolins
tries to show that varieties of types are the products of constant causes
which it is possible to analyze exactly, and the most fundamental principle
of which is the nature of the place and of the occupation. Thus there is a
social type derived from the pastoral occupation; another from the
cultivation of fruit trees, among which the several classes determine as
many modalities of the type; one is derived from petty gardening, and
another from large farming; another from manufacturing, and another from
transportation and commerce. Close analysis permits the detection of still
more delicate shades of types of varieties in each of the categories named,
whereby notable modifications are produced in the same region and the
same work.
The brewing industry in Germany is credited with the following output of
beer for the year 1897-'98: Germany proper, 8,055 breweries, exclusive of
Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine, 916,000,000 gallons;
Bavaria, 6,364 breweries, 351,000,000 gallons; Würtemberg, 6,285
breweries, 90,000,000 gallons; Baden, 946 breweries, 60,000,000 gallons;
Alsace-Lorraine, 127 breweries, 21,230,000 gallons—a grand total of
1,438,230,000 gallons, from the taxation of which the Government received
a revenue of $22,305,150.
Speaking in his society of the Relation of Britain to Folklore, retiring
President Alfred Nutt urged that it was the privilege of that country to
enshrine in its literature the ancient customary wisdom of many races, as
the English system of law was itself largely derived from custom. The
accidents of the geographical position and historical circumstances of
Britain had made it the preserver of a great body of archaic tradition, which
it was the function of the Folklore Society to study and interpret.
We have to record the deaths of Dr. William Hankel, Professor of Physics in
the University of Leipsic; Prof. F. K. C. L. Büchner, author of the famous
book, Force and Matter, at Darmstadt, Germany, May 1st; Dr. Francis W.

MacNamara, State Examiner of Medical Stores at the India Office, London,
formerly Professor of Chemistry in Calcutta Medical College, and later
Chemical Examiner to the Government of India, March 5th, aged sixty-
seven years; he was author of a number of books and papers on hygiene and
medical chemistry; Jeremiah Head, engineer, President of the Mechanical
Science Section of the British Association in 1893, and President of the
British Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1885-'86, March 10th, aged
sixty-four years; who was instrumental in introducing into England
important American improvements in the manufacture of iron and steel;
Franz Ritter von Hanse, Austrian geologist, Intendant of the National
Museum in Vienna, Director of the Imperial Geological Survey in 1866,
and author of the Geological Map of Austria, Bosnia, and Montenegro, and
of geological books, March 20th, aged seventy-seven years; Surveyor
Major G. C. Wallich, March 31st, in his eighty-fourth year, and Count Abbé
F. Castracan, of Rome, the two oldest Fellows of the Royal Microscopical
Society; Dr. P. L. Ryke, of the University of Leyden, aged eighty-six years;
Joseph Stevens, honorary curator of the museum at Reading, England,
author of archæological and geological papers; Dr. C. Brogniart,
entomologist, and author of a memoir On Fossil Insects of the Primary
Period, at Paris; Charles L. Prince, author of papers on meteorology and
astronomy, at Tunbridge Wells, England, April 22d; Dr. Wilhelm Jordan,
Professor of Geometry and Geodesy at the Technical Institution, Hanover,
April 17th, aged fifty-seven years; Sir William Roberts, of the Royal
College of Physicians, author of lectures and papers on digestion, diet, uric
acid, the opium habit in India, etc.; Prof. Karl Scheibler, chemist, at Berlin,
aged seventy-two years; Dr. Josef Wastler, docent in geodesy at the
Technical Institute in Graz; Dr. H. A. Wahlforso, Professor of Chemistry at
Helsingfors, aged sixty years; and Philip Thomas Main, Fellow of St. John's
College, Cambridge, England, author of a treatise on astronomy.

FOOTNOTES.
[1] From Alaska and the Klondike. With thirty-five full-page illustrations and
three maps. By Prof. Angelo Heilprin. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Pp. 326. Price, $1.75.
[2] Prof. Israel Russell has made the interesting observation that orographic
movement may now be taking place in the region of the middle Yukon, about the
Lower Ramparts, with the uplifting of a mountain range athwart the river; on
this supposition he seeks an explanation for the detail of the Yukon lowlands.
[3] Professor Russell, in discussing the flood-plain deposits of the Yukon about
the mouth of the Porcupine River, says that "fresh-water shells were frequently
observed in the finer deposits." Unfortunately, no statement is made of the types
which they represent.
[4] Since writing the above intelligence has been received of the location of a
rich pay streak on Gay Gulch.
[5] Note.—We are indebted to the courtesy of the Electrical World and Engineer
for cuts showing the Horry furnace.
[6] Note.—We are indebted to the courtesy of the Progressive Age for cuts
showing types of generators.
[7] Manuel de l'amateur des jardins.
[8] The Romaka Siddânta employs, as a measure of time, the Guga of 2,850
years or 1,040,953 days, giving a tropical year of 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes,
and 12 seconds, which is exactly the figure proposed by Ptolemy and
Hipparchus.—Burgess, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
[9] The term Romakapouri does not necessarily imply the city of Rome; the
name was probably extended to Alexandria and perhaps also to Byzantium. In
other writings we find the name Gavanapouri, the city of the Greeks (or Ionians),
applied to Alexandria.
[10] Till then, the Hindus hardly seem to have sought for a common measure of
time except for astronomical or mythological purposes.
[11] M. Sylvain Levi has, however, lately reopened the question of the initial
date of this era.
[12] The Lesson of Popular Government. By Gamaliel Bradford. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Two volumes. Pp. 520 and 590. Price, $4.
[13] In the Australian Bush, and on the Coast of the Coral Sea. Being the
Experiences and Observations of a Naturalist in Australia, New Guinea, and the
Moluccas. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 552. Price, $6.50.

[14] The Native Tribes of Central Australia. By Baldwin Spencer and F. J.
Gillen. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 671, with maps and plates.
Price, $6.50.
[15] West African Studies. By Mary H. Kingsley. New York: The Macmillan
Company. Pp. 633, with Map. Price, $5.
[16] In the Klondyke, including an Account of a Winter's Journey to Dawson. By
Frederick Palmer. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 218, with plates.
Price, $1.50.
[17] A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches, including the Evolution of
Physical Laboratories. By Florian Cajori. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Pp. 322. Price, $1.60.
[18] General Sherman. By General Manning F. Force. New York: D. Appleton
and Company. Pp. 353.
[19] Text-Book of Algebra, with Exercises for Secondary Schools and Colleges.
By George Egbert Fisher and Isaac J. Schwatt. Part I. Philadelphia: Fisher &
Schwatt. Pp. 683. Price, $1.25.

Transcriber's Notes.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent spellings have been kept,
including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g. "widespread" and "wide-spread"), and proper
names (e.g. "Siddânta" and "Siddhânta").
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the text.

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