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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899

Author: Various

Editor: William Jay Youmans

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

Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899 TO APRIL, 1900

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

FREDERICK C. SELOUS.

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1899.

EXACT METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY.
By FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, Ph. D.,
professor of sociology in columbia university.

Those who do pioneer work in science encounter not only the inherent difficulties
of research and interpretation, but also the misapprehension of certain educated
men whose distinctive gift is a fatal genius for applying false standards of
measurement to the progress of thought. Seizing upon some branch of knowledge
that is in a state of vigorous development, when its newer results are out of
harmony with its earlier hypotheses, such critics love to point out these
contradictions, and try to prove that the branch in question is no science at all, and
that its teachers are hardly worthy of respectful consideration.
The history of science contains many interesting chapters pertaining to this kind
of criticism and the fate that has invariably overtaken it. When Copernicus and
Galileo showed the absurdity of the Ptolemaic astronomy, the theologians enjoyed
themselves for a time, as they demonstrated—to their own entire satisfaction—the
folly of all rationalistic attempts to explain what revelation only could make clear.
When Darwin explained the origin of species through variation and natural
selection, the pretensions of biology were completely exploded by its lay and
clerical critics (they thought and said so) by the extremely simple device of the
"deadly parallel column." Was not Cuvier a great anatomist, and had he ever
taught this nonsense about the mutability of species? Was not Agassiz the most
learned naturalist alive, and what had he to say about Darwinian vagaries? Had he
not proved, over and over again, that the very concept of the species was the
notion of a group of characteristics that could not possibly change or be changed
from generation to generation? In more recent years we have again seen the same
method of reducing science to a variety show for the entertainment of the tired
general reader applied to both biology and psychology. Weismann has tried to
prove that acquired characteristics are not transmitted in heredity, and that the
germ plasm is distinct from the somatic cells. The neo-Lamarckians, Spencer,
Cope, and some of the botanists have contended for the older interpretation. Is
biology, then, a science? Forbid the thought! Heaven preserve our minds from
such confusion!
If the sociologists have hoped that they alone might not be overtaken by easy
annihilation, they deserve to be humiliated. But it is safe to say that they have

cherished no such illusions. If the men who have devoted much time to the
scientific explanation of society have had no other qualification for their task,
they have at least shown some acquaintance with the history of thought. And so it
is not likely that they have suffered deeply from disenchantment when they have
been confronted with the regulation exposure of "the present position" of their
science.
There is no need of wasting space to prove that the kind of criticism here referred
to is without scientific value. The present position of any science can not be
determined by arraying its contradictions and inconsistencies, irrespective of a
serious attempt to ascertain which of its concepts and hypotheses have inherent
vitality. It is precisely when a science is at its best, surely advancing year by year
and full of promise for the future, that contradictions most abound in its
monographs and text-books.
A true scientific criticism, then, must proceed by a different method. The present
position of a science can be ascertained only by instituting three specific inquiries,
namely: First, among the more or less contradictory conceptions and hypotheses
which constitute its groundwork, what ones are surely displacing all others and
gaining the wider acceptance among active students? Second, what progress is
being made in the application of exact methods to research? Third, is there a
practical or working harmony between the concepts that are gaining ground and
the more exact methods of research that are being perfected? Do the concepts and
hypotheses lend themselves to exact methods, and do they, on the whole, help to
perfect methods? Do improving methods, on the whole, confirm or strengthen the
concepts that are gaining wider acceptance?
If these inquiries are applied in the domain of sociology they bring to light
unmistakable evidence of a steady and gratifying progress toward scientific
consistency and rigor of method. Much babble about social ills and possible
reforms still masquerades as social science. A great deal of loose thinking and
slipshod investigation is paraded as expert opinion on questions of social welfare.
But no one who has seriously followed the efforts of scientifically trained minds
to discover the natural laws of social evolution is in any danger of confounding
the results thus far obtained with the chatter over every passing fad. In the more
serious work itself there is found a vigorous and hopeful disagreement of opinion
upon all unsettled questions. But the fact of real significance is that the
disputation has become intensive. The debate no longer ranges over a wide field.
A selective process has eliminated one after another the more loose and vague
conceptions of the science, the irrelevant issues, and the superficial analogies.

There has been a progressive concentration of attention upon a group of closely
related and fundamental problems.
The sociology of August Comte was little more than a highly intelligent and
quickening talk about social order and progress. It convinced thoughtful men that
there is a social order to be studied in a scientific spirit and by scientific methods,
and that social progress conforms to laws that may be discovered. Mr. Spencer
narrowed the field of sociological inquiry and gave precision of statement to all
social problems by bringing them within the formulas of universal evolution. He
still further narrowed the field by demonstrating the close relationship of social
phenomena to the phenomena of organic evolution and by seizing upon certain
psychological facts as chief factors in social causation. All fruitful later work in
social interpretation has been a further concentration of investigation upon the
psychic factors. While admitting that social as well as mental phenomena are
subsumed under biological phenomena, and that the parallelism of social
organization to biotic organization is real, the younger students of sociology have
developed the science as an offshoot of psychology, and have dropped the
biological analogy as unfruitful for purposes of research. The pioneer in this
movement was Dr. Lester F. Ward, whose masterly analysis of the psychic factors
of social phenomena gave the right direction for all time to sociological inquiry,
and whose emphasis of the importance of reason and volition in the social
process, although it has not yet received the attention that it merits, is destined to
be fruitful in coming years.
To the further study of the psychological foundations of society practically all the
valuable work on fundamental social problems has been given during the past ten
years. Tarde has given us profound studies of imitation and invention;
Gumplowicz and Le Bon, of the psychology of races and culture groups;
Novicow, of the psychology of conflict and toleration; Le Bon and Durkheim, of
the psychology of crowds, of co-operation, and of the division of labor; Baldwin,
of the psychology of the social unit—the socius.
Thus it appears that while sharp disagreements of opinion still exist relative to the
priority or the generality of one or another of these psychic factors in the social
process, discussion has focused about the psychological phenomena themselves.
There has been a progressive limitation of the field and an increasing definiteness
of conception and hypothesis.
My own effort, if now I may be pardoned for referring to it, has been to restrict
the field yet further, and to make the problems of sociology yet more specific. I
have contended that these psychological phenomena which have been seized upon

for purposes of sociological interpretation are still too vaguely conceived. They
are often disclosed to the inquirer in purely individual as well as in social aspects.
The lines of inquiry between the study of mind in general, of mind as individual,
and of mind as manifesting itself socially in the concert or co-operation of a
number of individual minds, have not been drawn with sufficient precision. I have
tried to show that the psychological phenomena that Ward, Tarde, Gumplowicz,
Novicow, Le Bon, Durkheim, Baldwin, and others have so admirably analyzed as
psychic factors of society are social when, and only when, they have certain
coefficients, namely: (1) The coefficient of resemblance—that is, a fundamental
similarity of individuals to one another underlying and, on the whole, dominating
their innumerable differences; (2) the coefficient of awareness or consciousness of
resemblance—that is to say, certain feelings, perceptions, or thoughts of
resemblance, which give rise to varied prejudices and preferences that facilitate or
prevent effective co-operation. Whether this contention of mine will prevail,
whether there will ultimately be a general agreement among sociologists that
these coefficients of resemblance and consciousness of kind are the true
differentia of social phenomena, time and further research must determine.
The second inquiry through which we may learn somewhat of the present position
of sociology relates to the development of method. Exact method in social
research is statistical. Wherever we can obtain numerical data within the domain
of social phenomena, there we arrive at exact or quantitative knowledge. The
development and application of statistical methods to social problems has been
one of the most striking scientific achievements of the present century. When
Quételet, in 1835, published his great work, Sur l'Homme et le Développement de
ses Facultés, he laid the foundation for a thorough statistical investigation of
psychological and sociological no less than of anatomical phenomena. And after
the publication, in 1846, of his work, Sur la Théorie des Probabilités appliquées
aux Sciences morales et politiques, followed, in 1848, by Du Système social et
des Lois qui le régissent, there was a rapid development of statistical methods in
precision, and of attempts to extend the statistical method to groups of facts which
had until then been studied only from a purely qualitative or, at best, a vaguely
comparative point of view. At the present time every subdivision of descriptive
sociology draws data from rich collections of statistical materials, and employs
statistical methods for the further extension of knowledge.
Thus, in the study of the social population, statistical methods are employed not
only to give the total number of inhabitants dwelling within a given territory and
the degree of density of population per square mile, but also to show to what
extent population increases by births in excess of deaths, to what extent by
immigration in excess of emigration, and to what extent the composition of the

population is rendered complex by the intermingling of many nationalities. The
character of a population, also, and its social capacities are in a large measure
statistically investigated. General intelligence is studied by means of statistics of
literacy and illiteracy; industrial preferences by statistics of occupation; habits of
industry by statistics of the number in every thousand of the total population who
regularly follow gainful occupations; frugality by statistics of savings, insurance,
and home ownership; and the amount of communication, whereby assimilation
and co-operation are rendered possible, by statistics of travel, mail, and
telegraphic service.
Passing to that study of concerted feeling, thought, and purpose which may be
called a study of the social mind, and which constitutes the second great division
of descriptive sociology, we find that it can be carried on, and that to a great
extent it is prosecuted, by means of statistical research. We have statistics
incomplete, but admitting of perfection, of those impulsive, emotional
disturbances of masses of men which take the form of strikes, insurrections,
lynchings, and revivals. The report of the United States Department of Labor on
strikes, published in 1894, and a recently published monograph by Dr. Frederick
S. Hall on Sympathetic Strikes, show the possibilities of this method whenever it
shall be exhaustively applied. It could be successfully applied to the other
phenomena mentioned. By painstaking effort and a sufficient expenditure of
money the data could be obtained. Lombroso and Laschi, in their work, Le Crime
politique et les Révolutions, have made a beginning toward the collection of
statistics of insurrections and revolutions. More exact, at present, are our statistics
of the rational working of the minds of large numbers of men in communication
and co-operation. These we have in the familiar form of election returns, which
show us the decisions that communities make on questions of public policy and
administration. This information could be increased by the application of
statistical analyses to the vast body of statute law and judicial decisions. A
beginning of such work has been made in the valuable Bulletin of State
Legislation, published by the New York State Library.
In the third division of descriptive sociology—that, namely, which treats of social
organization—the application of statistical method is proceeding with great
rapidity. We have not only statistics (yearly improving in quality) of marriage and
divorce, of the organization of all governmental departments, military and civil, of
chartered corporations, of religious and educational societies, but also of the
thousands of associations formed for the promotion of special interests,
recreation, scientific research, art and literature, and philanthropy. Every year the
statistical information on these matters, included in such compilations as The
World Almanac, becomes not only more extensive but more precise.

Yet more abundant are the statistical accumulations pertaining to that fourth and
last division of descriptive sociology which treats of the social welfare—of the
functioning of society, of the ends for which it exists. We have statistics of
prosperity, of the accumulation and distribution of wealth, of the expansion and
contraction of credit, and of business failures. We have statistics of longevity. We
ascertain improving sanitary conditions by changes in the death rate. We learn by
statistical methods of the increase or decrease of accident and death due to public
disorder or maladministration. We ascertain through educational statistics the
decrease of illiteracy and superstition. And by the same means we ascertain the
dimensions of pauperism and of crime. Not only so, but, by a certain refinement
of statistical method, applied by competent men like Sir Francis Galton, we
ascertain the increase or decrease and the distribution of the higher manifestations
of intellectual ability and moral character.
Thus the whole field of descriptive sociology is being more and more
exhaustively studied by statistical methods that are yearly improving in precision.
So far, then, as may be judged from the development of its methods, no science at
the present time is making surer and better progress than sociology, and none is
offering to the general public conclusions based upon more exact methods of
induction.
Let us now look at the relations which the development of statistical method bears
to that development of fundamental conceptions, which has already been
described. Do we here discover increasing harmony, a tendency toward co-
ordination, or have analyses of concepts, on the one hand, and developments of
statistical method, on the other hand, followed diverging lines?
There can be no possible doubt of the answer that must be made to these
questions. Conceptions and methods are in as perfect accord as can be discovered
in any branch of science. The merest glance over the field of social statistics
shows that, for the most part, they record and classify phenomena that are
essentially psychological. In working from the general theory of evolution
through the biological parallelism down to psychological premises, analytical
sociology has been doing in one way precisely what statistics have been doing in
another. The moment we pass from statistics of density and distribution of
population we find ourselves dealing next with groups of facts that are biological
(the facts, namely, of distribution according to sex and age periods), through facts
that are partly biological and partly psychological in character (the facts, namely,
of nationality), and then, leaving these behind, we deal henceforth entirely with
facts that belong to the mental and moral categories. To name them would be only
to repeat the categories already enumerated: the statistics of intelligence, industry,

and moral character, of emotional or rational social action, of various forms of
organization for the achievement of as many different purposes, and of the
development of the conscious personality of man as a result of his social relations
and activities.
Not only is this true, but the further interesting fact may be discovered that social
statistics of every category employed or known are based upon a frank
recognition of that coefficient of resemblance, physical or mental, which I have
contended is a mark of social phenomena. The first step in statistical tabulation is
classification, and classification invariably starts from an assumption of real or
supposed resemblance. Not to dwell on such fundamental distinctions as those of
color, race, and nationality, we encounter the more special resemblances of
agreement in religious belief, agreement in industrial preference, agreement in
political conviction (as shown in election returns), similar susceptibility to
emotionalism, similar capacities for rational comprehension, similar
imperfections of nature, which result in lives of crime or pauperism. Remove
from social statistics this postulate that blood kinship or mental resemblance
between one social unit and another is the basis of social phenomena, and the
statistics themselves would cease to exist.
Statistics reveal also the consciousness which men have of their resemblances and
their differences. It is statistically known that the geographical distribution of
nationalities is not accidental or capricious. Immigrant Italians, Germans, and
Scandinavians find their way to those parts of the country where men of their own
blood and speech are already established. Intermarriages of men and women of
different nationalities are statistically known to be frequent where no differences
of religion exist, and infrequent where different nationalities profess different
faiths. The statistics of political elections are quite as much statistics of the
consciousness of kind as of differences of mental type itself.
The most significant fact of all, however, has still to be named. It is this: From the
first known beginnings of statistical research to the present time every extension
of statistical inquiry has been in a large measure due to the consciousness of kind.
The first statistical surveys of communities of which we have any record were
such tribal enumerations as those recorded in the book of Numbers, the avowed
object of which was to ascertain the strength and resources of the various tribes
by clans, lesser gentile groups, and households, not more for utilitarian reasons
than for the gratification of gentile and tribal pride. The census taken in Greece in
594 b. c. was for the purpose of dividing the people into four classes and levying
taxes according to wealth. The constitution of Servius Tullius, 550 b. c.,
distinguished six property classes, and the attempt to determine these statistically

was one of the earliest experiments in census-making at Rome. The Domesday
Book of William I (1086) is the first great statistical document in English history,
and its origin was due to a desire to know not only the military and fiscal strength
of the nation, but also its class distinctions and feudal relationships. The great
stimulus given to statistical investigation by the French Revolution was an
obvious product of class feeling. Most of the refinements of statistical inquiry in
later years have had a like origin. Such, for example, was the cause of the
discrimination in our own census of the foreign born from the native born, and of
the native born of foreign parents from both native and foreign born. Such has
been the cause of the attempt to get more exact statistics of religious
denominations, of labor organizations, and of the distribution of wealth. Had there
been no reason for including these costly inquiries in statistical investigations,
except that of their general utility and scientific interest, the appropriation for
them would have been denied in Congress without an instant's hesitation. They
have been included because of the political deference given to class feeling and to
various forms of religious and educational prejudice.
Thus there is seen to be a remarkable interdependence of statistical method and
psychological analysis in the development of sociological research. Analysis and
method have converged upon the same postulates, and it is apparently by the
development of methods frankly founded upon these postulates that our
sociological knowledge is to be further increased.
It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that sociological knowledge is to
be increased only by the further collection and interpretation of numerical data.
Careful monographic description and historical research must continue to be
important sources of both information and hypothesis. The great defects of
monographic work, both descriptive and historical, are, first, a certain lack of
precision, attributable to the large part played in investigation by the individual
judgment of the student (the lack of objective tests by which his subjective
impressions may be critically examined); second, a certain incompleteness,
attributable to a failure to separate each inquiry into all its scientific subdivisions
and to attempt to obtain desired data under each subdivision, as is done in
statistical investigation where, in every table, as many topics as there are
scientific subdivisions of the general subject are represented by columns, and an
entry of some kind is made in every column.
I wish now to point out the possibility of giving greater precision to monographic
work in sociology by the introduction of quasi-statistical methods—methods that
are essentially quantitative in an algebraic sense, though they are not numerical.

Social phenomena have the interesting characteristic that small forces, while
never lost in that composition of forces which determines the ultimate equilibrium
of the social system, often count for absolutely nothing in the practical affairs of a
given generation. If, for example, Mr. Bryan and a Democratic Congress had been
elected in 1896, the practical consequences for the United States would have been
much the same whether the Democratic plurality had been one hundred thousand,
half a million, or two or three millions. This is but one example of a large class of
facts. Social phenomena are more often than not determined by a mere matter of
more or less, rather than by the exact amount or degree of more or less. The
determination is algebraic rather than arithmetical. Is the element under
investigation a positive or a negative quantity? Is its sign plus or minus? That is
usually the important question for the sociological student.
Now it happens that a great many investigations in descriptive sociology do not as
yet admit of the introduction of exact statistical—that is, arithmetical—inquiries
which, nevertheless, do admit the use of algebraically quantitative methods. In the
monographic description of a community many questions arise which can not be
answered by the entry of figures in a column, but which could be answered by
entering in a column a symbol indicating that a certain trait, habit, or choice could
be predicated of a large majority, or of a small majority, or of only a large
minority, or of only a small minority of the entire population. That is to say, it
often happens that an observer who can not take a perfect census (getting answers
to all his questions from every individual in the community), and who therefore
can not fill out his columns with arithmetical values, can, by such interviewing as
is possible to him and by such an examination of the objective products of social
activity as are open to the inspection of any one who chooses to observe them
critically, determine with absolute certainty whether certain things are true of
majorities or only of minorities.
Suppose, for example, that a traveler is studying an out-of-the-way settlement, or
a tribe, which presents many points of interest that are comparatively novel. All
who are familiar with the narratives of travel and exploration which Mr. Spencer
has used as data for his Descriptive Sociology are aware that they are almost
totally devoid of system. The reader is told that such marriage customs, such clan
relationships, such political institutions, such industrial operations, have been
observed. The all-important coefficient is left out. What the student of sociology
would most of all like to know is how many individuals in the community
manifest such or such a trait; how many have such or such a habit; how many
profess such or such a belief; how many adhere to this organization, how many to
that. But since this exact arithmetical knowledge usually can not be obtained
within the limited time and under the circumstances of a traveler's researches, he

should try to get at least partially quantitative results by noting in every instance
whether the phenomenon observed is true of a majority or only of a minority of
the people under investigation.
This simple method admits of a high degree of refinement by the obvious device
of subdividing the total human mass under observation into enumeration units. If,
for example, we are studying the social character and activities of the people of
the United States, we may take the fifty Commonwealths and Territories as
enumeration units. Making out a tabular form, we may enter in the left-hand
column the names of the several States and Territories. At the top of successive
columns, counting from left to right, we may enter words designating the social
phenomena to be observed. Then, taking the States and Territories in order, we
may enter opposite the name of each a symbol indicating that a majority large or
small, or a minority large or small, of the inhabitants of the State or Territory in
question manifests the trait or follows the activity, or belongs to the social
organization designated at the top of the column. The symbols that I have found
most convenient in use are these: For a large majority, a double plus sign thus, ⧺;
for a small majority, a single plus sign thus, +; for a large minority, a double plus
sign in a circle thus, ; for a small minority, a single plus sign in a circle thus, ⨁.
The great possibilities in this method of giving precision to observations and
records of the facts of social psychology and activity become daily more obvious
to students who practice it with reasonable care. Almost any desired degree of
accuracy can be attained by taking smaller and smaller enumeration units. Thus, if
I wish to form and to record my judgment as to whether the people of the United
States as a whole manifest a high, a medium, or a low degree of general
intelligence, I seem to be raising a question that admits of little better answer than
a statement of vague impressions. But let me take a concrete measure of high
general intelligence—for example, the general intelligence of a town noted for its
large proportion of scientific and professional men, its graded schools, its
satisfactory school attendance, and its low percentage of illiteracy. Let me then
subdivide the United States into fifty parts—namely, the Commonwealths and
Territories—and let me enter in a column opposite the name of each a symbol
indicating that, as compared with the general intelligence of the town which I
have taken as a standard, a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority
or only a small minority, of the people in that Commonwealth are of the high
general intelligence; that a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority
or only a small minority, are of medium intelligence; and that a large majority or a
small majority, or a large minority or a small minority, are of low intelligence.
Obviously, when I have completed this process I have subjected my vague general
impression that the people of the United States as a whole are of high, medium, or

low general intelligence to a certain correction and measure. I count up the entries
in my columns. I discover that I have made, let us say, nine entries indicating that
a large majority of the people in each of nine States are of high intelligence. I find
that I have made, let us say, eighteen entries indicating that in each of eighteen
States a small majority of the people are of low general intelligence; and this mere
counting of the entries may show me that, when taking the States one by one, I
have made a somewhat different estimate of the general intelligence of the people
of the entire country from that which I made when looking at all the people of the
country as an undivided mass.
If still unsatisfied with my judgment, I may proceed to subdivide each State into
its counties, and take the counties as enumeration units. I may go through the
process of recording my judgments by entering symbols in the several columns of
my table, and at the end I may again count up my totals of high, medium, and low
intelligence. Obviously, I can do this work only if I am able to travel through
every county in the United States, and, by interviews with people, by forming
general impressions and by visiting schools, get a fairly definite idea of the
relative intelligence of each civil division; or if, being unable to make this
personal inquiry, I resort to printed information—namely, educational reports,
miscellaneous public documents, historical records, newspapers, and other
objective data throwing light upon the intellectual status of these various
divisions. This, I find, is an enormous labor; but if I conscientiously perform it I
correct my subjective impressions, and there is a fair presumption that my final
result is a judgment vastly nearer the truth than was my first general impression of
the intelligence of the whole undivided mass of the American population.
Thus the conscientious use of the method which I have suggested insures, in the
interest of precision, two important modifications of ordinary sociological
description: First, it subjects the purely subjective processes of judgment to a
certain correction and measurement; secondly, it leads the observer step by step,
and almost unconsciously, to resort more and more to definite objective data in
place of first impressions.
Essentially the same method, by slight modifications of detail, may be extended
to historical inquiries. How often do we encounter in historical monographs the
statement that, since a certain date, there has been a marked increase of this or
that activity, or that such a trait or such a habit, occasionally observed half a
century ago, is now characteristic of whole sections or populations! To the credit
of the historians, it must be said that careful men seldom make such statements
without offering in substantiation of them a certain amount of objective evidence.
But the method is loose, and it has the radical defect of permitting such terms as

"increase" and "decrease," "great increase" and "great decrease" to stand for
different quantities when applied to different phenomena under examination in the
same treatise. There is no uniformity of measurement. Now, it is easy to introduce
uniformity, even where arithmetical values are not known. It is possible to know
that we are applying the same method of measurement when we say that, since
1850, there has been a "great" multiplication of lynchings in the United States that
we apply when we say that there has been a "great" increase of population,
although, in the case of the lynchings, we have not arithmetical values, while in
the case of the increase of population we have.
This can be done in the following way: Distinguish and designate degrees of
increase or decrease by symbols thus: No change, = 0; absolute increase but
relative decrease, = +1; absolute increase with no relative decrease, = +2; great
absolute increase without relative decrease, = +3; absolute and relative increase, =
+4; absolute decrease but relative increase, = -1; absolute decrease without
relative increase, = -2; great absolute decrease without relative increase, = -3;
absolute and relative decrease, = -4.
Now let the historian who wishes to pass in review the quantitative changes that
have occurred since a given time—for example, 1850—before he puts on paper
his impressions, based upon such evidence as he has been able to collate, put
down all these symbols against the name of each of the social phenomena which
he is studying. He will instantly see that he is trying to apply to each of the
phenomena whose changes he wishes to record a certain scale of measurement,
and he at once asks himself: What do I really mean by such a term as "relative"
increase or decrease when contrasted with "absolute" increase or decrease; and
what do I mean by such a term as "great" increase or decrease when contrasted
with such a term as "increase" or "decrease" without a modifying word? The
moment he puts these questions before his mind he will feel a sinking of heart as
he reviews the pages in which he has confidently told his readers that such
"absolute" and "relative" changes have from time to time occurred, and reflects
that he has seldom been consistent in his use of these terms.
How, then, shall he attain consistency and precision? To be consistent and precise
in the use of the word "relative" it is necessary to make at the outset an arbitrary
choice of a term of comparison, just as in making comparative judgments of such
a phenomenon as general intelligence it is necessary to take as a standard the
phenomenon as observed in a particular community. The most suitable term of
comparison for all judgments of increase or decrease in social phenomena is the
increase or decrease of population per square mile within the area and during the
period studied. The increase of population is arithmetically measured, and it

stands in relations of direct causation to every social change. The historian,
therefore, in forming his judgments of relative increase or decrease should always
take the increase or decrease of population per square mile as his term of
comparison.
What meaning, finally, shall be attached to the word "great" when the historian
wishes to distinguish "great" increase or "great" decrease from "increase" or
"decrease" in general, and absolute statistics are not available? There is one, and,
as far as I can see, only one, perfectly satisfactory procedure.
Let the investigator subdivide the community which he is studying into
enumeration units according to the method suggested above for the descriptive
monograph. Let him then make as many tables as there are ten-year periods in the
general historical period that he is investigating. That is to say, let him make a
table for 1850, for 1860, for 1870, for 1880, and for 1890. Let him then proceed
according to the method laid down for the descriptive monograph, entering
opposite each Commonwealth the symbol for majority or minority, thus showing
by States, for each of the ten-year periods, the prevalence of the trait or activity
under investigation. Suppose, for example, that the phenomenon studied is the
growth of popular interest in prize fighting since 1850. The historian should begin
by asking, In what States, if any, in 1850 were large majorities of the people
interested in prize fights to the extent of countenancing them and eagerly
following their progress? In what States were only small majorities so interested,
in what States only large minorities, and in what ones only small minorities? The
best answers that the historian can make to these questions, after examining all
the evidence that he can command, he should record by entering the proper
symbol against each State, after which he should repeat the procedure for the date
1860, for the date 1870, and so on. When his tables are thus completed, he should
count up the number of entries of each symbol in each table. If then he finds that
in less than half of his enumeration units—i. e., in less than half of all the States
and Territories—small minorities have become large minorities, large minorities
have become small majorities, or small majorities have become large, he will be
justified in concluding that there has been an increase, but not a "great" increase,
in popular interest in prize fighting. If, however, he discovers that these changes
have occurred in more than half of his enumeration units, he can say with reason
that the increase of interest in prize fighting has been "great."
Cases may arise in which a correction of the judgment thus formed may be
necessary. It might be erroneous to say that there had been no great increase of
interest in prize fighting if it were discovered that the increase had occurred in
two or three Commonwealths only, but that in them it had been phenomenal. The

method itself, however, reveals the necessity for correction in such cases and
measures the error; for, obviously, a phenomenal increase or decrease in any one
enumeration unit would be disclosed by a dropping of the intermediate symbols
between ⨁ and ⧺. That is to say, small minorities would become majorities, or
great majorities would become small minorities, within an interval during which
lesser changes were occurring elsewhere.
Thus, by taking a little trouble, the historian can apply one constant measure to
his judgments of increase and decrease, as he reviews social changes. He must
subdivide his community into enumeration units, and against each unit, at each
convenient date, he must enter a record of his judgment that the trait, activity,
interest, or relation under investigation can be predicated of a large or of only a
small majority, of a large or of only a small minority, of the individuals
composing the enumeration unit. He must then count up the changes from
minority to greater minority or to majority, or from majority to minority.
Conscientiously following this method, the historian may often make
comparisons of great precision, when otherwise his comparisons, made without
reference to a common measure, would be little more than suppositions.
Following such methods as these, the writers of descriptive and historical
monographs can increase our approximately exact sociological knowledge.
Constructing and filling out such tables as have been described, they can bring to
light serious gaps in our numerical statistics, and they can thereby suggest and
stimulate new statistical inquiries. Thus co-operating, the descriptive writers, the
historians, and the statisticians can in time perfect our descriptive sociology, and,
co-operating with those students who are completing the analysis of fundamental
concepts, they can gradually give precision to our formulations of sociological
law.

Bishop Creighton, of London, has characterized the present English idea of
education as embodying the supposition that "all the child had to do was to
sit still like a pitcher under a pump while an expert hand poured in the proper
amount of material for it to hold." His own view was that the only education
anybody really obtained was that which he gave himself. "The idea
prevailing at the beginning of the century was that men should read a good
book, master its contents, and pursue for themselves the lines of thought it
suggested, and talk it over and make its ideas the subject of discussion
among themselves. No system could surely be better."

VINLAND AND ITS RUINS.
SOME OF THE EVIDENCES THAT NORTHMEN WERE IN
MASSACHUSETTS IN PRE-COLUMBIAN DAYS.[1]
By CORNELIA HORSFORD.
The evidences that Northmen were in Massachusetts in pre-Columbian days are
drawn from two sources, geography and archæology. The archæological evidence
is found by comparing certain ruins in Massachusetts with ruins of the Saga-time
in Iceland, and also with the native and early European ruins on the coast of North
America. The geographical evidence is found by comparing the descriptions of
the country called Vinland in Icelandic literature with the coast of North America.
The geographical data for this paper are taken from each and all of the three
oldest manuscript versions of the story of Vinland, because they complement each
other where the descriptions vary in detail. These are called the Flat Island Book,
Eric the Red's Saga, and Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga.
If the coast of North America should repeat the same geographical features, it
would obviously be impossible to determine the site of Vinland by geography
alone. Let us see if this is so. It is stated in Eric the Red's Saga that Karlsefni's
party, which consisted of one hundred and sixty men and their live stock in three
vessels, after sailing southwest from Greenland for a number of days and seeing
two new countries, came to a certain cape. "They cruised along the land and the
land lay on the starboard.... There were there an open, harborless coast and long
strands and sand banks. And they went in boats to the land and found there the
keel of a ship, and they named it Keel Cape. And they gave a name to the strands
and called them Wonder Strands, because they were long to sail by. Then the land
became scored with bays, and they steered the ships to the bays."[2] They
remained here for some time, but they had not yet seen the Vinland which Leif
Erikson had found a few years before.
Thorhall started to seek for it "northward round Wonder-strand and westward off
Keel Cape." Therefore we must first look for a cape, the trend of whose shore is
north and south, with open water west of it, and beyond that again land. This cape
must have a long, sandy, harborless coast, with sand banks on the east, and it must
be broken up into bays farther to the south, and one of these bays must be large
enough and deep enough for three vessels, one of which could carry at least fifty

men across the Atlantic. The icelandic word "örœfi" which is used in this text
means "harborless," and is the descriptive local name of the convex, sandy,
unsheltered coast of southern Iceland (Orœfa), the present Skaptafells district,
from Stokksnes to Dyrhólaey. This gives a clear idea of what we ought to look for
along the coast of North America.

The eastern coast of North America[3] shows us that, south of rock-bound
Labrador, the only places north of New York where capes are to be found jutting
northward from the land are northern Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, the
southern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cape Ann, and Cape Cod.
There is no stretch of open, harborless, sandy coast from Cape Bauld to Cape
Spear, with its steep, sterile, rocky shores.[4] There are two or three stretches of
unbroken coast from three to five miles long, north and south of Canada Bay,
northwest of Conception Bay, and northeast of Bonavista Bay, but these are not
the shores of capes jutting to the north, with long strands and sand banks.
If we begin with Cape Breton and follow the coast northward we find no
extensive stretch of harborless coast until we reach Island Point. From this point
to Cape Smoke there is a comparatively unbroken coast about thirty miles in
extent whose "headlands are composed of primary and metamorphic rocks,
principally granite, with clay slate in nearly vertical strata, while sandstone,
conglomerate, shale, limestone, and occasionally beds of gypsum and red and
yellow marl occur on the intervening shores."[5] Here, then, there are not long
strands and sand banks. Cape North is a headland of slate one thousand feet high.
[6]
Dr. Gustav Storm, of the University of Christiania, in his well-known book,
Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, etc., page 42, points out a resemblance between
Cape Breton and Keel Cape, and states that the eastern shores of Cape Breton
Island are "specially described as low-lying and sandy." According to the United
States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 99, page 289, the southeast coast of Cape
Breton Island from Michaux Point to Cape Gabarus "is low and has a barren and
rocky appearance, and the shore is broken into numerous lakes and ponds,
protected from the sea by beaches of gravel and some small rocky islands and
ledges.... From Cape Gabarus to Cape Breton, a distance of fifteen miles, the land
is of moderate height and the shore broken into coves and small harbors."
Between Louisburg and Cape Breton, eight miles beyond, "there are three small
harbors, too intricate and rocky in their entrances to admit vessels of any burden,"
and Cape Breton itself is "low and rocky and covered with grassy moors." This is
unlike the open, harborless coast with long strands and sand banks of the Sagas.
Within the Gulf of St. Lawrence the capes which jut to the north are Cape St.

George,[7] with rocky, precipitous cliffs six hundred feet above the sea; North
Point,[8] on Prince Edward Island, which is broken about five miles down the
coast by Tignish River, and beyond that by the red sandstone cliff of Cape
Kildare; Escuminiac Point,[9] at the entrance to Miramichi Bay, a broken coast
with low sandstone cliffs; and Birch Point,[10] on Miscou Island, with a steep cliff
of sandstone ten feet high.
Campobello is a rocky island, and Cape Ann is rocky and has no long, harborless
coast.

Cape Cod[11] juts to the north with open water west of it, and beyond that again
land. It has also a long, harborless coast on the east, with strands and sand banks,
and is scored with bays toward the south.
Cape Cod, then, is the only cape north of Sandy Hook which corresponds to the
description in the Saga, and near here we should look for Vinland, leaving the
southern shores until later.
Vinland, which was discovered by Leif Erikson, is only described as Vinland in
the Flat Island Book. This account states that Leif Erikson's party "came to a
certain island which lay north of the land." That Leif Erikson should have thought
that Cape Cod was an island is obvious, because it is impossible from the cape to
see the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay twenty miles away. There is no need
to explain why he also believed it to lie north of the land, as no one and final
answer can be given, although several can be easily suggested; that water and
land again lay to the west is clearly stated in all three accounts.
Afterward "they sailed into that sound which lay between the island and the
promontory which jutted northward from the land; they steered in westward past
the promontory. There was much shallow water at ebb tide, and then their ship
stood up and then it was far to look to the sea from their ship." Across the water
which lies between Cape Cod and the mainland is Rocky Point, a high and
therefore noticeable promontory jutting northward from the land. Past this one
can only continue westering to the north, and thence we must now look along the
land to find the place where, in the words of the Flat Island Book, "a certain river
flowed out of a certain lake," having, as was said before, great shallows at its
mouth at ebb tide, whence it was far to look to the ocean.
Following round the inner coast of Cape Cod, we pass Plymouth and on to Boston
before we find in the Charles River and Boston Back Bay a river flowing through
a lake into the sea, where great shallows at its mouth are a conspicuous feature
and it is far to look to the ocean.

At this point we may add one more feature to the description of Keel Cape—that
it appears to be an island when approached from the north. Now we can continue
our search down the North Atlantic coast, noting that Sandy Hook is not scored
with bays at the south, and that Cape Henlopen and Cape Henry could not have
been mistaken for islands.[12]
There is one event described in all three versions of the Vinland story—the battle
with the natives. According to the Flat Island Book, this battle took place in
Vinland; according to the other two Sagas, Vinland was supposed to be north of
Keel Cape. But in these Sagas it is said that this battle took place south of Keel
Cape, where Karlsefni had found a river flowing through a lake into the sea.
It was this word south which led the Danish archæologist Carl Christian Rafn to
think that Vinland was in Rhode Island. Although there is no land south of Cape
Cod (with the exception of Nantucket Island) between Cape Cod and Santo
Domingo, it is only fair to look once more at Mount Hope Bay[13] (Rafn's
Vinland) to see whether it really corresponds to the description before us. The
Taunton River flows through Mount Hope Bay to the sea, but there are no
shallows here, and the mouth of the river looks directly out, southward and not
eastward, to the open ocean. In Boston Harbor, moreover, are great tongues of
land and islands such as are described in Eric the Red's Saga. There is perhaps
cause for comment in the use of the word "fjöll," fells or mountains (according to
Vigfusson[14]), applied to the hills about Boston, of which the highest, "Blue
Hill," is seven hundred and ten feet high. If "fells" is a correct translation, it
would be unobjectionable.
One morning Karlsefni saw the natives in their skin boats rowing toward his
house, from the south, past a promontory. It is not difficult to find the only
promontory past which canoes could have come from the south between the
mouth of the river and Watertown, the head of navigation. Here, then, Leif
Erikson and Thorfinn Karlsefni should have built their houses, if this history be
true, because this place corresponds with the description of Vinland, and also
because we can find no other place on the coast like it.
Having found what appears to be the site of Thorfinn Karlsefni's houses, it is well
to inquire next what the characteristic features of the Norse houses of the Saga-
time were, and what traces one might hope to find after nearly nine hundred
years.
Icelandic homesteads of that period usually consisted of a main house, composed
of three or four apartments and one or two outhouses, built on the surface of the

ground.
The walls were one and a half metres thick, and from one to one and a half metres
high, built of alternate layers of turf and stones on the inside and on the outside,
the space between being filled in with earth. Often, however, the walls were built
entirely of turf and earth, or with only disconnected rows of stones at the base.
Wood also was sometimes used. It is stated in Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga that some
of the trees in Vinland were "so large they were laid in a house."

Plan of the House of Eric the Red in Iceland.
A long, narrow fireplace usually extended through the middle of the principal
room, and an essential feature was the cooking fireplace, which was about one
metre square. These were either paved or surrounded by upright stones. The plan
is of the ruin of the house of Eric the Red in Haukadalr, Iceland. It shows the
different forms of fireplace, and that the walls, which were built of turf, were one
and a half metres thick. Outhouses were often dug into the hillside, and were
sometimes walled up on the inside with stone and turf. Ruins of such old
settlements in Iceland are usually low, grass-grown ridges and hollows.
When Professor Horsford first visited the site which his study of maps and
literature had led him to believe was Vinland, he found a few hollows in the
hillside and also some broad, low ridges on the level ground, indicating that a

building about twenty metres long by five metres broad had once stood there.
There was also a mound some distance away which has since proved to be of
modern construction.

Plan of supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts.
No digging was done here until after Professor Horsford's death, with the
exception of a few trenches across the supposed site of Leif Erikson's house on
the other side of the creek. In 1896, during a visit of Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson and
Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson, of Copenhagen and Iceland, extensive excavations
were made, leaving practically nothing unexamined at this site.
Three kinds of earth were revealed. The upper layer was of black loam from thirty
to forty centimetres deep; below this was a yellow soil of sand and clay thirty
centimetres deep; and below that again the sand and gravel which had remained
undisturbed since the close of the Glacial epoch.
The ruins were at the junction of the black and yellow earth. Throughout the black
loam to the bottom, wherever we dug, within or away from the ruins, were
scattered fragments of china, glass, glazed pottery, nails, pipestems, broken
bricks, etc., all belonging to the period of the occupation of this region by the
English. None of these were found in places where their presence would show
that they belonged to or preceded these ruins. In the paved pathway, which will be
described later, a few pieces of brick lie between the stones, but not deeper than
similar fragments of brick were found in the undisturbed earth near by, apparently
trodden in by the cattle which have been pastured there for years. There were also
objects of aboriginal manufacture, such as stone implements, pottery, pieces of

flint, etc. Occasionally, at different levels, remains of fires were found, some of
which were merely thin layers of charcoal and ashes. There were, however, two
well-built fireplaces, in good condition, entirely unlike each other. One of these
was an Indian clambake, neatly paved and piled with ashes and unopened clam
shells. This lay sixty-three centimetres below the sod. The photograph is not of
this fireplace, but is a good example of all Indian fireplaces or clambakes in
Massachusetts.

An Indian Fireplace in Massachusetts.
The second fireplace, which was about one metre square, surrounded by upright
stones at the four corners and filled with oak charcoal, but no ashes, was the
distinctive feature of this ruin, and resembled the cooking fireplaces of the
Icelanders. The absence of ashes has been accounted for by absorption in the soft
clay soil. Ashes often disappear in this way, but can be detected with acids.

Icelandic Fireplace in supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts.
Although the outline of the walls of the long house can only be suggested, the few
stones which were found at the base of the old walls were placed about a metre
and a half apart, as in the walls of the Saga-time. This, so far as is known, is
peculiar to that period and race. Iroquois long houses were constructed for
communal use, and were usually from one hundred to three hundred feet long.
The chief traces left are fire rows and kitchen middens. They are not known to
have used stone foundations, nor to have made any attempt at regularity of
outline. The drawing shows the method of construction of these long houses,
which were built only by the Indians of the Iroquois tribe.
Depressions which appeared to be the sites of old huts were in the hillside back of
the terrace on which the long house stood, but the roadway in front had apparently
destroyed all but one of these, and had also carried away the front wall of this.

East Wall of a supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts, showing
Layers of Turf between the stones.

West Wall of a supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts,
showing Layers of Turf between the Stones.

This hut was four metres across the front, and may have been five metres deep.
When the sod, stones, and the clearings, which had been thrown in from the
cultivated field above, were all removed, the remains of two side walls were
found, supported and protected by the upper portions of these same walls which
had slipped down from above and lay close to them, forming a compact mass of
earth and stones. None of the stones in this wall were in contact with each other,
being separated by two or three inches of dark earth such as results from the
decay of vegetable matter. There was no fireplace. The manner of constructing
these walls was the counterpart of Icelandic work. I shall now show you how this
differs from post-Columbian cellars.

Ancient Wall in Iceland, showing Layers of Turf between the
Stones.
This is a photograph of a ruin in the Thjór's River Valley, in Iceland. It shows the
sod between the stones closely packed but distinct. The stones in our early
English and French cellars practically touch each other, as in the old cellar in Fort
William Henry, in Maine. Sometimes broken stones fill the interstices, as in
another example of stonework at Fort William Henry. Mortar has been used here
more or less since the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Old Wall in a Cellar in Fort William Henry, Maine.

Old Wall at Fort William Henry, Maine.
Although European or post-Columbian walls and cellars differ considerably
among themselves, it is within certain limits. Post-Columbian walls, or foundation
walls when built on the surface of the ground, were practically homogeneous in
character, the French only attaining to one metre in thickness, whereas Icelandic
walls were disposed in three distinct parts, the inner and outer sides being
constructed in layers and the space between being filled in with closely packed
earth, while they were never less than a metre and a half thick.
Icelandic outhouses when dug into a hillside dispensed with the triple wall at the
back and on the sides, and thus when stone-faced partially resemble our cellars.
But even then they still retain one characteristic feature, in their alternate layers of
turf and stone.

Supposed Norse Pathway in Massachusetts.

Southern Turn of supposed Norse
Pathway.
While this hut was being dug out, our attention was called to stones protruding
through the turf a short distance away and nearer to the water. When the earth was
cleared away, it proved to be a rude stone-laid pathway leading along the margin
of the old creek to the river. Here at the landing place a similar pathway branched
away in another direction, stopping suddenly a few metres south of the supposed
house of Thorfinn Karlsefni. This pathway is called in Iceland a sjávar-gata, or
path to the sea. Ancient pavings have been found at Fort William Henry, near
Pemaquid, Maine. They are, however, similar to many street pavements still to be
found in our eastern cities. There is also a remarkable paved gutter at the Lewis
Farm, in Maine, which has long interested historians. But none of these resemble

the sjávar-gata in its peculiar construction, especially where it broadens and
divides with a wide margin of pebbles on one side and small heaps of stones on
the other.

A Pavement at Fort William Henry, Maine.

A Pavement at Pemaquid, Maine.
This map was made for Professor Horsford about ten years ago. It shows the site
of the long house, in which the Icelandic fireplace was found, and the cot, in
which Icelandic walls were found. The paved path ran along the shore in front.
Professor Horsford fixed Thorfinn's landing place a short distance south of this,
on solid ground. Geologists are unable to say how long ago the salt marshes were
formed. They are on Winthrop's map of 1634, but the sjávar-gata could hardly
have been accessible as a landing place after their formation.

Map of the supposed Norse Ruin in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In summary, it may be said that at the only point of land on the coast of North
America which we have found to correspond with the description of the site of
Thorfinn Karlsefni's houses, ruins have been dug out which bear peculiar features
characteristic of the period in Iceland known as the Saga-time, and differing in
certain essential features from the handiwork of all the native races of North
America, and, as far as is known at present, from all other races in Europe or in
America in post-Columbian days.

Extracts from the Reports of Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson.
The following extracts, from reports by Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson,
refer to the ruins described in the preceding paper. The plan for these researches

was first to compare the aforesaid ruins with the work of the native races
supposed to have inhabited or visited these shores, next with that of the Norsemen
of the eleventh century, and later, if necessary, with the earliest English, French,
Spanish, and Dutch ruins on these shores. Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson
noted the points of resemblance between these and Icelandic ruins, and in their
reports by request wrote everything they could think of in opposition to, as well as
in favor of, their being of Norse origin.
When these gentlemen left Cambridge the characteristic features of the early post-
Columbian ruins on this coast had not been ascertained, and these researches were
not finished satisfactorily until a year and a half after the Icelanders returned to
Europe.

From Dr. Gudmundsson's Report.
The next place into which we dug was a depression or hollow in the hillside in a
northerly direction from the above-mentioned place. Here we found
unquestionable remains of a house which had been dug into the hillside, with
walls constructed of stones, and layers of earth between the single rows of stones.
The foundation and the lower parts of the two side walls were solid and well
preserved, but the whole back wall, with the exception of a single row (the
foundation), had fallen down. The stones from this and the upper parts of the side
walls covered the whole bottom, so that they at the first glance seemed to form a
pavement. When carefully examined, it was evident, however, that most of the
stones which covered the bottom belonged to the walls, though some might have
rolled down from the hill above the house. Thus it could clearly be seen how
some of the stones had fallen down from the walls and some were just sliding
down, without having as yet reached to the bottom, as some stones underneath
had hindered them from gliding farther. The front wall of the house was wanting,
and must either have been of wood or—which seems most likely—have been
spoiled when the road which runs close past the house was made. When the
bottom was cleared of the stones which had fallen in it proved to consist of a level
black floor.
The construction and situation of this house are quite Scandinavian, built in the
same way as houses in Iceland and Greenland. I would therefore not have had the
least hesitation to declare it to be a ruin of a house built by Scandinavians in the
pre-Columbian period if between and under the stones which covered the bottom

we had not found some pieces of glazed pottery and bricks, of which some small
pieces were found trodden down even into the floor itself. This seems to indicate
that the house must be post-Columbian, or at least have been occupied by the first
English or French colonists. As in the meantime several American scholars, with
whom I have had an opportunity to discuss this matter, positively declare that the
post-Columbian colonists never would have built such walls of stones without
mortar, and it must be regarded as quite certain that Indian people could not have
built it, there seems to be no other explanation possible than that this ruin must be
Scandinavian, and, having been found by some of the first post-Columbian
colonists (e. g., some fishermen), had been repaired and occupied by them for a
shorter or longer time. If it can be proved that such a building as this could not
have been built by the post-Columbian colonists nor by Indians, it can hardly be
anything else than Scandinavian. This, however, must be left to American
scholars, who have sufficient knowledge in these matters. But so long as this is
not proved, the pieces of pottery and bricks which were found in it rather seem to
speak for its post-Columbian origin, as those pieces must have been there when
the house fell down, and such a house as this built in the beginning of the eleventh
century could not have stood five hundred years before its roof and the upper
parts of the walls fell down.
On the other side of the road we found an end of an old path paved with small
stones, running from the house in the hillside along the edge of the old river bank
down to a kind of promontory which in olden time, when the water stood much
higher than it now does, seems to have served as a landing place. In the middle of
this path, which was from about six to ten inches under the surface, was a hollow
as trodden down by the feet of men and (perhaps) horses. This path is very like
Icelandic paths, such as may still be found in many places in Iceland. But as we in
some places in this path found some bricks between the stones which formed its
pavement, it must be regarded as doubtful whether it is Scandinavian. The bricks
seem rather to speak for a post-Columbian origin, though the whole path is so
primitive that it hardly can be suggested that so advanced a people as the first
post-Columbian colonists should have made such a path. To settle the question
whether it could belong to those colonists must be left to American scholars. This
path seems, at any rate, to have been made by the same people who built the
house in the hillside, so either both of them must be regarded as post-Columbian
or they both are Scandinavian. Another path runs from this landing place in a
westerly direction along the old river bank, where it stops very abruptly on a
certain spot a very short distance east of the supposed "Thorfinn's house." As I
could not find any other reason for its stopping on this spot than that near it stood
a building, I examined the river bank beside it, and here I found the earth, about

eight inches under the surface, mixed with charcoal, which could indicate that
some refuse from a house had been thrown there. This seems to lead to the
conclusion that there at the end of this path really has stood a building, of which
we could not now expect to find any traces, or even a building constructed of turf
only (turf walls), which also might have wholly disappeared, as earth walls on an
elevated ground like this perhaps might have blown away.
The result of these researches is briefly, according to my opinion, this: As far as
concerns the construction, both the house in the hillside and the two paths, or the
two branches of the path, could be of Scandinavian origin, but I am not so well
acquainted with the life and customs of the first post-Columbian colonists as to be
able to decide whether they could not have been made by them. This, therefore,
must be left to American scholars.
Very respectfully yours,
Valtyr Gudmundsson.
Cambridge, Mass., July 16, 1896.

From Mr. Erlingsson's Report.
It is not uncommon in Iceland that houses, especially small outhouses, are dug
into small hills, hillsides, or sloping ground, just as this house is. It is, in fact,
built very like what I have seen in outhouses in many places in Iceland, and what
is left of the walls here nobody could distinguish from Icelandic walls. The size
and the whole form is also very like an outhouse, but as most frequently in
outhouses either all the four walls are made of stones or none of them, it would
seem strange that one of the walls here is completely wanting. But those stones
which were used in it could have been used in the road which has been made past
the house, or, besides, it is possible that the front wall of the house has been a
wooden one, and, although this is very rare in outhouses certainly, yet it must be
taken into consideration that here it is much easier to procure wood than in
Iceland. The whole form, the method, and the condition of the house itself seemed
like nothing else than that it was built by Icelandic hands, although some of the
stones seem to be rather small, but, as pieces of pottery and bricks have been
found beneath the stones which had fallen down from the walls and on the floor
itself, it seems to prove sufficiently that the house can not belong to the old
Icelandic period; but as nobody has expected such a house here, the discovery is
very remarkable.

This path is so like paths in Iceland, for which there have been gathered stones
and which later on have been trodden down by the feet of horses and men, that I
would not have hesitated to declare that it might be Scandinavian if in it there had
not been found bricks beside the other stones, which seems to indicate that the
path must belong to the same period as the house which was dug into the hill.
This discovery must therefore, too, be regarded as very remarkable....
Respectfully,
Thorsteinn Erlingsson.
Cambridge, Mass., July 12, 1896.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEMINIST.
By DAVID STARR JORDAN,
president of leland stanford junior university.

The meeting of the Astral Club of Alcalde, on September 10, 1899, was rendered
memorable by the return, from a month's absence in the East, of the secretary of
the club, Miss Corintha Jones, D. N. N. N. Her presence had been sorely missed
at the August meeting (though I say it who should not), for it is not often that one
of our devoted band is absent from his post.
Miss Jones had left Alcalde to complete a course of study in medicine in one of
the most famous colleges of the East. At the suggestion of the president of the
club, Mr. Asa Marvin, F. T. S., the usual programme was suspended on her return,
and Miss Doctress Jones, D. N. N. N. (for such indeed is the title she has now
earned), told us of her studies at the Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics, in
Boston, a noble institution, up to date in all respects, for it received its charter
from the General Assembly of Massachusetts in the year 1881.
Miss Doctress Jones left her home in Alcalde on the 20th of July, designing to
visit certain relatives residing at Homer and Virgil, Cortland County, N. Y., on the
way. She reached Boston on the 5th day of August, and at once proceeded to the
university. An ignorant hackman took her over to the suburban village of
Cambridge, which is the seat of Harvard College. Making inquiry of the
professors there, she found none who had ever heard of the University of
Mentiphysics, having eyes and ears for nothing but Harvard, which in some
respects is indeed a great institution, but on a material plane.
At last, after much inquiry, Doctress Jones was sent to the Neministic
Headquarters, a small building on the corner of Milk and Transcendental Streets.
Here she learned, from a little lady with a withered face and a serene smile, that
the University of Mentiphysics was situated not in Boston, but in the neighboring
town of Lynn, which lies some miles to the north. "But in Massachusetts," she
said, "we call it all Boston."
"So I took the train for Lynn," Miss Doctress Jones continued, "and drove at once
to the street and number named on the card. The little white house with green
blinds, white columns on the veranda, and a few weedy roses in the front yard did

not fill my conception of a university, for it did not look like our universities in
California. But the fault was with my conception, not with the fact.
"The maid who answered the bell assured me that this was indeed the university,
and ushered me at once into the office of the president. The wall was covered with
pictures and photographs, showing elderly ladies with serene smiling faces. Under
each one were the letters N. N. N., and a card giving an account of how each one
had been made whole and happy through Neministic Science. The president was a
middle-aged, matronly lady, with a high forehead and brown hair, streaked with
gray, done in graceful frizzes over her brow. Above the corners of her mouth,
which were always drawn up in an engaging smile, were three deep creases. Mr.
Gridley, our schoolmaster, tells me that these correspond to the grave accent in
Greek, and that there being three of them shows that the lady had been married
three times. I do not know as to this, but somehow her face seemed startlingly
familiar and at the same time strangely pleasant.
"I murmured something about having had the pleasure before. She said, taking the
words from my mouth: 'I know what you are going to say. We are indeed very
much alike, though she is on the material plane. Still, my friends call me the
"Lydia Pinkham of the soul," and I do not resent it, for what dear Lydia tries to do,
that I do.'
"I told the president," Doctress Jones continued, "that I wished to learn the
wisdom of Boston, and especially the science of Neministic Healing, of which I
had heard much in Alcalde. 'But perhaps I should call at the university, and not
trouble you in your rest at home.' At this her eyes blazed, and she said, with a
tragic air: 'Having eyes, ye see not! I read the Soul and the Stars through a higher
than mortal sense. Has the Sun forgotten to shine and the Planets to revolve
around it? Who was it discovered, demonstrated, and teaches the marvel of
Neministic Healing? That one, whoever it be, does understand something of what
can not be lost.'
"I looked dazed. She quieted down and explained to me that she was herself the
university, because no one but herself could explain what was revealed to her
alone. The whole Neministic Science was taught in twelve lessons, and I could
begin then and there.
"I said something about preparatory work and the books I would need to read. She
placed in my hands a slip which read:
"'N. N. N. Persons contemplating a course in the Massachusetts University of
Mentiphysics can prepare for it through no books save Neministic Science and

Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars. Man-made theories are narrow, else
extravagant, and always materialistic. Nihil nemini nocet.' Then she added: 'I
recommend students not to read so-called scientific works antagonistic to
Neministic Healing, which advocate material systems, because such works and
words becloud the right sense of Mentiphysical Science. A primary student richly
imbued with the Neministic spirit is a better healer and teacher than a normal-
class student, who partakes less of this power. Even an apt scholar who has
dipped into my Neministic Science and Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars (the
last revised edition), may enter this field of labor, without any personal
instruction, beneficially to himself and the race.'
"Then she continued blandly: 'You must learn, my dear, to enter this great field in
a manner beneficial to yourself and the race. You must teach others to render to
Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and to do this you must first render unto Cæsar yourself.
Do you understand?' I looked puzzled for a moment. Then she said: 'Twenty-five
dollars, please, dear, and be sure to come promptly at ten o'clock to-morrow. You
are now admitted to the Primary Plane, the first degree of Neministic Healing.' As
I gave her the California gold, she bowed me out of the room with a tender and
motherly smile, while she tested the unfamiliar coins by ringing them softly on
the table.
"At the second lesson she gave me the fundamental principles of Neministic
Healing. I received them eagerly, for I recognized in them a close harmony with
the teachings of our dear old Mr. Dean:
"'God is the principle of Mentiphysics. As there is but one God, there can be but
one Principle in this Science. As there are many stars, there must be many fixed
rules for the demonstration of this Divine Principle.
"'The fundamental propositions among these rules are proved by inversion, for
this is the basis of all true mathematics. Two times two is four, therefore four is
two times two. As a star is the same whether seen from the north, south, east, or
west, so a precept of Mentiphysics must be the same as seen from every side. To
invert is not to change its meaning, and must prove its truth.' Then she gave me a
printed card containing these words, over which I was to ponder until the next
lesson:
"'N. N. N. There is no Pain in Truth, therefore there is no Truth in Pain. There is
no Nerve in Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Nerve. There is no Matter in
Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Matter. There is no Matter in Life, therefore
there is no Life in Matter. There is no Matter in Good, therefore there is no Good
in Matter. Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet.'

"'Twenty-five dollars, please,' and I returned to my hotel filled with new thoughts,
which I found later were very incomplete.
"The next day she said:
"'Man, my dear, is governed by Soul, not sense. Sense is the reflection of matter,
and matter does not exist. Thus sense is but the shadow of a dream. In dreams the
laws of health are valueless. There is but one Law of Health, and that is the one
precept of Neministic Healing.
"'To the awakened mind the seasons will come and go, with changes of time and
tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The agriculturist finds that these
changes can not affect his crops. The mariner will have dominion over the
atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air.
The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars. He will look out from them
upon the universe, and the florist will find his flower before he beholds its seed.
Thus matter will be finally proved to be nothing but a mortal belief, wholly
inadequate to affect man through its supposed organic action or existence.'
"Then she gave me another mystic card, which read:
"'N. N. N. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and Creation must collapse. Nihil
nocet nemini.' And this time I did not need to be reminded of the final ceremony
with which the lesson ended. Nor did she need to clink the coins on the table.
"In the fourth lesson the president discoursed more fully on 'the popular gods, Sin,
Sorrow, and Sickness, the three S's of Satan; all three illusions of the Sinful Soul.
The very word Illusion proves their nothingness. These are but troubled dreams of
the darkened soul, and to rise above them is to wake from a cataleptic nightmare
to see the stars shining on the hills.
"'When troubled by a horrible dream, my dear, one has only to say, "This is a
Dream; I will awaken." Then the stars will shine through the open window and
the hideous vision will disappear.
"'So in afflictions of disease and dread and death, one must say, "This is a
Dream." Then it becomes a dream, and we rise above it into an atmosphere of
Perfect Serenity.
"'To the material sense, dear,' continued the president, 'to cut the jugular vein
takes away life. But in Neministic Science Life goes on unchanged, mounting
ever and ever to higher reaches, because there is no jugular vein, and Matter can
not make its mark on Mind.

"'The Barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, can not be deceived by
testimony of the senses. It points to fair weather in the midst of the unreal
apparition of murky clouds and threatening rain. Thus does Neministic Science,
the perfect culmination of Mentiphysics, point to the changeless Health and
Happiness of the Enlightened Man whatever material science may have to say
about the condition of his members. Man is made in the image of perfection,
therefore failure and imperfection can never assail him. As well expect to gather
peaches from a pine tree as to gather discord from the Concord of Being.'
"Then she gave me a card:
"'N. N. N. The Equipollence of the Stars above and of the Mind below shows the
awful unreality of Evil. Nihil nemini nocet.'
"After the usual parting ceremony I returned to my room, well convinced of the
unreality of Boston, and doubting whether I should ever again find my own
Alcalde. I feared lest some further precept might arise by which Alcalde could not
exist.
"In the fifth lesson the president informed me that I was now in the second
degree, or Normal Plane. We were ready for the first glimpse into the full,
rounded perfection of Neministic Healing.
"'To cure men of all ills whatsoever, we have only to show them the stars. When
we waken in the night, only the sight of the stars can tell us we are awake. When
we are awake all dreams must vanish, and all is dream which breaks the serenity
of the mind or checks the perfect perspicacity of being. We need not deal with the
body, for the body does not exist. It is dull, heavy, and aching, because it is the
dead Residuum of Dream. When we forget it, it is no longer there. Then and not
till then can you smile the serene smile of the Neministically Healed and
Mentiphysically Perfect Soul.'
"The little card read:
"'N. N. N. The body says, "I am ill." The reports of Sickness may form a coalition
with the reports of Sin and say, "I am Malice, Lust, Appetite, Envy, Hate." Treat a
belief in sickness as you would sin—with sudden dismissal. If it were not for
what the human mind says of the body, the body would not be weary any more
than an inanimate wheel. Nihil nemini nocet.'
"On the sixth day the president greeted me with her serenest smile.

"'We have now reached the point, my dear,' she said, 'when we must abandon
Pharmaceutics and take up Ontology, the science of Abstract Being. In this we
have many rivals who echo the cry, "Why art thou, NEMINISM, come hither to
torment us before our time?" Among the systems that thus cry out are many
whom this world deems successful. Animal Magnetism, Atheism, Spiritualism,
Theosophy, Agnosticism, Pantheism, and Infidelity are antagonistic to
Mentiphysics and fatal to the demonstration thereof, and of Neminism, its noblest
culmination; and so,' she continued, 'are some other systems.'
"She warned me especially against Pantheism, 'the worship of the sylvan god
Pan,' a cult reputed to be especially rife among the members of our club at
Alcalde.
"I tried to explain to her the difference between Pantheism and Sciosophy, but I
did not succeed very well, for she grew impatient. In her judgment, I discovered,
Sciosophy was grossly impractical, and the views of Mr. Abner Dean would take
the bread from the mouths of better men than he. 'I am told,' she said, 'that Mr.
Dean actually signed that wicked paper[15] of those Washington soreheads, who
call themselves the Reformed College of Neminism.' With this, she would not
listen to another word about Sciosophy.
"Then I regretted that I had said anything, for this pleasant lesson came to an
abrupt end, and left me without even the customary card to ponder over. I still
wondered what could be the secret meaning of N. N. N., nihil nemini nocet.
"On the next day the storm had blown over, or rather, like all other storms, it had
no real existence, and the smile of the president at the closing act of the lesson
was the sweetest I had ever seen, the most perfect witness to the truth of her
teachings.
"She took up the subject of Materia Medica. After reading from a printed book the
names of a host of poisons, from Abacus to Swamproot and Sandalwood and
Zygadene, she warned us against them all. All are alike evil. All alike have no real
existence. Therefore the student will do well not to learn their names. It will only
interfere with his serenity of mind, and perfect serenity is the sole symptom of
success.
"'Surely this is better,' she said, 'than to support the popular systems of medicine,
when the physician may be perchance an infidel and lose ninety-and-nine patients
where Neminism cures its hundred. Is it because Osteopathy and Ostariopathy are
more fashionable and less spiritual? Even business men have found that
Neministic Science enhances their physical and mental powers, enlarges their

perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness, and an
ability to exceed their ordinary business capacity.'
"Then she gave me this card:
"'N. N. N. In 1866 this discovery was made by me and by me alone: "The erring
Mortal misnamed Mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body."
This led to the demonstration that Mind is All and matter is naught, and being
nothing, nothing hurts nobody. Nobody hurts nothing, which proves it plainly by
inversion. Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet.'
"On the eighth day the president discoursed on Anatomy. Referring briefly to the
pernicious notions of the 'ancients,' as with a broad sweep of her hand she
designated the professors in Boston and Cambridge, concerning the structure of
the human body, she called it the nightmare of undigested learning. 'Why should
we care where the jugular vein goes, when we know that there is no jugular vein?
What of bones and muscles, and teguments and integuments? "Toil fatigues me,"
you say; but what is this me? Is it muscle or Mind? Which is tired, and so speaks?
Without Mind could the muscles be tired? Do the muscles talk, or do you talk for
them? Science includes no rule of discord, but governs harmoniously.'
"On the card were these words:
"'N. N. N. Flesh is an error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance,
and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensations. Nihil
nocet nemini.'
"On the ninth day I was admitted to the third degree, or the Introspective Plane.
As the president entered, I noticed a touch of camellia powder on her face, for the
subject of the day was Beauty. 'Beauty,' she said, 'is internal before it is perceived
outwardly. To have perfect faith in the principle of Neminism is to regain the
charms of Eternal Youth.' She told me of patients of hers who had become
beautiful through faith. One good lady at ninety developed new teeth through
belief in Neminism—incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one molar. A gentleman at
sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without a decaying cavity.
"On her card were these words:
"'N. N. N. The receipt for Beauty is to have less Illusion and more Soul. Nihil
nemini nocet.'
"And, as the final ceremony was passed, the president looked almost beautiful
herself.

"On the tenth day the president gave some account of her early studies and of the
origin of Neministic Healing.
"'While from the human standpoint I inherited the refinement that goes with
culture of family and moral rectitude, as usual here in Boston, yet there was a
marked degree of spiritual Grace, Soulful Delicacy, and Esoteric Elegance that
comes not from human ancestry, neither from communion with Nature. It was the
exquisite coloring of the touch of the astral hand which opens the petals of
thought as it does the opening rose. This ended in a soft glow of ineffable Joy, and
out of its perfect serenity Neministic Science was born.
"'The discovery was so new, the basis laid down for physical and moral health so
hopelessly original and men so unfamiliar with the subject, that not until later did
I venture to proclaim it to the world.'
"On the card was—

"'N. N. N.
"'My world has sprung from Spirit
In Everlasting Day;
Whereof I've much to glory,
Wherefor have much to pay.'

"Under this was a picture of the egg of a vulture, in which, through his
microscope, Agassiz once saw the sun, moon, stars, and the gathering of clouds.
'Nihil nemini nocet.'
"At the eleventh lesson I was directed to go out for clinical practice. In my hotel I
found a dear little six-year-old boy who had been invited, with the rest of a
kindergarten class, to attend a picnic.
"He did not feel that he wanted to go. He seemed dumpish, and, according to
mortal belief, was not well. At noon he said that he wanted to go to sleep. I took
him in my lap and began to read to him from Neministic Science and Astral
Health with a Key to the Stars. Very soon he expressed a wish to go to the picnic,
and did go. So I gave him a little card, with the words 'Nihil nemini nocet,' and all
day he said nothing more about being sick.
"Next morning the president gave me an account of various wonderful cures in
her experience. Among others, she showed me a letter from John B. Higgins, of
Little Egg Harbor, N. J. This I copied down as follows:

"'I am glad to tell you how I was healed. Beliefs of consumption, dyspepsia,
neuralgia, ulcers, tobacco, and bad language.... Doctors that were consulted
did nothing to relieve me, and I constantly grew worse. Nearly two years ago
you told me that if I would read a book called Neministic Science and Astral
Health with a Key to the Stars, I would be healed. I told you I would go into
it for all it was worth, and I found that it is worth all. I got the book and read
day and night. I saw that it must be true, and believed that what I could not
then understand would be made clear later. After some days' reading I was
afflicted with drowsiness, followed by vomiting. This lasted several hours,
when I fell into a sleep. I awoke healed.'

"The president assured me that if I would spend no time in intellectual drifting,
adhering to the impersonal and scientific deductions of the one discoverer to
whose clarified spiritual eye all truth of the mind had been revealed, with all the
loyalty of a mathematician to the principles of mathematics, I would be sure of a
comfortable fortune. Although money had no real existence, the shadow in its
substance proved that there was after all substance in its shadow. The Neministic
Healer is at no expense for books or instruments or medicine, providing always
that the one perfect Key to the Stars (including Neministic Science and Astral
Health) lies open before him. With that in sight he can not go wrong, and with
perfect faith in the unreality of all external things it matters not in earthly affairs
what he does or leaves undone.
"The card for this lesson was:
"'N. N. N. The population of our cities is ample to supply many practitioners,
teachers, and preachers with work. To enter this field of labor beneficially to
ourselves, it is necessary to demonstrate that the patient who is able to pay for
being healed is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for
health! Nihil nemini nocet.'
"At the last lesson the president informed me that my course of instruction was
complete, and that I must now go forth and bless the world. I must lean no longer
on her personal leadership, but, trusting in the spirit, I should rest solely on the
pure Mentiphysical principle at work. As a pioneer of Neministic Healing in the
far uncultured West, I must stand alone in the conflict, smiting error with the
falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of the spirit are costly, and they have won
fields of battle from which the dainty borrower would have fled.'
"I spoke once or twice of my diploma, without which I could not practice my
profession under the laws of Fresno County. At first she made as if she did not
hear me, but at last she said:

"'The Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics draws its breath from me, but I
yearn for retirement. No one else can sustain this institution amid the legislation
aimed at its vital purpose. This has given me conscientious scruples about
diplomas, and, with the growing conviction that every one should build on his
own foundation, no more diplomas shall be issued from this flourishing school.
"'But do not worry, dear,' she said. 'Your power is just the same with or without
diploma. You can make known the rare bequests of the Spirit quite as well as a
martyr as you could as a physician. The faithful will stand by you. Those who
believe will always pay. Take this locket, and hang it about your neck. It will
contain the quintessence of all my teachings, and with this in your right hand and
Neministic Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars in your left, you will
drain the cup which I have drained to the dregs as the discoverer and teacher of
Neminism, and without tasting this cup its inspiration can not be gained.'
"Then I took the little locket, and here it is. On one side are the letters D. N. N.
N., 'which,' she said, 'makes its holder a doctress.' On the reverse is the face of
Lydia Pinkham, while around the margin, in fine gilt letters, is a scroll with the
motto, 'Nihil nemini nocet.' Mr. Gridley, the learned professor of our Alcalde
school, says this means 'nothing hurts nobody.' But I am sure that there is more in
it than that; besides, whatever it is we can prove it by inversion: Nihil nocet
nemini; nihil nemini nocet—one is true like the other, and its symbolic
significance is proved by its three N's, for N is the symbol of eternity. At least,
this is what the president told me. But now that I am back in Alcalde, the whole
thing seems like a dream, while all the things I had learned to call dreams seem
more real than ever. Maybe I am still on the Material Plane after all, in spite of all
I have done and all the rest of us in Alcalde are doing to try to rise above it."

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN
NEWSPAPER.
By WALTER L. HAWLEY,
of the new york evening sun.

At the beginning of the present century the newspapers published in the United
States numbered 200—one for each 26,450 of population—while at the present
time the total of regular publications slightly exceeds 20,000—one for each 350
inhabitants of the country; and in that growth and development of the business is
represented more of science and art, more of physical ingenuity and mental
activity, than in any other line of human endeavor. One hundred years ago the
publication of a newspaper did not rank as a business, and the preparation of its
contents was regarded as a pastime or the indulgence of a whim, rather than a
profession. At the end of the century, journalism is the history of the world written
day by day, the chief medium of enlightenment for the masses, the universal
forum of scholar, sage, and scientist. As a business enterprise, the newspaper of
to-day commands unlimited capital, and as a profession it ranks second to none.
For three centuries and a half following Gutenberg's invention of type little
progress was made in the art of printing, and the production of a newspaper in this
country in 1800 was accomplished with crude machinery and involved much slow
and difficult hand labor. The printing was done on wooden presses of primitive
pattern, the type was large and ill formed, the paper used was in many cases
inferior to the lowest grade made at the present time, and the production of a large
number of copies of any issue was out of the question. No attempt was made in
this country to publish a daily paper until 1784, and in 1800 daily editions were
issued only in four or five of the larger cities.
The publications of that period were not newspapers in the sense in which the
word is now used, because no particular effort was made to present an account of
the happenings of the day. Notices of the arrival and departure of ships, time
tables of mail coaches, and brief announcements of matters of political interest
filled the limited space devoted to domestic news. Foreign news consisted entirely
of matter reprinted from the English journals received by sailing vessels, and
therefore weeks or months old when it appeared. The wooden presses used a
hundred years ago were operated entirely by hand. After the type had been set it

was placed in a frame
or "form," with little or
no regard to artistic
arrangement of
headlines or displayed
matter. To print the
edition, the "form" was
placed on the bed of the
press and ink spread
over the type by the use
of hand rollers. The
white paper was then
dampened with water,
sheet by sheet, laid
over the stationary
"form," and the
impression was made
by pulling down the
upper part of the press
with a lever. This work
was so slow that a
circulation of three or
four hundred copies of
a daily newspaper
would severely tax the
capacity of the press
room. The weekly
publications were as a
From the New York rule limited to about From the New York
Gazette and General the same figures, Gazette and General
Advertiser of January 1, because the entire Advertiser of
1800. mechanical part of Wednesday, January 1,
production devolved 1800.
upon one man, who was often owner and editor as
well as printer. Some iron presses were imported from England in 1810, and in
1817 George Clymer, of Philadelphia, invented a lever press that was a marked
improvement over the crude machines then in general use, reducing the manual
labor required and increasing the speed with which printed papers could be turned
out. The first power press used in this country was invented by Daniel Treadwell,
of Boston, in 1822, and operated by the American Bible Society, the power being

furnished by a team of mules. These presses were not adapted to newspaper work,
and the first considerable advance in the mechanical part of the business was
made in 1829 and 1830, when a Washington hand press was invented. Seventeen
years later a cylinder power press was perfected by Richard M. Hoe, and the
mechanical ability to produce periodicals was more than doubled; but during the
time when American ingenuity developed the steam engine, the cotton gin, the
sewing machine, and the electric telegraph, the progress made in the mechanism
of newspaper making was comparatively insignificant. The process of
stereotyping was introduced into this country from England in 1813, and a year
later the New Testament was printed from plates, but the discovery was not
utilized in the publication of newspapers until 1861.
In the first half of the century journalism did not at any time rank as a profession
requiring special training, and capacity, and the returns of the counting room were
so meager, the cost of material so high, and the appliances in the mechanical
department so imperfect, that the publication of newspapers rose only by slow
degrees to recognition as a business enterprise in which capital might seek
investment with fair prospect of a satisfactory return. Modeled after English
publications, the early American newspapers depended, for whatever of reputation
or success they achieved, upon the fame and ability of the editor. The reporting of
current events without comment was a secondary feature of the daily papers, and
in the weekly publications it was not attempted. Before the days of railroads and
prompt and reliable mail service, communication between men in public life and,
in fact, all persons of education, was chiefly by letter. The custom grew into a
fixed habit, and to a large extent influenced the character of the newspapers
published prior to 1850. The editor addressed himself directly to his readers
through long editorials upon topics in which he was interested, and his publication
was in reality a mere instrument for the expression of opinions. Public men and
politicians were encouraged to write letters for publication upon public questions,
and a long communication from a man of national reputation was regarded by the
editor as matter of far more value to his journal than any amount of news of the
events of the day.
The organization and development of political parties in the early part of the
second quarter of the century resulted in a rapid increase in the number of
newspapers throughout the country. Party leaders found that they could reach a
greater number of citizens by means of published letters and speeches than by the
primitive process of campaigning by easy stages from one State or county to
another. From writing personal letters to friends in their districts, senators and
representatives in Congress found that they could keep their constituents better
informed of the progress of legislation and politics by means of signed statements

in the press of their respective States.
The party organ and the personal
journal were the immediate natural
results of this condition of public life
and politics. Every secular journal
supported some political party or
organization without qualification,
and there was little or no
independence of the press. The editor
found his subscribers among the
members of his own party, and often
looked to the organization or the
candidate for financial support.
Papers were established and editors
hired by parties, factions, and
individual leaders to advocate some
particular plan of finance or tariff, or
some general policy for the nation or
State. During this stage of American
journalism the influence of a paper A Municipal Notice from the New
depended largely upon the reputation, York Gazette and General
individuality, and force of character Advertiser of January 1, 1800.
of the editor. He needed not to
possess any particular qualification
for the work, except a general knowledge of the affairs on which he was to write
and a command of vigorous language to compel attention to his utterances. For
many years the majority of the periodicals of the country, daily and weekly, were
critical reviews of the events of the time, rather than mediums for the spread of
general information. News of important happenings at home spread through all
the States ahead of the circulation of the papers, and the people looked to the
latter for review and comment upon events, rather than for detailed accounts of
the occurrences. Foreign affairs, as reported in the English publications received
in this country, took precedence in the classification of news in the journals of the
first half of the century, and local events, often matters that were subsequently
recognized as of great historical value, were briefly and too often imperfectly
recorded. It is a matter to be regretted that in the days when American statesmen
and orators were making history for the world, when the new republic, having
passed beyond the stage of experiment, was advancing with prodigious strides
toward glorious achievements in material development, the journals of the

country kept but an imperfect and often inaccurate record of events that should
have been reported in full.
During the first forty years of the present
century there was no system of collecting the
news for publication, and the capital invested in
the newspaper business was insufficient to
permit of any extra outlay to obtain reports of
events occurring at a distance in advance of the
regular mails. Such reports as were obtained
were usually voluntary contributions written by
a friend of the editor, and often colored or
distorted according to the prejudice of the writer.
These letters were, almost without exception,
semi-editorial in character, the writers indulging
freely in comment and expression of opinion
upon the event they attempted to record, so that
no political or public matter was reported
entirely free from partisan coloring. The drivers
of mail coaches, the captains of coastwise or
river vessels, strolling peddlers, lawyers,
surveyors, and wandering missionaries, who
made long journeys into the interior and from
town to town, were the news reporters of early
days. When they arrived in a city or town they
would tell the latest news from the places they
had visited, and the next issue of the local paper
would contain a story beginning, "The Rev. Mr.
Bland, the traveling missionary, relates," etc., or,
"Captain Smith, of the schooner——, reports
having heard," etc. Information received in this
Advertisements from the way might relate to Indian uprisings, fires,
New York Daily Advertiser floods, crimes, accidents, or political events; but
of Wednesday, January 1, in every case the published account would be
1800. interspersed with opinions of the narrator and
the comments of the editor who prepared the
story for publication. For news of events happening in the larger cities, the
journals of the first half of the century depended almost entirely on reprinting
from exchanges. They had no regular correspondents anywhere, and a paper
published in New York would reprint from the papers of Boston and Philadelphia

such of the news of those cities as impressed the editor as being of more than
local interest. During the War of 1812, the subsequent Indian wars, and the
conflict with Mexico, news of battles and movements of armies in the field was
obtained by the slow process of waiting for official reports to the Government or
private letters from officers and men at the front. The Mexican War stimulated the
public demand for news, increased the circulation of newspapers, and did more
than any other event up to that time to arouse the editors of the country to the fact
that the people wanted early and complete information of what was going on in
the world, rather than individual opinions on general problems. While that
struggle was in progress the arrival of the weekly mail in a remote village was an
event of importance. The inhabitants would gather in large numbers at the post
office, and the meager war news contained in the newspapers would be read
aloud. The postmaster or some subscriber to a paper would often post a copy of
the latest journal in some conspicuous place in the town, and from that simple
beginning there was developed the newspaper bulletin board, where the public
may obtain brief information of great events before the full report can be put in
type.
After the division of the voters of the country into organized political parties, the
tariff, banking and currency, the acquisition of additional territory, and States
rights developed into great national questions, precipitating prolonged and heated
discussion by the statesmen of that period. This condition stimulated the growth
of a certain class of newspapers, and brought into prominence many writers of
ability. The statesmen and politicians of that time turned to the press as an
available and valuable medium through which to disseminate arguments. They
sought to convince rather than to inform the public, and the journalism of that
period made no substantial progress except as an instrument for the development
and exploitation of writers of force and influence. Whatever power the press
exerted in shaping events, whatever it accomplished in swaying the public mind
in the days when nullification was scotched and territorial expansion was
accepted as a fixed policy of the majority, should be credited to the genius and
individuality of the leading writers of that time, rather than to a full presentation
of facts. The years of agitation of the question of slavery still further developed
individuality in journalism. The newspaper became an instrument for educating
the people on certain public questions, and an influence upon public opinion by
means of editorial writing. That was the period of so-called great editors, of
whom Horace Greeley may be mentioned as a conspicuous example, who made
and unmade politicians with their praise or criticism, who shaped the policy of
political parties, controlled conventions and nominated candidates, changed the
current of their country's history at critical points, and in many ways wielded an

influence in public affairs greater than
that of the leading statesmen. The
editor of that time was greater than
his newspaper, and the power of the
press was in reality the force of
character of the individual exerted
through the instrument within his
control.
From 1830 to 1860 the progress made
in the mechanical department of the
business was slow and unimportant in
comparison with recent inventions.
Cylinder presses came into general
use for the printing of daily papers,
but the weekly and monthly
publications continued to use the
primitive hand machines. The speed
of press-work was still limited to a
few hundred copies per hour, so that
an extensive circulation could not be
supplied even if there had been a
demand for it. The white paper used
was still made entirely of rags, and
most of the material was imported
from Austria and Italy. The cost of
Click here for larger image
production was high, and few
newspapers in the United States were
published at a fair profit. The uncertainty of the financial returns from the
business greatly retarded its development. Inventors found that their ingenuity
would receive more substantial rewards in other fields, and editors and publishers
were rarely practical men who could discover imperfections in mechanism and
suggest improvements in their own shops. Throughout the first half of the century
most of the improved methods of printing were developed in the establishments
of book and job printers. There new presses and all new mechanical devices were
first installed, and the newspaper followed, instead of leading, in the work of
material progress in the art.
To the New York Herald is generally credited the departure from old-time
methods that resulted in the creation of newspapers devoted entirely to the
publication of news, the reporting of the happenings of the world day by day. The

innovation was not well received by
the editors, who believed that the
public cared more for opinions than a
record of events. The new method
proved popular, however, and the
development of the newspaper from
the personal journal and party organ
dates from that time. The founder of
the Herald and the new school of
journalism spent money to obtain the
news of the world ahead of the
ordinary channels of communication.
He established a system of special
couriers, employed correspondents,
and made the collection of reports of
events of general interest a matter of
first importance in the business of
making a newspaper. Other editors
followed the new movement slowly,
and often with much doubt and
hesitation, but those who stood still
and refused to supply their readers
with the news were in time compelled
to go out of the business.

Click here for larger image When the civil war began the new
order of journalism had progressed
far enough to create a general demand
for a full report of the progress of that great conflict. All the larger cities of the
country were connected by railroads and telegraph lines, the political agitation for
five years prior to the beginning of hostilities had aroused the people to a feeling
of intense interest in the struggle, the circulation of the daily papers had increased
almost to the limit of their mechanical capacity, and every condition favored a
rapid development of the business with a certainty of profitable returns. The
leading editors of the country still exerted a far-reaching influence in public
affairs, and they were consulted by the highest officers of the Government; but the
time had come when the people wanted the news, rather than individual opinions.
American genius and ingenuity responded promptly and adequately to the
demand, and from the time of the civil war the development of the newspaper has
been a marvel of science and art. The telegraph came into general use for the

transmission of news, correspondents and
artists were sent to the front with all the
armies, the men employed in Washington to
write their own views of public questions were
instructed to send to their papers only a record
of the great events then transpiring around
them, and in a month, or at most a year,
American journalism was well advanced upon
a new era of marvelous development. The time
when the opinions, the power in phraseology,
or the individuality of one man could alone
make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or
political success had passed. The press had
become an institution, journalism a profession,
and the publication of newspapers a practical
business requiring and rewarding enterprise
and sagacity.
With the sudden demand for more papers
came rapid progress in the mechanical
department of the business. Double cylinder
presses capable of printing twenty thousand
papers an hour were soon perfected, folding
machines came into general use, stereotyping
was employed to save time, labor, and wear of
type, white paper was made from wood pulp at
greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all
departments of the business was by leaps and
bounds until every demand was more than From the New York Evening
supplied and new expectations created. From Post of November 16, 1801.
that time forward invention kept pace with
every increase of circulation. As soon as one
press was found inadequate or imperfect, the manufacturers were ready to set up a
faster and better one. As competition reduced the selling price of the newspaper,
invention supplied every demand for the material of production at a reduced rate.
The impetus to circulation imparted by the civil war created a new reading public,
which rapidly grew to include every person who could read and a demand for all
the news of the world once created would not be denied. The collection of news
was quickly reduced to a system and perfected, until to-day no event of

importance occurring in any part of
the world is omitted from the daily
record of current history.
The
great
cost
of
colle
cting
news
at the
front
and
trans
mitti
ng
by
teleg
raph
full
repor
ts of
battle
s
Click here for larger image durin
g the
civil war caused certain newspapers in New York
city to enter into an arrangement to receive
reports in duplicate and share expenses. Then the
cost was further reduced by selling the news to
papers in other cities. That was the beginning of
the Associated Press, a plan of newspaper A Bookseller's
combination that ultimately made the buying and Advertisement from the
selling of news a great commercial enterprise. New York Evening Post of
Within a few years after the close of the war this Friday, December 11, 1801.
system had been developed until practically all
the daily newspapers of the country were interested in it or subscribers to the
news collected and sold. This feature of the business continued to grow until
agencies for the collection and transmission of news were established throughout

the world. Similar associations were formed in England and on the continent of
Europe, and news exchanged with the American organization. In the United States
the business was developed until newspapers of particular sections of the country
and even those of single States formed associations on the principle of mutual
benefit for the collection of full reports of all important events within the territory
where they circulated. At the present time the system has been perfected until the
great news agencies of the country receive reports of important events from every
quarter of the globe with a degree of promptness and accuracy rendered possible
only by thoroughness of organization and the constant exercise of the keenest
intelligence. The collection of all the news of the world would not be possible
under any other plan, but the American newspapers, having created a demand for
the news, were the first to devise a system of obtaining it promptly at a cost that
made possible the publication of daily papers at a profit in almost every town in
the country. Brief reports of all important events are transmitted by cable or
telegraph to a central office in New York, Washington, or Chicago, where they are
condensed or elaborated, as occasion may require, and then sent out over special
telegraph wires to papers all over the country that are subscribers to the service.
The larger papers of the country, however, do not rely upon this service alone.
They are represented by special correspondents not only in all the chief cities of
the United States, but in London. Paris, Berlin, and other news centers of the Old
World.
The development of the newspaper into a medium for recording day by day every
event of human interest was so rapid during the civil war and the stirring times
immediately thereafter that many faults of form and detail remained. The
journalism of that period was a new departure, and the men who created it had no
precedent to guide them, but all the time there was a steady and intelligent effort
to improve in all directions. The efforts of the leading men in the profession,
influenced by conditions and surroundings, resulted in the creation of what were
for a time known as schools of journalism—that is, one man set up an ideal, and
another man strived to create a journal of another character. The aim of all was to
publish the general news of the day, but political influences were still strong
enough to control editorial policy, and ultra-partisan and sectional views were
incorporated in the record of events. There were still editors of great power and
influence in politics and public affairs, and they tried to shape the current of the
new condition by the force of editorial writing. A number of editors, of both the
old and new order, for a time followed the policy of subordinating to partisan
politics all other features of the newspaper. They sought to make the press the
dominant influence in politics, and to do that they presented in their journals only
one side of public and party questions. They undertook to think and to reason for

their readers, and their partisan and
sectional views were reflected in the
news columns of their papers. So long
as party feeling ran high this style of
journalism was popular and
successful, but the newspaper, being
in the nature of an educator of the
masses, soon set the people to
thinking for themselves, and created a
demand for the news of public and
political events without the color of
individual opinion. The change from
intense partisanship to partial or
complete independence of editorial
utterance has come slowly, and is still
under way. To-day there is no great
daily newspaper in the United States
so entirely subservient to a political
An Eden Musée of 1801. From the party as to support any man or
New York Evening Post of December measure without question or protest.
23, 1801. Politicians fear this spirit of
independence, and therein lies the
secret of the great power of the press in public affairs. The most powerful and
successful journals are those that combine absolute fairness and honesty with
independence.
So-called schools of journalism, in the rapid development of the profession during
the past twenty years, have merged into one general system or plan, which is to
get all the news and publish it. Journals may be graded or classified by their
treatment of news and their judgment as to the intelligence and moral character of
the reading public.
A detailed record of the development of the mechanical part of the newspaper
business during the past thirty years would be almost a synopsis of all progress in
science and art. The newspaper printing press of to-day, which prints, cuts, folds,
and counts ninety-six thousand papers per hour, with one man to operate it, is the
mechanical wonder of the age. It is justly regarded as the greatest piece of
machinery that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. Type is no longer set by
hand in the making of a newspaper, the letters being formed from the metal direct
and cast in finished lines by machinery.

Octuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders (printing on both sides of
the paper). Capacity 96,000 4-, 6-, or 8-page papers per hour; down to 24,000
24-page papers per hour. A, paper rolls (Webb's), sometimes five miles long;
B, printing cylinders, each one carrying sixteen plates (pages); C, blanket or
impression cylinders; D, inking motion (fountain and inking rollers); F,
folding mechanism or formers (four of these); G, deliveries (four of these); H,
controlling lever; I, bar slitting, pasting, collating, and collecting devices
(between press and folders).
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph. This
picture and the succeeding one represent the most powerful and complete printing presses which have
been constructed up to date.)

Studying the perfection and magnitude of the newspaper printing press of to-day
it is difficult to realize that little more than half a century of time and invention
stand between this piece of mechanism, that seems to work with human
intelligence, and the Washington hand press, upon which the production of printed
sheets was a matter of slow and arduous labor. The great metropolitan newspapers
of to-day are printed by monster machines weighing thirty tons, composed of four
thousand separate pieces of steel, iron, brass, wood, and cloth. In the great
printing-press factory of R. Hoe & Co. eighteen months' time is required to build
one of the modern presses, and the cost of it would have more than paid for all the

newspaper printing presses in use in the United States at the beginning of the
century. These monster machines are known as quadruple presses, which means
that four complete presses have been built into one. When in operation, white
paper is fed to them automatically from rolls, and this paper, with a speed greater
than the eye can follow, is converted into the finished newspaper, printed on both
sides, cut into sheets, pasted together, folded, counted, and deposited in files of
fifty or one hundred at one side of the press. White paper is fed to the press from
two points, and finished newspapers are delivered at two places on the opposite
side. An idea of the speed with which the work is done may be gained by
watching the printed papers fall from the folder. They drop so fast that the eye, no
matter how well trained, can not count them. These presses have a capacity of
ninety-six thousand four-, six-, or eight-page papers per hour, and forty-eight
thousand ten-, twelve-, or sixteen-page papers. Their mechanism is so perfect and
so carefully adjusted that the breaking of a narrow band of tape in the folder, the
loosening of a nut, the slightest bending of a rod, friction in a bearing, or any
other derangement, no matter how slight, is instantly apparent to the skilled
machinist in charge.

Sextuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders (with color attachment
for printing three additional colors on outside pages). It prints per hour
48,000 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-page papers, 36,000 16 page papers, or 24,000 14-,
16-, 20-, or 24-page papers—all delivered folded, pasted, and counted. Also
magazines with pages half the size of the newspaper pages, one half the pages

printed in four colors and the other half in one color, at the rate of 48,000 of 8,
12, 16, 20, or 24 pages, and 24,000 of 28, 32, 40, or 48 pages, delivered folded
to page size, cut open at the heads, bound with wire staples, and counted.
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph.)

The white paper used in making the newspapers of to-day is manufactured from
wood pulp and is put up in long rolls, wound about an iron cylinder that can be
adjusted in place at one end of the press. These rolls contain from two to four
miles of paper, and weigh from eight hundred to twelve hundred pounds each. As
soon as one roll is used up another is lifted into place, the loose ends of the two
are pasted together, and, after a stop of less than two minutes, the great press is
again belching forth finished newspapers at the rate of sixteen hundred a minute,
or two hundred and sixty-six each second.
Almost every invention and device of recent years in connection with the use of
electricity is in some way utilized in the production and distribution of the daily
newspapers. The evolution of journalism having finally established the fact that
the chief function of the daily newspaper is to publish the news of the world, the
problem of the business is how to obtain the news surely, accurately, and
promptly. The ocean cable has taken the place of the sailing vessel, the trained
correspondent has succeeded the occasional contributor, the electric telegraph and
telephone have entirely superseded the mail in the transmission of domestic news,
and every event of human interest throughout the civilized world is placed before
millions of readers within a few hours of its actual occurrence.
The collection of news is not restricted by any question of the cost of obtaining it.
Fifty years ago it was considered a remarkable feat for one newspaper to obtain
information of an important event in advance of competitors. To-day it is a matter
of comment if any newspaper fails to publish all the news desired by its readers.
If a war is fought on any part of the earth there are reporters on the firing line, and
no expense is spared in collecting and transmitting by the quickest method
available full reports of any event of world-wide importance. To-day the hiring of
special trains, the stringing of a special line of telegraph wire, the charter of a
ship, the fitting out of an exploring expedition, or any other great enterprise in the
way of collecting information for the newspapers of the United States, is so much
a part of the everyday business of journalism that such things are accepted as a
matter of course, or cause no more than a passing comment.
Half a century ago the result of a national convention or election was not known
all over the country for weeks afterward. In the case of a national convention to-
day, telegraph wires lead from the convention hall into the offices of all the

newspapers in the larger cities. An operator sits near the platform of the presiding
officer, and with a muffled key he sends over the wire a full report of the
proceedings, with a description of every incident of interest. At the other end of
the line is an operator at a typecasting machine receiving the report and putting it
into lines as fast as received. When a candidate for President has been nominated,
extra editions of the daily papers are selling on the streets of cities a thousand
miles away almost before the applause for the winning man has died out in the
convention hall. The people of every city and town in the United States where a
newspaper is published would feel themselves cheated of their rights if they failed
to receive news of the result of an election by midnight of the day on which the
ballots were cast.
In enterprise and originality the journalism of America leads the world at the end
of the nineteenth century. As a profession, it commands, with alluring prospects of
fame and fortune, the services of men of genius and learning. Those who enter it
from choice succeed or fail quickly. It is a life of activity, a work where energy
and intelligence are essential qualifications, and honor and honesty are certain of
reward. There is no enduring place in the profession for hypocrisy, indolence, or
mediocrity.

VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART.
By GEORGES PERROT.

Georges Perrot is one of the leading art writers and teachers of France. Born
in 1832, not far from Paris, he was graduated from the École Normale about
1855, and was then for three years at the French School at Athens. From his
return to the present day he has occupied, with honor and distinction, many
positions in the world of letters. At present he is a member of the Institut, an
officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a professor à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris,
and the director of the École Normale Supérieure. He is best known to
scholars outside of France by the magnificent work on the History of Art in
Antiquity, which he is writing, assisted by Charles Chipiez, architecte du
gouvernement, and of which seven superb quartos have already appeared.
(Hachette et Cie.) In 1891, by a decree of the Minister of Public Instruction,
the study of the history of the fine arts was introduced into a section of the
studies pursued at the lycées. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes,
July 15, 1899, Perrot pleads for an increase of the time assigned to the study
and for its introduction into other parts of the curriculum.
I have translated those pages of the article which are of general interest as a
contribution to a subject which is deservedly attracting the attention of
American institutions of learning.
D. Cady Eaton.

Written and spoken language, the language of which the signs are words, is not
the only language which man uses to convey his ideas. There is also the language
of forms, which, with no less clearness and force, conveys the conceptions of the
intellect and the sentiments of the heart. We study the history and the literature of
bygone people for the purpose of acquiring a better knowledge of ourselves, and
this knowledge is secured by becoming conscious of the different states of mind,
to use a modern expression, through which our ancestors have passed. Even the
most elementary and the most remote of these successive conditions are,
unconsciously perhaps, represented in the depths of our being by beliefs and
customs for which the present order and progress of civilization can not account.
[16]

Not to go back to the Quaternary period or to the cave dwellers, there are many of
these mental ideas or conditions which would remain hidden from the inquiry of
the historian if he were limited to written testimony. One example may suffice:
the discoveries of Schliemann, at Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns have rescued from
oblivion a primitive Greece of which the Greeks themselves had preserved but a
faint remembrance. Thus has been given to the Homeric epoch a background of
many centuries. Now this Greece, contemporary of the Thutmoses and the
Ramses of Egypt, anterior to not only Grecian history but even to Grecian
tradition, could not write, but could work and use stone; could hew wood and
fashion it for carpentry; could mold and bake clay; could melt and hammer lead,
bronze, gold, and silver; and could carve ivory. Every bit of material fashioned by
the instruments of this period has the value of an authentic document. How
society was constituted, the life that was led, what notions were held of the
hereafter—all these things are revealed by the marks the hands of man have left
upon everything he touched. The colossal walls of Tiryns, the majestic funeral
cupolas of Mycenæ, the divisions of the royal abodes of which the outlines can
still be traced on the surface of the soil, and the arrangement of the sepulchres
hidden beneath it all testify. So, too, the weapons, the instruments, the vases, and
the jewels which have been found scattered about amid the ruins of the buildings
or buried in the tombs. Thanks to all these monuments, we are beginning to
recognize in a shadow which year by year glows with a brighter light the features
which characterized the world of Achæan heroes of which the image, transformed
by oral tradition and singularly enlarged by power of invention, is reflected in the
Iliad and the Odyssey.
From these obscure and remote ages let us transport ourselves to the Greece of
Pisistratus, of Pericles, and of Alexander. Instructors of youth tell of the losses
which have been made, and of how small a part of the literary work of Greek
genius has escaped the great shipwreck of antiquity. Should they not also indicate
where precious supplements of information may be found to fill the voids of
written tradition? There are many variations of important myths, hardly
mentioned in passing by obscure epitomizers of the lower centuries, which have
furnished to ceramic artists subjects for pictures which make us acquainted with
personages and with episodes of which writers have hardly left a trace. But even
if we had the works of the cyclic poets, all of which have perished; if we had the
lyric poets, of whom only Pindar has survived, and Bacchylides whose fragments
are to-day the joy of Hellenists; if we had the whole of tragedy, of which we have
but the remnants; if we had all of that comedy which is represented by
Aristophanes alone; if we had all of the more ancient comedy, all of the middle
period and all of the new, with Menander who since the Renaissance is the regret

of all critics of fine apprehension—all this poetry could not exhaust the multiple
fecundity and the prodigious richness of the imagination which created it. If
malevolent Fortune had decreed the destruction of every bit of Greek plastic art
we should have been condemned to perpetual ignorance of many aspects and
methods of the Greek soul. Is there anything in literature worth the little clay
figures of Tanagra in making clear how the Greeks apprehended and enjoyed
female beauty: how they loved it not only in the noble and serious types of a
Pallas or an Aphrodite, but even as presented by the humble inhabitants of little
villages in the graceful abandon of their everyday life and in the liberty of their
most ordinary attitudes? If we base an opinion of the religion of the Greeks only
upon the epithets used by poets in defining the gods and upon actions they
attributed to them, we run the risk of judging wrongly. In contemplating their
images we obtain clearer notions of the ideas associated with each divine type.
Alas! we do not possess the great works of Phidias which according to men of
authority made men more religious—the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of
Olympia. But even in the reduced copies of these two masterpieces which have
reached down to our time we can divine how the master expressed in the one the
idea of calm and luminous intelligence and of supreme wisdom, and in the other
the idea of that sovereign force in repose and of that omnipotence, tempered by
goodness, which were conceived to exist in the sovereign of the universe, the
father of gods and men.
In subsequent paragraphs Perrot imagines the Greek statues of the Louvre thus
addressing a classical student:
"Young man, you who are studying Greece in Homer and Plato, in Sophocles and
Herodotus, do not pass us by so quickly. We also belong to that Greece which you
discern and which you seek in their writings, of which not without difficulty you
decipher the prose and the verse. To understand and to love us, to read in our
features the thoughts of which we are the expression, to seize in the modeling of
our flesh and in the pure outline of our limbs the secret of the genius which
created us, no grammar nor dictionary is needed; only apply yourself to the
education of your eye. In this exercise, in this apprenticeship, you will find a
pleasure which will become more and more keen as you become more capable of
perceiving rapidly the finest gradations. If you aspire to become an authorized
interpreter of Greek genius, do not fear that you may be losing time. When, by
long and affectionate intercourse, you shall have sufficiently entered into our
intimacy to be able at any given hour to evoke in your spirit, as clearly as if we
stood before you, a vision of the forms which shall have become dear to you, then
the images which shall be awakened in your memories when you read the poets
will be akin to those which the same recitals and the same epithets suggested to

the Greeks who saw us born. To them you will be drawn by similarity of
impression. You will be nearer to them, nearer to thinking and feeling after their
fashion, at least by moments, than the most subtle grammarian or the most learned
Hellenist who never has seen us."
Turning from Greece to Italy, Perrot derives a no less striking lesson from the
statues of Roman emperors:
"Is there a lesson, though given by the most learned professor, that could cause to
live before us all the life of the Rome of the Cæsars as do these effigies? In the
long succession of portraits which embrace three centuries of history the
differences of times and of men are contrasted more keenly and more vividly than
in the recitals of ancient authors or in the dissertations of modern erudites.
Augustus and Tiberius, Constantine and Theodosius, all bore the same title
—'imperator'; all were called consuls, Cæsars, Augusti, patres patriæ, etc.
Nevertheless, from the first to the fourth centuries the supreme power was greatly
modified. Volumes have been written to explain the change, but there is nothing
that makes it so clear as the comparison of the images of these princes. Augustus,
in perhaps the most beautiful of all his statues, called de Prima Porta, has his
head, arms, legs, and feet bare. Over the soldier's short tunic he wears a cuirass,
and over it is thrown the military mantle of command. He is represented as
supreme chief haranguing his troops. Another statue may represent him as a
simple citizen, clothed with the toga and holding in his hand the manuscript of the
discourse he proposes reading to the senate. The statues still show forth the
Roman Republic, at least the customs and the style of it. Most vividly is the spirit
and also the deception of the system perceived which, while investing a single
individual with a power almost limitless, affects for two centuries a preservation
of ancient liberties. Turn from these to an image of one of the successors of
Diocletian, one who preferred to reside in Constantinople, the new capital of the
empire. Do not seek his image in one of the ceremonial statues where, by force of
routine, the sculptor may perchance have preserved classic rules; but in
monuments of another order, where the artist kept closer to reality, in miniatures
adorning manuscripts, in mosaics, in ivory diptychs, etc. There you will find
figures which have nothing left of the simplicity and nobility which Rome
borrowed from Greece, but figures which in some particulars recall the old art of
Asia, and in others already announce the art of the middle ages. The head is
encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are entirely hidden by clinging
draperies which are very long and very narrow. The materials which form this
species of case are decorated from top to bottom with rich embroideries in the
shape of medallions, flowers, animals, and even persons. There is no more

deception; we are no longer in Rome; fictions so long preserved have finally
disappeared; the empire has turned into an Oriental despotism.
"Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees are there which
furnish the very best commentaries of history? The heads of all the Cæsars, even
those of Claudius, the accidental scholar, and of Caligula, the wicked and witty
fool, are aristocratic. They show the nobility and the pride of race. You recognize
in them the descendants of those grand patrician families which at first seemed to
hold exclusively the right to give masters to the Romans. With Vespasian, scion of
a middle-class family pushing its way into second-class public positions, the
advent of a new order is evident. Vespasian has the round and smooth, double-
chinned face of the chief clerk of a commercial or banking establishment. Trajan
has the features of a soldier who has probably pushed his way to the front from
the ranks. Hadrian, who turns his head to hear the better, whose bright eyes gleam
even in the marble, whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of speech, shows
the features of a learned and intelligent scholar. Marcus Aurelius, with his
bristling hair and beard, would be taken for a Greek philosopher. In Caracalla's
looks there is derangement. His eye betrays that murderous and fantastic frenzy
which seized more than one emperor, especially of those who from early youth
had been exposed to the temptations of absolute power.[17]
"Not to personages alone do pictured monuments give life. The same character of
sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the surroundings of the picture, to
all the theater where these actors played their parts. Of this truth no one of our
teachers, when I was a collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an
illustration in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I
can almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was really
convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had actually existed. I
certainly did not know how or where to place them in space, what idea to have of
their situation, or of the outlines made by the ridges of their walls, their houses,
and their temples. All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between
heaven and earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.
"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color and splendor of
the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult is it to know and understand
France of the middle ages when condemned to study it in its literary work alone!
The literature of the period is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The
French of the day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the
age is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the learned, of
philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But to follow them in the
subtle analyses and in the excessive complications of symbolism, in which they

delight, requires mental efforts which are made all the more laborious by the
artificial character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew itself
at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how such works, in spite of
their value to erudition, can be called to take part in the education of the young. It
is for this reason that lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been
made in the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language,
for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and Joinville. But
the student can only read these in translations, or in those adaptations which so
modernize the language as to leave but a little of its original flavor, and which
therefore make but an imperfect contact between the original work and the mind
of the reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original text: can
its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome monotone of its flowing
dissonances, give him emotions which have the vivacity of those which a page of
Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to those who know even a modicum of Latin?
Can they have the power to excite the imagination in the same degree as any
strong and concise sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of
the Roman poet?
"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the middle ages give
the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are often grand, but the expression
is always weak and dragging. On the other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are
not less beautiful after their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of
another fashion, but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less
clearly the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The particular
character of Christian faith is shown with singular clearness in their majesty, in
the elevation of their vaults, in the half lights which flood them, and in the
thousands of figures which populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the
sculptor co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has occupied
no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes represented on the
pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great gods of Greece and the local
myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous masters, called to decorate the
cathedrals of the middle ages, have placed impressive statues on the sides and in
the voussoirs of the portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on
the top of the pinnacles which throng the roof—in fact, everywhere where space
is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by doctrine and
tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and angels, prophets and
apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes suggested by Holy Writ or by local
and popular legends. Among these images there are many at Bourges, Chartres,
Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance,
of chaste and haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary

has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it would be
difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the most boasted statues
of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching Christ of the west portal of
Amiens, to which the popular surname has been attached of le Beau Dieu
d'Amiens.
"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did not, as did
Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and reproduction of the nude. It denied
itself this attraction. All figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine
masses with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated with
precision. The principal interest and the rare originality, however, of this sculpture
is that it is perhaps the most expressive that has ever existed. This expressiveness
appears in the general effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but
especially in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the features
of the face.
"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old and of the
New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the miracles of saints and their
infinite charity—these things which the middle ages failed to put into clear and
intelligible words are fully rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large
and firm. Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the
material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is to the literary
work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens statue with the portraits
the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to draw of the Son of God. 'What can be
more flat than these poor verses, which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century?
The authors had good intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but
they were betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the
thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar of their art,
expressed all they felt, and have left us the most divine images of Jesus Christ in
existence.'[18]
"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has not measured
the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of artists who practice it, but
of all men of all conditions—of princes, nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of
most humble occupations. No one in any rank is without a passionate love for
plastic beauty. This love was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because
all her sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her
dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her political
liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time, it constituted the
intensity of her life which was exhausted and renewed again in the ardor with
which she pursued her ideal and in her endeavors to realize it under all its aspects.

Let him who would wish to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a
while in Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known city
which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects, its sculptors, its
painters, some of whom, though they only worked for their native city, were not
far from manifesting genius.[19]
"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich literature can not alone
give an idea of the situation occupied by Louis XIV in Europe when he was
admired, imitated, or rather servilely copied, as pre-eminently the type of the
modern king even by those who hated him the most. After two centuries, have we
not seen his wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis
II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined himself in
building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination. Louis XIV, when dying,
may have accused himself of having indulged too great a love for building; but
his edifices, with their majestic grandeur and the opulence of their decoration,
gave that royal life a frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all
Europe experienced when in the presence of le Roi Soleil. In order to recognize
and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the impression felt by all
contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the apartments of the palace, the
terraces, and the alleys of the park must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon
this historic figure a light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the
result of learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé, or
all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.
"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an incomplete
idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This century, to which Voltaire
gave the note, seems to have had no sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of
André Chenier everything called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The
imagination, however, did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed,
it withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it gives evidence
of invention and of light and spontaneous grace. Architects adopt plans of happy
arrangement. They employ forms of rare elegance both in the elements of
construction and in the ornaments which decorate them. Such sculptors as
Capperi and Houdon give to portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the
terra cottas of Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay
modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher spread
before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard conjure dreams of
ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign eternal youth and eternal
desire. The politics of our kings and of our ministers of the period is but a
succession of faults and weaknesses. The best concerted plans come to naught.
The most brilliant victory produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so

many reverses, still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and
to her artists."
Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference to those
notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no Froissart, no Villehardouin,
but the history of whose civilization may be traced in monuments along the Rhine
and the Danube, the Ems and the Elbe. In the last part of the article Perrot
considers the best methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting
and valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction has
already been established, it is evident that there must first be a conviction of the
value and necessity of such studies and the determination to have them started.
Methods are not difficult to devise, and will vary with national and individual
tastes. That American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have
objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into their curricula is
easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by the New England mind as an
emanation of the devil, and the New England mind controlled American colleges.
Why the repugnance continues to exist is harder to understand. It may subsist
from ignorance, from prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still
regard all information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may still
be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words are the only vehicles
of instruction, and that the arts are useless and idle vanities, while ignorance may
be awaiting demonstration which will have to be strong and conclusive to awake
it from self-satisfied apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and
accelerate the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by the
American university!

HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED.
By T. B. WILLSON, M. A.
Almost everybody knows that observatories are the places from which standard
time is sent out and corrected daily or hourly. But comparatively few have more
than the vaguest idea of the means used at the observatories for obtaining it.
Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories obtain the correct
time from the sun. When the average man wishes to give his watch the highest
praise he says, "It regulates the sun," not being aware that a watch which would
keep with the sun around the year would have to be nearly as bad as Sam Weller's.
The farmer may safely decide when to go in to dinner by the sun, but if the
mariner was as confident that the sun marked always the correct time as the
farmer is he would be sure to be at times two or three hundred miles from where
he thought he was. In other words, the sun—that is, a sundial—is only correct on
a few days in each year, and during the intervening times gets as far as a whole
quarter hour fast or slow.
These variations of the sun from uniform time caused no end of trouble between
the astronomers and the fine clockmakers before it was discovered that sun time is
subject to such irregularities. The better the clock, the worse it often seemed to
go.
But as the variations in sun time are now accurately known, correct time might be
obtained from the sun by making proper allowance, were it not for the difficulty
of observing its position, with sufficient exactness. The large disk of the sun can
not be located so perfectly as can the single point which a star makes. For this
reason astronomers depend almost wholly upon the stars for obtaining accurate
time. It is the method of doing this which we propose to describe.
There are several hundred stars whose positions have been established with the
greatest accuracy by the most careful observations at a number of the principal
observatories of the world. If a star's exact position is known, it can readily be
calculated when it will pass the meridian of any given place—that is, the instant it
will cross a north-and-south line through the place. The data regarding these stars
are all published in the nautical almanacs, which are got out by several different
observatories for the use of navigators and all others who have uses for them.
These stars are known as "clock stars."

Every observatory is provided with at least one, or, better, several clocks that are
very accurate indeed. Every appliance and precaution which science can suggest
is resorted to to make these clocks accurate. The workmanship is, of course, very
fine. What is known as the "retaining click" prevents their losing a single beat
while being wound. The small variations in the length of the pendulum which
changes of temperature would cause are offset by compensation. The rise of the
mercury in the pendulum bob, if the weather grows warmer, shortens the
pendulum precisely as much as the expansion of its rod lengthens it, and
conversely if it becomes colder. Such clocks, too, are set on stone piers built up
from below the surface of the ground and wholly independent of the building
itself. Often the clocks are made with air-tight cases, and sometimes are placed in
tightly closed chambers, only to be entered when absolutely necessary. Some fine
clocks even have appliances for offsetting barometric changes, but these affect
such clocks less than other influences or imperfections which can not be
accounted for, and thus they are seldom provided against.
The astronomer's principal clock—the one he uses in all his calculations—marks
what is known as sidereal, not ordinary, time. The revolution of the earth in its
orbit sets the sun back in its place in the heavens at the rate of about four minutes
a day, or one whole day in a year, so that this clock, indicating star time, gains this
amount and is only with ordinary clocks once a year. After it is once adjusted, no
attempt is made to regulate it exactly, as the astronomer would better calculate its
differences than disturb its regulation, always provided its rate is very uniform
and accurately known.
One or more of the other clocks, however, are made to show ordinary time, and
corrected by observations taken every few days. It is from this clock that the
standard time is sent out.
It is possible to connect any of these clocks telegraphically with an instrument in
the observatory, known as a chronograph. It consists of a cylinder with a sheet of
paper around it, on which rests a pen connected with the telegraphic instrument
which follows the beats of the clock. The cylinder is turned slowly by clockwork,
and the pen, carried slowly along by a screw, describes a spiral on the paper with
jogs or teeth in it about a quarter of an inch apart, caused by the beats of the
clock. In this way the astronomer secures a visible record of the beating of his
clock, or rather of the movements of his telegraphic recorder. Thus, if he has
another key on the same circuit with the clock, connected with his chronograph
recorder, and should touch it between the beats of his clock, it would put in an
extra jog or tooth on his record, and it will show, what he could not have told in
any other way, in just what part of the second he touched this key, whether in the

first or last part of the second, and precisely how far from either end—that is, he
can determine fractions of a second with great nicety.

A Short Section from the Paper Band of the Chronograph Cylinder,
showing Tracings of Pen connected with Clocks: 1, seconds of sidereal
clock; 2, both sidereal and common clocks; 3-10, the tracings of the mean-
time clock fall steadily behind the other; 11, sidereal only; 12, connected with
observer's key. The extra teeth show when a star passed each of the five
spider lines. At the extreme right is a "rattle," put in to show where the
observation is on the cylinder.
As a matter of fact, he has such a key at the telescope which he uses to make his
observations in taking time, so that when he wishes to record the precise instant in
which anything takes place which he is viewing through his telescope he has but
to press the key in his hand and an extra tooth will be put into the record which
the clock is making, somewhere among the regular teeth put in by the beating of
the clock. Later, when he takes out the sheet he can see just where the tooth came,
and so at what instant it was. If, now, he knows exactly what the instant was
according to the true time as given in his almanacs—that is, what his clock ought
to have shown at that instant—he can tell how nearly right his clock is. Once

knowing how this clock is, it is a simple calculation to find how the clock which
sends the signals is running, and to alter it if needed in a manner we shall describe
later.
The observations the astronomer makes use of to determine these instants of time
are upon the "clock stars." He uses a rather small telescope, known as a transit. It
is placed with the nicest accuracy in a north-and-south line. It can turn over
vertically, but can not move sideways out of its line. Its alignment is kept perfect
by occasionally sighting some small mark a few rods from the observatory, either
north or south.
If the astronomer points this transit, say, halfway up the southern heavens and
sees a star pass across the center of its field he knows that that instant gives, as it
were, the "noon mark" of that star. If it is one of the "clock stars," he knows by his
tables what that instant of time is—should be—by his clock.
We have seen what his means are of comparing his clock and his observations.
But observe, now, how much pains he takes to get the most exact observations.
To begin with, he must have calculated to a nicety his location. The director of an
observatory always knows where he is located in a sense that few other men do.
The accuracy of a large part of his observations of any kind depends on his first
having determined the latitude and longitude of his observatory within a very few
feet. Then the data given by his tables are all modified, and adapted to conform to
his locality.
There are stretched across in the eyepiece of his transit five spider lines. The
central one is on the central line of the field of his instrument. In observing a star
for time the astronomer watches it as it is carried by the rotation of the earth past
each of these spider lines, and presses his key—that is, makes a record—as it
crosses each line. Taking the average of these five observations, he makes the
possible error very small. But, in addition to this, he also usually makes
observations on at least four clock stars, which gives him twenty observations to
average up and determine by. As he inspects the record of these observations
which has gone upon the chronograph sheet along with the clock beats he is able
to determine, after proper calculations, how his clock stands.
Such observations are made every three or four evenings, and thus the clocks are
not given time to get far out of the way. It is not usual for a good clock to show a
variation of more than half a second. If the astronomer finds that his clock which
is sending the time is running a fraction of a second slow, he goes to it and lays on
the top of the pendulum bob a minute clipping of metal, which is equivalent to

shortening the pendulum an infinitesimal amount. When he takes his next
observation he discovers how his clock has been affected, and again treats it
accordingly. Thus the time that is sent out automatically by the clock is kept
always correct within a small fraction of a second. Those who receive the time
sometimes arrange electro-magnets near the pendulums of their clocks, which act
with the beats of the observatory clock, and their attraction is enough to hold or
accelerate the pendulums as needed to make them synchronize with the
observatory clock.
It will be seen that the means of obtaining exact time involve a very considerable
outlay, and that the services of highly trained men are needed. The public is thus
greatly indebted to the railroads, telephone companies, and other corporations
which usually bear the expense of securing standard time. It is probable, however,
that from motives of scientific pride no observatory would undertake to charge for
this anything like what would be exacted for such rare service in any department
of the commercial world.
It is worth while to note that even with such perfect clocks and favorable
conditions it is still impossible to secure perfect timekeeping. Add to this the fact
that it is not usual for those who send out the time, after it has been received from
the observatory, to pay much heed to variations, even of several seconds, in their
master clocks, and we see why it is a disheartening task to keep the best watch as
near the second as the owner would fain have it. In the first place, the watch could
hardly be made to keep such time if kept still in an unchanging temperature;
secondly, it is still less capable of it when subjected to the jolting and changes of
temperature it encounters when carried; and, thirdly, the means of obtaining time
with sufficient exactitude are rarely available to the general public.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN FOREIGN
COUNTRIES.
By W. E. DE RIEMER, M. A.
The recent death, at the closing of the year 1898, of the lamented Senator Justin S.
Morrill, who, as being the author of the Land-Grant College Act, is justly styled
the father of agricultural education in the United States, seems to suggest the
desirability of taking a survey of agricultural education as it at present exists in
other countries than our own.
Since the pursuit of agriculture is one which concerns more of the people of our
globe than any other pursuit, the necessity for scientific training for agriculturists
becomes more and more evident to educated people. It is true that the cultivators
of the soil do not generally admit the need of special schooling. At the beginning
of this century very few educators, even, thought so. It was supposed that tilling
the soil had nothing to do with schools, and that science had no connection with
plowing and sowing. Agricultural lectureships were established early in the
eighteenth century in several European universities, but they were regarded as
curiosities of the age—superfluities of culture, rather than aids to the cultivator.
Farmers themselves were supposed to be the only competent teachers of
agriculture, and experience the only possible guide. But it has become apparent
that no farmer's experience is broad enough to be adapted to all soils and climates.
The successful farmer has come to regard the land which he owns as a wonderful
machine which, if rightly managed, will turn out the most costly and perfect
product; but which, if neglected or ignorantly handled, will disappoint his high
hopes and possibly impoverish its owner. The development of commerce which
so easily introduces the wheat and potatoes and other products of our country into
competition with the grain produced in a distant land has taught the producers of
this generation, and especially the citizen of European countries, that the farmer
who can produce the largest crop of grain from the fewest acres, at the lowest
price for the best cereal or vegetable, is the only successful cultivator. The nation
which succeeds best in this direction with all its soil products is the one which is
sure to have the "balance of trade" always in its favor.
The United States awoke to this idea when, in 1862, Congress passed the Land-
Grant College Act, allotting Government lands in every State to aid in founding
agricultural colleges. The country became more profoundly moved by this idea

when, in 1887, Congress passed the Hatch Act, granting annually to each State the
sum of fifteen thousand dollars to organize and perpetuate agricultural experiment
stations, and still further when it organized a Department of Experiment Stations
as an integral part of the Department of Agriculture.
But several of the countries of Europe have anticipated our action in behalf of
agricultural education by a quarter of a century. Germany and France and little
Switzerland realized fifty years ago that agriculture in its various departments
must be pursued with the aid of the latest science combined with the broadest
experience. These countries have not waited for the laborer to perfect himself in
experience—an impossible attainment—but they have opened schools of every
possible grade, arranged courses of lectures by the best educated scientists, made
elementary agriculture a compulsory subject in the curricula of the common
schools, sent out traveling instructors to confer with and advise and give courses
of lectures to the older farmers, made it possible—even compulsory—that young
people should attend technical schools at odd hours of the day or evening, and
even tempted them to pass a serious examination in their respective studies by the
offer of a valuable prize as the reward of success. It is said that Charles Dickens
once made a speech at an agricultural dinner in which he somewhat derisively
said that "the field it paid the farmer best to cultivate was the one within the ring
fence of his own skull." Dickens was correct. The farmer needs scientific
education. The best civilized and progressive nations of to-day are admitting the
utterance of Dickens to be a serious truth. Vast sums of money are appropriated
by European governments to prevent their agricultural classes from continuing in
or subsiding into ignorance of their art. Even the peasants of Russia, notably in
the province of Ekaterinoslav, by the generous appliances for special agricultural
education made by the Ministry of Agriculture and State Domains, united with the
efforts of the Ministry of Public Instruction, are made to feel that without expert
teaching a man can not succeed even in the raising of fowls or of bees, the culture
of silkworms, the making of wine, or the manuring of his fields. Consul
Heenan[20] says that in the province named above the Government annually rents
thirty-two experiment fields, each eight acres in extent, distributed four in each
district, and each one located in the midst of peasant fields. Each of these fields is
placed in charge of some scientifically educated public-school teacher, who is
paid twenty-five dollars per year for his direction, and receives, besides, all the
harvest produced. The teacher uses the native tools and seeds, and hires neighbor
peasants to assist in demonstrating that with care in plowing, cleaning of seed,
cultivating, and reaping, his field will produce larger crops than his slovenly or
ignorant neighbor. The object lesson has its certain result. The peasants are

gradually adopting the four-field culture system—viz., fallow, winter crops,
pastures, and summer crops.
Besides these, Russia sustains 68 agricultural schools, containing 3,157 pupils, at
a cost of $403,500, of which sum the Government pays $277,500, and the local
zemstovs (societies) or the school founders pay $136,000.
In France the eminent scientist Lavoisier, at the close of the last century,
advocated the founding of a national school for the teaching of agricultural
science. His plan for government initiation was not realized, but in 1822 Matthieu
de Dombasle founded, near Nancy, the first true agricultural school. In 1829 and
1830 the schools at Grignon and Grandjouan were founded by August Bella and
Riefell respectively. Now France boasts of one of the most perfect systems of
agricultural education of any country of the world. Under the joint direction of her
Ministers of Agriculture and of Public Instruction, France plans to cover every
phase of education from the simplest forms of object lessons taught by law in all
her primary schools to the crowning National Institute of Agriculture at Paris. The
facts of science, united with the soundest experience, are demonstrated to the
farmer by lectures and experimentation; the future agriculturists of the country are
educated in the certainties of scientific research at graded schools, ranging from
elementary to university degrees, and every milkmaid is taught the necessity of
promptness, cleanliness, and system in the care of milch cows and in the disposal
of their milk.
The former able Director-General of French Agriculture, Monsieur Tisserand,
says: "The aim and object of France has been not only to give to children and
young people the means of acquiring knowledge, but also to establish means for
interesting old cultivators. In this century of extreme competition we must admit
that the agriculturist can only thrive if, in working the soil, he adopts scientific
methods. Old routine is no longer sufficient in this branch, as it is proved to be
insufficient in manufacture." In carrying out her enlightened policy, instruction
was given in 1893[21] to 3,600 pupil teachers. Thirty agricultural laboratories
throughout the country furnish analyses of soils and manures for the help of
cultivators, and 3,362 trial fields are established where farmers can profit by
experiments suitable to their own districts. The special farm schools number
sixteen; practical schools of agriculture, thirty-nine; national schools of
agriculture and horticulture, six; three veterinary schools; and one each, bearing
the name of National Agronomic Institute, is a shepherd school, a cheese, and a
silkworm school. In the universities are no less than 160 departments and chairs
of agriculture for students of profoundest research. All this costs the departments
alone over 4,504,050 francs per annum.

In Prussian Germany no less activity is displayed or energy put forth to make the
farmer's occupation one of financial profit and scientific status. Statistics for 1897
are at hand in the report of the Prussian Minister of Agriculture. The German
system is based on the theory that schools and colleges are the only places where
theoretical agriculture can be properly taught. Few of the higher agricultural
schools first established were exclusively such. A liberal education could be
obtained at most of them without touching the subject of agriculture. Later
educators have developed a system which begins by fostering a love for Nature in
the minds of the pupils in the kindergarten, and patiently develops that love
through all the dozen or more grades of schools until it culminates in the
polytechnic school or the degree granted by the university.
Germany is indebted to the learned Professor Thaer for the establishment of its
first agricultural school at Möglin in 1807. But more than all is she, in common
with all the world, indebted to the famous chemist Baron von Liebig, who, in
1840, announced the scientific truth which underlies all arguments for agricultural
education—viz., that no matter how impoverished a soil is naturally, or has
become by excessive cropping, its fertility may be restored, maintained, and even
increased by providing it with the mineral and organic matter which it lacks.
Prussian agricultural affairs are under the supervision of the Ministry of
Agriculture, Domains, and Forests. The state maintains three grades of schools—
higher, middle, and lower—as in other European countries. The most celebrated
are the Royal Agricultural High Schools at Berlin and Popplesdorf, two royal
academies of forestry, and the university courses in agriculture at Halle,
Göttingen, Königsberg, Leipsic, Giessen, and Jena. The state expends something
like two hundred thousand dollars annually on agricultural education. In Germany
agricultural education has so broadened out as to include training in every
technical part of a farmer's work—culture of forests, fruits, flowers, and vines;
schools to teach wine, cider, and beer making, machine repairing, engine running,
barn construction, and surveying; knowledge of poultry, bees, and silkworm
raising; domestic economy, sewing, and accounts for farm women—all in
addition to the long scientific courses of study and years of practical work on an
established farm. Verily, the country that excels Germany in training agriculturists
must be par excellence in its methods.
A special feature of agricultural teaching is the traveling professor
(Wanderlehrer). United States Consul Monaghan enthusiastically describes him:
"These teachers, supported partly by the state and by agricultural unions, go from
place to place ... and lecture on agricultural and horticultural subjects. Their
purpose is to lift up and ennoble agricultural life; to afford the farmer the

knowledge gleaned by science since he left the school; to impart to him the best
methods of selecting soils, fertilizers, cattle, trees, etc.; to teach him how to use
his lands to best advantage, to graft, to breed in; to get the best, quickest, and
most profitable results. These teachers are skilled scientists, practical workers, not
theorists, ... perfectly familiar with the wants and needs of their districts. Armed
with this knowledge, the teacher's usefulness is certain and unlimited. When he
speaks his voice is that of one in authority, it is heeded.... He is a walking
encyclopædia of knowledge, especially of knowledge pertaining to the woods,
hills, farms, and fields."
Austria has, like Germany, a system of agricultural and forestry schools in three
grades—viz., superior, middle, and lower. Its oldest school of superior grade was
established in 1799 at Krumman.[22] Similar schools existed later at Grätz, Trieste,
Lemberg, Trutsch, and Altenburg. The latter is especially complete in every
appliance for instruction, and well patronized. The middle schools provide two-
year courses of study and practice, and are located at Grossan, Kreutz, Dublany,
and other points, while the lower schools incline less to study and more to lectures
and farm practice. They are located in the provinces of Bohemia, Styria, Galicia,
and Carinthia.
Forestry schools of various grades exist at Mariabrunn, Wissewasser, Aussen,
Pibram, Windschact, and Nagny; of these, Mariabrunn is especially deserving of
mention for its thorough course and complete equipment.
Switzerland was the home of the philanthropist and educator Fellenburg. His
school, established at Hopyl in 1806, was a philanthropy in aid of the peasantry,
concerning whom he said that possessing nothing but bodies and minds, the
cultivation of these was the only antidote for their poverty. At least three thousand
pupils received their education in agriculture here. The Federal Polytechnic
School at Zurich is the nation's pride. Out of six courses of superior training
which it provides for its one thousand students, forestry and agriculture count as
two. Five universities and numerous special schools furnish aid to agricultural
education.
The little kingdoms of Belgium and Holland are following hard upon the tracks of
their powerful neighbors. In Belgium may be found superior institutions of
agriculture, horticulture, veterinary science, and forestry at Gembloux, Vilvorde,
Cureghem, and Bouillon respectively.
In Holland, whose people robbed the sea to obtain lands for farms and homes,
about £71,500 were expended by the state on its agricultural department in 1897.
Its first school, established by a communal society at Hären in 1842, was

discontinued. The state in 1876 adopted the school of agriculture which has been
established at Wageningen as its own, and this institution can fairly lay claim to
equality with any in Europe. Government also supports the State Veterinary
College at Utrecht, and subsidizes a school of forestry and several dairy schools.
Agricultural teaching in primary schools has not yet proved a success.
Italy has not made such progress in agricultural education as her northern
neighbors, yet she is not indifferent to the requirements of the times. She has a
most unique scheme for Government superintendence of agricultural matters. All
comes under the purview of a general Director of Agriculture, assisted by a
Council for Agricultural Instruction, which latter was established by royal decree
in 1885, and reorganized in 1887. Four divisions of the department exist—
namely, (1) agriculture proper, (2) zoötechny, (3) forestry, and (4) agricultural
hydraulics. Statistics are not easily procured, but recent catalogues show that the
two Royal Superior Schools of Agriculture, located respectively at Milan and
Portici, are institutions of which any country might be proud. Of the latter Mr. E.
Neville Rolfe, British consul, wrote in 1897 that it was originally a provincial
establishment, but in 1885 it had been established by royal charter and domiciled
in the magnificent grounds and buildings of a disused royal palace. Its study
course requires three years to complete, and graduates obtain the degree of
Laureato Agronomo. Up to 1896, two hundred and twenty-eight students had
obtained this degree, most of whom are instructors or Government employees of
high rank. It is known also that thirty-three special and practical agricultural
schools exist in different parts of the kingdom.
Much can not be said in praise of agricultural education in Spain. That country
possesses the machinery for education of the higher grades, but through her seven
distinctly agricultural colleges, located at Madrid, Saragossa, Barcelona, Corunna,
Valencia, Caceres, and Jerez, she seems only to have obtained men for
Government service at home or abroad. Spain expended in 1896 on agricultural
education the sum of £58,460, but she evidently sends no Wanderlehrer
instructors among her peasant farmers.
It is said that Portugal possesses seven agricultural schools, attended in 1896 by
one hundred and eighty-seven students, but of their location, save one, and
courses of study the writer has no information. The Government conduct of
education is committed to a Director-General of Agriculture. The leading school
is named the General Institute of Agriculture, and is located at Lisbon. It provides
four courses—viz., (1) rural engineering, (2) agronomy, (3) sylviculture, (4)
veterinary medicine. It has a large tract of land for demonstration purposes
located a few miles from the city.

Concerning Greece and the smaller kingdoms in southeastern Europe, together
with the land of the Turk, not much to the encouragement of the scientific
agriculturist can be said; but turning northward across Europe to the Scandinavian
countries quite a different state of things becomes apparent. At once we find that
the system of agricultural education is highly developed, and in some phases is
not surpassed by other countries. Immediately we are in a network of dairy
schools, experiment stations, chemical and seed-control stations, agricultural
societies, colleges, and universities. Here we find five institutions all under royal
patronage and state support. In Norway is the Higher Agricultural School at Aas,
established in 1859. In Sweden stands the Agricultural Institute at Ultuna,
established in 1849, and the Alnarp Agricultural and Dairy Institute, established in
1862. In Denmark is the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College at
Copenhagen, established in 1773 as a veterinary college. In Finland the Mustiala
Agricultural and Dairy Institute, established in 1840. In these four small states
there exist agricultural, horticultural, forestry, and dairy schools of all grades to
the number of one hundred and fifty-nine. Education in agriculture is not
attempted in the primary public schools of Norway or in any of these
Scandinavian countries, but agricultural elementary instruction is begun in what
other continental countries would call secondary schools, and is provided for
persons intending to be farmers and who are eighteen years of age and older.
Norway spent on elementary agricultural education in secondary schools, in 1895-
'96, the sum of $31,182, and Finland more than doubled that sum.
Crossing the Channel to Great Britain, again we see a nation intent on solving the
question of success for her agricultural population. Celebrated Englishmen,
Scotchmen, and Irishmen early began to plan for an educated peasantry, but it was
long before any national system was evolved. The sectional divisions and
peculiarities belonging severally to Scot and Celt and Saxon have not yet
permitted a uniform legislation. Ireland and Scotland each has its own scheme of
Government supervision, and both differ from England and Wales. It is estimated
that but ten per cent of England's laboring population is concerned with
agriculture for support, while in Ireland there is scarcely ten per cent of the people
who are not dependent on agriculture for existence. In consequence, we find in
Ireland, as in France, intense interest centers upon the plan to teach agriculture
and horticulture in the elementary public schools, while in England, until very
recently, agricultural education served principally to produce a class of educated
scientific men fitted for the Government home and colonial service.
In Ireland compulsory attendance on primary schools is made by law. In 1876
Ireland claimed to be the pioneer country in providing compulsory elementary
agricultural instruction in all her rural schools. She has desperately clung to the

theory that in providing such education in her elementary schools she would
eventually train a nation of agriculturists. To attain this end, elementary text-
books were prepared, which all teachers must use. The Government grant for a
pass at examination in agriculture was much larger than a pass in any other study;
teachers who held certificates to teach it were given higher salaries than others,
and to enable teachers to prepare for such certificates, scholarships were offered
them at teachers' colleges (normal schools), and their railway fare was free in
going and coming. Plots of ground at schoolhouse or teacher's house were
provided, where flower and vegetable culture could be constantly practiced, and a
special grant was allowed to the school for cultivating a successful garden, and
another special for classes showing proficiency in practical work. Gardens were
cultivated at convents and workhouses, and the subject was taught theoretically to
"half-time" pupils and students at the "evening continuation schools."
In December, 1896, Ireland had 8,606 national schools, with an average
attendance of 815,248 pupils. She also had 150 half-time schools, 155 workhouse
schools, 267 convent schools, 30 model schools, five training colleges for
teachers, and two training agricultural institutes (at Glassnevin and at Munster),
and in all of these agricultural science or practice is either a compulsory or a
voluntary subject. What country can surpass Ireland's enthusiasm for agricultural
training?[23]
Scotland enjoys deservedly the distinction of having been first among the peoples
of Europe to introduce in the university course scientific education in agriculture.
In 1790 a chair was established in the University of Edinburgh, and a course of
agricultural lectures was given therefrom by Rev. D. Walker. Better than that, in
1743 a volume entitled Select Transactions was published by Maxwell,
representing the agricultural society known as the "Society of Improvers," and
numbering at one time three hundred members. Out of this society grew the
"Highland and Agricultural Society," which organization has fostered every
agricultural effort which private beneficence or royal grant has initiated in the
land since 1834. Through its munificence both the departments of forestry and
veterinary surgery have been placed upon a firm educational basis, and the
educational lectureship of Edinburgh University has been permanently endowed.
It has instituted its own syllabus of examinations for granting "Fellowships in
Agriculture," and stimulated pupils of the secondary schools to make the effort by
offering prizes and scholarships to the ambitious students.
The University of Aberdeen has lately entered the field as an agricultural educator
by becoming what the Government styles a "collegiate center," receiving a
straight subsidy of £100 per annum, and furnishing professional instructors to

rural assemblies arranging lectures for them. In the public schools of Scotland
agricultural science is arranged for as an optional study from the third to the sixth
standards inclusive. In 1895-'96, 4,148 pupils passed examinations in the subject,
and the cost of this to the state was £42,792. In 1896-'97 pupils in the "evening
continuation schools" to the number of 1,089 passed in agriculture, and 115 others
in horticulture.
England and Wales are under a joint administration of agricultural affairs. The
Government policy, so far as it has one, has been continually opposed to
paternalism and direct subsidy or ownership of schools. Rather has her Parliament
waited to be solicited to make subventions by way of encouraging individual or
local society initiative. The flourishing agricultural schools at Cirencester and
Downton, for the instruction of the higher classes, have grown out of private
establishments, then been perpetuated by obtaining royal charters, by which the
Government became pledged to supply any lack of income. But since 1893 the
state has so far relaxed her policy as to grant subsidies to certain colleges
centrally located, which it styles "collegiate centers," through which colleges it
offers superior instruction to the public. These colleges associate with themselves
ample farm lands for experiment grounds and dairy machinery, and equip
themselves with competent lecturers, who are also practical experts, and who,
upon invitation from agricultural societies or county councils, go forth as lecturers
upon their special subjects. Each adjacent county makes an annual grant of £75 to
the college funds, and is privileged to nominate students to attend the college
agricultural course at a reduction of twenty-five per cent on the usual fee. In
1898-'99 the Board of Education granted to fifteen colleges and associations in
England and Wales the sum of £7,200. The colleges were the Yorkshire College at
Leeds, Durham College of Science at Newcastle-on-Tyne, University Extension
College at Reading, University College at Nottingham, Southeastern Agricultural
College at Wye, and in Wales the University Colleges at Bangor and Aberystwith.
Besides the direct Government subsidy to higher education, the state grants to the
several counties part of the money raised from the excise ("drink money") for
educational purposes, out of which at least £78,000 were spent by the committees
in 1896-'97 in promoting agricultural education.
Still further, Parliament puts into the hands of the Science and Art Department
large sums of money to be expended as grants-in-aid of "technical education."
The state recognizes instruction in the principles of agriculture as instruction in
elementary science, and through this Science and Art Department's grants to
primary and secondary schools, and to teachers' colleges, it encourages
agricultural education as a technical study. In 1896-'97, 1,023 pupils passed

examination, and the respective school managements received as grant on their
account a total sum of £140,150.[24]
In 1897 the Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression in England made its
report. Among other declarations made by the commission were these: "We
believe that it is essential for the welfare of agriculture that there should be placed
within the reach of every young farmer a sound, general school education,
including such a grounding in the elements of sciences bearing upon agriculture—
e. g., chemistry, geology, botany, and animal physiology—as will give him an
intelligent interest in them and familiarize him in their language."[25]
They further recommend that hereafter the control of all funds for technical
agricultural education be placed with the Board of Agriculture, and that the entire
income of the Customs and Excise Act of 1890 should be devoted to educational
purposes, agriculture receiving its adequate share. Should the first
recommendation carry for all divisions of the United Kingdom, agriculture would
cease to be one of the subjects provided for examination by the Science and Art
Department. Should the second recommendation become a law, the sum expended
by local county councils in agricultural education would be vastly increased.
Passing from England to her colonies, let us journey toward the sunrising.
Stopping for a moment in Egypt, we note with pleasure the existence of the newly
established School of Agriculture at Gizeh, which is under the direction of the
Ministry of Public Instruction for Egypt. Its reconstructed course of study was
open to students in 1898, and it provides for four years of study. Arabic and
English are the teaching languages, especially the latter, and allotments of land for
individual culture are made to all pupils.
Beyond the Indian Ocean lies Hindustan. Here all science study is awaiting its
development. The best cultivation of India is not behind that of England as a
matter of empiricism,[26] but the science of cultivation is yet to be developed.
Agricultural chemistry and agricultural botany and horticulture, as related to
India, have scarcely been investigated, and text-books in the native tongues have
yet to be written. For this accomplishment all elementary instruction in public
schools must patiently wait. For an agriculturally educated set of teachers, also,
Indian youth studying in the vernacular must patiently wait. In 1889 the home
Government (Parliament) laid upon the Indian Educational Department the duty
of providing school "readers" which should contain elementary instruction in
agricultural science, and it authorized a liberal grant-in-aid toward such schools as
could furnish pupils for passes in this subject. For those students who have
mastered the English language a few colleges exist. Saidapet, near Madras, with

about forty students in a three-years' course, including veterinary, is a pure
agricultural institution. Fourteen students received diplomas in agriculture in
March, 1897.
Several colleges have agricultural departments, notably the Poona College of
Science in the Bombay presidency; the Baroda College; the Maharajah's College
and the Shimoga College, Mysore; the Central College, and the Sanskrit College
of Bangalore. All of these are affiliated with the University of Bombay, and
present pupils for examination in agriculture for the degree of B. Sc. A.
In many of the English high schools of India are found agricultural classes which
give both science teaching and field practice. These schools are at Nagpur, Nasik,
Sholapur, Ahmednagar, Ahmedabad, Dhulia, Kolapur, Surat, Belgaum, and
Nadiad. The stimulus to study in these schools is the hope of obtaining a diploma
in agriculture, which would result in employment in the Government service.
In Lucknow is a celebrated veterinary school whose graduates have been greatly
sought after. One at Bombay has become still more celebrated. In 1897 sixty-nine
students were in attendance. Graduates easily found employment with native
rajahs, and on the island of Ceylon, and at Mozambique. Another Government
veterinary school recently established at Belgatchia, Calcutta presidency, has done
good work.
The forestry school at Dehra Dun, in the Northwest Provinces, has attained a great
reputation. About seventy students attend, and the Government charges the cost of
the school, 33,000 rupees, to the districts which send up pupils for study. India,
under the British rule, will soon come into line with educated agriculturists.
In Burmah and in Assam steps have been taken to introduce science lessons into
Government, or grant-in-aid, elementary schools by the preparation of "readers,"
as in India, but no secondary or superior schools in agriculture exist in these
countries. So far as we know, the same is true of Siam and the Malayan
Archipelago and of the Philippines.
Australia, as a federation of states, is late in its development, but some of its states
are surprisingly advanced. New Zealand has its superior university, combining the
three colleges at Auckland, Lincoln, and Otago. Its syllabus provides for
searching examinations in agriculture to obtain the degree of B. Sc., either of
these colleges having previously granted the diploma of agriculture to successful
students. Each of these colleges has ample grants of land, but only one—the
Canterbury College at Lincoln—has yet presented agricultural candidates. Forty-

four graduates have received diplomas previous to 1895. Instruction in elementary
schools seems not yet to have included agriculture.
In Queensland the Queensland Agricultural College was opened at Gatton in
1897.
In South Australia is an agricultural college at Roseworthy and another at
Adelaide which has graduated several recipients of the diploma.
In Victoria there exists a college at Dookia and another at Longerong. There is
also a school of horticulture at Richmond.
To New South Wales belongs the banner for furnishing the greatest opportunities
for agricultural education. Its university at Sydney grants a degree of B. Sc. to
students from the colleges of St. Paul, St. John, St. Andrew, the Woman's College,
and the Sydney Grammar School. At Sydney also is the splendid Technical
College, handsomely endowed, having an agricultural department. The superior of
all other schools is the Hawksbury Agricultural College and Experimental Farm at
Richmond, established in 1891, richly endowed with land (three thousand acres),
and organized on the most approved modern models. Science teaching is not
carried so high as the university standard, but all manner of practical work must
be performed by each student.
Homeward bound, we reach Cape Colony, South Africa. Here, in 1887, the
Government inaugurated a scheme for aiding farm schools in which elementary
agriculture was taught. In 1894, out of 352 schools aided by the Government, 202
were classed as "farmhouse schools." In higher education there may be found
(1898) the School of Agriculture and Viticulture at Stellenbosch, and a second one
at Sunset East. As both of these schools are young, statistics concerning them are
not yet available.
Last of England's colonies we notice the Dominion of Canada on our northern
frontier. No evident progress has been made in introducing agricultural science
teaching in the primary schools of the entire Dominion. The first step taken in the
direction of agricultural education was for the enlightenment of farmers. In 1886
Parliament authorized the establishment of a system of experiment farms, one in
each province in Canada, viz.: one at Ottawa (to serve both Quebec and Ontario),
and one each at Nappan, in Nova Scotia; at Brandon, Manitoba; at Indian Head,
Assiniboia; at Agassiz, British Columbia; and at Charlottetown, Prince Edward
Island. To give these stations greater efficiency, the Government encouraged the
formation of farmers' institutes in every electoral district for the hearing of

lectures from experts which it provided, and for discussion or business. To each
regularly organized institute of fifty members a grant of £10 is annually made.
In Nova Scotia five primary and secondary schools are reported as giving
agricultural instruction to two hundred pupils. Some of these schools have farms
or gardens. The Provincial School of Agriculture at Truro is making a good
beginning. In its last class three students were granted teachers' diplomas, seven
received farmers' diplomas, and eighteen took farmers' certificates. Three hundred
and fifty students have pursued its course of studies. There is also a horticultural
school at Annapolis Valley.
Another horticultural school exists at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, under the control of
a committee of the Fruit-Growers' Association. Students take a thorough course of
two years' duration. The Legislatures of New Brunswick and of Prince Edward
Island grant bonuses of fifty dollars to each young man of their provinces who
will take a course at this school.
Fine creamery plants are found at various points, and several provinces sustain
each a "traveling dairy," which systematically visits accessible centers and gives
demonstration lectures to farmers' families.
The crowning agricultural educational institution for the entire Dominion is the
college at Guelph, Ontario. It combines instruction in veterinary science,
horticulture, bee and poultry keeping, dairying, and the experimental farm. The
course continues for three years. Two years confers the "associate diploma," and
three years' study, with successful examination in the syllabus of the Toronto
University, secures the degree of B. Sc. A. Success attends all these educational
efforts and marks this colonial empire as among the ranks representing true
progress.
Mexico and the countries of South America next claim our notice. In the first-
named country, as early as the year 1850 provision was made at the old college of
San Gregorio for instruction in agriculture in five different courses. But in 1854
the Government came into possession of the disused convent of San Jacinto,
Agosta. Here a national school was organized, combining the two departments of
agriculture and veterinary science. It was opened February 22, 1854, and
designated the National School of Agriculture and Veterinary Science. Its courses
of study are up to the best standards. Three years are necessary to complete the
agricultural course and receive the title of Superintendent of Rural Estates, and
four years' study must be given to secure that of Ingeniero Agronomo. The course
was readjusted in 1893. During the five years past 169 graduates have received
the former and 68 the latter degrees. The management consists of 48 persons,

whose salaries annually cost the Government 96,424 Mexican dollars. Ample
grounds and buildings are provided to make this institution a matter for national
pride.
Besides this college, a farm school exists in one of the federal districts, costing
annually $17,564, and another at the colony of Porfirio Diaz, costing the state
$14,708. Mexico is also moving to introduce agriculture as a subject for primary
instruction in public schools.
In Uruguay exist fine schools for teaching agriculture and viticulture which are of
recent organization. At Montevideo the Government has created a Department of
Live Stock and Agriculture, subject to the Home Ministry. The budget of 1897
provides for organizing and sustaining agricultural schools and experiment farms
to the extent of $28,222, with an additional allowance of $90,000 for experiments
on farms, installation of plants, furniture, instruments, etc.
Chili is coming to the front in her educational efforts. In the city of Concepción
exists a Practical School of Agriculture. Others are found at Santiago, at Talca,
San Fernando, Elqui, and Salamanca. The school at Santiago receives an annual
subvention of $40,000, and that at Concepción the sum of $23,000. Attached to
the latter are agronomic stations for soil analysis and oversight of irrigation
systems of the state. The Sociedad Nacional de Agricultur at Santiago receives an
annual grant of $20,000, which it distributes at agricultural shows and for the
support of the zoölogical garden. At Quintan Normal is also an Institute Agricola
of high grade for agricultural engineers and agronomics, or for furnishing a
simple certificate in agriculture.
Other countries of South America possess education facilities, but we are not
supplied with details concerning them.
Our closing glance must be directed to the far Orient. Japan, the newest of
kingdoms, has a model brace of institutions for superior education in agriculture.
When Japan awoke to the new ideas, to which for ages she was oblivious, her
keenest statesmen grasped the thought that her agricultural people needed new
light and intellectual quickening along the lines which so vitally affected their
daily subsistence. She took the United States into her confidence. She imported
for a season our Commissioner of Agriculture (General Capron), in 1871-'72, as
"Adviser to the Colonial Office at Hokaido," who, after visiting Japan, advised the
Government to organize at once an agricultural college at Sapporo, and still
another at Tokio. This advice was cordially received and speedily adopted.
American scholars of the highest wisdom and experience were imported to
inaugurate the work. The college was inaugurated by Colonel W. S. Clark, LL. D.,

President of Amherst Agricultural College, in August, 1876, with twenty-four
students. Its new location was Sapporo, and its new name was the Sapporo
Agricultural College. The Government dealt liberally in grants of land, but these
ample acres have since been mostly confiscated, leaving only sufficient for
educational purposes. Few can estimate the wonderful uplift which has come to
Japan through this efficient school. In 1893 it had sent out from its agricultural
course 123 graduates; from the engineering, 4; military, 42; and from the practical
department, 114.
In 1874 an agricultural department was added to the Imperial University at Tokio,
the original location of the Sapporo College. An exhaustive syllabus in the
Department of Agriculture provides examination for many profound students of
this science, and admits them to the highest university degree. Four courses are
open in the university—viz., agriculture, agricultural chemistry, forestry, and
veterinary medicine. In 1895 there were 261 students of agriculture in the
university.
From this extended though by no means exhaustive review of the status of
scientific instruction in agriculture throughout the world, it is evident that all the
progressive nations have caught the inspiration which attaches to this branch of
education, and are swinging into line in their efforts to adopt it. Old ideals are
rapidly giving place to the new. Educators are forced to admit that mental culture
is as possible under the study of science as by the protracted study of languages
and literature; that such study aids vastly more than the latter in the training which
prepares men for the active duties of life; and that if the development of
husbandry as a pursuit does not keep pace on an intelligent basis with every other
technical pursuit, national greatness and permanence will never be achieved.

EASTERN OYSTER CULTURE IN OREGON.
By F. L. WASHBURN, A. M.,
state biologist and professor of biology in the university of oregon.

During the past two years the United States Fish Commission, with characteristic
enterprise, has been carrying on experiments in the propagation of Eastern oysters
in the bays of the Oregon coast. Work of a similar nature is now being undertaken
in the State of Washington.

"Oyster City," Yaquina Bay, Oregon.
As the result of an application through official sources, re-enforced possibly by
the results of a biological survey made by this department during the preceding
summer, twenty-two barrels of Eastern oysters were, on November 7, 1896,
deposited on a portion of Oysterville Flat, so called, in Yaquina Bay, Oregon,
seven miles and a half from the ocean. The oystermen of that section have agreed
to abstain from tonging for native oysters upon the portion of the flat thus
reserved until sufficient time has elapsed to justify an opinion as to the result of
the experiment. These introduced oysters were of two varieties—the long, slender
East Rivers and the more oval, fan-shaped, and ribbed Princess Bays. Their
journey of twelve days across the continent, in sugar barrels, from New York to

San Francisco and thence to Oregon without water did not cause the mortality one
might expect, for in strewing them over the bed from the scows of the oystermen
very few dead individuals were observed—certainly not one half of one per cent.

An Experimental Spawning Float.
This alien oyster has much to contend with here. It was realized that the cold and
salt water rushing in from the Pacific—colder and salter by far than in their
Atlantic home at the same time—if it did not entirely prevent spawning would at
least make the survival of the young embryos a matter of doubt; yet it was hoped
that perhaps, after a number of years, the oysters might become acclimated, as it
were, and their spawn, inheriting their parents' acquired hardiness, we might
present to the people of the State a new form of Oregon product in the shape of
Eastern oysters hatched and grown in the waters of this bay. Notwithstanding the
fecundity of this oyster, a female producing in the vicinity of sixty million eggs at
a spawning, it must be remembered that even under the most favorable conditions
in its own home, where the water has in summer a fairly constant temperature of
over 70° F. and a salinity of 1.012 on an average, but a very small proportion of
this multitude survive. How much more unlikely is its survival in the waters of
Yaquina Bay, Oregon, where the writer has seen the water change from a
temperature of 70° F. and a saltness of 1.012 to a temperature of 55° and a salinity
of 1.022 within six hours! It was to save the young embryos from exposure to

these and kindred dangers that I, as a volunteer employee of the United States
Fish Commission during the summers of 1897 and 1898, among other things
resorted to the artificial fertilization of the eggs in a temporary laboratory,
carrying the delicate embryos to the swimming stage and dumping them by
thousands into the bay. Given some clean crocks, a microscope, dissecting
instruments, tumblers, rubber tubing, thermometers, and instruments to test the
saltness of the water, and innumerable embryos can be cared for without much
trouble. The process, as practiced by Brooks, Ryder, Nelson, and others in
America, is too well known to need repeating here. Its efficacy is well established,
and, in spite of the incredulity of the oystermen, who wished to see the oysters
spawn "spontaneous," as they expressed it, an incredulity amounting almost to
opposition, the writer has persevered in this work for two seasons and intends to
continue it the coming summer.

1, native oyster spat on clam shell; 2, same on inside of oyster shell; 3, 4, 5,
native spat (Ostrea lurida) on Eastern oyster shells; 6, showing size and
appearance of native spat one or two months old.
The native oyster of this Northwest coast (Ostrea lurida), smaller and by many
preferred to its Eastern congener, while it is far less fruitful in its spawning than
the latter, retains its young within the parent shell until long after they have passed
the tender stages, when they leave the mantle cavity of the parent to swim for
themselves. This oyster could rightly be called viviparous, while the Eastern

oyster is oviparous. On account of its nurse-acting proclivities this West-coast
oyster has an immense advantage here over the introduced species. The latter's
eggs have to run the following gantlet: (1) Not meeting with a fertilizing cell and
perishing in consequence; (2) sinking, before or after fertilization, in the fatal
mud; (3) being eaten by small fish and other minute animals; (4) being killed by
sudden changes in the temperature and density of the water. Artificial fertilization
and the rearing of the embryos in the laboratory largely eliminate these dangers.
We have adopted other methods to insure success. A few of the oysters were
removed from the Government plant and deposited two miles farther up the bay,
nine miles and a half from the ocean, where it was thought the water was warmer,
less salt, and less variable than on Oysterville Flat. Some, during the breeding
season, were placed on spawning floats and anchored near the shore, where the
shallow water is thoroughly warmed by the sun. It was in one of these floats that
the oystermen had an opportunity to see the oysters spawn "spontaneous," for the
water therein, reaching 70° F., became milk-white with spawn or milt within an
hour after the oysters had been taken from the plant. This was really our first
proof that the introduced oyster would spawn here. Some were placed in sloughs
adjoining the bay, with the hope that favorable conditions would be met with
there. Others were placed in artificially constructed salt ponds somewhat after the
style used by the French.

Eastern Oysters in Oregon. The lower row shows
size when planted in 1896; the upper row represents
their appearance in 1898.
What has been the outcome? The oysters, particularly the Princess Bay variety,
have grown enormously and are in excellent condition. Until this spring no
Eastern spat or young Eastern oysters had been discovered; this, of course, is the
crucial point in the experiment; we know they will spawn, but will the spawn
develop? Recently, much to our encouragement, a few young oysters, apparently
of last summer's spawning, have been found and forwarded to Washington, proof
positive that the oyster will propagate here, but not certain evidence of the
practical outcome of the experiment. It is too early to predict results as yet; two
years more are really required to tell the story.
For thirty years Eastern oysters have been shipped to San Francisco by
enterprising firms of that city, planted there in the bay until a large size is attained,
and then sold at an immense profit. These firms have always claimed that the
Eastern oyster did not reproduce there. As far as can be ascertained from a reliable
source, the shipments in recent years have rather increased than diminished, this
fact being used as an argument to support the above statement. It is nevertheless a
known fact that much Eastern spat and many adult oysters undoubtedly hatched

there have been found by members of the United States Fish Commission and
others. Moreover, with increasing trade one would naturally expect more
shipments, even though the introduced oyster did propagate to some extent.
Ostrea lurida, the toothsome little native oyster which years ago was so abundant
at Yaquina Bay, affording support to many families, has decreased in numbers to
such an alarming extent that unless some radical measures are soon taken to
prevent, the native oyster industry of this locality will be a thing of the past. This
decrease in the size and numbers appears to be due to several causes. In the first
place, there has been a very persistent tonging on a somewhat limited area. This
might have been counterbalanced by proper precautions to insure a future supply,
but, with characteristic lack of foresight, such precautions have been neglected,
and the beds have been culled year after year, until the comparatively few oysters
now marketed from Yaquina Bay are of very questionable size. Each oysterman
has two acres of flats for private use. Three natural beds in the bay afford sources
of supply for these private beds. The larger oysters tonged on the natural beds are
marketed, and the smaller specimens spread on the private ground referred to.
Beyond strewing clean shells on these private beds, no provision is made to
collect the swimming embryos during the spawning season, and multitudes must
be carried away and lost. The writer has urged upon the oystermen the need of
collectors of brush or tile, by the use of which the oysters which they have
acquired may be largely increased in numbers, and will endeavor to demonstrate,
by the use of tile collectors, that hundreds of young spat may be saved and raised
to marketable age. Our native oyster structurally and physiologically resembles
the European oyster (Ostrea edulis), and, like it, could be propagated in artificial
oyster ponds. The practicability of such work on the West American coast
depends, of course, on the market price of the resulting product as compared with
the outlay required for labor.

MALAY FOLKLORE.
By R. CLYDE FORD.
The Malay is an Oriental, and, of course, possesses a goodly number of
superstitions and old wives' fables, but he does not hug them to his soul like some
of the other peoples of the East—the Chinaman, for instance, who lives only by
favor of gods, ghosts, goblins, and devils. The Malay lives in spite of spirits, good
or bad, and tries to be a model Mohammedan at the same time. With bold
assurance and positiveness, he puts his trust in Allah; but, after all, this does not
keep him from cherishing, on the sly, a knowledge of a few uncanny, hair-raising
beliefs any more than to be a devout churchman with us removes one from the
occult influences of stolen dishcloths, overturned saltcellars, and the phases of the
moon.
The Malay man's aberglaube—his superstition—is undoubtedly of ancient origin.
For five hundred years or more he has said his prayers five times a day in
response to the muezzin's cry of Allah ho akbar, and his religion has penetrated
the very life of his race and spread to the most distant confines of the archipelago,
but it has never been able to remove entirely the heritage of that past when he was
governed by Sanskrit gods or by deities of his own. Whatever he may have
believed then and since changed, these fragments and relics of goblindom and
superstition go back to that time, and so link on to all the weird love that prevailed
in the ancient world. Another evidence of the primitiveness of Malay folklore may
be seen in the fact that the inhabitants of the jungles and padangs and the
aboriginal dwellers of mountains and dense forests cherish much more heathen
notions and greater elaborations of everyday superstitions than the more
enlightened and modernized Malays of towns and campongs. In the East, as in the
West, the man who lives close to Nature "holds communion with her visible
forms," and likewise finds out, or thinks he does, a good deal about her invisible
shapes.
The Malay has on his list of uncanny things the names of several spirits. Disease
is everywhere a great dread of men, and often looked upon as an infliction of the
supernatural powers. There are several spirits of sickness recognized among the
Malays, but they reserve their greatest horror for the influences of the Hantu
Katumbohan, or spirit of smallpox. But other spirits abound; there are some that
inhabit the sources of streams, and many that dwell in forests. Mines, too, have

their patron goblins, which are propitiated by the miners. The sea-going Malay,
also, whose vision has been clarified by bitter salt spray, knows and frequently
sees the spirits that inhabit certain parts of the ocean.
The Hantu Pemburo, or phantom hunter, is a spirit the Malays take special
account of; in general, he seems to resemble the wilde Jäger of German folklore.
Long ago, so the story has it, there lived a certain man and his wife in Katapang,
in Sumatra. One day the wife fell sick, and, thinking the flesh of a mouse-deer
might strengthen her, she asked her husband to kill one for her. He went forth on
the hunt, but was unsuccessful and soon returned. His wife now became very
angry, and told him to try again—in fact, not to return till he could come home
with the coveted game. The man swore a mighty oath, called his dogs, took his
weapons, and set out into the forest. He wandered and wandered, and always in
vain. The days ran into months, the months became years, and still no mouse-
deer. At last, despairing of finding the animal on earth, he ordered his dogs to bay
the stars, and they sprang away through the sky, and he followed. As he walked
with upturned gaze, a leaf fell into his mouth and took root there.
At home things were not going well. His son, born after his departure, when he
became a lad, was often taunted by the other children of the campong, and twitted
of the fact that his father was a wandering ghost. After hearing the truth from his
mother, the boy went out into the forest to meet the huntsman. Far from the haunts
of men, in the depths of the forest, they met and conversed. The boy told of his
wrongs, and the father vowed to avenge them, and ever since that time, say the
Malays, he has afflicted mankind. At night he courses through the wood and sky
with a noisy, yelping pack, and woe to the man who sees him! On the peninsula
the people mutter this charm to ward off his evil influence:

"I know thy history,
O man of Katapang!
Therefore return thou
To thy jungle of Mohang,
And do not bring sickness upon me."

The Malay is a firm believer in the efficacy of charms. He wears amulets, places
written words of magic in houses, and sports a tiger's claw as a preventive of
disease. If he is specially primitive and backwoodsy, when he enters a forest he
says: "Go to the right, all my enemies and assailants! May you not look upon me;
let me walk alone!" To allay a storm he says: "The elephants collect, they wallow
across the sea; go to the right, go to the left, I break the tempest." When about to
begin an elephant hunt, according to Thompson, he uses this charm: "The

elephant trumpets, he wallows across the lake. The pot boils, the pan boils across
the point. Go to the left, go to the right, spirit of grandfather (the elephant); I loose
the fingers upon the bowstring."
The Malay believes in witches and witchcraft. There is the bottle imp, the Polong,
which feeds on its owner's blood till the time comes for it to take possession of an
enemy. Then there is a horrid thing, the Penangalan, which possesses women.
Frequently it leaves its rightful abode to fly away at night to feed on blood, taking
the form of the head and intestines of the person it inhabited, in which shape it
wanders around.
Such beliefs may perhaps have their origin in metempsychosis, which in other
ways has some foothold among the common people. For instance, elephants and
tigers are believed sometimes to be human souls in disguise, and so the Malay
addresses them as "grandfather" to allay their wrath and avoid direct reference to
them. Crocodiles also are often regarded as sacred, and special charms are used in
fishing for them. One such, given by Maxwell, is as follows: "O Dangsari, lotus
flower, receive what I send thee. If thou receivest it not, may thy eyes be torn
out!"
The domestic animals also figure in Malay folklore. Dogs are unlucky and
regarded with suspicion, for they would like to lick their master's bones. Cats, on
the other hand, are lucky, and show a fondness for their owners.
Owls are regarded as birds of ill omen, and their hooting forebodes death.
Days are lucky and unlucky. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are fortunate
birthdays, and a dream on a Thursday night will come true. To dream of a dog or a
flood is unlucky. To stumble when starting on a journey is a bad sign, and before
setting out on a pilgrimage to Mecca certain formulas are muttered and signs
followed.
The Malay hates to tear down a house, and so the old one is left standing when a
new one is built. The ladder of a house must be built just so, or disaster comes to
the owner or builder; and to knock one's head on the lintel is regarded as
unfavorable. One rises quickly from a meal; otherwise, if he is single, he may be
regarded with disfavor by his prospective father-in-law.
As one travels over the archipelago he finds that superstitions vary, and what may
be regarded by the Malays of the peninsula as particularly ominous may have no
meaning at all with the Malays of the south or east. The Dyaks of Borneo are
probably the most uncivilized of all the Malay tribes, for Mohammedanism has

taken but little hold upon them, and their natural paganism remains as yet
unshaken. Of their folklore we know but little. It awaits the conquest of the West,
like the island itself.

ELECTRICITY FROM THALES TO FARADAY.
By ERNEST A. LESUEUR.
It is so common a notion nowadays that electricity had its birth and rise in the
nineteenth century that it gives one a strange mental sensation to contemplate the
fact that all the myriads of commercial applications that have of late years been
developed in this field might have been made by the Chinese or the ancient
Egyptians, so far as the potentiality of Nature for developing electrical
phenomena is concerned. The writer used to know a delightful old gentleman in
Vermont who once referred, as to a well-known fact, to Edison's having invented
electricity. It is astonishing how closely his state of mind typifies that of a great
many people.
In the form of the lightning, the aurora, and the shock of the electric eel or
torpedo, electrical manifestations have been known ever since man commenced to
observe those phenomena, but the fossil resin amber was the substance which
eventually gave its name to the now tremendous agency. This material was
observed, many centuries before our era, to possess the property of attracting light
bodies to itself when rubbed with wool, and, being called ἤλεκτρον (electron) by
the Greeks, transmitted its name to the property or force which it thus brought
into evidence. The fact is mentioned as early as 600 b. c., by Thales of Miletus,
although he does not transmit to us the name of the original observer of the
phenomenon. Homely as was the experiment, it marked a beginning in electrical
research.
Not that scientific investigations in that or any line were pushed very assiduously
in those days, for there is a great gap between the discovery of the property above
alluded to and the acquisition of any more solid knowledge pertaining to
electricity. The phenomenon was at that time set down in the list of natural facts,
and no attempt appears to have been made to connect it with others. The inquiring
spirit of the present age can hardly be brought into more striking relief than by a
comparison of the, at present, almost daily advances in scientific knowledge with
the fact that twenty-two hundred years elapsed between the discovery of the
above-mentioned power of amber by the ancients and the later one that a very
large number of other substances, such as diamonds, vitrefactions of all kinds,
sulphur, common resin, etc., possess the same property. A few other scattered
facts were, however, also noted by the ancients: fire is said to have streamed from

the head of Servius Tullius at the age of seven, and Virgil asserts that flame was
emitted by the hair of Ascanius.
In examining, now, the history of the rise of electrical science we find, as just
mentioned, the vast gap of over two millenniums between the discovery of the
attracting power of rubbed amber and the mere extension of man's knowledge so
as to include other substances. The philosophers Boyle and Otto von Guericke,
who were active during the latter half of the seventeenth century, added a mass of
new data in this line. Boyle, moreover, discovered the equivalence of action and
reaction between the attracting and the attracted body, and that the rubbed amber
or other "electric" retained its attractive powers for a certain period after
excitation had ceased.
Otto von Guericke made a vast step forward by constructing the first electrical
machine, in a crude form, truly, but which proved of the utmost service in adding
to our knowledge of the properties of electricity. His machine was constructed
very simply of a globe of sulphur mounted on a spindle, which could be rotated
by means of a crank; the operator applied friction with the hand, his body
receiving a positive charge, while the surface of the sulphur acquired a negative.
The fact of the two electrifications being separated at the surface of the sulphur
was not, however, known at the time; the only charge that Guericke observed
being that appearing on the sulphur. The reason for this was that the latter, being a
nonconductor, any electricity generated upon it was compelled to stay there, for a
certain time at least, and consequently accumulated so as to be observable;
whereas the opposite electrification flowing into the operator's hand continuously
escaped to earth without giving any sign of its presence. Had the operator stood
upon an insulating support, the electrification would have accumulated on his
body as well as upon the sulphur. Guericke made the discovery that a light body,
having been once attracted to an electrified surface, was almost immediately
repelled from it, and could not be again attracted without having its imparted
electrification removed by contact with an uncharged surface.
Sir Isaac Newton, about 1675, made an interesting application of a principle allied
to this. He used a hollow, drum-shaped contrivance with glass ends and a very
short axis, into which he put a number of fragments of paper. On briskly rubbing
the outside of the glass with a piece of silk the paper was caused to "leap from one
part of the glass to another and twirl about in the air." This was repeated in 1676
before the Royal Society, to the great edification of that learned body.
Newton made a considerable improvement in the electrical machine of Guericke
by the substitution of a hollow globe of glass for Guericke's sulphur one. What is

chiefly interesting about the improvement is the fact that Guericke's sulphur
globe, of comparative weight and cumbrousness, was made by casting melted
sulphur into a glass globe and then breaking off the glass. Guericke observed in
the dark a peculiar luminosity of conducting surfaces when well charged by
means of his machine; he compared it to the phosphorescent light observed when
lump sugar is broken in the dark. It was what is now known as the brush-
discharge effect.
In 1705 Francis Hawksbee discovered the peculiar phenomenon which he termed
the mercurial phosphorus. It was produced by causing a stream of well-dried
mercury to fall through an exhausted glass receiver. The friction of the particles of
mercury against the jet piece and the glass caused an electrification which evinced
itself in a phosphorescent glow. The receiver, indeed, had not to be by any means
thoroughly exhausted, the phenomenon occurring at an air pressure up to about
fourteen inches of the barometer.
The crackling noise and the spark accompanying electrical discharge suggested
about this time the analogy of those miniature disturbances to thunder and
lightning, but the identity of the two was not fully established until later.
Up to this time the fact that certain substances were capable of conducting
electricity was not known, but in 1729 Stephen Gray, F. R. S., an enthusiastic
investigator, made the discovery, and at the same time the cognate one that a large
class of materials are nonconductors. The only source of electricity which was at
the disposal of experimenters up to this time was the electrical machine,
improved, as described, by Newton, which furnished intermittent currents
(discharges) of infinitesimal quantity, as we should say now, but of extremely
high pressure. This fact of the enormous pressure resulted in the electricity's
forcing its way through very imperfect conductors, so as to cause our
investigators to rank many of these latter with the metals. Thus Gray concluded
that pack thread was a good conductor because it did not oppose sufficient
resistance to prevent the flow of his high pressure (or, as we should now say, high
voltage or tension) electricity. He tried wire as well, but did not realize it was a
better conductor than the thread, although its conductivity was actually in the
millions of times as great. In collaboration with his friend Wheeler he conveyed
electrical discharges a distance of eight hundred and eighty-six feet, through
presumably air-dry pack thread—an achievement which would almost be notable
at the present time. He insulated the line by hanging it from loops of silk thread.
Gray hoped "that there may be found out a way to collect a greater quantity of
electric fire, and consequently to increase the force of that power, which, si licet

magnis componere parva, seems to be of the same nature with thunder and
lightning."
About this time Desaguliers discovered that those materials which, upon being
rubbed, develop electrical charges, are all nonconductors, and that, conversely,
nonelectrics are conductors. The terms electrics and nonelectrics were applied to
bodies respectively capable and incapable of excitation; the words idioelectrics
and anelectrics were also used in respectively equivalent senses.
In France, Dufay discovered that the conductivity of pack thread was greatly
improved by the presence of moisture, and he succeeded in conveying a discharge
a distance of almost thirteen hundred feet. He suspended himself by silken cords
and had himself electrified, and then observed that he could give a shock
accompanied by a spark to any person standing on the ground.
He also established the fact of the two opposite kinds of electrification, and gave
them the names of vitreous and resinous, from the fact that the former was
developed by the excitation of glass and vitreous substances generally, and the
latter from that of amber and resins. He observed that the distinguishing
characteristic of the two was the fact that opposite charges attracted each other,
while similar ones exerted mutual repulsion. Dufay and Gray died within three
years of each other, both at the age of forty, Gray having added to the results
already mentioned the discovery of the conducting powers of certain liquids and
of the human body.
Experimental research now began to spread into Germany and the Netherlands.
The electrical machine was greatly improved by Professor Boze, of Wittenberg,
and Professor Winkler, of Leipsic, who respectively added the prime conductor
and the silk rubber to that important piece of apparatus. A Scotch Benedictine
monk of Erfurt—Professor Gordon—substituted a glass cylinder for the sphere,
and thereby brought the instrument in its essentials practically to the form in
which it exists to-day. The improvement enabled the production of very large
sparks, which were caused to produce the inflammation of various combustibles.
Gordon went so far as to ignite alcohol by means of a jet of electrified water.
We now come to an epoch-making discovery—that of the condenser, or, in its
conventional laboratory form, the Leyden jar. Professor Muschenbroeck, of the
University of Leyden, was struck with the idea that it would be a good plan to try
to prevent the dissipation of the electric charge by inclosing the conductor
containing it in an insulating envelope. He therefore took a glass jar, partly filled
it with water, and electrified the latter. His assistant, who was holding the bottle,
accidentally touched the wire which made connection with the water, and

received on the instant a shock much more violent than any that the electrical
machine was capable of giving. This led to the discovery that as the charge of
vitreous electricity had accumulated in the water, a corresponding charge of the
opposite kind had gathered upon the outside of the glass and been "bound" there,
as it is called, by the attraction exercised upon it by the charge on the inside. It
had been enabled to get upon the glass by the fact of the assistant's hand having
covered part of the surface of the latter, and, since he stood upon the ground, the
electricity had quietly flowed from the latter up through his body to the outside
surface of the glass.
The apparatus was quickly perfected by coating both the inside and outside of a
jar with tin foil, applying the charge by means of a wire or chain to the inside
coating and allowing the outer one to stand upon the earth or upon a conducting
substance in electrical contact with the latter. The exaltation of spirit with which
the discovery was hailed by the savants appears to have been extraordinary—one
student who took a discharge through his body being reported to state that he
would not have missed the experience for a fabulous consideration, and that he
would not repeat it if it were to save his life. In reality the advance was enormous;
it gave a means for literally bottling up electricity in quantities previously
unthought of. The prime conductor of an electrical machine could not retain any
considerable quantity of electricity for the reason that, a certain small intensity of
electrification having been reached, the addition operated to upset the balance, so
to speak, and the electricity escaped by a sudden (disruptive) discharge, or spark,
or by the brush discharge already alluded to. With the Leyden jar, however, as fast
as electricity was supplied to the inside coating it became "bound" there by the
charge of opposite sign accumulating on the outside, and the limit of capacity of
the jar was simply one of strength of the glass: if too much electricity was
supplied, the stress of mutual attraction between the two charges relieved itself by
destroying the jar.
Although Professor Muschenbroeck discovered the principle in the manner above
referred to, it appears extremely probable that two other investigators, working
independently, also did the same. One Cuneus and a monk named Kleist each
claimed the honor of original invention of the condenser.
About 1747 the first gun was fired by electricity; this was accomplished by Sir
William Watson, who also succeeded in kindling alcohol and gas by means of a
drop of cold water and even with ice. The same experimenter reversed the
ordinary procedure of causing the electric influence to pass from an electrified
body to the one to be experimented upon, the latter being unelectrified, by

electrifying the latter, and then producing the desired effect by approaching it to
an unelectrified one.
A party of the Royal Society with Watson as chief operator instituted a series of
researches on a grand scale to determine, if possible, the velocity of the electric
discharge, and arrived at a number of conclusions which, however, were of a
decidedly negative nature. The most important of these were as follows: That they
could not observe any interval between the instant of applying the discharge to
one end of the line and its reception at the other; that the destructive effects of
discharge are greater through bad conductors than through good ones; that
conduction is equally powerful whether occurring through earth or water.
Just previous to this there had been some brilliant experiments carried on in
France, and the discharge had been conveyed through twelve thousand feet of
circuit, including the acre basin of the Tuileries, but they had not been performed
as systematically, or with the definite objects in view, as had the English
experiments.
The following year the Royal Society continued its researches on a larger scale
than previously, using 12,276 feet of wire, and found that even through that length
the velocity was practically instantaneous.
Watson urged as a theory that electrical disturbances were caused by influx or
efflux of a single electric fluid from the state of normal electrification, thus
differing from Dufay in his opinion as to the existence of two fluids. He was led
to this belief by observing that he obtained a larger spark between two oppositely
electrified bodies than from either to the earth.
From this time on there appears upon the scene a host of workers in this field, one
of the most prominent being the distinguished American, Benjamin Franklin.
Somewhat previous to his remarkable work, or about 1750, Boze made certain
discoveries in the matter of the surface tension of conducting liquids being
diminished by electrification, and Mowbray and Nollet ascertained that the
vegetation of flowers and of vegetating seeds was hastened by electrifying them.
Franklin (born 1706, died 1790) made the important discovery of the active
discharge of electricity from an electrified body by points as well as the converse
of it—i. e., that electricity was rapidly abstracted from a charged atmosphere by
points. This enabled him to increase the efficiency of the electrical machine by
adding a comb-shaped series of points to the collector of the prime conductor.

Up to this time, although the identity of lightning with electricity had long been
suspected, it had not been at all established, and to Franklin may be said to belong
the honor of doing so, although in this, as in the case of the invention of the
Leyden jar, there appears to have been successful contemporaneous research
elsewhere. Before performing his great experiment Franklin published a book
strongly supporting the belief in the identity of the two. Once having conceived
the idea of drawing electricity from the upper atmosphere, he unfortunately lost
some time through waiting for the completion of the spire of a certain church in
Philadelphia, from the top of which he hoped to be able to collect electricity by
means of a wire, but finally hit upon the device which now fills much the same
place in connection with his memory that the classical cherry tree does with
Washington's—the lightning-collecting kite. This apparatus was very simply
constructed, and had a pointed wire projecting a short distance above the
framework. It was controlled, and electrical connection made, by an ordinary
string which terminated in a short length of silk ribbon to protect the person from
possible injury, and to give electricity a chance to accumulate in the system, by
insulating the "line." At the end of the string proper Franklin fastened a metallic
key. In company with his son he flew the kite during a thunderstorm which
occurred in June, 1752; for some time no electric disturbance approached the
neighborhood, and he was on the point of abandoning the experiment when he
observed what he had been waiting for—the outer fibers of the string standing out
from the latter by repulsive force—and, applying his knuckle to the key, he drew a
spark. Subsequently, when the rain soaked the string and caused it to conduct
much better, there was a fine supply of electricity, and Franklin charged a Leyden
jar from the key, thus achieving the actual storage of "lightning."
He continued his investigations in atmospheric electricity, and discovered that the
electrification of the clouds (or of the upper atmosphere) was sometimes positive
and sometimes negative. The invention of the lightning rod is due to him.
Franklin sided with Watson in his belief in the single nature of the electric fluid.
As intimated above, atmospheric electricity appears to have been collected
independently about the same time in Europe, and certain very daring and
dangerous experiments were performed there. One sad occurrence, as a result,
was the death of Professor Richman, in St. Petersburg, in 1753. Richman, in
company with a friend, Sokolow, was taking observations on an electroscope
connected with an iron rod which terminated in the apartment and extended in the
other direction above the roof of the building. During the progress of their
experiments a violent peal of thunder was heard in the neighborhood, and
Richman bent to examine the instrument. In doing so he approached his head to

within a foot of the end of the rod, and Sokolow saw a ball of fire "about the size
of a man's fist" shoot from it to Richman's head with a terrific report. The stroke
was, of course, immediately fatal, and what we now know as the return shock
stupefied and benumbed Sokolow. The unfortunate event served as a warning to
other daring experimenters.
Canton, another prominent worker in this field, discovered that the so-called
vitreous electricity was not necessarily always developed by the friction of glass,
as had hitherto been believed to be invariably the case. By applying different
rubbers to glass he obtained either positive or negative at pleasure. This at once
disposed of the idea that one kind of electricity resided in certain bodies and its
opposite in others. Canton also made the interesting discovery that glass, amber,
rock crystal, etc., when taken out of mercury, were all electrified positively. He
was thus enabled to make the improvement in the electrical machine of coating its
rubber with an amalgam rich in mercury, which greatly enhanced its powers.
Among the numerous names now coming into prominence must be mentioned
those of Beccaria, Symmer, Delaval, Wilson, Kinnersley, Wilcke, and Priestley.
The first named, Father Beccaria, was a celebrated Italian physicist who did most
valuable work in connection with atmospheric electricity, and who published
several classical works on that and allied subjects. Among these may be
mentioned his Lettre del Elettricità, 1758, and Experimenta, 1772. He ascertained
that water is not by any means a good conductor, as it had previously been
supposed to be, and, by using pure water, he caused the electric spark to become
visible in it, a phenomenon capable of occurring only through media almost
nonconducting. In these experiments he used thick glass tubes with wires led
through the opposite ends, the latter being sealed, and the tubes filled with water.
These were invariably shattered by the passage of the spark on account of the
accompanying elevation of temperature, which caused expansion. He also
established the facts that the atmosphere adjacent to an electrified body acquires
electrification of the same sign by abstracting electricity from the body, and that
the air then parts with its electricity very slowly. He advanced the theory that
there is a mutual repulsion between the particles of the electric fluid and those of
air, and that a temporary vacuum is formed at the moment of the passage of a
disruptive discharge or spark.
Robert Symmer, in 1759, described some most entertaining experiments, making
use of the opposite electrifications of superposed stockings of different materials
or merely of different colors (the dye matters in the latter case causing
differentiation). If, in a dry atmosphere, a silk stocking be drawn over the leg and

a woolen one pulled over it, the two will be found, upon being removed, to be
very powerfully electrified in opposite senses. If the four stockings of two such
pairs be used and then suspended together, they will indulge in remarkable antics
due to each of the silk stockings trying to attract both of the woolen ones, and vice
versa, and, on the other hand, each of each kind repelling the other. The amount
of electrical attraction and repulsion produced in this simple way in a dry
atmosphere is remarkable. The experiment may also be performed with all silk
stockings, one pair white and the other black.
Symmer advanced the theory of two fluids coexisting in all matter (not
independently of each other, as had been previously supposed), which by mutual
counteractions produced all electrical phenomena. His conception was that a
body, positively electrified, did not exist in that condition because of the
possession of a charge of a positive (as distinct from a negative) electric fluid
which it had not held before, and did not hold in a normal state; nor that it
possessed a greater share of a single electric fluid than it did in an unelectrified
condition, as had been believed by Franklin and Watson, and by Dufay
respectively; but that such a body contained both positive and negative
electricities which, when the body behaved as "unelectrified," entirely
counteracted each other, but which, on the other hand, caused a positive or
negative charge to be evinced should either positive or negative electricity
respectively preponderate.
Æpinus was the author of another notable theory, of which we must omit further
mention for want of space.
Disjointed observations connected with animal electricity had been accumulating
for many centuries. The first chronicled note that refers to the subject dates back
to 676 a. d. Whether or not entirely by chance, the Arabians named the electric
eel, or torpedo, in a way that impresses us now as singularly felicitous, raad (the
lightning). Toward the end of the last century Redi discovered that the shock was
sometimes conveyed through the line and rod to the fisherman, and Kampfer
compared the effects to those of electrical discharges. It does not appear, however,
that the resemblance was actually believed to be more than accidental until
Bancroft urged, in the last ten years of the eighteenth century, the view which was
shortly proved. Investigation since has shown that several other aquatic animals
possess this astonishing manifestation of vitality, notably the Gymnotus electricus
(Surinam eel), the Trichiurus electricus, and the Tetraodon electricus. Humboldt
gives an account of wonderful battles in South America between gymnoti and
wild horses. In fact, the most expeditious method, if not the most humane one, of
capturing these alarming creatures appears to be to drive horses into the pond

inhabited by them, and to allow the eels to exhaust their strength by repeated
electric discharges before endeavoring to bring them to land by other means.
Cavendish was one of the most noted experimental investigators in the electrical
field during the latter third of the eighteenth century. His work was remarkably
accurate, considering the lack of a proper equipment for taking observations
incident to operations in those days. He computed the relative conductivities of
iron and water as four hundred million to unity, and found that the addition of but
one part of common salt to one hundred of water increased the conductivity of the
latter a hundredfold. A twenty-six-per-cent solution of salt he found to possess
only seven and one quarter times the conductivity of the extremely weak one
mentioned. He also established the law that the capacity of condensers (of which
the previously mentioned Leyden jar is an example) varies directly as the active
area, and inversely as the distance separating the conducting surfaces. It was
reserved for later investigators to make the grand discoveries which relate to
electrochemical dissociation, but Cavendish succeeded in accurately determining
the ratio of combination of the elements of water in a method which superficially
suggests the inverse of electrolytic decomposition—i. e., by inducing the
combination of hydrogen and oxygen by the electric spark in the instrument
known as the eudiometer.
Hard on the heels of this work came news of Galvani's remarkable discovery
(1790) of the fact that freshly amputated frogs' legs, on being touched along the
lines of the muscles by dissimilar metals, were powerfully agitated. We can only
speak of this discovery as the stumbling on to an isolated fact, for it was reserved
for Volta to establish the generalization that a current is produced in the conductor
joining dissimilar metals when the latter are both in contact with a suitable
electrolyte (or liquid capable both of conducting electricity and of acting on one,
and incidentally also sometimes both, of the metals). Meantime (Du Bois-
Reymond observes), "wherever frogs were to be found, and where two different
kinds of metal could be procured, everybody was anxious to see the mangled
limbs of frogs brought to life in this wonderful way. Physiologists believed that at
last they should realize their visions of a vital power, and physicians that no cure
was impossible."
Volta first discovered merely the fact of electrification by contact. He wrote to
Galvani: "I don't need your frog. Give me two metals and a moist rag, and I will
produce your animal electricity. Your frog is nothing but a moist conductor, and in
this respect it is inferior to my wet rag!" Nobili, nevertheless, in 1825 proved the
existence of galvanic currents in muscles.

Later on Volta invented the "couronne des tasses" (crown of cups), thus at the
same time adopting the general form of cell used, with modifications, to-day, and
producing the higher electromotive force, or electrical pressure, consequent on the
multiplication of the cells in a series battery.
Just before Volta's celebrated communication to the Royal Society, in 1800,
Fabroni, of Florence, in discussing Galvani's phenomenon, went to the root of the
matter by suggesting that the energy of chemical action was at the bottom of
galvanic manifestations, and he was warmly upheld in this contention by Sir
Humphry Davy, who, upon the publication of Volta's discoveries, constructed a
most elaborate battery with which (apparently about 1806) he produced the arc
light between carbon pencils.
In the year referred to, Davy published the results of a series of experiments of
enormous significance, among other things of the isolation of the alkali metals,
sodium and potassium, whose existence had hitherto not been dreamed of. The
simple electrolytic decomposition of water had been accomplished by Nicolson
and Carlisle in the last year of the eighteenth century. Sir W. S. Harris says: "A
series of new substances was speedily discovered, the existence of which had
never before been imagined. Oxygen, chlorine, and acids were all dragged, as it
were, to the positive pole, while metals, inflammable bodies, alkalies, and earths
became determined to the negative pole of the battery. When wires connected
with each extremity of the new battery were tipped with prepared and well-
pointed charcoal, and the points brought near each other, then a most intense and
pure evolution of light followed, which on separating the points extended to a
gorgeous arc." It was at first supposed that the galvanic or voltaic electricity was
distinct from the so-called "frictional" or "ordinary" electricity.
A distinguished contemporary of Cavendish was Coulomb, the value of whose
work in developing certain exceedingly important mathematical laws with regard
to action at a distance, surface densities, and rates of charge dissipation can hardly
be overestimated. His name was given to the torsion balance which, since his day,
has been the standard instrument for measuring electric and magnetic attractions
and repulsions. The importance of his work has since been recognized by the
perpetuation of his name in connection with the unit of quantity of electricity, as
that of Volta has been honored by its use, abbreviated (volt), to designate the unit
of electrical tension or pressure.
Certain highly instructive and interesting data were accumulated about this time
by Volta, Laplace, Saussure, and the renowned chemist Lavoisier, in connection
with the subject of electrification produced when evaporation, and the liberation

of gases and vapors in general from any cause, occurs. The liquid, solid, or
mixture liberating the gas was contained in a metallic dish and the resultant
electrification of the latter examined qualitatively. Volta's observations led him to
conclude that the electrification was always negative, but Saussure demonstrated
finally that its sign was dependent on the material of the dish. These
experimenters covered, between them all, a somewhat extensive field, examining,
among other things, the electrification resulting from the ebullition of various
liquids, from the ordinary combustion of fuel, and from the decomposition of
acids by metals to liberate hydrogen.
About the end of the first decade of the century Poisson attacked the phenomena
of electricity analytically, and succeeded in demonstrating the right of electrical
investigation to rank among the exact sciences. Of his most important
mathematical propositions is one in which, assuming as a working hypothesis the
existence of two mutually attracting fluids, he deduced formulæ covering the
distribution of these fluids on the surfaces of two conducting spheres, in or out of
contact.
A great deal of work was done during the end of the last century and the
beginning of the present one on what is now known as pyro-electrification. The
Abbé Haüy discovered that fragments of tourmaline crystal exhibited opposite
electrifications on opposite extremities of their lines of cleavage. It is this crystal
also which has unusually remarkable powers of polarizing light, and which, under
electro-magnetic stress, suffers modifications of the latter property. Haüy
investigated the field with much diligence, and succeeded in cataloguing a large
number of natural crystals by the side of tourmaline. The subject was amplified
later by Sir David Brewster, who added a series of artificial crystalline salts to the
list of pyro-electrical materials, among them, notably, hydro-potassic (and sodic)
tartrate. The property was found not always to reside on these substances, but to
be developed by heating them. Brewster found that even powdered tourmaline
exhibited opposite electrifications on the opposite extremities of each tiny
particle, causing the latter to act, so far as attractions and repulsions went, as
infinitesimal magnets.
Our rapid and imperfect survey has now brought us to the threshold of the great
activity in electrical work elicited by the tremendous discovery, made by
Professor Oersted, of Copenhagen, of the existence of the electro-magnetic field.
It happens that two of the most amiable and estimable individuals that have ever
devoted their lives to scientific research stand out in this connection head and
shoulders above all other investigators—Ampère and Faraday, the latter sixteen
years younger than the former and destined to long survive him.

WINGLESS BIRDS.
By PHILIPPE GLANGEAUD.
It is often said that there are no rules without exceptions. We purpose to test the
truth of this maxim once more. Fishes are made to live in water, but some of them
pass the greater part of their existence in mud. Some even perch upon trees, thus
competing with birds, whose kingdom is the air, and which are able, with the aid
of their wings, to plunge into space and travel rapidly over considerable distances.
Yet there are birds, deprived by Nature, which do not possess the wing
characteristic of the feathered tribe, and are consequently, like the majority of
animals, pinned to the soil.
Birds do not all have equal power of flight, which is closely related to the extent
of the development of their wings. There exist all grades in the spread of wings
between that of the condor, which is four times the length of the body, whereby
the bird is able to rise to the height of nearly twenty-five thousand feet, and the
little winglets of the auk, which are of no use to it. The penguins have still smaller
wings, which are nothing more than short, flattened stumps, without proper
feathers and covered with a fine, hairlike down which might be taken for scales.
Another group of birds exists, called appropriately Brevipennes, the wings of
which are so poorly developed as to be wholly unsuitable for flight. As an offset
and just compensation for this, their long and robust legs permit them to run with
extraordinary speed. For that reason they have been called running birds, in
distinction from other kinds that constitute the group of flying birds. Among them
are some gigantic birds, and also some that have no visible wings on the outside
of their bodies, and may therefore be properly called wingless.
The ostrich is a member of this group. With its bare, callous head and short bill,
its long, featherless neck, and its massive body, supported by long, half-bare legs,
ending in two large toes; its very short wings, formed of soft and flexible feathers;
and its plume-shaped tail, it presents a very special appearance among the birds.
The nandous, the American representatives of the ostrich, have still shorter wings,
which have no remigia at all, and terminate in a horny appendage, and they have
no tail feathers.

The cassowary and the emu also resemble the ostrich in many points, but their
wings are still more reduced than those of the nandou. They are only slightly
distinct, and can not be seen when the bird holds them close up to its body. In the
Apteryx, the name of which, from the Greek, means without wings, the organs of
flight are hardly apparent, and consist simply of a very short stump bearing a
thick and hooked nail. The Apteryx, which is also called Kiwi, a native of New
Zealand, is the most singular of living birds. The neck and the body are
continuous, and the moderately sized head is furnished with a long beak
resembling that of the ibis. Having long hairs similar to the mustaches of cats at
its base, it is different from the bills of all other existing birds in possessing
nostrils that open at its upper point. Although the Apteryx can not fly, it runs very
fast, despite the shortness of its legs, and can defend itself very effectively against
assailants by the aid of its long-nailed and sharp-nailed feet. The tail is absent like
the wings. The very pliant feathers are extremely curious, of the shape of a lance-
head, pendent, loose, silky, with jagged barbs, and increase in length as they go
back from the neck. The bird is of the size of a fowl, and when in its normal
position stands with its body almost vertical, and carries the suggestion of a
caricature—resembling, we might say, a feathered sack, with only a long-billed
head and the claws projecting, and one beholding it feels that he is looking at
some unfinished creature. It is a nocturnal bird, of fierce temper, and has become
rare in consequence of the merciless war that is made upon it. Everything is
strange about it, even the single egg it lays, which weighs about a quarter as much
as its body.
Together with the Apteryx, there lived in New Zealand a bird that reached the
height of nearly twelve feet—the Dinornis. It and the Phororhaces and the
Brontornis, which have been recently exhumed in Patagonia, might be regarded as
the giants of birds. This bird was known to the natives as the Moa, and lived in
troops like the ostriches. Its organization was very much like that of the Apteryx,
from which it was, however, distinguished by its great size, long neck, and short
beak. It seems to have had the aspect of an ostrich, with a feathered neck and no
wings or tail. The feet of the Dinornis, with their three large toes, were really
enormous. Isolated fragments of its bones suggest very large mammals, rather
than birds. The femur and tibia are larger than those of a bear, the tibia alone
being about four feet long, and the thickness, in the narrowest part, of the width of
a man's hand, while it was more than seven inches in the thickest part. The
sternum, on the other hand, was small, convex, and longer than broad. The wing
could not have been visible on the outside of the body, for the bones that
constitute them are proportionally smaller than those of the Apteryx. There was,
therefore, a maximum reduction of the wing in this bird.

The Dinornis was covered with a rich plumage, and this was doubtless what led to
its destruction, women preferring its plumes to all other ornaments. The large
number of bones which have been discovered in the alluviums, the caves, and the
peat bogs of New Zealand authorize the thought that the island was once
inhabited by a considerable number of these birds, which were able easily to repel
the attacks of other animals by means of their big feet. But they could stand no
chance against Nature's more terrible destroyer—man—who, when seeking the
gratification of his taste and fancy, does not hesitate to exterminate whole species.
The natives of New Zealand still recall the history of these singular birds; their
extermination seems to have occurred about the time the island was visited by
Captain Cook (1767-1778). Moreover, some of the bones collected in later years
still had animal matter upon them. Even parts of the windpipe have been
discovered, mixed with charcoal, and evidences of cooking have been found.
A near relative of the Dinornis, which the Maoris regard as extinct, is the
Notornis, of which only four living specimens have been found since 1842, the
last one having been captured in the latter part of 1898.
The eggs of the Dinornis were very large, having a capacity of about a gallon and
being equivalent to eighty hen's eggs. Still larger eggs than these, however, are
known. In 1851 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire exhibited, in the French Academy
of Sciences, eggs of a bird coming from Madagascar that had a capacity of two
gallons. Some specimens of these eggs may be seen in the galleries of the Paris
Museum, and still larger eggs have been found. The museum in London has one
with a capacity exceeding eleven quarts, or equivalent to two hundred and twenty
hen's eggs, or more than seventy thousand humming birds' eggs. It was thought at
first that the bird which laid these gigantic eggs was still living, for natives of
Madagascar spoke of having seen a bird of colossal size that could throw down an
ox and make a meal of it. Such, however, were not the ways of the bird called the
Epiornis, which had no talons or wings, and fed on vegetable substances. The
description by the celebrated traveler Marco Polo of a great flying bird of prey,
called a roc, has no reference to the Epiornis. M. Grandidier has demonstrated
that this bird no longer exists in Madagascar, and that if man ever knew it the
stories with marvelous details which the savages hand down from generation to
generation make no mention of it. We owe to M. Grandidier, M. Milne-Edwards,
and Major Forsyth what is known of the history of this large wingless bird, which
resembles the Dinornis in several points. If its size was proportioned to that of its
eggs it should have been twice as large as the Dinornis. It was not, however, but
constituted a family represented by very diverse forms and of variable size,
though never much exceeding eleven feet. The head was similar in appearance to
that of the Dinornis, but the surface of the forehead was furrowed with wrinkles

and cavities, indicating the presence of a crest of large feathers. A curious
peculiarity was the opening of the Eustachian tube directly on the exterior. The
cervical vertebræ are very numerous, while the sternum is much reduced. It is a
flat bone, broad but very short, especially in the median part. The wing also has
suffered a great regression, for it comprises only a thin, short rod, the humerus,
and a small osseous mass representing all the other bones of the wing stuck
together. The Epiornis had no wings externally visible. The bones of the feet
were, on the other hand, of considerable size, and indicate that the bird that
possessed them was larger than the Dinornis.
The Epiornis, according to M. Milne-Edwards, frequented the borders of waters,
keeping among the reeds along lakes and rivers, for its bones are found associated
with those of turtles, crocodiles, and a small hippopotamus. It most probably
nested in the low plains around lakes.
Just as the Apteryx among birds, and the bison and the beaver among mammals,
so the Dinornis and the Epiornis have been destroyed as man has extended his
abode and his domination.
When we regard the fauna of Madagascar and of New Zealand we are struck by
the great resemblance between them, from the points of view of their recent and
ancient vertebrate fauna. These resemblances suggest the past existence of
relations between these two lands now separated by a wide expanse of sea, and
this agrees with geological observations.—Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from La Nature.

SKETCH OF FREDERICK C. SELOUS.
The description of Selous, in Men and Women of the Time, as "explorer,
naturalist, and sportsman," is suggestive of the manner in which his career has
been developed and his fame has grown. Beginning his active life as a mere
hunter of big game in the wilds of South Africa, and known at first only as a
sportsman, he has become recognized as one of the leading, most intelligent, and
most efficient explorers of his time, and is accepted as the most eminent authority
respecting what relates to the large and important region of Mashonaland.
Frederick Courtenay Selous was born in London, the son of a father of
Huguenot extraction and of a mother who, descended from the Bruces of
Clackmannan, could count Robert Bruce among her ancestors, and was also
related to Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler. He was taught at Bruce Castle,
Tottenham, and then went to school at Rugby, where he distinguished himself by
his activity, which was displayed in his high spirits and love of violent mischief
and by his personal courage to such an extent that his schoolfellows wittily
nicknamed him "Zealous."
Leaving Rugby when sixteen or seventeen years old, he spent two years in
Switzerland and Germany, studying at Neufchâtel and Wiesbaden. His hardy
activity seems to have been as marked in Germany as at Rugby, for it is recorded
of him that he attracted some notice in the papers by jumping into the Rhine in
winter after a wild duck which he had shot. He was not dressed for a swim, and,
his great coat and top boots becoming filled with water, he had much difficulty in
getting to shore with his game. His determination to achieve a career in South
Africa by hunting and collecting specimens was apparently reached while he was
still a youth, and at nineteen years of age he sailed from England, to land at Algoa
Bay in 1871. Hunting was his object, as is substantially confessed in the title of
his first book, A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa. The book won instant recognition
as a story of sport and a hunter's prowess, and was regarded in that light by the
critics and the general public. The Royal Geographical Society, however,
perceived other qualities in the story he had to tell, and gave him successively
honorable mention, the Cuthbert Peake grant, and, in 1883, the Founder's Gold
Medal, the highest honor it had to bestow.
Among the earliest testimonials paid by this society to the value, as yet not
generally appreciated, of Selous's work was that given by Lord Aberdare,

president, in his anniversary address, delivered in May, 1881, to the services
rendered to geography in the regions west of Lake Nyassa by Mr. Selous, who
had "hitherto been known as a mighty hunter of large game.... This gentleman, we
learn, in 1878 penetrated for one hundred and fifty miles the unknown country
north of the Zambezi, in the direction of Lake Bangweolo. He has since crossed in
various directions the Matabele country south of the Zambezi, discovering two
new rivers and defining the course of others which had previously been laid down
from vague information." Selous's Notes on the Chobi, it appears, had already
been published by the Geographical Society.
Mr. Selous has spent most of his time since he began his African wanderings in
1871, except for occasional visits to England, in traveling and hunting over that
part of the African continent with which his name as an explorer is associated. In
1877 he and some companions penetrated into Matabeleland to hunt elephants.
Relating the story of his wanderings in an address to the Royal Geographical
Society in 1893, he described his experiences with fever and ague, the attacks of
which began in Griqualand in 1872, but came on only when he halted anywhere a
few days. North of the Zambezi he made several journeys among the Balongas,
and spent a wretched rainy season, almost without equipment, on the Manica
table-land, of the luxuriant vegetation of which, with sweet-smelling flowers after
the rains, he gave a glowing description in his address. Interesting observations
were made on some of the northern rivers. The curious phenomena of the steady
rise of the waters of the Chobi and Machabi—an outlet of the Okavango—was
observed from the first week in June till the last week in September, when the
flood began to recede.
From 1882 the journeys acquired additional geographical importance, and Mr.
Selous proceeded to rectify the maps of Mashonaland made by earlier travelers,
taking constant compass bearings, sketching the courses of rivers, and fixing the
positions of tributaries. The value of this work was made manifest in a
magnificent large scale map of the country.
This map, which was published in 1895, was intended, first and chiefly, to
illustrate the work done by Mr. Selous while in the service of the South African
Company; and, secondly, to embody, as far as possible, the knowledge possessed
of the entire region extending from Fort Salisbury to the northward as far as the
Zambezi, and to the eastward as far as the lower Pungwe. Mr. Selous's manuscript
originals, deposited in the map room of the Royal Geographical Society, comprise
a compass survey, showing the routes during a year's employment in the service
of the British South African Company, September 1, 1890, to September, 1891, on
a scale of 1:255,000; a sketch map, showing the route of the Manika Mission

from Fort Charter to Umtassa's and thence to the camp near Mount Wedza, and
also the routes taken by Mr. Selous from the camp near Mount Wedza to
Makoni's, Mangwendi's, Maranka's, and back to Makoni's, on a scale of
1:255,000; a sketch of routes from Umtali to Mapanda (Pungwe) and back, in
1891, on the same scale; a sketch of Mashonaland, showing tribal boundaries, on
the same scale; a rough survey map of the countries ruled over by the Makorikori
chiefs, for which a mineral concession had been granted to the Selous Exploration
Syndicate, on a scale of 1:210,000; and about thirty sheets of manuscript maps
and rounds of angles, utilized in the compilation of the first four maps of this list.
Although Mr. Selous did not determine latitudes or longitudes, his long-distance
compass bearings enabled him to lay down a network of triangles connecting Fort
Salisbury with Masikesi. These triangles included Fort Charter, Sengedza, and
Mavanka's in the south, Mount Mtemwa in the north, and Mount Dombo in the
east; and it turns out that the distance between Fort Salisbury and Masikesi, as
resulting from this triangulation, differs to the extent of only about a mile from
that obtained by careful astronomical observations made at the two terminal
points. The greater part of Mr. Selous's compass bearings were taken during the
rainy season, when the air was very clear and landmarks could be seen at great
distances. Mr Selous's determinations of altitude were not so accurate, and those
obtained with the aneroid were characterized by himself as "of little value."
During all of his twenty years' wanderings Mr. Selous represented in his address
to the Royal Geographical Society, with the exception of a treacherous night
attack made upon his camp by the Mashuku-Sumbwe, led by a few hostile
Marotse, in 1888, he had never had any serious trouble with the natives. He had
gone among many tribes who had never previously seen a white man, and was
always in their power, as he seldom had more than from five to ten native
servants, none of whom were ever armed. Mr. Selous's pioneer work began in
1889, when he conducted a gold-prospecting company through eastern
Mashonaland. The journey took the party to the Portuguese settlements on the
Zambezi, where those people were found to have a full appreciation of the
richness of the gold region.
The British South Africa Company, or "Chartered Company," as it is sometimes
called, was incorporated about the same time (October, 1889), with power to
occupy and possess the large domains that constitute what is now called
Rhodesia. The return of Mr. Selous to the Cape of Good Hope with the report of
what he had observed had the effect of determining the company to speed its
operations so as to anticipate the Portuguese. Mr. Selous entered the service of the
company, and, although he was not yet an explorer in the scientific sense, the

accurate memory of his early wanderings over the region enabled him to guide
successfully the pioneer expedition that took possession of Mashonaland.
One of the sensational incidents of this campaign was the refusal of Lobengula to
allow the pioneer force to use the road that led through Buluwayo, his capital, the
only existing wagon road from the British frontier to the Mashonaland plateau. A
new road was cut, under the guidance and superintendence of Mr. Selous, through
four hundred and sixty miles of wilderness, the whole work being accomplished
in two months and a half.
Among the chiefs who submitted to the British occupation after the seizure of
Gonvola was Moloko, ruler of the country north of Manica, who made a treaty
with Mr. Selous. After two years spent in various operations for opening up the
country and securing treaties with the native chiefs, Mr. Selous returned to
England in December, 1892, and put the narrative of his adventures to press, but
was called back in August, 1893, returning at very short notice, on account of the
threatening attitude of the Matabele chief Lobengula and the consequent risk of
interruption in the development of the country. The tribes had risen against the
assumption of the company to claim as a territorial cession what they had
regarded as simply a grant of mining and exploiting privileges. Mr. Selous
engaged actively in the campaign, in which he is credited with having fought with
great gallantry by the side of the colonists, and was wounded while protecting
some negroes who had been surprised by the enemy.
Returning again to Mashonaland, he reached there in time to witness a second
outbreak of the natives, vexed by the triple plague of locusts, rinderpest, and the
stringent regulations of the Chartered Company's government with respect to
cattle. His own cattle were stolen, and he headed a company of volunteers that
went out to check the insurgents and protect the people who were still on their
farms.
The fruits, in acquisition to geographical knowledge, of Mr. Selous's adventures
and explorations are to be found, mingled with much about sporting and exciting
incident, in his books: A Hunter's Wanderings in South Africa, already mentioned;
Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa (1893); Sunshine and Storm in
Rhodesia (1896); and in lectures to the Geographical Society and periodical
contributions concerning Mashonaland.
These books abound in observations on natural history, often constituting real
contributions of new facts or new demonstrations to the science, usually occurring
incidentally in the narrative of adventure, but sometimes given in more formal
shape. The author avows that his conclusions respecting animals are drawn from

personal experience of the beasts, and are not influenced in any way by the stories
of old hunters, Dutch or native. Among these notices are original observations on
the giraffe and its habits, notes on buffaloes and their disposition, and remarks on
variations in the types of South African lions. Of this animal, while some authors
would make three species, the author believes there is only one. "As out of fifty
male lion skins," he says, "scarcely two will be found exactly alike in the color
and length of the mane, I think it would be as reasonable to suppose there are
twenty species as three." So in Notes upon South African Rhinoceroses, a paper
read before the Zoölogical Society of London in June, 1881, and reprinted in this
volume, Mr. Selous gives his reasons for affirming that there are only two species
of rhinoceros in South or in all Africa—the square-mouthed or white Rhinoceros
simus and the prehensile-lipped or black Rhinoceros bicornis—while the
supposed Rhinoceros keitloa, or blue rhinoceros of the Boers, is merely a variety
of the bicornis, the distinction between the two being based only on differences in
the relative length of the horns. Another paper from the Proceedings of the
Zoölogical Society, reprinted here, is Notes on the South Central African
Antelopes, embodying again only the results of the author's own observations. In
this paper twenty-two species are described by their scientific, native, Dutch, and
English names, and their characteristics, habits, appearance, and distinctions are
indicated.
In the preface to his Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa Mr. Selous tells
how he had determined, in 1881, upon visiting the ostrich farm of his friend Frank
Mandy, to settle down in Africa for a quiet life. Then he went home and spent a
few months in England. Visiting the Natural History Department of the British
Museum, he was shown by Dr. Gunther and his associate how old and dilapidated
some of the specimens were, and how many noble forms were not represented at
all. He took note of what he ought to get should he visit the interior of Africa
again. Next we find him in South Africa, not quiet on a farm as he had intended to
be, but in the wilderness, where he spent six years (1882-'87) engaged principally
in collecting specimens "of the magnificent fauna which once abounded
throughout the land," but many forms of which were now becoming scarce and
some were verging on extinction. He shot and preserved a great many fine
specimens of the larger antelopes, some of which may be seen in the New Natural
History Museum at South Kensington, while others are in the collection of the
South African Museum at Cape Town. Besides the stories of specimen hunting
and adventures with the lions that are always to be found where game is abundant,
the volume contains much matter of more general interest, such as notes of
personal experiences among the Boers; accounts of two expeditions sent against
the Batauweni by Lobengula; the devastations committed by the Matabele in

Mashonaland; valuable notes on the Bushmen or Masarwas; accounts of journeys
beyond the Zambezi to the countries of the Machukulumbwi and Barotsi tribes;
and a review of the past history and present condition of Mashonaland. We find
here also a notice of the caves of Sinola, with a subterranean lake in the principal
cave having water marked by a deep-blue color like that of the blue grotto of
Capri, an account of which was published by Mr. Selous in the Proceedings of the
Geographical Society of London for May, 1888. An account of Mr. Selous's
Twenty Years in Zambezia was published in the Geographical Journal in 1893.
Mr. Selous has done more than any other man to bring Mashonaland into notice,
and is credited, together with Cecil Rhodes, with having contributed most to the
creation of Rhodesia. The first comprehensive account of Mashonaland was given
by him in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1889, when he described the country
as a land of perennial streams in which thirst is an unknown quantity; with its
high plateau, standing at an elevation of from four thousand to forty-six hundred
feet and forming a very important watershed, endowed with a network of
important streams, the springs supplying which, welling out from the highest parts
of the downs, were capable of being applied to the irrigation of an enormous area,
and having a salubrious climate, the continuous southwest wind giving cool
breezes in summer and cold ones in winter. The high plateaus were further of
much ethnological interest, in that they gave shelter to the very few remnants of
the peaceful Mashonas who had escaped extermination at the hands of the
Matabele.

Editor's Table.
SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC MIND.

The address delivered by Prof. Michael Foster, as president this year of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, was not as long or elaborate as such
addresses are wont to be, but it contained many thoughts of great value. After
sketching the vast advances in scientific knowledge made within the present
century, he observed, with great truth, that "the very story of the past which tells
of the triumphs of science puts away all thoughts of vainglory." Why? In the first
place, because no one can study the history of science without being made to feel
how very near, in many cases, the men of the past came to anticipating some of
the most famous discoveries and generalizations of later years. Translate the
language of an earlier age into modern terms, and you often find that you have
expressed the most advanced scientific doctrine of to-day. In the second place, if
we find a certain lack of definiteness and truth to fact in the ideas of the past, how
can we be at all sure how our ideas will look when confronted with the fuller
knowledge which doubtless our successors will possess? Lastly, "there is written
clearly on each page of the history of science the lesson that no scientific truth is
born anew, coming by itself and of itself. Each new truth is always the offspring
of something which has gone before, becoming in turn the parent of something
coming after." However great the work of a man of science may be, "it is not
wholly his own; it is in part the outcome of the work of men who have gone
before." In this respect Professor Foster sees a striking difference between the
man of science and the poet. We always know whence the former came, but the
latter is almost as devoid of visible ancestry as Melchizedek. When the man of
science dies the results which he achieved remain, and his work is taken up where
he left it off; whereas the poet, strictly speaking, has no continuators. The
Homeridæ do not represent Homer, nor do Dryden and Congreve take the place of
Shakespeare.
The story of natural knowledge or science, we are reminded, is a story of
continued progress. "There is in it not so much as a hint of falling back—not even
of standing still." The enemies of science sometimes seek to turn against it the
fact that each age revises the conclusions of the preceding one. They ask, What
dependence can be placed upon opinions or theories that are thus subject to
change? The answer is that the science of each age is the nearest approximation

which that age can make to the truth, and upon some points represents the truth
with a great approach to finality of interpretation. The law of gravitation, for
example, as formulated by Newton, lies at the foundation of the physics of to-day.
The circulation of the blood was discovered once for all by Harvey. The true
theory of the solar system was given once for all by Kepler. It is the glory of
science that whatever of imperfection may lurk in a scientific theory is sure to be
brought to light and corrected by subsequent observation and analysis.
The learned professor dwelt briefly but forcibly upon the qualities of the scientific
mind. In the first place, the scientific mind must "vibrate in unison with that of
which it is in search." It is in search of truth, and it must therefore vibrate in
unison with truth. The follower of science must have a truthfulness beyond that of
the ordinary man, who does not set a great price upon exactness in his
observations or conclusions, and readily confounds things which, superficially
similar, are fundamentally different. Nature resents even the most trifling
inexactness, and the careless student will find that the further he carries his
inquiries the further he goes astray. The scientific mind must also be alert. The
indications and hints which Nature gives are sometimes very slight, and only one
who is watchful in the extreme and attentive to the smallest things will catch
them. Then the problems which Nature sets are often complicated, and call for a
high degree of courage and perseverance. An inquiry which seemed easy at first
will suddenly become overcast by what seems the most hopeless obscurity, and
the scientific worker, unless he possesses the necessary moral as well as
intellectual qualities, will fail in his quest. Considering the characteristics which
the pursuit of science tends to develop in its votaries, and considering that
scientific method is now and has been for many years past a wonderfully devised
system for carrying on research, Professor Foster is surprised that the progress of
science is not even more rapid than it is. He fears that perhaps Science does not
get the best minds enrolled in her service, and rather hints that our institutions of
education are responsible for turning aside many who might lend great aid in the
advancement of real knowledge to less profitable pursuits. In words of almost
precisely similar import to some that we used in these columns not very long ago,
he observes that "that teaching is one-sided, and therefore misleading, which deals
with the doings of man only and is silent about the works of Nature, in the sight
of which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing." The whole address is
stamped with the high thoughtfulness which so eminently distinguishes its author,
and deserves to be carefully pondered by all who would understand the character
and mission of science and the intellectual needs of the present age.

THE LATE WILLIAM H. APPLETON.

As many of our readers will have learned through the daily press, Mr. William H.
Appleton, long the head of the well-known publishing house of D. Appleton and
Company, passed away at his home in Riverdale on the Hudson, October 19,
1899, having reached the advanced age of eighty-five years. As one of the
founders of this magazine, who from the start was in close sympathy with its
aims, kept up an active interest in its management, and was ever ready to aid its
conductors with advice and encouragement, it is fitting that a few memorial words
should be spoken of him in these columns.
The career of Mr. Appleton was a marked one in many respects. Entering the
book business of his father, Mr. Daniel Appleton, at an unusually early age, he
soon developed such an aptitude for affairs that at twenty-one he went abroad for
the purpose of making the acquaintance of the leading foreign publishers and
paving the way for closer relations with them in the importation and sale of their
books in this country. Three years later, or at the age of twenty-four, his father
made him a partner in the business, which had previously been extended so as to
include the publication as well as the sale of books, and had now so increased in
volume as to compel removal to more commodious quarters. Ten years of growth
and uninterrupted prosperity followed, when Mr. Daniel Appleton, in 1848,
retired from the now well-established firm, William H. Appleton, at the age of
thirty-four, becoming its head, with his brothers John A. and Daniel Sidney as
partners. In co-operation with these and other brothers who afterward entered the
business, Mr. Appleton guided the operations of the firm for a period of nearly
fifty years, successfully piloting it through several financial crises and carrying it
to a foremost place among the publishing houses of America.
Besides the routine of an extensive publishing business, the history of the house
during this time includes a number of large undertakings involving the
expenditure of vast sums of money, and years of labor by many workers, and
attended with risks that only the most far-seeing business sagacity could justify.
We may presume that the several members of the firm shared a common faith in
the success of these great enterprises, but it is fair to infer that as the head of the
house William H. Appleton took a leading part in their origin and execution. One
of these ventures was the publication of the American Cyclopædia, which in its
present revised form represents an outlay of over a million dollars and some ten
years of time. Another undertaking, and the one that we wish more particularly to
speak of here, was the extension of the business in the line of popular scientific
publications.
Scientific circles in this country have never realized the debt they owe to D.
Appleton and Company, and especially to William H. Appleton, in this regard. It

is no exaggeration to say that the advance of science in the United States was
hastened by more than a quarter of a century by the enlightened and courageous
policy which led the firm to add this class of books to their lists at the time they
did. Everything apparently was against it—nothing in its favor. Our scientific
literature consisted mainly of a few text-books having only a limited sale. Science
itself was an affair of laboratories and bug collectors, the one to be shunned and
the other commiserated. The few utterances of scientific men having a bearing on
the great questions of the right interpretation of Nature, man's relations to his
fellows and to the world at large, social betterment, etc., that here and there
arrested public attention were received with contemptuous sneers or scouted as
the rankest infidelity. Few who are not past middle life will find it possible now to
realize that this was the general attitude toward science forty years ago, but we
have only to refer the reader to the writings of the time for abundant confirmation
of our statements.
It was such conditions as these that the firm was called upon to face when
considering the question of entering this new field of publication. All ordinary
business instincts were against it. Scarcely a publisher either here or abroad would
even listen to the proposal to risk his capital in such an enterprise. Nevertheless,
Mr. Appleton, lending an appreciative ear to the arguments of the former editor of
this journal and displaying his usual foresight, finally decided in favor of the
project, which afterward resulted in the introduction of the works of Spencer,
Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Bain, Romanes, and other distinguished writers to
American readers. A further step in the same direction, taken later, was the
publication of the International Scientific Series, now numbering some eighty
volumes. The scheme as originated and shaped by Professor Youmans was
heartily seconded by Mr. Appleton, as was also the plan of the Popular Science
Monthly.
A distinctive feature of the arrangements for the issue of all these foreign books,
and one which redounds in no small degree to the credit of the firm, was the
voluntary agreement, in the absence of an international copyright law, to pay their
authors the usual royalties, making no distinction between them and authors at
home. Mr. Appleton had been a lifelong advocate of international copyright,
founding his contention on the simple justice of recognizing the property rights of
the author, no matter where he lived. Although to adopt such a course was to
expose themselves to the possibility of heavy loss through the issue of reprints by
irresponsible parties, a thing which actually happened in the case of a good many
of the volumes, the principle was faithfully adhered to, thus anticipating by many
years the central provision of our present law.

The storm of denunciation raised abroad by the appearance of the earlier
installments of these writings might well have deterred the boldest from repeating
the experiment of giving them currency in America. But in spite of solemn
warnings that dire consequences would be visited on the publisher who ventured
to issue them here, the books continued to appear, while the predicted evils never
came to pass.
It must not be inferred from the foregoing, however, that Mr. Appleton was either
unmindful or wanting in respect for the opposition which his course aroused.
Much of this had its origin in the religious convictions of the community, not a
little of the criticism, be it said, emanating directly from the Church or its leading
representatives. But, being a strong churchman himself, actively furthering the
work of the Church with his private means and personal co-operation, in full
sympathy with its purposes, and rejoicing in its beneficent influence, he was the
last one who would wantonly outrage the sacred beliefs of his fellow-men. Yet,
gifted with a large-mindedness that is at least unusual in the walks of business, he
was enabled to see that the onward march of natural knowledge which had so
often before excited alarm among men of narrow views could have nothing in it
that was inconsistent with a truly religious life; while, on the other hand, to
promote its advance and diffusion was to contribute by so much to the highest
human welfare.
The wisdom of Mr. Appleton's course has been fully justified by the event. As we
look over the last half of the century, which has been so fruitful in discovery and
has witnessed the development of so many agencies for the amelioration of
human ills and so manifold an increase in man's power for right living, we can see
at the various stages of this evolution how large a part the broadening of thought
fostered by these authors and the new aims and methods in inquiry suggested by
them have contributed to the advance. It could not, in short, have been made so
rapidly or effectively without the stimulus they gave. For what has been done in
this line in this country we think—when we reflect that it was he who had the
courage to bring the works of those thinkers here, and who made them accessible
to students and the reading public, who constituted the agency through which the
new thoughts and aims were spread—a very important part in the achievement
may fairly be ascribed to Mr. William H. Appleton.

Scientific Literature.
Owing to the increasing demands upon our space, authors and publishers are
notified that hereafter the department of Scientific Literature, with the exception
of Publications Received, will be discontinued.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The busy pen of Mr. John Fiske has produced another book marked by the
qualities which the public has learned to associate with all his work—lucidity of
expression, felicity of illustration, a large command of the conventional elements
of literary composition, and a philosophy which, while very free and lightsome in
its steps and paces, always has the luck to fetch up within easy hailing distance of
a moderate orthodoxy. Mr. Fiske undertakes to conduct us on an excursion
Through Nature to God,[27] somewhat as Cook, of international fame, might
undertake to see us safe from New York to the Holy Land. Of the two, we think
Cook makes the surer thing of it; yet no one can deny that Mr. Fiske has done his
best to trace the itinerary and encourage his excursionists to believe that they will
"get there."
We may as well candidly confess that we have not much faith in the method
followed in the work before us. The intention is to show that an analysis of Nature
and of Nature's ways yields God; in other words, that we have only to carry out
the processes of thought which an examination of the external world and of
human history sets in motion in order to find God at the end of the argument.
Thus, by searching, contrary to what Scripture has generally been held to imply,
we find out both that God is and to some extent what he is. We prefer the older
view. The world's greatest Teacher said simply, "God is a spirit." He did not say
that this was a conclusion to which many lines of argument led. He did not hint at
any kind of argument, but assumed the affirmation of God by the human
consciousness. We venture to say that if Mr. Fiske's method were successful and
we could argue ourselves into a belief in God, the result would be disastrous; for
the God of argument, or even of analogy, is not the God of the human soul or
conscience. We should have one conclusion more of science, but we should lose
that for which no conclusion of science could make amends—our sense of the
infinite and the possibility of faith.

Mr. Fiske discusses, in the early chapters of his book, The Mystery of Evil. He
takes the familiar ground that evil is the necessary correlative, and in a manner the
necessary condition, of good. We are placed in a universe that abounds in evil in
order that by conquering it we may raise ourselves to a moral level otherwise
impossible. On one page the author goes so far as to say that God, and not the
devil, "is the creator of evil," but elsewhere he relaxes his boldness and speaks of
evil being "permitted." One feels like asking, If good and evil are equally made by
God, then which is which? When we speak of electricity as positive and negative
we do not ascribe any superiority to one over the other. Nor do we say that
centrifugal is a more commendable form of force than centripetal, or vice versa.
"For strong and resolute men and women," we are told, "an Eden would be but a
fool's paradise." This is not complimentary to our first parents in their primitive
condition of innocence, and it puts the curse pronounced upon them in a
somewhat equivocal light. There is also quite a rehabilitation of the "serpent,"
who, it seems, knew quite well what he was talking about and gave excellent
advice. We wonder whether Mr. Fiske is really of opinion that it helps us to solve
any of the practical problems of life to be told that without evil there could not be
good. Men have known for centuries that it is good to fight evil, though what evil
is essentially they have often been in doubt. Upon the latter point Mr. Fiske does
not in the least attempt to enlighten us; and yet it should be rather a more hopeful
enterprise to attempt to show us what is specifically evil and ought therefore to be
resisted, than to vindicate evil in general as the indispensable condition of good,
and something, therefore, which God was justified in making.
The second division of the book deals with The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-
Sacrifice. We can not see that these roots are traced further back than the mother's
affection for her offspring. Mother's love is doubtless an old story in the world by
now, and perhaps as good a story as earth has to tell; but it seems to us that the
"cosmic" character of it is not very apparent. We may believe that it was destined
to come in the fullness of time, but this can be said equally of all that exists. "I
think it can be shown," says Mr. Fiske, "that the principles of morality have their
roots in the deepest foundations of the universe; that the cosmic process is ethical
in the profoundest sense; that, in that far-off morning of the world when the stars
sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, the beauty of self-sacrifice and
disinterested love formed the chief burden of the mighty theme." All we can say
in regard to this is that Mr. Fiske has not shown it. He has shown just what we all
knew before—that love exists in the world, that it antagonizes selfishness, and
that human beings are endowed with a moral and religious sense—but he has not
made it plain that the meaning of the universe is to be found in these (as we

regard them) higher developments. He has himself acknowledged that, on a broad
view of the world-wide struggle for life, there are no moral elements to be seen.
Religion, as we hold, is its own justification. There is more of religion in one
verse of the Psalms than in all the Theodicies that ever were written. "As the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God." Here is the whole essence of the matter—
the affirmation of the human heart that there is something or some one beyond
and above the mesh of circumstance and fact in which our lives are involved;
something or some one who authenticates all that is good, and everlastingly
condemns what is evil; something or some one to which or to whom the soul
gravitates as to nothing else in the universe. When this affirmation is strong,
religious life is strong; when it is weak, religious life is weak; should it cease
entirely, then religion is dead. The book Mr. Fiske has given us is interesting from
first to last—all his books are interesting—but it does not increase our knowledge,
nor does it add to our knowledge faith.

GENERAL NOTICES.
The author of Extemporaneous Oratory for Professional and Amateur
Speakers[28] is himself one of the most effective orators, especially in debate, of
the time. He has embodied in this book the results of ripened thought and
successful experience gained in a field in which he is a master, for the instruction
and help of those who would follow what he regards as the greatest of all arts,
including the elements of all—music in the intonations of the voice, and painting
and sculpture in the life, attitudes, and expression of the speaker. It is an art, too,
which has wielded a more general and important influence than any other, which
is almost universal in its appeals, and which any one may at any time find useful,
when it will be of great advantage to him to possess the ability "to speak distinctly
to the purpose, gracefully, with genuine fire." Extemporaneous oratory concerns
the delivery, in form and language suggested by the occasion, "of ideas previously
conceived and adopted with more or less fullness and precision, together with
such thoughts and feelings as may arise and obtain utterance." It has many
advantages over other methods of oratory, all tending to give the speaker greater
power over his audience, and particularly in the fact that the extemporizer is at all
times ready to expound, defend, illustrate, and enforce his opinions. The
extemporaneous speaker must have a full and fluent command of language, and a
full store of facts which he may at any time have to bring to bear upon the subject
of his address and in the vindication of his opinions. The first place of importance
is given to facts of natural science, which are of increasing utility. "To the
educated and uneducated alike, natural science is now the most interesting of
themes." Next come the facts of history and biography, those of the special
branches bearing on the speaker's theme and purpose, and the great general
conceptions included in the thoughts of the learned; and he must have settled
opinions. At the basis of Dr. Buckley's treatment of this art and of his advice to
those who would perfect themselves in it is the principle that extemporization is
evolution after involution. This advice, in which the various phases of the subject
are commented upon under a great variety of aspects, concerns the general
preparation for the address, the acquisition of effective command of language, the
exercise and training of the voice, the intellectual and physical elements that enter
into oratory, its accessories, and the factor of the audience—all plainly and
practically presented, with a facility of style that makes the reading of the book a
pleasure.

Readers of the Popular Science Monthly have already had an opportunity of
perusing some of the narrative and observations which Professor Heilprin has
embodied in his Alaska and the Klondike.[29] In it he has attempted to portray that
remarkable region in its true aspects. Professor Heilprin is well able to do so, for
he is a keen observer and looks with a scientific eye, and his literary style is free
and graphic. He made a summer journey to the region last year (1898), between
the end of July and the middle of October, with the object of being "able to
determine between fact and fancy, and to obtain a personal knowledge of the
region and its varied conditions." What he saw and heard is here presented. While
by no means pretending to that degree of accuracy and of proper insight which
can only come with more protracted and intimate knowledge, the author believes
that he has given a careful and unprejudiced account. Persons whose ideas of the
regions about Dawson are associated with visions of arctic severity and sterility
may be a little surprised at reading of one's looking from the heights about the
town northwestward "over a most lovely stretch of river, with hillsides closely
besetting it, and with a vegetation of most striking brilliancy and vigor," and of
the eye turned southward, losing, in consequence of the different configuration of
the ground, "all but the beautiful verdant slopes which still mark out the valley";
of the beholder being able for hours at a time to sit watching the beauty of the
landscape; and of the difficulty of recommending to one endowed with a proper
appreciation for the works of quiet Nature "a more enjoyable exercise than to take
in a bit of this wonderful land of the North, and with it a mellow sunshine that is
not to be found elsewhere." These pretty landscape pictures of the arctic summer
are followed by accounts of society at the Klondike as the author found it, of the
trail, steamboat travel, and the routes to the region; a description of the placers,
their occurrence, and the methods of mining; observations on the physical history
and geology of the gold fields; and a summary of the laws regulating mining. In
the summary of his geological discussion the author expresses the opinion that it
seems probable that "the Klondike gold region is merely a fractional part of a
discontinuously continuous auriferous tract that extends in a westerly course into
the heart of Alaska, and southward into British Columbia."

Mr. Bullen's Idylls of the Sea[30] comprises three groups of essays, each group
being marked by distinct characteristics. The sketches in the first group, the
designation of which gives the name to the book, answer approximately well to
Mr. Strachey's estimation of the whole as "some of the most vivid things ever
written about the sea," such as only a man who really knows the sea in all its
humors, and "has heard all those multitudinous voices that echo along the waste
spaces of the deep," could write. There is something weird about them, and they
have the air of mystery and superstitious awe with which, according to tradition,

the sailor regards the imperfectly understood features of the sea. They are short
stories of curious or striking incidents of sea life. The essays of the second group
are real natural-history sketches—accounts of some oceanic birds, the kraken,
sharks, the devilfish, etc., by a man who is well and scientifically acquainted with
them. The third group includes longer sketches of sea-farers' life, rather more
actual ones than those of the first group, and papers having a critical bearing on
the present conditions of British seamanship.
The constant advance in the knowledge of dietetics makes it desirable that its
results should be put in an accessible form, and this is particularly the case in
regard to food for those in ill health, to whom it may be the means of restoring the
normal condition. In her book on Diet in Illness and Convalescence[31] the author
has endeavored to present the substance of Diet for the Sick, now out of print,
together with recent thought on the subject, especially in the treatment of typhoid
and malarial fevers, which we owe in such variety to the present war. An outline
is given for suitable food in the more common forms of disease, suggestions for
serving meals tastefully to an invalid, and numerous recipes for beverages, soups,
dishes of meats, vegetables, and desserts. Some of these are taken from English
and French treatises; others are contributions of American cooks, and include
many novel and excellent ideas. From the preparation of koumiss and May wine
to the manipulation of Dixie biscuit there is no want of explicitness, and one is
tempted to covet the state of convalescence in which he could fare upon such
attractive compounds as rose, violet, or amethyst jelly. A word of caution is
inserted now and then. We are told "a fritter of any kind should never be
mentioned in an invalid's book." Macaroni croquettes and soufflé of shad roe are,
however, admissible. The beginning of the volume is devoted by the author to a
brief consideration of the constituents of food and processes of digestion, with
directions for the use of the pancreatic ferments. There are unfortunately many
disputed points concerning a fit dietary in illness; not only idiosyncrasies of
constitution but incomplete knowledge of physiological chemistry still render the
problem difficult. New foods are constantly introduced which subsequent
experiment proves to be harmful. The last dictum, we believe, in regard to
saccharin is that it is not wholly innocuous, so that it might be as well for the
diabetic patient to learn to do without sweets in the beginning, while as for the
digestive ferments, they are at the least hazardous concoctions. We can not be too
wary of artificial substitutes and laboratory products which claim the virtues of
organic material or living protoplasm.

The reason for the being of John Munro's The Story of the British Race[32] is
briefly indicated in the preface as to be found in the fact that the current ideas on

the subject are derived from the views of historians representing the doctrines of
an earlier and less critical generation, while the fact is overlooked that the new
science of anthropology, using careful observations and exact methods, has put
the real nature of the British people in a light in which it was never seen so clearly
before. The result is that the old ideas on the subject have been greatly modified.
Mr. Munro believes that his little book is the first attempt to bring these important
results and views of modern anthropologists before the general public in familiar
language, whereby the oversights of historians and teachers may be redeemed. An
important error to be controverted, in the author's view, lies in the fine-drawn
distinctions and sharply defined demarcations that have been made between Celts
and Saxons. It is inferred from anthropology that the population of the British
Isles is a mixture of all the races of western Europe, in which the Teutonic and
Mediterranean elements—"the aborigines of Europe"—predominate, while "the
intrusive Celtic race from Asia," still represented by the Bretons, passed into the
British Isles in comparatively small numbers. Scotland is perhaps more Teutonic
and less Mediterranean than England, Wales, or Ireland. Wales is the least
Teutonic and the most Mediterranean, if not Celtic, of the three. England has more
of the Dutch and Low Country elements than of the Scandinavian, with
apparently not far short of an equal share of the Mediterranean and Teutonic
elements. Ireland is perhaps as Teutonic as England, though the better fusion of
the elements may disguise the fact. The author thinks that the first chapters of
English history will have to be written over again by the light of anthropology.

The Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey[33]
mentions, as an important change in the field work that made necessary by the
legislation providing for the establishment of levels and permanent monuments
and bench marks, of which 10,840 miles of levels were run and 1,820 bench
marks were established. The topographic surveys to date covered an aggregate
area of 759,525 square miles, of which 240,000 square miles were on a scale of
four miles to the inch. The topographic work has progressed very satisfactorily
under the present organization of the survey, including, in the year covered by the
report, surveys in the Indian Territory and of the northern part of the boundary
line between Idaho and Montana—the first work of the kind assigned to the
Geological Survey—and the beginning of the survey of the forest reserves. The
work on the educational series of rocks has been completed. It includes two
hundred and fifty larger and smaller sets, which will be distributed to institutions
where geology is taught. In his general report the director mentions the work of
more than thirty geological parties in all parts of the United States, of six
paleontological parties, hydrographic and topographic surveys by States, and the
work of the division of mineral resources, the full account of which will constitute

Part V of the report. The theoretic and other papers in Part II relate to the Triassic
Formation of Connecticut (W. M. Davis), Geology of the Edwards Plateau, etc.,
Texas (R. T. Hill and J. W. Vaughan), North American Tertiary Horizons (W. H.
Dall), Glaciers of Mount Rainier (I. C. Russell) and Rocks of Mount Rainier (G.
O. Smith), The Franklin White Limestone of New Jersey (J. E. Wolfe and A. H.
Brooks), the Geology of San Clemente Island (W. S. T. Smith), Geology of the
Cape Cod District (N. H. Shaler), and Recent Earth Movement in the Great Lakes
Region (G. K. Gilbert). Part III contains papers on the gold districts of Alaska, by
G. F. Becker, J. E. Spurr, and H. B. Goodrich; Coal Fields of Puget Sound (B.
Willis), the Judith Mountains of Montana (W. H. Weed and L. V. Pirsson), Certain
Mining Districts in Idaho (W. Lindgren and F. H. Knowlton), and the Mining
Districts of the Telluride Quadrangle, Colorado (C. W. Purington). The four
papers in Part IV are a Report of Progress of Stream Measurements during 1896,
by A. P. Davis; the Water Resources of Indiana and Ohio, by Frank Leverett; New
Developments in Well-boring in South Dakota, by N. H. Darton; and Water
Storage and the Construction of Dams, by J. D. Schuyler.

The purpose of Belle S. Cragin's Our Insect Friends and Foes[34] is illustrated
from a passage in the author's own life, cited in the preface: "In my younger days,
when Nature study was unknown in schools and my problems had to be solved by
my own investigations or remain unsolved, I used to long for somebody to write a
book that would tell me the things I wished to know, or show me how to find
them out for myself; and that is what I have tried to do for you." The beginning of
the book is a chapter on the collection, preservation, and care of insects for
specimens, giving explicit directions for collecting them perfect, for putting them
to death, for mounting and placing them in the cabinet, and for protecting them
against vermin, dust, and mold, with descriptions of the instruments, cases, etc.,
that are used. In the descriptions of insects no attempt is made to mention any
except the commonest species, and not all of those. The habitat, in most cases, is
included in the description. As a rule, most of the species are those found in the
States east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Gulf States. Scientific names
are attached to the illustrations and a list of popular names, with their scientific
equivalents. The descriptions are brief and well adapted to the purpose indicated
in the quotation with which our notice begins.

In presenting a revision of their Plane and Solid Geometry[35] Messrs. Beman and
Smith express their belief as being, that amid all the schemes for breaking away
from the formal proofs of Euclid and Legendre and leading the student to
independent discovery, the best results are secured by setting forth a minimum of
formal proofs as models, and a maximum of unsolved or unproved propositions as

exercises. They likewise share in the belief that such of the notions of modern
geometry as materially simplify the ancient should find place in our elementary
text-books. Accordingly, they have introduced various ideas, such as those of one-
to-one correspondence, anti-parallels, negative magnitudes, general figures,
prismatic space, similarity of point systems, etc., which are of real use in the early
study of the science. In general, whatever is found to be usable in elementary
work has been inserted where it will prove of most value.
The plan of the investigation undertaken by Mr. Walter Smith in his Methods of
Knowledge[36] is, first, to give a definition of knowledge. The methods are then
considered by which men have thought it possible to attain knowledge of the self
on the one hand, and the not-self on the other. The common view of philosophers
and men of science that truth is given in general concepts, or universals, or
categories, is taken up, and the special form of the doctrine given in empiricism is
considered and found to be a doctrine wanting in all its forms. Yet it is pointed out
that the concept has its uses in the mental economy. The method is then
expounded of knowing the not-self as being gained by sympathetic imitation. It is
then determined wherein self-knowledge consists, and the bearing of this theory
on the philosophical problem and on certain practical questions is indicated.

In The Philosophy of Memory and Other Essays[37] Dr. D. T. Smith develops a
theory of mental action, the basis of which is the setting up in the cells of the gray
matter of the brain, and possibly of the spinal cord, of orderly grouping of waves
or vibrations among certain atoms or molecules by whatever may affect any of the
senses; that these undulations are realized first as sensations, and then group
themselves so as to form perceptions, ideas, emotions, etc. They rise in succession
into the scope of consciousness. After a time the effect of these vibrations in
consciousness is weakened, without perhaps utterly passing away, and retains the
possibility of being re-enforced by kindred vibrations in harmony with it. This is
memory.

In The Psychology of Reasoning[38] M. Alfred Binet makes reasoning a process of
the formation of mental images. He finds no decided difference between
perception—the cognizance of sensations and assignment of them to their source
—and logical reasoning. "The two operations are both reasonings, transitions
from the known to the unknown"; "the two extremes of a long series of
phenomena." A premise is "a judgment, an association of images," and a
conclusion that follows from the premises is "an association of images produced
by other associations." The theory of three images—the two premises and the
conclusion—"is applicable to reasonings of every kind, and therefore constitutes a
general theory of reasoning.... If it be recollected that images are fragments,

residues of former sensations; that they spring from the place where former
sensations have been received, in the sensory centers of the cerebral surface
layers, it will be understood that the purpose of these images in grouping
themselves in reasonings, according to the laws of their affinity, is to replace the
absent sensations. Such is therefore the function of reasoning; it enlarges the
sphere of our sensibility, and extends it to all objects which our senses can not
know directly. Thus understood, reasoning is a supplementary sense, which has
the advantage of being free from those strict conditions of time and space—the
two enemies of human knowledge." In memory, "the suggested image is projected
and localized in the panorama of the past, of which it appears to be a fragment."
Imagination is "a faculty of creating assemblages of images which do not
correspond to any external reality."

The idea of preparing Who's Who in America[39] was suggested by the success of
the English book, Who's Who? now in its fifty-second year, and the work has
been prepared on similar lines. Its purpose is to supply information concerning
living American men and women who have achieved distinction, who hold
recognized public positions, and who have contributed so as to have it talked
about to the growth, development, knowledge, and civilization of the country.
Eight thousand six hundred and two such persons are represented in this book,
including, ex-officio, all members of the Fifty-sixth Congress, Governors of States
and Territories now in office, United States, State, and territorial judges of courts
of high jurisdiction, persons of other prominent official classification, national
academicians, members of the National Academy of Sciences, heads of the larger
universities and colleges, and a few others chosen on similar arbitrary lines.
Special effort has been made to include all living American authors of books of
more than ephemeral value. The data for the book have been obtained from first
hands, except in a very few cases, where the modesty of the subjects made it
necessary to supply the material from other sources, when the articles were
submitted to the subjects for revision.

In The Dawn of Reason[40] Dr. Weir has provided a most interesting book for the
unscientific reader as well as for the comparative psychologist. He traces the
gradual unfolding of conscious mind in animal life from the actinophryans which
discriminates between the grains of starch and sand, and the Stentor which
changes its position to catch a ripened spore, to the higher forms that decorate
their homes, exhibit parental affection, exercise mathematical faculty, and
extricate themselves from unforeseen dangers. As the field of observation of the
senses of touch, taste, and smell has been so thoroughly worked by Lubbock and
other naturalists, special attention is paid by the author to the senses of sight and

hearing, in regard to which he furnishes new and valuable data. In addition to
these he claims to establish the fact that tinctumutations and "homing" are
auxiliary senses—not instincts. He located the center of color changing in the frog
exactly below the optic, and by artificial stimulation produced the alteration in
tint, and by excision, or treatment with atropine, destroyed the chromatophoric
function. By experimentation upon snails he found the center of the sense of
locality at the base of the cephalic ganglion, and, removing it, rendered them
unable to return to their homes. Many anecdotes are given showing that the lower
orders of animal life exercise conscious determination, and that among those with
more complex nervous systems there is a mind akin to that of man. Not only do
animals remember friends, strangers, and events, but they love, hate, and fear.
They evince æsthetic feeling also when the spider ornaments its web with
logwood flakes, the dog howls in harmonic accord with the church bell, and
salamanders assemble at the sound of a piccolo. Still higher psychical attributes
are those of animals that show parental affection or ability to count, like the
mason wasp, which provides invariably five spiders for the male larva and eight
for the female; or the harvester ants that plant their grain, weed and winnow it.
Examples are cited of the capacity of the elephant to form abstract ideas and of
the dog to indulge in brown studies. The author scouts at the theory that
"specialized instinct," or "intelligent accident," prompts actions in animals which
in man would be ascribed to reason. "Instinct," he writes, "is the bugbear of
psychologists," and thereupon he differentiates sharply the two sadly confused
functions.
In the thesis entitled A Step Forward, F. Theodor Kruger proposes, as a measure
of possible social reform, placing the medical and legal professions wholly under
the direct control of the civil authorities, to be exercised through duly constituted
boards or departments of the several communities.
In his study of Centralized Administration of Liquor Laws in the American
Commonwealths (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public
Law) Clement M. L. Sites finds that widely variant policies are followed by the
several States in the regulation of the liquor traffic, all based upon the broad
powers of taxation and police. While we hear much of characteristic plans of
regulation, little is said about characteristic systems of administration. This is
because the liquor laws are administered incoherently. There is no consensus,
even within the Commonwealth, in standards of administration. Each community
practically determines for itself how the law shall be enforced, and we have all
degrees of enforcement, from rigid severity to none. The various plans of
regulation are classified by the author according to the dominant aspect in which
they regard the liquor traffic. It has been treated as an open traffic, subject simply

to taxation and reasonable safeguards; as a necessary but dangerous business, to
be limited to approved persons and places and surrounded by special safeguards;
as a criminal enterprise, to be suppressed, like highway robbery; and as a subject
of legal monopoly. It is the purpose of Mr. Sites's essay to follow the
developments of centralized administration that have taken place in recent years
in each of these spheres, and in that of the institution and maintenance of judicial
proceedings. The phases of current development that seem to merit special note
are the substitution of the liquor-tax system for the license system, the extension
and elaboration of local option, the contingent central control of city police
administration, and the recognition of the general province of administration. The
author's study shows that these developments accord in general with the laws of
evolution, each representing some special aspect of the differentiation. In
considering the "dispensary" plan, illustrated in South Carolina, a significant
contribution to current thought is remarked in the approval it gives to the use of
liquors as a beverage, while their abuse is disapproved in an equally marked
degree, a distinction being attempted here, with correspondingly different
methods of treatment between those who can be trusted with liquors and those
who can not.
The Report of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for the year
ending June 30, 1898, represents that the operations of the division of fish culture
were in some respects more important during that than in any preceding year. This
was owing in part to the natural growth of the work, and in part to greater
efficiency in dealing with the various questions and problems that came up for
consideration. The propagation and distribution of food fishes exceeded by about
forty per cent the work accomplished in any other twelve months. The steady
increase in the catch of shad is cited as being conclusive evidence of the value of
artificial propagation. The constant decline in the lobster fishery accentuates the
necessity for increased work in that line. The efforts to acclimatize food fishes in
waters to which they are not indigenous have been continued. The special papers
published in connection with the report relate to mackerel investigations, the
alewife fisheries, the oyster beds of Louisiana, the shad fisheries of the Atlantic
coast, reports of fishes obtained in sea explorations, a list of publications, and a
report of the exhibit at the Tennessee Centennial.
The Tenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission on the Statistics
of Railways in the United States covers the year ending June 30, 1897. The year is
characterized as having been for the transportation industry one "of deferred
expectations." While the years from 1890 to 1893 each closed with increased
gross earnings as compared with the preceding year, 1893-'94 was disastrous,
showing a large decrease; no recovery took place in 1894-'95, but an increase took

place in 1895-'96. A downward turn came again in the year of the present report,
with no revival till the last month of the twelve. The total increase in mileage for
the year of the report was only 1,651.84 miles, the smallest increase and the
smallest percentage of increase noted in any year since 1890. "In many States,"
says the report, "railway construction seems to have been practically abandoned.
Especially is this noticeable in the more populous districts of the country—a
result which is not entirely due to the general commercial depression, but to the
marvelous increase in electric railways for suburban and short-distance traffic.
The influence of electric construction upon steam transportation is noted in
certain of the reports of State railway commissions for the current year." These
are only two of the numerous interesting facts presented in the report.
Small Accumulators, how Made and Used, is the first of a series of popular
scientific handbooks for students and engineers. The particular subject has been
selected for beginning the series under the suggestion of a large number of
requests for advice which the author, Percival Marshall, had received in his
capacity as editor of the Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician. The work is
intended to be an elementary handbook—"a practical and trustworthy guide"—for
amateurs and students. The theory of the accumulator is explained, directions are
given for making them, types of small accumulators are illustrated, the charging
and use of accumulators are explained, and the applications are shown. Useful
receipts and a glossary of technical terms are given. (The book is published by
Spon & Chamberlain, New York. Price, 50 cents.)
In his Better World Philosophy—a Sociological Synthesis (Chicago: the Ward
Waugh Company), J. Howard Moore utters a protest against the egoism or
selfishness of our day, and suggests an ideal scheme. The problem of life is
defined as being the relation of each individual to the rest of the universe, and is
peculiarized by the existence of the social problem involving relations of
individuals to each other different from those sustained to the impersonal
universe. There are in the nature of living beings the egoistic element, which
impels action in behalf of self, and the altruistic element, which prompts or
prevents movement out of consideration to others. At present the egoistic element
predominates, with results that make a picture far from bright. In the social ideal
the strong should supplement the weak as they would like to be supplemented if
they were weak; individuals not unequal but diverse may mutualize their efforts to
the advantage of all; and each individual should perform in the social economy
that function for which he is best fitted, and should receive in return "a graceful
equity in the means for satisfying his desires."

Among the books announced for issue soon by Henry Holt & Co. are The Book of
Vertebrate Zoölogy, by Prof. J. S. Kingsley, author of The Elements of
Comparative Zoölogy, published by the same house, which can be used as a
companion to McMurrich's Invertebrate Zoölogy; Elementary Studies in
Chemistry, by Prof. Joseph Torrey, of Harvard, which, while it is characterized by
the emphasis laid upon quantitative laboratory work in general chemistry, will be
a comprehensive text-book on the whole subject; and Moulds, Mildews, and
Mushrooms, a guide to the systematic study of the fungi and Mycetozoa and their
literature, by Prof. Lucien Underwood, of Columbia University.
Miss Cornelia E. Horsford, being interested in the question of the origin of certain
ancient ruins situated on the Charles River, Mass., and elsewhere in America,
which were discovered by the late Prof. E. N. Horsford and were believed by him
to be relics of the settlements formed by the Norsemen in the tenth century,
commissioned Mr. Thorstein Erlingsson to examine for comparison certain
ancient dwellings in Iceland, in the summer of 1895. The inquiries assigned to
him related to the method of construction of the long houses, square buildings,
hillside cots with pavements, mounds, things and doom rings, irrigation and
drainage, ditches, river dams, hithes and ship docks, or nauts, grave-hills, and
forts. The results of the study are given, with illustrations, in a small book, Ruins
of the Saga Times, by Thorstein Erlingsson. (Published by David Nutt, London.)
Mr. Erlingsson's report is supplemented by an outline of already ascertained
knowledge regarding early Scandinavian home building, derived from previous
excavations and investigations furnished by F. T. Norris and Jön Stefánsson, and a
summary in French by M. E. D. Grand.
The Quarterly Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland was issued during the thirty-seven years from the beginning of 1871 in the
form styled demi-octavo. The small pages of this size entailed some
inconveniences, especially when ample plates and tables were needed for
illustration. With the double number (August and November, 1898) a new series
was begun, in the form styled imperial octavo, with a page considerably larger
than in the old form and corresponding in size with the important publications of
some of the continental societies of Europe. This number contains the proceedings
of seven meetings of the society and important anthropological articles, some of
them on American subjects. Among them is a criticism, by Prof. W. Z. Ripley, on
Deniker's Classification of the Races of Europe.
In How to Swim (Putnams, $1) Captain Davis Dalton, Chief Inspector of the
United States Volunteer Life-Saving Corps, gives a practical treatise upon the art
of natation, together with instruction as to the best methods of saving persons

imperiled in the water and of resuscitating persons apparently drowned. The
treatise covers every branch of the art, and abounds in cautions in connection with
nearly every topic, against the mistakes that may arise from timidity or the
carelessness of over-confidence. The author holds that swimming is an art to be
acquired and learned like other athletic arts, although it depends upon natural
principles. The best movements for taking advantages of the physical laws
involved in it have been studied by competent men, and a brief and clear
presentation of them is attempted here. First, we have the lessons for the beginner,
who must, before all things, "have confidence." The different strokes are
described in detail and illustrated; the different modes of swimming and the
postures, swimming in clothes, taking off clothes in the water, diving and
swimming under water, swimming in waves, and other features are explained;
and, finally, the life-saving directions are given, and public education in
swimming is insisted upon.
The Southern Magazine is a new monthly, published at Manassas, Va., by the
Southern Publishing Company, of which we have the third number, that for
August. It has a definite flavor of the old South, for which we find no fault with,
for there was much about the old South which ought to be preserved, and no little
that was too precious to be lost. Among the matters of special interest in this
number are the Sketch of Sidney Lanier, by Ellen Manderson, with selections
from his writings; The Last Meeting of the Confederate Cabinet (held, by a
curious coincidence, at Abbeville, S. C., where secession was started), by Walter
L. Miller; an account of the University of Virginia, by John S. Patten, which
appears to be the first of a series on Southern Educational Institutions; and an
article on South Carolina in Letters, by Colonel J. P. Thomas.
The fifth yearly number of L'Année Psychologique of MM. Alfred Binet, H.
Beaunis, and Th. Ribot is a volume of 902 pages, of which 591 pages are included
in the first part, devoted to Original Memoirs and General Reviews. The papers
are nineteen in number, on such subjects as muscular fatigue, the foreshortening
of objects rising from the horizon, stereognostic perception and stereoagnosy,
suggestibility, applications of the calculation of probabilities to psychology,
colored audition, mental labor and nutritive changes, measure of mental fatigue,
sensations of smell, phonographs and the study of the vowels, cephalometry,
pedology, volume of the arm and muscular force, chronophotographic and other
apparatus, and muscular sense; and the authors are MM. Van Biervliet, of Ghent;
Blum, of Nîmes; Bourdon, of Rennes; Claparède, of Geneva; Clavière, Delage,
Demeny, Druault, Mlle. Joteyko, MM. Larguier, Manouvrier, Marage; Marbe, of
Würzburg; Obersteiner, of Vienna; Tscherning and Zwaardemaker, of Utrecht. M.
V. Henri's paper on Muscular Sense would make a volume by itself. The second

part—Analyses—consists of reviews of psychological publications entered under
ten headings. The Bibliography contains 2,558 titles, and the index of authors fills
upward of seventeen double-columned pages. (Paris: Scheicher Frères.)
Valuable papers on Comparative Tests of Bituminous Steam Coals, by John W.
Hill; the Artificial Preservation of Railroad Ties by the Use of Zinc Chloride, by
W. W. Curtis; and the Theory of Concrete, by G. W. Rafter, are given in the
Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers (vol. xxv, No. 4, April,
1899), together with discussions respecting street grades and cross-sections in
asphalt and cement and to loads and maximum stress on members of a bridge
truss; also biographical sketches of D. L. Barnes and W. R. Michie.
A valuable addition to D. Appleton and Company's International Education
Series, and a sprightly book in itself withal, is Montaigne on the Education of
Children, a volume of selections bearing on the subject from the writings of the
quaint old Frenchman, translated and annotated by L. E. Rector. The significance
of Montaigne, as the editor of the series observes in his preface to the volume, lies
chiefly in his protest against pedantry, and the translator finds Montaigne's
modernity shown in his attempt to degrade men learning from the first place, and
to lay the emphasis on fitness for practical life, ability to use one's judgment, and
morality and virtue. While Montaigne had limitations and defects in his
educational views, such as are pointed out by Dr. Harris, he still appears to have
been far in advance of his own time, and in some respects of the present time as
well. The solution of the human problem, success in dealing with one's self and
his fellows, was his ideal. The translator shows how Locke and Rousseau, and, of
course, all educational writers who have built upon these, drew from him. The
subjects of the selections given here are the Education of Children, Pedantry, the
Affection of Fathers, Liars, Physiognomy, Anger, the Art of Conversation,
Idleness, Experience, and History.
An essay on The Object of the Labor Movement, by Johann Jacoby, translated by
Florence Kelley, and published by the International Publishing Company,
advocates co-operation, demands that the employer recognize the laborer whom
he employs as a being fully his own equal and treat him accordingly, and claims
of the State an especial consideration of the working class as an act of reparative
justice.
The Transactions of the First and Second Regular Meetings of the Wyoming State
Medical Society, May 13 and November 1, 1898, shows that that body is vigorous
and active, and that the doctors of Wyoming are interested in maintaining the
dignity and reputation of their profession. It is represented that fully fifty per cent

of the regular physicians of the State have already been enrolled as members of
the society.
Mr. Frederick H. Gelman's Elements of Blowpipe Analysis (New York: The
Macmillan Company; 60 cents) is intended to serve the twofold purpose of giving
the student a general outline of the analysis and of introducing him to the methods
of determinative mineralogy. Every effort has been made to simplify the account.
The first chapter is devoted to Apparatus and Details, and the second to the
General Outline of Blowpipe Analysis. Then the general reactions for the
detection of the metallic elements in simple compounds are described, the
behavior of some of the principal ores before the blowpipe, and comparative
tables.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Abbot, A. C., M. D. The Hygiene of Transmissible Diseases, their Causation,
Modes of Dissemination, and Methods of Prevention. Philadelphia: W. B.
Saunders. Pp. 311. $2 net.
Allin, Arthur. Extra-Organic Evolution and Education. Pp. 8.
Baker, Charles Whiting. Monopolies and the People. Third edition, revised and
enlarged. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 368.
Baker, M. N. Potable Water and Methods of Detecting Impurities. New York: D.
Van Nostrand Company. Pp. 97. 50 cents.
Baskett, James Newton. The Story of the Fishes. New York: D. Appleton and
Company. (Appletons' Home-Reading Books.) Pp. 297.
Borodine, N., Editor. Revue Internationale de Pêche et de Pisciculture.
(International Review of Fisheries and Fish-Culture.) No. 1. August, 1899. (Three
times a year.) St. Petersburg, Russia. Published by the Russian Imperial Society of
Fisheries and Fish-Culture. (In English, German, and French.) Pp. 37, with
supplement of one folded page. Annual subscription, four francs.
Bulletin, Le, Médical de Quebec. Volume I, No. 1. September, 1899. Published
under the direction of the Medical Society of Quebec. Monthly. Pp. 56. $2 a year.
Burgess, O. O., M. D. Consciousness, Being, Immortality; Divine Healing and
Christian Science. San Francisco. Pp. 20.
Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston. Legal Aspects of Christian Science.
Decisions of Courts, Opinions of Lawyers, etc. Pp. 83.
Conn, H. W. The Story of the Living Machine. New York: D. Appleton and
Company. (Library of Useful Stories.) Pp. 191. 40 cents.
De Morgan, Augustus. Elementary Illustrations of the Differential and Integral
Calculus. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company. Pp. 144. $1.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method; or the Method of Rightly Conducting the
Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Translated, etc., by John Veitch.

Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company. (Religion of Science Library.)
Pp. 87. 25 cents.
Flynt, Josiah. Tramping with Tramps. Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life.
With Prefatory Note by Hon. Andrew D. White. New York: The Century
Company. Pp. 396. $1.50.
Giles, William A., Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the Civic Federation
(Chicago). Papers on Reform Legislation, Corrupt Practices Acts, and
Pawnbroking in Different Countries. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
Pp. 35.
Griffith, G. W. The Influence of the Earth upon the Field of a Bar Magnet. Pp. 4.
Harrington, Mark W. About the Weather. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
(Appletons' Home-Reading Books.) Pp. 246.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Contemporaries. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 379. $2.
Holland, Frederick May. Liberty in the Nineteenth Century. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 257.
Korscheldt, Dr. E., and Helder, Dr. K. Text-Book of the Embryology of the
Invertebrates. Translated by Matilda Bernard, and edited, with Additional Notes,
by Martin F. Woodward. Vol. II. Pp. 369. Vol. III. Pp. 441. $3.25.
Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration. Report of the Fifth Annual
Meeting, 1889. Pp. 142.
Lo Blanco, Dr. Salvatore. The Methods employed at the Naples Zoölogical
Station for the Preservation of Marine Animals. Translated by E. O. Hovey.
United States National Museum. Pp. 42.
Newman, George. Bacteria, especially as they are related to the Economy of
Nature, to Industrial Processes, and to the Public Health. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 348.
Newton, Alfred, Gadow, Hans, and others. A Dictionary of Birds. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 1088. $5.
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Press Bulletin No. 199. Plums. A
Comparison of Varieties. Pp. 2.

Oliver, Charles A. Description of an Adjustable Bracket for the Reid
Ophthalmometer. Pp. 3; A Case of Foreign Body in the Optic Nerve. Pp. 3; A
Case of Reflex Irritation. Pp. 5; A Case of Fibroma of the Eyelid. P. 1, with plate;
A New Method for the Plantation of Glass Balls into the Optical Cavity. Pp. 30.
Putnam, F. W. Address as Retiring President of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Columbus Meeting, 1899. Pp. 17.
Ribot, Th. The Evolution of General Ideas. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing
Company. Pp. 231. $1.25.
Russell, Charles T. The At-one-ment between God and Man. ("Millennial Dawn."
Vol. V.) Allegheny, Pa.: Watch-Tower Bible and Tract Society. Pp. 507.
Stuver, E., M. D. The Importance of a Knowledge of the Phylogenetic
Development of the Child in the Prevention of Children's Diseases. Pp. 11.
Thompson, Ernest Seton. The Trail of the Sandhill Stag. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 93. $1.50.
United States Department of Agriculture. Farmers' Bulletins. No. 70. The
Principal Insect Enemies of the Grape. By C. L. Marlatt. Pp. 23; No. 80. The
Peach-Twig Borer. By. C. L. Marlatt. Pp. 15: No. 99. Three Insect Enemies of
Shade Trees. By L. O. Howard. Pp. 30;—Division of Entomology. No. 37. The
Use of Hydrocyanic-Acid Gas for Fumigating Greenhouses and Small Frames.
Pp. 10; No. 38. The Squash-Vine Borer. Pp. 6; No. 39. The Common Squash Bug.
Pp. 5.
United States Fish Commission. Check-List of the Fishes of Florida. By B. W.
Evermann and W. C. Kendall. Pp. 68.
Upsala, University of (Sweden). Bulletin of the Geological Institution. Hj.
Sjögren, Editor. Vol. IV, Part I, No. 7. 1898. Pp. 131, with four plates.
Weed, Clarence Moores, Editor. The Insect World. A Reading Book of
Entomology. New York: D. Appleton and Company. (Appletons' Home-Reading
Books.) Pp. 207. 60 cents.
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Bulletin No. 4. On the
Building and Ornamental Stones of Wisconsin. By Ernest R. Buckley. Pp. 544.
Wisla. A Geographical and Ethnographical Publication (in Polish). Vol. XIII, Nos.
1 to 5. Warsaw, Poland. Pp. 320.

Wright, Mabel Osgood. Wabenor the Magician. New York: The Macmillan
Company. Pp. 346.

Fragments of Science.
The Dread of the Jew.[41]—The Dreyfus affair and the furious passions
that it has awakened have their ultimate foundation in dread and hatred of
the Jews. There is a Jewish question, more or less acute, in every
continental country, and we are told by pessimists that before long we shall
have an anti-Jewish movement in the East End of London. These facts
naturally suggest an inquiry into the causes of the dread and hate which the
Jews inspire, and the asking once again whether there are any good grounds
for regarding the Hebrew race as a menace to the Christian world. The main
fact about the Jews on the Continent which emerges from a study of the
present situation is that for some reason or other they inspire terror. That
this terror is as absurd and as unreasonable as is the terror caused
respectively by Jesuits and Freemasons, we ourselves do not doubt for a
moment, but that does not alter the fact that the sense of terror exists. It is
hardly too much to say that the majority of people on the Continent
honestly believe that unless the Jews are in some way or other curbed,
controlled, and kept down, something very dreadful will happen. In Russia
the vast Slavonic population and its leaders believe that unless the Jews are
impounded in the Polish Pale they will swamp the true Russian, and utterly
ruin and destroy the Russian nationality and the Russian ideal. In Austria it
is believed that if the Jews are allowed to go on as they are going on they
will get everything into their hands—the land of the peasants, the sources of
public information and the press, and the nerves by which trade and
commerce are moved. In Germany it is much the same story, and there the
Jews are believed, unless stopped in time, to be about to monopolize the
universities. In France it is thought that the Jews, if not put down with the
strong hand, will capture the whole administration, as well as "strangle
commerce by their octopus grip." The Jews are called a "parasitic race,"
whatever that may mean. It is said that the Jew never becomes an
agriculturist, that he is a usurer and a bloodsucker, that he is a gross
materialist, and that he has no ideals beyond the precious metals; and that
they habitually act together to further their own racial interests and to injure
those communities which have been foolish enough to trust them. To take

the charge of want of patriotism first. How is it substantiated? We can not
say that we have ever seen any real evidence of want of patriotism in the
Jews. Look at the case of France at present. There is something extremely
pathetic in the way in which the French Jews cling to their nationality in
spite of all the hatred they inspire. The truth is, the Jew is a sort of expert in
patriotism. Did not the Maccabees teach the world one of its first lessons in
patriotism? Depend upon it, if the Jew is only allowed to be a patriot he will
not fail here. The charge, indeed, is like that so often made in Russia against
the Jews. They are accused of not tilling the soil, their accusers ignoring the
fact that no Jew is allowed to buy, or to lease, or to occupy land, and is, in
fact, excluded by law from acting as a farmer. Take next the charge of
"aloofness." Probably this charge is well founded, but what can be expected
of a people so newly freed from the Ghetto? If you treat a race for centuries
as lepers, and visit its members with dire penalties, if they do not keep
"aloof" they are likely to remain for some time disinclined to free
intercourse. The third charge is, in reality, that the Jews of the world, having
obtained control of cosmopolitan finance, act together in the interests of
their race, and inflict grievous injuries upon the nations. But what proof is
there of this? Curiously enough, Mr. Arnold White—though in other ways
he seems to encourage this charge—accuses the great Jewish financiers of
not doing this very thing. He tells us that after the Russians had driven the
Jews into the Pale they wanted to raise a loan. One would have expected the
great Jewish loanmongers to have absolutely refused to help the enemy of
the race. Instead they basely, as we think, found Russia the money she
wanted. But though this was a base act, it certainly is not consistent with the
charge that the Jews control the international money market for tribal ends.
We believe, in fact, that this whole charge is a pure delusion. The great
financiers, whether Jew or Gentile, look for a profit, and not to deep and
mysterious racial aspirations. The charge that the Jews are steeped in
materialism, and so are a demoralizing element in the community, is equally
unfair and absurd. Many Jews may be fond of pomp of a vulgar kind, and
may affect what we confess personally to finding very disagreeable forms
of Asiatic luxury; but these are externals. In essentials and as a race the
Jews are no more materialistic than their neighbors. And can we say that
they are a demoralizing element when it is universally confessed that the
Jews are among the best fathers, sons, and husbands in the world?

Death of Professor Bunsen.—With the death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen,
at Heidelberg, August 16th, the world loses a student whose name is
inseparably connected with nearly all the chemical work that has been done
in the last fifty years, for it is safe to say that hardly a discovery has been
made or experiment performed to the success of which some process,
property, or instrument discovered, invented, or suggested by Bunsen, and
usually named after him, has not contributed. A sketch of this illustrious
chemist, with a portrait, and an enumeration of his principal works, each of
which might be characterized as a milestone in the advance of the science,
was published in the Popular Science Monthly for August, 1881 (vol. xix,
page 550). One of the principal events in his life since that sketch was
published was his election, in 1883, as one of the eight foreign associates of
the French Academy of Sciences—the highest honor that that institution is
competent to confer. Besides Bunsen's personal interest in the work and
success of his students, one of his most salient traits, as described by a
careful and appreciative biographer in the New York Evening Post, was his
absentmindedness concerning what he had himself accomplished. He was
afflicted with an "incipient aphasia," which made it impossible for him to
talk about them. "He could not answer verbal questions, whether oral or
written. He could not have passed a decent examination in his own
discoveries. Let the question come in the shape of an emergency in a
chemical operation, and a wealth of knowledge would be poured out, but let
it be put in words and he could not answer it." He is said to have answered a
student once, who asked him about some substance, that he knew nothing
about it—"You will have to look up the literature." The student looked up
the literature, and found that it consisted of a single article, and that by
Bunsen! Professor Bunsen prized what would stimulate him to effort,
enjoyed life, was fond of travel and interested in everything human, and
was a good novel reader.
The Unprofitableness of Strikes.—The cost of a large strike is
impressively illustrated in some of the results of the great colliery dispute of
1898 in South Wales, as they are set forth in the British Board of Trade
returns and the reports of the consular service. In direct financial loss, the
company suffered to the extent of $100,000, and the men of $300,000 in
wages, besides the demoralization from being so long out of work. To a
certain extent, other districts gained what the South Wales mines lost by the

diversion of trade to them, but that simply aggravated the evil in the mines,
for some of this diverted trade will stay where it went. It is sometimes said,
indeed, that strikes have only a temporary effect on business, from which it
will recover in time. This is true, however, as is suggested in Industries and
Iron, only when the locality affected has a virtual monopoly of the trade,
while in the competition of the nations instances of that kind are growing
rarer. England especially has many rivals in these days, eager to take
advantage of every opportunity to profit by its mistakes or misfortunes, and
which, when they get their hands on a good thing, are not apt to let go.
Notwithstanding some strikes at home, the coal trade in the United States
derived benefits from the British strike by sending to markets which the
Welsh mines should have supplied; Germany sent coal to Sweden, and
Belgium increased its shipments to the Canary Islands. Other countries are
induced, by conditions making the usual sources of supply inconvenient to
them, to a more active development of their own resources, as Austria-
Hungary, Spain, and France were in the present case. So it is more than
doubtful whether the present strike paid.
The Scientific Spirit.—The study of science, especially of an experimental
science, said Prof. R. H. Chittenden in an informal talk to students of the
Sheffield Scientific School, is peculiarly adapted for developing the power
of independent thought, and of training one in drawing logical conclusions
from experimental data. In the laboratory is afforded an opportunity for
making observations, but if real benefit is to be derived from the
experimental work there must be a full realization of the necessity of
careful thought in drawing deductions from the results observed. Broad
generalizations built on a slender foundation of fact frequently topple to the
ground, and sometimes carry destruction with them, all because of a lack of
that critical spirit which prompts a careful and thorough consideration of all
the premises. The man who has acquired the habit of careful thought, of
reasoning out each step in a process, of weighing carefully each reaction
involved, of seeking in his own mind the reason for this or that
phenomenon, who looks at both sides of a question, and carefully considers
all the facts available, will build much more surely and firmly than he who
by specious arguments constructs a glittering hypothesis, only to see it fade
away. Hasty reasoning, insufficient data, obscure facts, are the bane of
modern science. The true scientific spirit prompts to thorough inquiry; it

will have nothing to do with hasty generalizations that may glitter but do
not convince; it puts a restraining hand on all immature conclusions, and
demands, above all else, careful, thorough observation. It shuns all shams.
Good, honest work is the only passport to the domain of science.
Constitution of the Funafuti Atoll.—In the boring of the coral atoll of
Funafuti, Professor David, of the University of Sydney, reached a depth of
697 feet, and a subsequent boring was made down to about 1,000 feet. The
core obtained by the David party was sent to England and placed in the
hands of Professor Judd for investigation. The general statement is made
respecting it that the material brought up presents much the same character
throughout, and so far is regarded as supporting Darwin's theory. There are
no layers of chalky ooze, such as Murray's hypothesis might have made
possible, and no trace of volcanic material has been found. The later boring
beyond 700 feet passed through a hard limestone containing many well-
preserved corals. In a boring of the bed of the lagoon down to 144 feet, after
passing through 101 feet of water, the first 80 feet below were found to
consist of the calcareous alga Halimeda mixed with shells, and the
remaining 64 feet of the same material mixed with gravel.
Metallic Calcium.—Metallic calcium, as prepared by Professor Moissan
from solution in liquid sodium, separates in hexagonal crystals which have
a specific gravity of 1.85 and melt at 760° in vacuo. On solidifying, the
metal is somewhat brittle, is less malleable than potassium and sodium, and
shows a crystalline fracture. When free from nitride it is silver-white in
color, and has a brilliant surface. Heated to redness in a current of
hydrogen, a crystalline hydride, CaH₂, is formed. When pure, calcium is not
acted upon at ordinary temperatures by chlorine, though at 100° C. the
action is decided. But if the metal contains nitride, chlorine attacks it at the
ordinary temperature. At 300° C. calcium ignites and burns brilliantly in
oxygen. Gently warmed in air, it burns with brilliant scintillations. It
combines with sulphur, with incandescence, at 400° C. At a red heat it
unites actively with lampblack, giving a carbide, CaC₂. It gives some brittle
alloys with magnesium, zinc, and nickel. The alloy with tin slowly
decomposes water. A crystalline amalgam is formed with mercury, which
may be distilled in hydrogen at 400° C., but which forms nitride when
heated in nitrogen. Heated to redness with potassium or sodium chloride,
calcium sets the metal free. Water acts on calcium only very slowly, with

the evolution of hydrogen. In liquefied ammonia at -40° C. calcium
ammonia is formed—a reddish-brown solid.
Prosperity and Enterprise in Mexico.—The increasing prosperity of
Mexico is one of the striking features of current history. In four years the
imports of the country increased from $30,000,000 in 1894 to upward of
$45,000,000 in 1898, the average for five years having been $40,000,000.
The chief sellers to Mexicans are the United States, Great Britain, France,
and Germany, and the keenness of the competition for trade is shown in the
fluctuations in the relative shares of it of the several countries. Spain has a
small share of trade, which is growing. Industrial enterprises are being
developed throughout the country with energy, enterprise, and success.
Cotton and linen factories have been established, attention is given to the
erection of woolen mills, and a noticeable activity prevails in mining
industries. Under all these influences the railroads are prospering too.
A Question of Economy.—A paper, "Shall we grow the Sugar that we
consume?" by Freeman Stewart, called out by an article by ex-Secretary
Wilson, besides matter bearing directly on the question, embodies
observations on general political principles. Thus, it seems necessary to
observe "that the idea that republicanism requires our public officials to act
as mere weathercocks for the transient waves of popular clamor and
excitement is also a deplorable delusion, which, if persistently carried into
effect, will soon utterly destroy republicanism. As free institutions depend
on the recognition of correct principles by the people, it is primarily
necessary that correct principles should be constantly impressed upon the
attention of the people. The great need of the nation to-day is wise
leadership—unselfish men, who appreciate the necessity of being governed
by immutable divinely appointed principles, to act as leaders, to keep the
minds of the people centered in the right direction." Coming to the main
subject of the essay, we have, as to the expediency of taxing ourselves to
have sugar made here: "If the farmer's profits must come from the
consumers of sugar as a bounty or tax, and not from the inherent
profitableness of the business, then the farmer's profits are the consumer's
loss. The business is inherently unprofitable, and no farmer, or any one else,
has a right, 'inherent' or otherwise, to carry on an unprofitable business,
except at his own expense.... It may be assumed that the farmers who are
growing the sugar are now growing crops which, if not as profitable as they

desire, are at least sufficiently so to keep them from being burdensome to
the rest of the nation. And how can the prosperity of the nation be increased
by having these same farmers engage in a new business which will require
them to draw on the productive capacity of the rest of the people to the
extent of many millions of dollars annually, in order to keep their heads
above water?"
Bacteria of the Dairy.—An investigation of the relation of acid
fermentation to the flavor and aroma of butter, made by C. H. Eckles at the
Iowa College Experiment Station, has given the results that the flavor is
produced by the bacterial fermentations which have taken place in the milk
and cream. The kind of flavor depends upon the class of bacteria causing
the fermentation. The ripening of a good quality of acid cream is mostly a
development of acid bacteria. Four species of acid-producing bacteria,
tested in ripening pasteurized cream, were found to give the butter the
typical flavor and aroma. Of the species tried, the most common milk-
souring organism (Bacterium lactarii) was found to give the most
satisfactory results in ripening cream. Cream ripened with common bacteria
found in hay dust (Bacillus subtilis) gives a very undesirable flavor to
butter. The superior flavor of summer butter is due to the greater number of
bacteria of the acid class found in milk during that season.
For Outdoor Improvement.—The American Park and Outdoor
Association has taken up and aims to nationalize the important work of the
improvement of outdoors. Not that it expects to improve upon Nature, but it
hopes to be able to neutralize or remedy the devastation and disfigurement
which man has wrought upon her face. At the third annual meeting of the
association, held in Detroit in July, 1899, preliminary steps were taken
toward offering prizes for the improvement of grounds about manufactories
and homes—both front and back lots—and especially about the homes of
artisans. A standing committee was instituted to consider the best way of
checking abuses of public advertising. A paper read by Mr. F. Law
Olmstead, on the Relation of Reservoirs to Public Parks, concerned such
construction of reservoirs and the surrounding them with suitable settings as
would bring them into closer harmony with the park landscape and make
them more a part of it. Another paper, by Mr. R. J. Coryell, of the Detroit
parks, might be described as an effort to show how a similar service may be
performed for the parks and the people—in other words, how to make the

people at home in the parks. Its points were illustrated by citing what had
been done in Detroit. Respecting means of preventing depredations, Mr. C.
C. Lancey told of good results accomplished in Rochester, N. Y., by the
distribution of circulars of information on the subject; and Mr. F. L.
Olmstead, Jr., of the interest taken by the children in the school gardens in
Cambridge, Mass.
Where Physical Investigation Fails.—From the discussion of the physical
method, with its descriptive laws and applications and hypotheses, Prof. J.
H. Poynting was led, in his address at the British Association, to the
consideration of the limitation of its range. It was developed in the study of
matter which we describe as non-living, and with non-living matter it has
sufficed for the particular purposes of the physicist. Of course, only a little
corner of the universe has been explored, but in the study of non-living
matter we have come to no impassable gulfs, no chasms across which we
can not throw bridges of hypothesis. Does the method equally suffice when
it is applied to living matter? Can we give a purely physical account of such
matter? Do we make any attempt to apply the physical method to describe
and explain those motions of matter which on the psychical view we term
voluntary? In practice the strictest physicist abandons the physical view,
and replaces it by the psychical. He admits the study of purpose as well as
the study of motion, and has to confess that here the physical method of
prediction fails.
Honors to Sullivant and Lesquereux.—"Sullivant day," August 22d, was
devoted in the American Association to the commemoration of the lives and
works of William S. Sullivant and C. Leo Lesquereux, botanists, the former
distinguished for his studies in the mosses and the latter for his researches
in paleobotany, both of whom lived and did the work by which they became
famous in Columbus, Ohio. Sullivant was born and passed the whole of his
life in Columbus. Lesquereux, a Swiss by birth, lived in Columbus during
many of his most fruitful years, and worked alongside of Sullivant. A
considerable number of objects associated with the two botanists were on
exhibition—rare botanical specimens, charts and pictures connected with
their labors, and complete sets of their published works—and excellent and
highly prized portraits of them were shown. The families of both were
represented by the presence of daughters and granddaughters, among whom
was Miss Arhart, a granddaughter of Lesquereux, who was associated with

him in part of his work, and made most of the drawings for his later books.
Prof. C. R. Barnes presided over the exercises. Prof. W. A. Kellerman read a
tribute to Sullivant from Dr. Gray's supplement to the Icones. Mrs. Britton
gave a short review of the species named from Sullivant (including twelve
North American mosses). Professor Barnes read a tribute to Lesquereux,
taken from the Botanical Gazette. Remarks were made and papers read on
the Progress in the study of the Hepatica, by Prof. L. M. Underwood; the
Moss Flora of Alabama, by Dr. Charles Mohr (read by Professor Earle); the
History of the Study of the Mosses, by Mrs. Britton; the Classification of
Certain Mosses, by A. J. Grout; the Study of Lichen Distribution in the
Mississippi Valley, by Bruce Fink; and Botanical Teaching in the Secondary
Schools, by W. C. Stevens and Ida Clendenin. Among the exhibits, those of
twelve species of hepaticæ from California, by Prof. F. E. Lloyd; forty-five
photographs of American students and collectors made famous by their
work in mosses, by Mrs. Britton and Professor Underwood; and six species
of mosses discovered and collected originally by Sullivant and Lesquereux
near Columbus, deserve special mention.
Rate of Evolutionary Variation in the Past.—Mr. Adam Sedgwick,
speaking, in his address at the British Association, of variation, selection,
and heredity, having raised the question whether the variability of
organisms has ever been different from what it is now, answered it in the
affirmative, because it would be absurd to suppose that organisms would
remain constant in this respect while they have undergone alteration in all
their other properties. According to the Darwinian theory of evolution, one
of the most important factors in determining the modification of organisms
has been natural selection. It acts by preserving certain favorable variations,
and allowing others less favorable to be killed off in the struggle for
existence. It will thus come about that certain variations will be gradually
eliminated, while the variations of the selected organisms will themselves
be submitted to selection, and certain of these will in their turn be
eliminated. In this way a group of organisms becomes more and more
closely adapted to the surroundings. It would thus appear that the result of
continued selection is to diminish the variability of a species. Hence, as
selection has been going on all the while, variation must have been much
greater in past times than it is now. Following out this train of reasoning, we
are driven to the conclusion that one of the most important results of the

evolutionary change has been the gradual increase and perfection of
heredity as a function of organisms and a gradual elimination of variability.
This view, if it can be established, is of the utmost importance to our
theoretical conception of evolution, because it enables us to bring our
requirements as to time within the limits granted by the physicists.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Of the archæology of Block Island, Arthur Hollick found in his explorations
that around the shores of Great Salt Pond and on the sand dunes that border
the western shores of the island evidences of former occupation by the
Indians are numerous. Kitchen middens are exposed in several street
cuttings, implements are often found scattered over the surface of the
ground in certain localities, and skeletons have been unearthed from time to
time. In many places the kitchen midden accumulations were so obvious
that it was impossible to ignore them entirely. They were found to consist of
the customary collection of oyster and other shells, bones, pottery
fragments, fire-cracked stones, charcoal, finished implements, rejects,
flakes, chips, etc. The finished implements found were two axes, of a
plagioclase igneous rock, and three arrow points, all of quartzite. In the
sand dunes were many old fireplaces, mostly buried by the sand which has
drifted over them. They could generally be located by the richness of the
turf on the surface immediately above. Mixed with the accumulations in
these places were the bones and teeth of animals. The island promises a
good reward for archæological investigation.
In a form of disease known as peckiness in the cypress and pin-rot in the
librocedrus, described by Hermann von Schrenk in a thesis presented to
Washington University, the wood is destroyed in localized areas, which are
surrounded by apparently sound wood. The cell walls are changed into
compounds, which diffuse through the walls and fill the cells surrounding
the decayed center, and these have been called humus compounds. In both
trees a fungus mycelium occurs, with strongly marked characteristics,
which flourishes within the diseased centers, and grows between them
without affecting the intervening wood. This wood can be utilized for many
purposes even when much rotted, and in neither case does the mycelium
grow after the tree has once been cut down. The two trees thus diseased,

both representatives of a race of trees the majority of which are extinct, are
closely related genetically, although growing in different parts of the
country. The two forms of decay differ but slightly, and not more than might
be expected in two woods of different character.
Mr. J. C. Arthur, of the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station,
a few years ago picked up a small white flower (Cerastium arvense
oblongifolium) growing unobtrusively among the grass and low weeds of
the roadside. It was a little more attractive than its relative which is called
the field chickweed, and the author suggests the name of starry grasswort
for it. Under cultivation it spread out over the ground in a close mat of
foliage in a manner characteristic of many members of the pink family, to
which it belongs; and now for six weeks in April and May it is a mass of
"dazzling whiteness, softened with the pale green of stems and leaves,"
while "all winter long the prostrate stems remain alive to their very tips, and
the leaves maintain a summerlike appearance," without the indurated,
polished look so usually associated with evergreen foliage. This is one
roadside flower taken up, perhaps casually, for cultivation and
improvement. There are others—no one knows how many—that will
doubtless likewise reward the pains taken with them; and this inspires Mr.
Arthur to suggest to others that they keep a lookout for plants that may
become desirable garden varieties and try them. "It is evident that
showiness in the wild state is not the most important criterion by which to
gauge the future culture value of a plant. One needs to have many factors in
mind to meet with success, and it is hoped that the study of the starry
grasswort will be suggestive in this line. The byways and fields
undoubtedly hold many incipiently valuable decorative plants which await
the discoverer, as truly as do those of the unexplored regions of Asia and
Africa."
An experiment has been tried in New York during the past summer in the
way of "vacation schools" for teaching housekeeping and domestic
economy. Instruction was given daily in these arts in the public
schoolrooms in Front and Oliver Streets and in Hester Street. At Front and
Oliver Streets girls were taught to air, clean, and take care of a bedroom; to
set table, clean, and take care of a living room; kitchen cleanliness; laundry
work—one week being devoted to each course, and talks were given on
furnishing a flat, the care of a cellar, and the importance of air and sunlight

to health. The children were also taught daily to cook appetizing dishes and
serve them. At Hester Street more time was given to the cooking lessons,
instruction was given on the feeding of babies, and a class in nursing was
taught; among other things, emergency bandaging, caring for helpless
patients, and the hygiene of the sick-room.
Mr. A. P. Coleman, during some geological work last summer on the north
shore of Lake Superior, about Heron Bay, discovered a new mineral, which
he has named Heronite, and which he describes at length in the Journal of
Geology for July-August. It is a dike rock, consisting essentially of analcite,
orthoclase, plagioclase, and ægyrite, the analcite having the character of a
base, in which the other minerals form radiating groups of crystals. The
analcite clearly represents the magma left after the crystallization of the
imbedded minerals, and it is evident that it can be formed only from a
magma highly charged with water, and therefore under pressure.
From the examination of a number of nearly pure hydrocarbons obtained
from American petroleum by Young, it appears that the same classes of
hydrocarbons, paraffins, polymethylene compounds of naphthenes and
aromatic hydrocarbons are present in these and in Russian and Galician
petroleums; but that Russian petroleum contains a relatively larger amount
of naphthalenes and, in all probability, of aromatic hydrocarbons, than
Galician, and Galician a larger amount of the same hydrocarbons than
American petroleum.

NOTES.

An old contributor, Dr. A. F. A. King, of Washington, D. C., writes us
calling attention to the interesting fact that we printed an article of his as far
back as September, 1883, suggesting the mosquito theory of malaria, and
giving a number of observations which seemed strongly to support this
view.
Experiments made by F. H. Hall and W. P. Wheeler, at the New York
Agricultural Experiment Station, regarding the best food for "chicks,
pullets, cockerels, and ducklings," seem to indicate conclusively that part of
the protein must be drawn from animal sources if we are to get the best
results. Rations in which from forty to fifty per cent of the protein was

supplied by animal food produced more rapid growth and at less cost of
production.
Messrs. A. Stutzer and Hartlieb, of Breslau, have detected bacteria in
Portland cements, which provoke the liberation of the nitrogen from
nitrogenous compounds in water, and the formation of nitrous and nitric
acids that act upon the lime in the cement and promote its disintegration.
According to Industries and Iron, the tides are now utilized for generating
power at Pont-l'Abbé, Finisterre, France, during fourteen hours per day. At
flood tide the water flows through a canal two miles and a half inland into a
pond in the rear of the power house, and returns to the sea at ebb tide. The
total fall is seven feet and a half, and eighty-horse power is generated by
means of turbines. Means have been considered for applying this method of
generating power to various industries.
A proposal for an International Physical Congress has been accepted by the
authorities of the Paris Exposition of 1900, and the congress will be held
from the 6th to the 12th of August, under the auspices of the French
Government. It immediately precedes the International Electrical Congress.
So far as has yet been determined, the subjects of the addresses and reports
will be classified under the headings of the definition and fixing certain
units (of pressure, scale of hardness, quantity of heat, etc.), the
Bibliography of Physics, and National Laboratories. The final programme
is, however, still to be settled. The subscription for membership is twenty
francs, or four dollars. The foreign secretary of the congress is M. Charles
Edouard Guillaume, Pavillon de Breteuil, Sevres (Seine et Oise), Paris.
In a book called Literary Munich Portraits, with brief biographical sketches
by Paul Heyse, are given of twenty-five of the most prominent literary men
of that brilliant capital. Only two authors not Germans are included. One of
them is our contributor, E. P. Evans. The other is the Norwegian novelist
Björnson. Heyse leaves himself out, although he is the greatest literary
character of them all.
Some recent experiments, conducted jointly by the Kew Observatory
Committee and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at
Sèvres, were made to compare the platinum thermometer of Professor
Callendar, which measures temperature by the varying resistance of a

platinum wire, and the older mercury and gas thermometers. It was found
that below 100° C. the differences between the observed values on the
nitrogen scale and those deduced from the platinum thermometer are
exceedingly small, and that even at the highest temperature (590°) the
differences only amount to a few tenths of a degree.
The American Chemical Society has gained 232 members during the past
year, making the present number 1,540. The report of the committee on the
analysis of coal, submitted to the recent meeting of the society at
Columbus, Ohio, embodied detailed instructions in regard to the best
methods of analyzing coke, and outlined a plan for securing uniformity in
such analysis by chemists throughout the land. This report was adopted.
At the recent annual meeting of the American Society for the Promotion of
Agricultural Science Prof. W. J. Beal reported concerning the germination
of seeds, after long keeping, that experiments had been tried with various
seeds five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years old, from which it appeared that
seeds of a large number of important plants would germinate after fifteen
years, but the number sprouting after twenty years was small.
A paper was read by Dr. L. O. Howard, at the recent meeting of the
American Society of Entomologists, recording the success which has been
obtained by the fig-raisers of California in fertilizing the Smyrna variety of
figs by the aid of the blastophaga which issues from the Capri figs covered
with their pollen. A generation of the blastophaga has been developed at
Fresno by which many Smyrna figs have been satisfactorily fertilized, and
there is considerable probability that the insect has at last established itself
on California soil.
The five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Gutenberg, associated with
the invention of printing, is to be celebrated at Mayence, June 24, 1900. It is
hoped that the foundation of a Gutenberg Museum may be a result of this
movement. An exhibition illustrating the art and progress of printing is also
expected to be held.
The conclusion is drawn by the Italian, Signor Albini, from investigations
on the nutritive value of whole-meal bread, that it is inferior to that of
ordinary white bread, and that a further disadvantage comes from the

excessive quantity of indigestible matter, formed of the harder parts of the
pericarp of the grain, which it contains.
We have to add to our obituary list of men known in science the names of
Edward Orton, LL. D., Professor of Geology in Ohio State University, late
State Geologist of Ohio, and late President of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, at Columbus, Ohio, October 16th, in his
seventy-first year, of whom we shall shortly give a more extended sketch,
with portrait; Grant Allen, writer of several scientific books and articles,
and a contributor to the Popular Science Monthly; Prof. Theodore Elbert,
German geologist, aged forty-two years; Dr. Max Barth, Director of the
Agricultural Station of Rufach, Alsace, aged forty-four years; M. Paul
Janet, member of the Paris Academy of Moral Science, and formerly
professor at the Sorbonne; Edward Case, English engineer, well known for
his method of groining to prevent the sea from encroaching on the coast,
September 22d; Hamilton Y. Castner, whose name is associated with the
establishment of processes for the electrolytic production of alkali and
bleaching powder from common salt, and for the extraction of aluminum;
Dr. Oscar Baumann, of Vienna, African explorer, author of a map of the
Congo, geographical articles, and books relating to his explorations; and Dr.
J. W. Hicks, Bishop of Bloemfontein, formerly demonstrator in chemistry in
the University of Cambridge, and author of a text-book on inorganic
chemistry.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] A paper read before the Viking Club of London on December 16, 1898; also
before the Section of Anthropology of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science at the Boston meeting, August, 1898.
[2] The translations are from the Icelandic texts in The Finding of Wineland the
Good by Arthur Middleton Reeves. Henry Frowde, London.
[3] Chart of North Atlantic, No. 98. Norie & Wilson, London.
[4] Belle Isle to Boston, No. 102. Norie & Wilson, London.
[5] United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 99, 1897, p. 315.
[6] Ibid., p. 314.
[7] United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 100, 1897, p. 70.
[8] Ibid., pp. 130, 152.
[9] Ibid., p. 157.
[10] Ibid., p. 173.
[11] United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, General Chart of the Coast, No.
VII.
[12] Chart of North Atlantic, No. 98. Norie & Wilson, London.
[13] United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart, No. 13. Cuttyhunk to
Block Island.
[14] Icelandic-English Dictionary. R. Cleasby. Enlarged and completed by
Gudbrand Vigfusson.
[15] In this document it is asserted that Neministic Science and Astral Health
with a Key to the Stars "and all of the inspired writings shall be free—i. e., free
from the love of the lust of gain and that the charging of three dollars for Science
and Health, etc., when it can be printed and sold for less than fifty cents per
copy, is wrong in principle, and, in effect, shuts the doors of this beautiful truth
upon the poor by thus putting a prohibitive price upon it....
"We hold that in the giving of class instruction the teacher is entitled to a
reasonable compensation, and give our opinion that such compensation should
be ten dollars, and we do condemn the present practice when they charge one
hundred dollars for a series of twelve lessons. Take a class of thirty—which is
not unusual—the teacher receives about $258 per day for two hours' work. This
is unjust, and especially so, because many of these teachers are unable and unfit
for teaching.

"In the matter of healing, when the healer gives the proper time to the work, one
dollar per treatment ought not to be excessive, but the practice of some of
charging before the patient is received into the room and then heavily charged
for the treatment, is an outrage, ... and should be prohibited."—See full text,
Washington News Letter, September 6, 1899; Editor.
[16] The highest education consists in the presentation and in the acceptance of
the purest ideas and the highest ideals of all ages, whether they be presented in
written or spoken words, in songs of voices or sounds of instruments, in plastic
forms or glowing pictures, in humble lives or glorious actions. The well-
educated man should be the product and the epitome of the best thoughts and
sentiments the world has produced, for he carries the responsibility of past
centuries.
[17] There is a bust of Julius Cæsar in England of which a cast or a copy should
be by the side of every expounder of the Commentaries. The presence of the bust
would give new life to the narrative, for there is more life in the marble than in
the writing. There are in the Louvre, placed side by side, three representations of
Nero which tell the story of the man more graphically than the pages of
Suetonius. The first represents the youth, whose thoughts are pure, hopes bright,
and resolves noble. The second shows the conflict with evil and the beginning of
the triumph of sin. The third is so monstrous in its brutality and lust that it must
have been taken but a short time before the catastrophe which terminated the
matricide's career. Historians may detail the circumstances of the fall of Rome,
philosophers may investigate the causes which led to it, but that hideous face in
the Louvre tells the whole story with a force so startling, so instantaneous, that
history and philosophy seem weak and wanting.
[18] E. Mâle. Revue Universitaire, Third Année, l. i, p. 15.
[19] Raphael's Madonnas save the reputation of the papal see of the sixteenth
century, for pontiffs who cherished such pure and gentle representations could
not have been so corrupt as Luther's partisans assert.
[20] See United States Consular Reports, vol. lvii, No. 215, August, 1898, article
on Gardener's Schools in Russia, by Consul Heenan.
[21] Statistics of 1893. The French Government only occasionally issues its
official report of agricultural schools.
[22] See Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. xx, 1870, p. 673.
[23] A bill for the development of Irish agricultural industry and Irish technical
education, providing for Government aid to private enterprise in agriculture, and
in manufacturing industries also, has just passed (August, 1899) the House of
Commons, and is assured its passage by the House of Lords also.
[24] Appendix to Report of Science and Art Department, 1896-'97.
[25] Page 152 of Report.
[26] Dr. Voelker, in his Report on Improvement of Indian Agriculture, made to
the English Board of Agriculture in 1893, said: "At the best, the Indian raiyat, or
cultivator, is quite as good as, and in some respects the superior of, the average

British farmer. It is wonderful, too, how much is known of rotation, the system
of mixed crops, and of fallowing. Certain it is that I, at least, have never seen a
more perfect picture of careful cultivation, combined with hard labor,
perseverance, and fertility of resource, than I have seen at many of the halting
places. Such are the gardens of Máhim, the fields of Nadiad, the center of the
garden of Gujarat, in Bombay."
[27] Through Nature to God. By John Fiske. Boston and New York: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.
[28] Extemporaneous Oratory for Professional and Amateur Speakers. By James
M. Buckley. New York: Eaton & Mains. Pp. 480. Price, $1.50.
[29] Alaska and the Klondike. A Journey to the New Eldorado. With Hints to the
Traveler and Observations on the Physical History and Geology of the Gold
Regions, the Conditions and Methods of working the Klondike Placers, and the
Laws governing and regulating Mining in the Northwest Territory of Canada. By
Angelo Heilprin. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 315. Price, $1.75.
[30] Idylls of the Sea. By Frank T. Bullen. With an Introduction by J. St. Loe
Strachey. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Price, $1.25.
[31] Diet in Illness and Convalescence. By Alice Worthington Winthrop. New
York: Harper & Brothers. Pp. 286.
[32] The Story of the British Race. (Library of Useful Stories.) By John Munro.
New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 228. Price, 40 cents.
[33] Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the
Secretary of the Interior, 1896-'97. Charles D. Walcott, Director. In Five Parts.
Director's Report, including Triangulation and Spirit Leveling. Pp. 450, with 4
plates. Part II; Papers chiefly of a Theoretic Nature. Pp. 653, with 105 plates.
Part III; Economic Geology. Pp. 861, with 118 plates. Part IV; Hydrography. Pp.
756, with 102 plates.
[34] Our Insect Friends and Foes. How to Collect, Preserve, and Study them. By
Belle S. Cragin. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 377. Price, $1.75.
[35] New Plane and Solid Geometry. By W. W. Beman and D. E. Smith. Boston:
Ginn & Co. Pp. 382.
[36] Methods of Knowledge. An Essay in Epistemology. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 340. Price, $1.25.
[37] The Philosophy of Memory and Other Essays. By D. T. Smith. Louisville,
Ky.: John P. Morton & Co. Pp. 203.
[38] The Psychology of Reasoning. Based on Experimental Researches in
Hypnotism. By Alfred Binet. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.
Pp. 191.
[39] Who's Who in America. A Biographical Dictionary of Living Men and
Women in the United States, 1899-1900. Edited by John W. Leonard. Chicago:
A. N. Marquis & Co. Pp. 822.

[40] The Dawn of Reason. By James Weir, Jr., M. D. New York: The Macmillan
Company. Pp. 234. Price, $1.25.
[41] From an article in the London Spectator.

Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent spellings have been kept.
Captions added to captionless illustrations and some illustrations were relocated to
correspond to their references in the text.

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