The Project Gutenberg EBook of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly,
February 1900, by Various

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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1900
       Vol. 56, November, 1899 to April, 1900

Author: Various

Editor: William Jay Youmans

Release Date: October 23, 2014 [EBook #47181]

Language: English

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Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber.
Bold text is indicated with =equals signs=, italics with _underscores_.




CONTENTS


  South Sea Bubbles in Science                          401
  What Makes the Trolley Car Go                         408
  Is the Christian Religion Declining?                  423
  A Century of Geology                                  431
  The Applications of Explosives                        444
  A Year’s Progress in the Klondike                     456
  The Decline of Criminal Jurisprudence in America      466
  The Blind Fishes of North America                     473
  The Man of Science in Practical Affairs               487
  Forenoon and Afternoon                                492
  President Jordan’s “Neminism.”                        494
  Correspondence                                        497
  Editor’s Table                                        501
  Fragments of Science                                  505
  Minor Paragraphs                                      510
  Publications Received                                 512




  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.




  APPLETONS’
  POPULAR SCIENCE
  MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1900.




SOUTH SEA BUBBLES IN SCIENCE.

BY PROF. JOHN TROWBRIDGE,

DIRECTOR OF JEFFERSON PHYSICAL LABORATORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.


The advances in science lead to hopes of the sudden accumulation
of gold, just as the discovery of new worlds led our ancestors to
invest in many inflated enterprises of commerce and conquest. This
older temptation has passed away, for there are no new worlds to
discover, and this small globe has been practically staked out; but the
mysterious domains of science are still illimitable, and afford vast
opportunities for inflated schemes which have their prototype in the
South Sea Bubble.

Let us refresh our memory of this surprising delusion. It arose in
the reign of Queen Anne, nearly one hundred and eighty years ago, and
when we consider the extent of the speculation and gambling which it
caused and the number of those who lost everything and who consigned
their families to bitter poverty, we are tempted to class it with
those other calamities which preceded it and which afflicted England
so heavily--the great fire of London and the plague. The South Sea
Company claimed to have enormous sources of profit in certain exclusive
privileges, obtained from the Spanish Government, for trading in their
possessions in South America and Mexico; and it may be well for us in
these times of the flotation of schemes for obtaining gold from salt
water and from sands, of power from air and something more ethereal
than air, to be reminded of the many bubbles that came into existence
and burst at the time of the collapse of the South Sea Bubble.

The stock of the South Sea Company rose from one hundred to a thousand,
and an army of future victims crowded the offices of the company,
anxious to invest in what they believed would suddenly enrich them.
Indeed, all England seemed to go mad, and the craze of the time is
reflected in the writings of Pope and Swift. Pope says:

  “At length corruption like a general flood
  Did deluge all; and avarice creeping on,
  Spread like a low-born mist, and hid the sun.
  Statesmen and patriots plied alike the stocks,
  Peeress and butler shared alike the box;
  And judges jobbed, and bishops bit the town,
  And mighty dukes packed cards for half a crown;
  Britain was sunk in lucre’s sordid charms.”

The rise of the great bubble was accompanied by the formation of
hundreds of minor ones. Among these we will mention a few which are
pertinent to the subject of this paper:

A wheel for perpetual motion. Capital, one million pounds.

For extracting silver from lead.

For the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal.

Puckles Machine Company, for discharging round and square cannon balls
and bullets, and making a total revolution in “the art of war.”

For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, “but nobody to know
what it is.”

It is estimated that the proposed capital for floating these and
similar schemes was three hundred million pounds. We find, in the
annals of the time, that the Duchess of Marlborough persuaded her
husband, John Churchill, the great general, not to increase his
holdings, and to sell his shares; he, like a sensible man, took a
sensible woman’s advice and made one hundred thousand pounds. When we
come to speak of the connection of women with modern delusions, we must
remember this act of one of their sex.

At this time, nearly two hundred years after the singular outbreak of
chimerical projects of Queen Anne’s reign, we can match some of these
bubbles almost exactly; for have we not had the Keeley motor, the
extraction of gold from salt water, and is there not great activity
in making the wonder of the public over some advance in science a
source of money-making? The unscientific person is certainly open to
a new danger in the increasing tendency to promote enterprises based
upon some new scientific discovery, and it behooves the followers of
science to suggest a remedy for this growing evil. I shall endeavor to
do my part in this paper in pointing out the necessity of some oracular
medium--a scientific oracle of Delphos--to which the common man can
repair and get trustworthy information, for it is a melancholy fact
that such information can not be obtained from the daily press or from
the literary magazines of the time.

Many of our newspapers draw such an income from their advertising
columns that the editors are unwilling to print any criticism which
would lead to the restriction of this source of gain; thus if a company
promoting a scientific bubble should advertise liberally in a leading
newspaper, the editors are usually loath to insert an article upon the
scheme, for the printing of the criticism might lead to the withdrawal
of the advertisement. It is possible that the editors of such daily
papers have not overmuch confidence in the judgment of scientific men,
for have not the latter often been mistaken? There was Lardner, who
prophesied that steamships could not cross the Atlantic, but we must
remember that Lardner was not a scientific man; he was a popularizer
of science, and never made a scientific investigation. It is said that
there have been college professors who have denied the possibility of
sending messages under the ocean. This I also doubt, for I am a witness
in the flesh of the way such stories can arise. Not long since I was
invited to speak before a commercial club, and the presiding officer,
in introducing me, remarked: “The professor will now address you on
the advances in electricity. When I was in college I well remember
his describing an electric motor and his remark that it would never
become a practical invention.” There was, of course, laughter, and the
president sat down with a comfortable air of having made a point. The
professor pointed out that the presiding officer graduated before he
became professor in the university, and before the Gramme machine and
the electric motor were invented. Nevertheless, the world loves to
believe in the inaccuracy of the accurate, and even a sophomore takes
infinite delight in discovering arithmetical mistakes in an edition of
Newton’s _Principia_.

I mention this proneness to believe that scientific men are apt to be
mistaken, for it is a blame laid at their doors often by the promoters
of scientific bubbles, and for a very easily understood reason, and the
editors of newspapers and literary magazines can ease their consciences
after publishing sensational scientific articles by reflecting on the
fallibility of the followers of science. Lawyers and judges, too,
make their mistakes; nevertheless, we continue to resort to them for
advice; and few editors, I imagine, would dare to publish a legal
opinion without consulting an authority in law. Yet we read every day
so-called scientific articles in newspapers and magazines which have
evidently never been submitted to competent critics. Have we not read
statements of the possibility of exploding powder magazines on board
ships by electric waves; of the manufacture of liquid air without the
expenditure of energy; of electricity direct from coal; papers on the
nebular theory, more nebulous than any nebula yet discovered? When we
read a broad sheet in the morning paper setting forth a glowing scheme
to manufacture power out of nothing, to what oracle can we repair to
ascertain the truth? It is true that common sense might lead the reader
to reflect that when he is told that the shares can now be obtained for
five dollars, but in a short time they will be advanced to ten dollars,
and now is the time to invest, that such good things are quickly taken
up without the necessity of advertising. When the morning mail brings
a prospectus of a company formed to make diamonds by electricity,
a company with ten million dollars capital (why not one hundred
millions?), to whom should one go to allay the fever of sudden gain?
While men and women will carefully consider which line of steamships
to Europe is the best equipped with engines, the efficiency of which
depends upon the laws that prove the impossibility of perpetual motion,
they enter at the same time upon schemes to obtain power without the
consumption of work.

We are indeed confronted with the curious fact that even so-called
intelligent people can be led to believe that what we have learned in
regard to the working of Nature may be thrown aside, and that some
new and unrelated laws may rule supreme. Thus we have what is called
Christian Science, one of the intuitional sciences which may be said
to add a new peril to matrimony. We find cultivated men believing that
a government can make money by pronouncing silver equal to gold. Thus
there are those who fondle their delusions and those who bank upon
credulity. Education seems to be ineffectual with some temperaments; on
the whole, however, it has a saving grace, and there are undoubtedly
a number in the community who would welcome a source of scientific
authority which might answer for them just as the Times does in
political and economic questions to an Englishman. The American has
especial reason to fear scientific bubbles, for our patent laws make
it comparatively easy for promoters to make a great show of vested
rights. One method is to build an imposing plant, with powerful dynamos
and with a multiplicity of electrical devices, and to capitalize for
an enormous sum an expensive plant in sight with millions in patents
of very little value. The proposed investor is taken to see the great
plant; its magnitude appeals to his reverence for size, and his
pocketbook is soon at the service of the promoter. Another method is
to select some scheme which is on the borderland between physics and
chemistry, such as the electrolytic method of obtaining gold from
salt water. There is a minute quantity of gold in salt water, and
the chemist, thinking that electricity might afford an economical
method of treating large quantities of water, is reticent in regard
to such a scheme, while the electrician, ignorant of chemistry, is
ready to concede that the chemists may have found a cheap extractor,
so the promoter can play the chemist against the electrician, and
there is no arbitrator in sight. The American is peculiarly in peril
from the absence of a large body of men trained in technical science,
such as exist in Germany. He also has been unduly excited, and his
desire for love of sudden wealth stimulated by phenomenal successes.
The commercial triumph of the telephone has led to a multitude of
scientific bubbles, and has resulted, like the discovery of gold in the
Klondike, in a rush into electrical schemes which have been held up to
a hungry crowd of victims as second only to the Bell telephone.

While the telegraph and the telephone can prevent speculations like
the South Sea Bubble in a great measure, for such schemes were much
aided by a lack of a general dissemination of intelligence, and this
lack is supplied by a quick interchange of knowledge, they bring their
own peculiar peril, for they are examples of what profit may be reaped
from discovery in the world of science. The commercial enterprises of
the world have been brought within reach of the many by the telegraph
and telephone. They no longer belong to the few, while the successful
working of the field of science is still confined to a minority and the
general public; even the cultivated people are very ignorant of the
approaches to the New El Dorado. No bogus land scheme or salted mining
enterprise can be kept in existence to-day for a long period; but the
Keeley motor, with its ethereal vibrations and its pseudo-molecular
motions, was limited in activity only by the life of the promoter.
Instead of the alchemists we have the seekers after power, which costs
nothing, and in the train of the honest inventor there are unscrupulous
promoters ready to capitalize any remarkable new fact or discovery
which attracts public attention.

I have mentioned the influence of the first Duchess of Marlborough
in inducing her husband, the great duke, to sell out his shares in
the South Sea Bubble when they had risen to a high value because this
example of discrimination and prudence in a woman supports one in the
belief that all women are not prone to invest in women’s bank schemes,
in Keeley motors, or in enterprises for “carrying on an undertaking
of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” One of my friends
recently visited the office of a company which proposed to produce
power without the expenditure of a due amount of energy, and found
among those anxious to invest a woman who said that she had just
received a dividend from the company for extracting gold from salt
water, and she was anxious to invest it in the new power company. The
dividend was the result of a liquidation of the Gold from Sea Water
Company, and represented half of her original sum. She had come out of
one delusion with a loss of half of her property, and was now ready
to enter another one with the remaining half. It was an old-fashioned
notion that women should be kept in ignorance of business, for business
knowledge, it was thought, was the concern of the husbands. This notion
prevails still in some quarters, and there may be some connection
between the number of women in Christian Science temples and their lack
of education in practical matters, or in what may be called the legal
business habit--a habit which weighs the probabilities of this and
that, and leads to ways of exact thinking.

One of the remedies for this proneness of women to invest in scientific
bubbles, to invest money on faith, is the lack of exact training,
which is not acquired by them either in private schools or colleges.
The classes of philosophy and psychology in women’s colleges are
crowded, while those in the exact sciences have only handfuls. This
remark also applies to the students in men’s colleges, and we realize
in this respect how closely college women imitate college men. They
follow the latter also in the habit of taking lecture courses, a custom
which increases vagueness, inaccuracy of thought, and looseness of
statement. This choice of studies by the young women in their colleges
is a serious question for mankind, in view of the speculative spirit
which the feminine sex show toward scientific bubbles and schemes
which promise an inordinate rate of interest; for the graduates of
these colleges will become teachers of youth, and if not teachers
they have an influence upon the coming citizen during his formative
period. As teachers they will far outnumber men teachers, and they are
fast coming into competition with men also in the routine of business
offices and in certain positions in commercial houses. In these
activities they will need a balance of judgment, exactness of thought,
and business habits. They should be given a sufficient knowledge of
the elements of physical science to know that power can not be created
from nothing, and that the great mass of our knowledge of mechanics
and of the relation of electricity to mechanics can not be overturned
by any new discovery. Whatever is discovered must be related to what
has preceded it. This is a characteristic of a science, and this is
what distinguishes it from a delusion--namely, the great body of
related facts put upon a mechanical basis, so that any fact can be
substantiated and any phenomenon repeated. When this latter test is
applied to many of the isms of the day they fade into thin air, and
young women need especially to be taught to apply such a test. It
would seem as if the present choice of study by women students tended
to intensify vagueness of thought rather than to correct it, to keep
them in ignorance of business habits rather than to educate them in the
balance of judgment on economic questions.

Women are born speculators, and are peculiarly prone to invest money
and heart in bubbles. Being the power behind the throne, they can
carry men into action, and it seems to me that especial attention
should be paid in women’s colleges to the studies that cultivate
accurate thought and business methods. A certain amount of the study
of scientific methods and a study of common law might take the place
of the study of philosophy, psychology, and biology, certainly in the
first years of a woman’s college course, for psychology and biology are
studies which demand long scientific training and maturity of thought.
Recently I heard the following conversation at a bank in Cambridge.
The cashier was speaking with a young lady: “Miss ----, your friend has
overdrawn her account three hundred dollars, and you say she has left
Cambridge.” “Yes, the trouble with Jane is she is too much educated.”
A long residence in a university town makes one wary of educational
theories, but the proneness of women to invest in women’s banks and
bogus trust companies certainly seems to need a corrective in a new
college curriculum. Men can indulge in delusions and can recover
mental balance, and perhaps their fortunes; but women are apt to
become bankrupt permanently. Their experience in business delusions is
similar to that in affairs of the heart. Washington Irving says of this
feminine attribute:

“She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole
soul in the traffic of affection, and if shipwrecked her case is
hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”

More mathematics and science, and less philosophy and psychology, might
correct that vagueness of thought which leads both men and women into
delusion.

Now for our other remedies. Shall we have an academy which shall issue
storm warnings of scientific bubbles? I fear that the influence of
academies is waning, and that the conviction that there are as many
good men outside of the academy as inside would militate against their
dicta. We could have courts of scientific appeal, with judges appointed
by the State to sit on scientific questions of perplexity, and to
sift expert opinions. Such a constitution of scientific courts might
be a good thing in several ways--a saving health to the public. The
college professor would certainly be greatly relieved of endeavors of
promoters to use the name and reputation of the professor’s university,
and incidentally the little his own name might add. This remedial
solution is not in sight, and we must direct our vision in another
direction. We know that the newspaper can not serve us, for we seek to
kill sensations, and it seeks to live on them. We are bound to turn to
some journal or periodical which will publish only what it considers
sound science and will eschew sensational science; a journal which,
just as the London Times is regarded as the authority on political and
economical questions, will be looked up to as an authority on matters
of science.

In order, therefore, to protect the public against scientific bubbles
we must impress upon both men and women the fact that an education in
science is desirable, and is becoming more important as the world grows
older; but until a scientific education becomes more general, it is
important that there should be some scientific oracle of Delphos, and
I can not think of any better than a well-managed scientific journal,
the editors of which will seek for the best information on scientific
questions which interest the financial world. When it is known that
such a journal admits to its pages nothing that is sensational, when it
is realized that the best specialists contribute to it, surely it will
become a saving help in times of trouble.




WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO.

BY WILLIAM BAXTER, JR., C. E.

    NOTE.--The illustrations of railway generator and switchboard were
    made from photographs kindly furnished by the Westinghouse Electric
    and Manufacturing Company.

    For the photographs of the electric truck and car controller we are
    indebted to the courtesy of the General Electric Company.


II.

If the successful operation of a street-railway car by mechanical power
depended wholly upon the ability to produce a motor of sufficient
capacity to do the work, the problem would be an easy one to solve,
and would have been solved long before the advent of the electric
motor. Mere ability to furnish the necessary power, however, is not
enough to meet the requirements. As already shown, the mechanism
must be light, strong, compact, simple, and so well protected that
it can not be injured except under abnormal conditions. In addition,
speed-controlling devices must be provided whereby the velocity may
be changed at will and in the shortest possible time, and with as
nearly absolute precision as possible. This controlling mechanism must
also be so arranged that the direction of motion may be varied with
the greatest certainty and as rapidly as may at any time be required.
The way in which these results are accomplished in an electrically
operated car can be understood from Figs. 18 and 19, which are line
drawings, in a simplified form, of an ordinary trolley car. Fig. 18
is an elevation showing the outline of the car body and the wheels in
broken lines, while the motors and the wires through which the current
is conveyed thereto are drawn in solid lines. Fig. 19 is a plan in
which the outline of the car floor and the platforms is represented in
broken lines, the solid lines being the motors and connecting wires.

In almost every instance railway cars are provided with two motors, as
shown at _M M_ in these two figures. This arrangement is adopted not
because one motor can not furnish all the power required, but simply
for the purpose of making the equipment more reliable. Everything of
human make is liable to fail; hence if only one motor were used there
would be more or less liability of its giving out at a critical moment,
and then the car would be helpless. If two motors are provided, should
one give out the car would not be disabled, for the remaining machine
would be able to run it to its destination. In order that this result
may be successfully accomplished, each motor is made of sufficient
capacity to run the car without being overtaxed, unless the load is
abnormally large; but even under the latter conditions the machine will
in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred withstand the strain. Some roads,
in small towns, where the traffic is light and the expense must be
kept down to the lowest point, use single-motor cars, so as to effect
a saving in first cost. This course, however, is very seldom followed,
except in places where there are no heavy grades or where there is
very little probability of the loads becoming excessive, except at
rare intervals. If the cars are provided with a single motor, when one
becomes disabled from any cause it has to wait until overtaken by the
car behind it, so that it may be pushed by the latter to the end of the
road.

The electric current for operating the motors is generated in a power
house that is located at some convenient point along the route. The
current is conveyed to the moving cars by means of a trolley wire,
which is marked _T_ in the drawings. Unless the road is very small and
operates but a few cars, this wire will not be sufficient to carry all
the current, hence in most cases there are a number of supplementary
wires, which are called feeders. These wires are carried along on
poles, and at proper intervals are connected with the trolley wire _T_.
The electric current passes from the trolley wire through the motors
on the car, and thence to the rails _R_, and through these, and also
through the ground, back to the power house. The exact path of the
current is as follows:

[Illustration: FIGS. 18, 19.--OUTLINE ELEVATION AND PLAN OF ELECTRIC
RAILWAY CAR, SHOWING LOCATION OF MOTORS, CONTROLLING SWITCHES, AND
CONNECTING WIRES.]

From the trolley wire, through the trolley pole _t_, to the fixture
on top of the car which holds the latter. From this fixture, as shown
by the heavy full line, the current passes to _a_, which is a switch
located under the car hood overhanging the platform. From this switch
the current passes to a similar one, marked _b_, located in a like
position at the other end of the car. These two switches are called
emergency switches; they are provided simply as a safety device,
and are used only when the main switches get out of order and the
motorman can not turn the current off in the regular way. From the
last hood switch _b_ the current passes to the bottom of the car,
where it enters the wire _d d_ at the point _c_. This wire _d d_, as
will be seen, runs in both directions, and ends in the stands _C C_.
These latter are the controlling switches, and are provided with a
handle _h_, by means of which the current is turned on or off from
the motors, and is directed through them in such a way as to make the
car run in whichever direction may be desired. From the controllers
_C C_ several wires are run under the car, as shown at _e e e_. These
wires are generally bunched into one or two cables, but they are kept
separate from each other by means of strong insulating coverings. Four
wires lead into each motor, and three or four into each of the boxes
marked _G G_. If the motors were required to run in one direction
only, then two wires would be sufficient to convey the current to
them; but as they have to run in either direction, at least three
wires are necessary, but in almost every case four are used, as the
results obtained thereby are more satisfactory. The boxes _G G_ are
called rheostats, and are simply devices through which the current is
run so as to reduce the speed of the car, and also for the purpose of
graduating the strength of the current that passes through the motors
in the act of starting. These rheostats are very seldom in use when the
car is in motion, because it is a waste of power to pass the current
through them. After the current has passed through the motors it enters
the ironwork, and thus gets into the car wheels and finally to the
track.

The lines drawn in Fig. 18 to indicate the position of the wires in the
car do not show their actual position, but only the general direction
they follow. From the trolley base to the first hood switch the wire,
as a rule, is run along the car roof on one side of the ventilator,
and the wire leading from the first to the second hood switch occupies
a corresponding position on the opposite side of the roof. From the
last hood switch, _b_, the wire is run down one corner of the car body,
being either within the car body, or, if not, so covered by moldings as
to not be reached by the hands of passengers. The wires _d_ and _e_ are
generally run under the car, and are firmly secured to it by means of
suitable fastenings.

The controlling switches _C C_ are provided with one and sometimes two
handles, one of which is used to regulate the speed of the car and
stop and start it, while the other is for the purpose of reversing
the direction in which it runs. The handle _h_ is for the purpose of
regulating the speed, and by means of _k_ the direction of motion
is changed. Before _h_ is moved from the inactive position _k_ is
turned so that the car may run either forward or backward, as may be
desired; then, when _h_ is moved, the car will start, and by varying
the position of _h_ the speed can be changed. If it is desired to
reverse the car, _h_ is brought back to the stop position, _k_ is
shifted to the reverse motion, and then _h_ is again turned to the
running position. When the controlling switch is provided with only one
handle this is turned in one direction to run the car ahead, and in
the opposite direction to run it backward, the graduations in velocity
being obtained by placing the handle in positions intermediate between
the stop position and the highest speed position.

As will be noticed, the wire _d d_ branches at _c_ and runs in both
directions. Now, when the controller handles are both turned to the
stop position the current from the trolley can get no farther than
the ends of _d_ in either switch, but if one of them is turned to
the running position, the current at once passes to the wires in the
cable _e e e_, and thus to the two motors. If the switches _C C_ are
in proper working order and there is no disarrangement of the wires
leading to the motors or those within the latter, the current will obey
the movements of the handle _h_, but under other conditions it may not.
If such an emergency arises, the motorman reaches up to the hood and
turns the safety switch _a_ or _b_, and thus cuts the current off.

The force with which the motors turn the car wheels around depends
upon the strength of the current; this is owing to the fact that the
magnetic force is increased or decreased by variations in the current
strength. If the current is doubled the magnetic force of the armature
is nearly doubled, and so is that of the field magnet, therefore the
pull between the poles is nearly four times as great. From this it
will be seen that the force with which the car is pushed ahead can be
increased enormously by a comparatively small increase in the strength
of the current. If the current strength is doubled, the propelling
force is practically quadrupled; and if the current is increased four
times, the propelling force is made nearly sixteen times as great.

The speed at which the car runs depends upon the force that impels the
current through the wire, and which is called electro-motive force.
The greater the electro-motive force, the higher the velocity. If the
current passes from the wires in the cable _e e e_ through each motor
separately, and thence to the rails _R_, each machine will receive
the effect of the whole electro-motive force of the current; but if
after the current has passed through one motor it is directed through
the other, then each machine will be acted upon by only one half the
electro-motive force, and, as can be seen at once, the velocity in the
first instance will be twice as great as in the last. This fact is
taken advantage of in regulating the speed of the car, and controlling
switches arranged so as to direct the current through the motors in
this way are designated as belonging to the series parallel type,
the name being given from the fact that when the car is running slow,
the current passes through the two motors in series--that is, through
one after the other; but when the motors are running fast, a separate
current passes through each machine.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--VIEW OF ELECTRIC RAILWAY TRUCK WITH ONE MOTOR
ON EACH AXLE AND PROVIDED WITH MAGNETIC BRAKES.]

If, when a car is running, the controlling switch is turned to cut the
current off, the effect will be that the speed will gradually reduce;
but if it is desired to effect a sudden stop, it becomes necessary to
check the headway by means of a brake. For this purpose the hand brake
ordinarily used on all types of cars is employed, but magnetic brakes
are also used in some cases. Fig. 20 shows a car truck equipped with
two motors and magnetic brakes, one on each axle. Looking at the front
end of the truck, the brake is seen on the left side of the axle,
between the motor bearing and the car wheel. The larger drum, on the
right side, is the casing within which the gear wheel and pinion are
inclosed. These magnetic brakes are operated by a current generated
by the motors, and not by that of the main line. As was explained in
the first article, an electric motor can be made to act as a generator
of electric current by simply reversing the direction in which the
armature revolves. If we do not desire to reverse the direction of
rotation, the result can still be attained by reversing the direction
in which the current passes through the armature coils. It is evident
that the direction of a car motor can not be reversed at the instant
that it is desired to have it act as a generator--that is, when it
is desired to put the brakes on; hence the direction of the current
through the armature is reversed.

When a car is provided with magnetic brakes, the controlling switches
are so made that when the handle _h_ is moved back to the stop position
it disconnects the motors from the trolley wire and at the same time
connects them with the magnetic brakes in such a manner that they
will act as generators and thus send current through the coils of the
latter. In order that the force with which the brakes are applied may
be graduated, the controlling switches are arranged so as to be moved
several steps back of the point which in the ordinary type of switch
would be the final stop position. When the handle _h_ is placed on
the first brake position the current generated by the motors is not
very strong, and as a consequence the force of the brake is light, but
sufficient to bring the car to a stop in a reasonable distance. If a
quicker stop is desired the handle is moved to the second, third, or
fourth brake position, thus increasing the retarding force as much as
may be desired. Magnetic brakes are very desirable, as they save the
car wheels, and furthermore afford an additional safety in cases where
it is necessary to arrest the speed instantly.

The position of the motors with reference to the truck and car wheels
is very well shown in Fig. 20, and also the manner in which they are
held in place. The covers of the openings through which access to the
commutator brushes is obtained are removed from both motors, and in
the forward one the top of the commutator and one of the brushes can
be readily seen. The manner in which the motors are suspended from the
truck is not the same in this figure as in those previously shown, but
this is simply because the machines are not made by the same concern,
and each manufacturer has his own design.

Fig. 21 shows the appearance of the interior of the controlling
switches _C C_, Figs. 18 and 19. It will be noticed that there are two
upright shafts, the ends of which project above the top of the box. The
handle _h_ is placed upon the shaft to the left, and _k_ on that to the
right. The first is the main controller, and the other is the reversing
switch. It will be noticed that the main controller shaft carries a
number of circular segments of different lengths; these are so disposed
that they come in contact with suitable stationary pieces as the handle
_h_ is turned around, and thus vary the path of the current through the
motors and the rheostats in the manner required to effect the desired
changes in the velocity of the car. The reversing shaft is also
provided with a number of segments, but these are not so easily seen,
although they can be discerned on close examination. The wires from the
cable _e e e_ and also wire _d d_ are attached to the stationary pieces
with which the segments carried by the two shafts make contact when
the latter are moved around by the motorman. These wires can be seen
back of the main switch shaft, and also above the board located at the
lower left-hand corner. All these wires enter the controller through an
opening in the bottom.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--VIEW OF INTERIOR OF CAR CONTROLLER.]

In addition to the apparatus shown in Figs. 18 to 21, electric cars
are provided with a safety fuse and a lightning arrester, the object
of the latter being to protect the motors from the destructive effects
of lightning strokes. The object of the safety fuse is to protect the
motor from injury when the current becomes too strong. An electric
current in passing through a wire generates heat, and the stronger the
current the greater the heat. If the wire is large and the current
weak, the heat developed may be insufficient to raise the temperature
to a noticeable degree; but, on the other hand, if the wire is small
or the current very strong, the heat generated may be capable of
raising the temperature of the metal to the fusing point. In fact, the
incandescent lamp operates upon this principle; the carbon filament
is traversed by a current of a strength sufficient to heat it to a
point where it becomes intensely luminous, and sometimes, through
accident or otherwise, the current becomes strong enough to melt the
filament, and then the light goes out. In an electric motor it is not
necessary to raise the temperature of the wire to the melting point to
do serious injury; in fact, if the heat is sufficient to char paper or
cloth, the machine will be rendered useless until suitable repairs are
made. The insulation of the wire coils is made principally of cotton,
which is a very good electrical insulator in its natural state, but
when carbonized by excessive heat it becomes a conductor. As soon as
it becomes a conductor the current is no longer confined to the proper
channel, but cuts through the insulation to find the shortest path
through the machine. If safety fuses were not provided the danger of
destroying the insulation of the motors and thus disabling the car
would be decidedly great, for, as already said, the motors can not be
stalled with an overload, the only effect produced being a reduction in
the speed and an increase in current strength. Now, if there were no
way of limiting the increase in current strength the motors, if greatly
overloaded, would continue to operate until the insulation gave out.
The safety fuse is simply a piece of wire of such size that it will be
melted by a current that the motors can carry without being injured;
hence when the current strength reaches a point where the safety of the
apparatus is endangered the fuse melts and thus breaks the circuit and
stops the further flow of current. Fuses are generally made of an alloy
that melts at a low temperature, so that the molten metal may not set
fire to anything upon which it may fall. These easily fused alloys are
inferior to copper as electrical conductors, and on this account the
fuse wire is as a rule much larger than that wound upon the motors,
which fact makes its action somewhat mysterious to the uninitiated;
but whatever its size may be, it is so proportioned that it will melt
before the current rises to a strength that would injure the motor
coils.

The manner in which the electric current generated in the power house
reaches the motors is illustrated in Fig. 22. In this figure four
tracks are shown, which may be taken to represent roads running in
as many different directions. The three squares at the left side
represent generators located in the power house. The circles _a a a_
represent switches, by means of which the generators are connected
or disconnected from the trolley lines. _A_ and _B_ represent heavy
metallic rods, generally made of copper, with which the generators are
connected by means of the switches _a a a_. These rods are called bus
bars. The circles _b b b b_ represent switches by means of which the
current is turned on or off from the several tracks.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE MANNER IN WHICH THE
ELECTRIC CURRENT FLOWS FROM THE GENERATORS TO THE CARS UPON THE TRACKS.]

Electric currents must always circulate in closed paths--that is, the
current that starts out from a generator must return to it, and the
amount coming back is the same as that which leaves. The action of
an electric generator can be understood by comparing it with that of
a water pump pumping into a pipe which runs around from the delivery
end to the suction. With such an arrangement it can be seen that the
action of the pump would be to keep the water in circulation, but
the same water would be pumped through the pump and the pipe all the
time. With an electric generator the action is the same, and in Fig.
22 the current flowing along any one of the tracks follows the course
indicated by the arrows. The currents pass out to the several tracks
through the trolley wires _T T T T_, and return through the tracks
_R R R R_. The bus bar _A_ is connected with a plate _D_, which is
imbedded in the ground, and is also connected with the ends of the
rails _R R R R_. Suppose for a moment that the two lower generators are
out of service, their switches _a a_ being turned so as to disconnect
them from the bus _A_, and, further, suppose that the three lower _b_
switches are open, so that the current can only pass to the upper
track; then the top generator will feed into the top road only. Tracing
the path of the current under these conditions, we find that it will
start from the upper side of the generator through the _a_ switch to
the _B_ bus, and thence to the trolley wire at the top of the figure.
On reaching the first car a portion of the current passes to the track
_R_, the amount being dependent upon the speed of the car and the load.
Why the whole current does not follow this path generally puzzles the
layman, but the explanation is that the motors hold the current back,
and only allow as much to pass through them as is necessary to perform
the required work--that is to say, the current flowing through each
car is not controlled by the generator or by the force of the current,
but by the requirements of the motors. The amount of current delivered
by the generator is governed by the demands of the motors. The current
that does not pass through the first car goes on to the second one,
and if there were more cars there would be current left in the trolley
wire to supply them. After passing through the motors of the two cars
the current returns through the rails _R_ to the plate _D_, and thus
to bus _A_, from which it enters the lower side of the top generator.
It will from this explanation be seen that the action of the generator
is simply to keep the current circulating. If two of the generators
are connected with the bus bars _A_ and _B_, the current required by
the motors will be delivered by the two machines, and if the three
generators are placed in service the current will be divided among them.

When two or more generators are used, it is necessary to provide
means to prevent the current from dividing unequally between them;
if this were not done, one machine might do nearly all the work,
while the other one would be practically idle. The means employed to
accomplish the result is simply an additional bus bar, which is called
an equalizing bus. We will not undertake to explain the principle upon
which this arrangement acts; it is sufficient to say that by such means
the work can be distributed in amounts directly proportional to the
capacity of the generators, so that if one machine is very much larger
than the others it will take a portion of the load corresponding to
its size. In order that these results may be attained it is necessary
to properly adjust the several generators, and as no machine can be
made to work with the accuracy of perfection, the work will not be
distributed in true proportion for all conditions of load; thus if the
generators are adjusted so as to each take its proper share when all
the cars are in operation, one machine may do too much or not enough
when only one half the number are running, but the excess or deficiency
will not be more than a few per cent unless the adjustment is very
defective.

Electric generators for railway work are made in all sizes, from those
only large enough to operate four or five cars to others capable of
furnishing sufficient current for thirty or forty or even more. Small
generators are made so as to be driven by a belt running over a pulley
mounted on the end of the armature shaft, or they may be arranged
to be connected to the end of a steam-engine shaft, and thus become
what is called direct connected machines. Large generators are almost
invariably of the latter type. A machine of this class is illustrated
in Fig. 23. The driving engine is shown at _E_, the cylinder being
in the background and the crank toward the front, the shaft being
clearly seen at _S_, while _F_ is the fly wheel. The generator is
mounted directly upon the engine shaft, between the bearing at the
crank end and the fly wheel. The large ring marked _G_ is the field
magnet ring, and at _D D D_ the field coils are shown. These coils
are equally spaced all the way around the circle. The commutator is
marked _C_, and the commutator brushes are located at _B B_. The
armature can not be seen very well, as it is covered by the brush
holders and their supporting frames, but it is located within the
ring _G_ in the position designated by _A_. This machine is one of
a number used to operate the roads of Troy, N. Y., and is of about
one-thousand-horsepower capacity, which is enough to furnish all the
current required to run sixty or seventy cars.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--LARGE-SIZE DIRECT CONNECTED ELECTRIC RAILWAY
GENERATOR.]

The switches _a a_ and _b b_, shown in Fig. 22, and the bus bars _A
B_, are mounted upon a large panel, made of marble or slate, called a
switch board. These switches are sufficient for the purpose of turning
the current on or off any track or for connecting and disconnecting
the generators, but for the successful operation of the plant it is
necessary to have other devices by means of which the strength of
the current may be ascertained, and also the electro-motive force.
It is necessary to provide each generator with means for varying the
electro-motive force of the current it generates, otherwise the load
could not be properly equalized between the several machines. All these
different devices are located upon the switch board, so as to have
them in an accessible position. A railway switch board, arranged for
four generators and a large number of distributing circuits, is shown
in Fig. 24. The four generator switches are shown at _a a a a_, and
the circles marked _R_, directly under them, are the devices by means
of which the electro-motive force of the current is regulated. These
devices are called field regulators, from the fact that their office
is to regulate the strength of the field magnets of the generators,
making them stronger to increase the electro-motive force and weaker
to reduce it. The part seen upon the front of the switch board is not
the regulator proper, but only the handle and the contact points over
which this swings. The instruments marked _A A A A_ are for measuring
the strength of the current of each individual generator, and are
called ammeters. The instruments marked _V V V V_ are for the purpose
of indicating the electro-motive force of the currents of the several
generators, and are called voltmeters. _Ag_ is an ammeter used to
measure the strength of the total current, and _Vg_ is a voltmeter that
indicates the electro-motive force of the current passing out to the
cars on the various lines. The ammeter _Ag_ is not an actual necessity,
for the strength of the total current can be ascertained by adding the
readings of the four instruments connected with the generators, but it
is a convenience, as it saves the trouble of performing the addition.
The voltmeter _Vg_, however, can not be regarded in this light; in
fact, its presence is decidedly serviceable, for it indicates the
average electro-motive force of all the generators; therefore if any
one of the instruments _V V V V_ is higher or lower it shows at once
that the generator to which it is attached is out of adjustment and not
doing its proper share of the work. The switches _b b b_, by means of
which the current is turned on to the several external circuits, are
shown at the extreme end of the switch board.

The instrument marked _W_, located between the _a_ switches, is
called a wattmeter, and its office is to indicate the amount of power
furnished by the generators. This instrument is not always used, as
it is a convenience but not a necessity. It can be seen at once that
whether it is used or not, the amount of power required to operate
the roads will be the same, but it is thought by most railroad
managers that it is desirable, for then the relation between the coal
consumed and the power developed can be seen; and if the showing is
not as good as it should be, the engineer can remind the firemen that
they are not exercising as much care in feeding the boilers as they
should. Considered in this light, the watt-meter acts as a check to
wastefulness on the part of the employees.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY SWITCHBOARD.]

The instruments marked _C C C C_ serve the same purpose in connection
with the generators as the safety fuses do with respect to the car
motors; they are electro-magnetic devices used to open the generator
circuits whenever the current reaches a strength that is sufficient
to injure the machine. These devices are called circuit breakers.
As will be noticed, there are four located directly above the four
_a_ switches, and, at the farther end of the board, a large number
located directly above the _b_ switches. The latter act to open the
individual circuits when the currents flowing in them become too
strong, and the former are controlled entirely by the current of the
generator circuits. A circuit breaker is more reliable than a safety
fuse, because it acts quicker. With the fuse the current must act for
some time before it can melt the metal, as a sufficient amount of heat
can not be generated instantly. With the circuit breaker, however,
the action is instantaneous, for as soon as the current reaches the
predetermined strength the magnetism of the operative parts of the
device becomes sufficiently strong to cause it to act. A circuit
breaker is simply a switch that is arranged to be opened automatically
by the action of a magnet, instead of by the hand of the operator. The
switch part of the apparatus is held in place by a catch that is set
much after the fashion of the catch in a mouse trap--that is, so that
the least pressure will disengage it. A strong spring acts to throw
the switch open, and as soon as the catch is tripped by the actuating
magnet the force of the spring comes into action and the circuit is
opened.

The circuit breaker is a very valuable apparatus, for it frequently
happens that, through delays of one kind or another, a large number of
cars concentrate at one point on the road, and, as all the motormen
are anxious to make headway, they all start up at once at the first
opportunity. If there were no circuit breakers at the power house the
result would be that some of the generators would be greatly overloaded
and perhaps disabled; but, owing to the presence of the circuit
breakers, the actual result is that the circuit is broken, and then
the motormen have to wait until the current is turned on again. If too
many of them try to start their cars at the second trial the current
will again stop. After two or three ineffectual efforts have been made
to start all the cars together the motormen will conclude to go easy,
and set a few in motion at a time. In this way the cars will become
more evenly distributed along the line, and the demand for current at
the point of blockade will reduce to the normal amount, or nearly so,
and the running of the cars will continue without further interruption,
for the current drawn by the motors having been reduced to the average
amount, the circuit breaker will cease to act.

The bus bars and all the connections between them and the generators
and external circuits, as well as with all the instruments, are located
behind the switch board. All these connections are so secured that
they can not come in contact with each other except where contacts
are required; care is also taken to prevent any connection being made
with the iron framing that supports the marble slabs. The front of a
switch board is generally very attractive, the surface being of highly
polished marble, while all the switches and instruments are finely
finished and, as a rule, of decidedly ornamental design.

The switch board might be looked upon as the fountain head from which
the entire operation of an electric railway system is controlled. By
the movement of one set of switches upon it the generators are thrown
in or out of service, and by the movement of another set of switches
the several branches of the road are rendered active or inactive.




IS THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION DECLINING?

BY THE REV. CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D. D.,

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.


The question whether the Christian religion is declining is agitating
the public mind in some measure at the present time. This is due to
the many changes that are taking place in the forms of religion, the
types of doctrine, and the methods of action in the numerous religious
organizations which bear the name of Jesus Christ. Are these changes
symptoms of disease and decay in the Christian religion, or are they
evidences of renewed vitality and enlargement by growth? It is quite
evident that many things which have been regarded as important and even
essential in the past have declined in importance, and some of them
seem to be on the eve of disappearing altogether. It is not surprising
that those who have been trained to regard these as essential to
Christianity should think that the Christian religion is declining
with them. If, however, these things are not so important as has
been supposed, but have gained for a time an exaggerated importance,
then their decline to their normal position and the advance of other
things to their rightful place, as more important things than has
hitherto been supposed--all this is evidence of a healthful advance in
Christianity. This question, therefore, will be answered in accordance
with the point of view of the one who considers it. If it is to be
answered correctly we must put aside all prejudice, and examine the
whole situation candidly and with a critical scientific spirit. It
is impracticable within the bounds of this article to examine this
question on all sides. We can only make a few suggestions relating to
it.

It is necessary at the outset to approach the question aright. We
must distinguish between what is essential to the Christian religion
and what is non-essential. This is not so easy a task as one might
imagine. We can only make this distinction generally, and not with
scientific precision. In the study of religions we have to distinguish
(1) the more fundamental things in the historical institutions and
experience in life; (2) the doctrines which express the popular belief
or scientific knowledge of the adherents of the religion; and (3) the
expression of the religion in ethical principles and moral conduct.
The order of development is always life, doctrine, morals. The earlier
stages of the Christian religion and of Christian experience at any
time and in any community is the vital experience and the institutional
organization. Doctrines of faith and knowledge presuppose the vital
relation, and morals presuppose both, and conduct is the final aim
and crown of the whole development. And yet there are some scholars
who exaggerate the relative importance of each one of the three in its
relation to the other two and to the whole.

In our age greater attention is given to Christian ethics and sociology
than ever before. A man who has the ethical enthusiasm of our times
is inclined to criticise historical Christianity with great severity,
because of its failure to realize the highest ethical ideals, and
especially those presented by Jesus in his teaching and his example.
Historical Christianity is so far below these ideals, even in its
best types, that one is inclined to say if the Church has failed so
badly in nineteen centuries, what prospect has it in the present or
the future? Some good men in our times are disgruntled with historical
Christianity for its ethical failures, and keep aloof from the Church
on that account; but these are after all proportionately few, and they
are unreasonable, for they exaggerate the ethical phase of Christianity
over against the doctrinal and the vital; they fail to see what is
necessarily involved in the development of the Christian religion,
that the ethical age should come last of all; and they also are not
just in their estimate of Christian history, for, notwithstanding the
failure of the Church, there has been a wonderful and steady ethical
advance through the centuries. Indeed, it is Christianity itself which
is chiefly responsible for the ethical enthusiasm of the present time,
and this is an evidence that Christianity is about to enter upon the
last and highest stage of its development. Holy love in principle and
practice in the liberty of self-sacrifice is better understood in the
Church to-day than ever before, and it is becoming more influential
in the Church and in the world. The Church is about to put forth the
supreme ethical influence of holy love to transform society and the
lives of men.

In large sections of the Church the greatest stress is still laid
upon Christian doctrine, especially as expressed in dogmatic forms.
If a man thinks that orthodox doctrine is the test of a healthful
and vigorous church, he will make that the determining element in
his judgment whether Christianity is advancing or declining. In this
sphere we have to distinguish three things: (1) The popular orthodoxy,
which is determined by the consensus of teaching from the pulpit; (2)
the scholarly orthodoxy, which is determined by the teaching of the
theologian from the chairs of the theological schools and in text-books
of dogmatic theology; (3) the official orthodoxy, which is determined
by creeds, liturgies, confessions of faith, and canons of the Church.

There can be no doubt that there has been a great overturning of dogma
in our times, and it is altogether probable that this will assume
much greater dimensions. Many think that dogma has had an exaggerated
importance in the past, and, from their point of view, the Christian
religion has made an advance by pushing dogma back to a less dominant
position. Those who maintain that dogma is of supreme importance
naturally think that the Christian religion declines when dogma is
discredited in the Christian community. There can be little doubt that
a large number of men absent themselves from church attendance because
they dislike the popular orthodoxy, which seems to them antiquated,
unscientific, and untrue. Many refuse to unite with religious
organizations which are dominated by an orthodoxy representing the
theories of scholastic theology. Many remain apart from the churches
because they are unwilling to be responsible in any way for their
official orthodoxy. Many, born and trained in Presbyterian families,
refuse to remain in an organization which is responsible for the hard
doctrines set forth in the Westminster Confession. Many Methodists
refuse to be compromised by Wesley’s doctrines and Wesley’s rules of
life. Many refuse to remain Baptists because of what is involved in
close communion. Many refuse to be Episcopalians because they resent
the doctrines and practices of sacerdotalism. And so we could find,
more or less in all religious communions, a dissatisfaction with
dogmas--sometimes superficial, giving a plausible excuse for absence,
sometimes profound, inciting active hostility to the Church. If all of
these dissatisfied ones are to be regarded as hostile or indifferent
to Christianity, then it is evident that an army of Christians have
practically separated themselves from the Church in our time, and we
must say that Christianity has in this respect declined. If, on the
other hand, we think that these dissatisfied and disgruntled ones are
yet Christians, and that they are maintaining their faith in Christ
in opposition to an unreasonable church, that they are exerting an
important influence in the transformation of the dogmas of the Church,
then we may say that this is an evidence that Christianity is in a
state of transition, that it is on the move away from an untenable
position of exaggerated dogma to a truer and stronger position,
in which dogma will be transformed and given its normal place and
importance.

The effort to throw off the bondage of the popular and the scholastic
dogma is an advance, and not a decline; it is an advance into the realm
of freedom. It first gives the possibility of a critical re-examination
of the dogmatic faith of the Church. Only by the application of the
scientific methods of our age to dogma is it possible for our age to
verify dogma and accept it as valid and reliable. We can not rely on
anything that is merely traditional or the product of the logical
analysis of premises which remain themselves unverified. The revolt
against the confessional orthodoxy, especially in the Presbyterian,
Reformed, and Lutheran Churches, is not a sign of decline, as some
think, but a wholesome movement which indicates a determination to know
the truth and to hold nothing but the truth.

The Chicago-Lambeth articles, adopted by the whole Anglican communion
throughout the world, reduces the essential doctrines of Christ’s
Church to the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed; those creeds in
which all the great historical churches, the Greek and the Oriental,
the Roman and the Protestant, agree. This marks a dogmatic advance,
not a dogmatic decline, because it makes the distinction between the
essential and unessential doctrines, it defines essential doctrines by
holding up ancient fundamental historical creeds; it thereby represents
all other matters as within the realm of the unessential doctrines, the
province of Christian liberty.

The churches are therefore readjusting themselves in their relation
to Christian doctrine, and the Christian community is readjusting
itself likewise. The offensive features of Christian dogma, while still
retained and advocated by some theologians and some communions, have
been in great measure removed by other theologians and communions, and
the process is going on with great rapidity. The war against science,
criticism, literature, and art--all that is characteristic of our
age--is gradually being limited to a smaller number of theologians and
denominations, and there is ever an increasing number of theologians
and churches which fully recognize all the achievements of modern times
and who are at work in harmonizing them with the verified Christian
dogmas in a larger, grander system--in a new theology representing
all that is noblest and best in Christianity as applied to the modern
world. While this process is going on, the dissatisfied ones will
take some little time to find their new church homes and to adjust
themselves to new conditions and circumstances.

So far as the great mass of mankind is concerned, the chief factor
in the Christian religion is the fundamental one of the Christian
life and the Christian institution, and the advance or decline of
Christianity will be judged from this point of view. Here, however, we
must recognize that there are several types of religious life which
sometimes combine in one community, but which ordinarily exist apart as
characteristic of different temperaments, different nations, different
races. The lines of cleavage in historical Christianity are for the
most part racial, national, or temperamental. We have to take this
into account when we consider the religious life and institutions
of different countries. What a difference there is in religion from
this point of view in the great centers, such as Rome, St. Petersburg,
Berlin, London, Edinburgh, New York! That man would go far astray who
should undertake to use any one of these as a test of any or of all the
others.

Let us consider, for example, the question of participation in the
services of the Church. Rome has apparently, from a Protestant point
of view, an abnormal number of churches, and in these churches an
extraordinary number of chapels and altars. The reason for this is
that there is an immense number of clergy in Rome, and all these
altars are needed that they may perform the most important of their
duties--the sacrifice of the mass. The churches, chapels, and altars
are not erected for the people merely--if so, vastly fewer would be
necessary--but for the priests who sacrifice for the people even when
they are absent. Berlin has apparently very few churches, and these
are not always well attended by the people, and are used infrequently
except on Sundays. Judging from this, it would be a very irreligious
city; but any one who really knows Berlin would not say that it is
less religious than Rome. The religion of the German people finds its
expression in a mystic type of personal piety and of family and social
life; it maintains and propagates itself without frequent attendance
upon public worship.

In London regular attendance upon public worship is commonly regarded
as indispensable for the maintenance of the Christian religion.
Therefore Christian people frequent the churches to an extent that is
unknown on the continent of Europe. But to make the British habit of
frequenting the Church for public worship a test of the vitality of
the Christian religion in the great cities of the Continent would be
altogether unjust and untrue. The historical development of religion
in Great Britain has brought about an entirely different state of
affairs there from that which we find everywhere else in the world.
The situation in Great Britain is therefore special, peculiar, and,
one might say, abnormal as compared with the situation in other
parts of the world. In the United States the original population was
chiefly British, and therefore followed British methods in religion.
But in the present century our land, and especially our cities, have
filled up with a population from the continent of Europe, bringing
with them Continental methods of worship which would not yield to or
readily adopt British methods. Intermarriage with the British stock
and familiar converse in society have tended to assimilation, and
therefore the situation has gradually and inevitably emerged that
the Christianity of New York and Chicago and our other great cities
has assumed an intermediate position between that of the Continent
and that of Great Britain. The religious customs characteristic of
British Christianity have undoubtedly declined--they have yielded to
the influence of Continental Christianity. If British Christianity
is the norm by which we are to judge, then Christianity has declined
in the United States. If, however, it is not the norm, then it might
appear that an intermediate position, such as we have attained by
the assimilation of the British and the Continental types, may be a
real advance and gain, because of the appropriation of some of the
best features of both methods and the rubbing off of some of the
eccentricities and excrescences of both. A decline in the relative
attendance upon the public worship, and especially upon the second
service on Sunday, is exactly what we would anticipate under the
circumstances. It is altogether probable that the decline is much
less than we had the right to expect in view of the vast influence
exerted upon us by Continental types of Christianity during the past
half century. And it is altogether probable that the decline has not
reached its normal goal. Especially is this the case when we take into
consideration other influences which tend to diminish the attendance
upon public worship.

1. In Great Britain, where the churches were established by law,
the state and Church were so entwined that it was a badge of good
citizenship to attend upon public worship. In antithesis with this,
attendance of the nonconformists upon public worship was regarded as a
standing by their principles and a test of fidelity and courage. These
influences worked also in the United States during the colonial period;
but during the present century this motive has lost its influence,
and it is to be feared that politicians as such feel under no special
obligation to attend church, especially in view of the attitude of many
of the ministry as to political life and political questions.

2. In Great Britain it has been a badge of social propriety to attend
public worship. Social influences still prevail greatly in the United
States, in villages and small cities, and even to some extent in the
churches in the great cities, where they are organized and conducted
in social lines as social religious clubs. But this influence is much
weaker than it used to be, and it is gradually passing away.

3. The pulpit was once the chief means of instruction and of
intellectual and moral stimulation for the people. The preacher was the
people’s orator. The pulpit has in great measure lost its attractive
power in this regard. The daily and weekly press have a greater
influence in public instruction. The multiplication of cheap books
also takes from the preacher a large share of his influence in this
regard. Oratory in legislative bodies has to a great extent lost its
influence. Its place has been taken by simple, compact, time-saving
statements, often printed but not delivered. Committees do the work
which used to be done after discussion before the public. So the people
will not listen now to the pulpit orator of former generations. They
demand short, crisp sermons that bristle with points, and are practical
and helpful. In other words, the oratorical and highly intellectual
character of the pulpit which used to attract worshipers no longer
attracts them. They feel that they can get more benefit in this regard
by reading in the comfort of the home. Multitudes of people can no
longer be induced to attend church to be instructed by the minister
or to get his judgment on topics of the time, or to be stirred by his
eloquence; they can get all these things cheaper and easier by reading
at home. When, now, this is re-enforced by the fact that multitudes
dislike the doctrines of the Church, and resent them when they are
preached, we can easily understand that church attendance should
decline very greatly from this reason.

But this is no evidence that the Christian religion has declined. If
men absent themselves from public worship because it is no longer
necessary for them, as good citizens and as respectable members of
society, to attend, or because they may get their instruction and
stimulation elsewhere easier and with less expenditure of time and
money, that is simply an evidence that attendance upon church in the
past has been due in great measure to other than religious reasons, and
that, these no longer holding, attendance has disappeared with them.
The attendance upon public worship, though reduced so far as number
is concerned, is now more simply and purely for religious reasons,
and therefore minister and people may with greater freedom make the
services more distinctly religious.

This is indeed the real situation that has emerged. The sermon
has declined relatively in importance, and rightly so. It had an
exaggerated importance in the Protestant Church, especially in the
non-liturgical churches. There is a world-wide tendency now, which
is increasing in power, to improve and enlarge the worship of the
Church. Liturgies and ceremonies of worship are more discussed now
in the Protestant world than are sermons and lectures, because it is
becoming every day more evident that the Church is organized for common
prayer and for public worship, and not merely to furnish a pulpit for
a minister. The pulpit is more and more being merged in the worship,
and is losing its domination over the worship. With this tendency
goes increased attention to the Holy Sacraments, especially the Holy
Communion, more frequent celebrations and more frequent participation,
increased opportunity of worship during Sunday and during the week,
and also therewith the greatly increased attention to the organization
of the Church for aggressive Christian work. Those who think that the
pulpit is everything in the public service naturally suppose that with
the decline of the pulpit Christianity declines, but those who think
that public worship is the essential thing in the Church rejoice at the
changes that are taking place, and hold that Christianity is advancing.
They maintain that it is not so important for the Church to gather
large crowds to listen to the sermon as it is for the church doors to
be ever open, with frequent services for the convenience and help of
worshipers at any time, without regard to whether they are few or many,
assured that thereby a much greater number of people are reached and
benefited than by the former limited methods.

It is sometimes said that biblical criticism has undermined faith
in Holy Scripture, and that, therefore, many absent themselves from
public worship. But there is no real evidence for it. I doubt not
that the opponents of biblical criticism drive many people from their
congregations, just as they do when they attack the sure results
of modern science, or expose their ignorance in the discussion of
political and economical questions in which they have not been trained;
but these people simply remove to other congregations where they will
not be offended by obscurantism and intolerance. Biblical criticism
really makes the Bible more attractive to the people, and its reading
and exposition more interesting and influential in the Church.

A careful study of the situation makes it evident that the Christian
religion is not declining in our land; but it is passing through a
transition state, putting off antiquated dogmas, customs, and methods,
and adapting itself to the modern world, and transferring itself so as
to better accomplish its work. In no age has Christianity made more
advance than in the century now drawing to a close.

       *       *       *       *       *

    The Indians of Bolivia are described by Sir Martin Conway as “an
    exceedingly bigoted folk, retaining under a mask of Christianity
    their ancient superstitions, little altered,” and are kept in
    order by priestly management rather than by force. Mr. Conway
    was seriously interfered with by them in the prosecution of his
    researches because the nature of his undertaking involved some
    outrage to their superstitions. They regard the mountains above the
    level of habitation as part of the other world, and holding, among
    other fancies, that a golden bull and a golden cross planted by
    supernatural agency stood on the summit of one of the peaks round
    the base of Mount Serata, thought that the object of the explorer’s
    expedition could be nothing else than to obtain possession of these
    priceless treasures. Hence they offered formidable opposition to
    him.




A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY.[A]

BY PROF. JOSEPH LE CONTE.

    [A] In this article I have attempted to give only the development
        of geological thought.


Geology is one of the youngest of the sciences. It may almost be said
to have been born of the present century. It is true that knowledge
concerning the structure of the earth had been accumulating ever since
the time of the Greeks and Romans; it is true that these materials
became more abundant and were better organized in the eighteenth
century; but this knowledge had not yet taken form as a distinct
branch of science until about the end of that century. There are two
distinctive marks of scientific as compared with popular knowledge:
First, that its fundamental idea is clearly conceived; and, second,
that its method is distinctly inductive.

1. FUNDAMENTAL IDEA.--The fundamental idea underlying geological
thought is the history of the earth. Now, until the beginning of the
present century the earth was not supposed to have any history. It was
supposed to have been made at once, out of hand, about six thousand
years ago, and to have remained substantially unchanged ever since as
the necessary theater of human history. Changes were known to have
taken place and in less degree to be still taking place, but these
were not supposed to follow any law such as is necessary to constitute
a history, and thus to constitute a science distinct from geography.
Buffon, about the middle of the last century, did indeed bring out
dimly the idea of an abyss of time, preceding the advent of man, in
which the earth was inhabited by animals and plants wholly different
from those of the present day, but he was compelled by the priests of
the Sorbonne to retract these supposed irreligious views. So tardily
was the fundamental idea of geology clearly conceived that Comte, the
great originator of scientific philosophy, in his classification of
the sciences in 1820, denied a place to geology because, according
to him, it was not a distinct science at all, but only a field for
the application of all the sciences. It is evident that he did not
perceive the fundamental idea underlying geology and distinguishing
it from geography--viz., a life history of the earth through all
time. The claim of geology to a place in a scheme of classification
is exactly the same as that of astronomy. As astronomy is a field for
the application of mathematics, mechanics, physics, and, recently,
chemistry, but is distinguished from them all by its characteristic
fundamental idea of illimitable space, so geology is a field for the
application of all other lower sciences, but is distinguished from
them all by her characteristic fundamental idea of illimitable time.
As all other sciences are terrestrial, but astronomy alone celestial,
so all other sciences belong to the present--the “_now_”--but geology
alone belongs to the illimitable past. The fundamental idea of the one
is infinite _space_, of the other infinite, in sense of inconceivable,
_time_. All other sciences, including astronomy, are but a flash-light
view of Nature. Geology alone is a view of Nature in continuous
movement, a life history--an evolution of Nature. This mode of thought
began to dawn only in the closing years of the last and the opening
years of the present century. It seems to have been first clearly
conceived by the mind of Hutton in the last part of the eighteenth
century.

2. INDUCTIVE METHOD APPLIED.--When the true idea underlying geology
was clearly conceived and geology thus distinctly separated from other
departments of science, geology may be said to have been born. But
it was still in helpless infancy, its growth irregular, and even its
continuous life uncertain, because a solid basis of inductive method
was not yet laid. That basis was laid mainly by Hutton in 1795,[B] and
still more clearly by Charles Lyell in 1830, in the principle that
the study of _causes now in operation_ is the only true foundation of
geology.

    [B] Hutton’s Theory of the Earth.

Geological changes, of course, belong to the irrevocable past, and are
therefore hopelessly removed from _direct_ observation. Their causes
and process must be reconstructed by the skillful use of the scientific
imagination. Until Lyell, more or less probable hypotheses seemed all
that was possible. What a field was here for the conflict of opposite
extreme views! But Lyell showed that “causes now in operation” are
producing similar effects under our eyes, if we will only observe. From
that moment geology became a truly inductive science and its indefinite
progress assured.

These two events, then--viz., the conception of geology as a distinct
science, and the introduction of a true scientific method--are the
greatest epochs in the history of geological science. Some dim
adumbrations of these appear before this century, especially the former
in the mind of Buffon, and the latter somewhat fully in the mind of
Hutton, but they were not generally accepted and had not become working
principles until the beginning and even some time after the beginning
of the nineteenth century. These must be borne in mind in all we have
further to say of the progress of geology through the century.

When the century opened, the war between the Neptunists and the
Plutonists, between the Wernerites and the Huttonites, was still
going on, but was approaching the usual result in such cases of
dispute--viz., the recognition of the fact that there was truth on
both sides, and they must be combined into a more comprehensive view.
The chief difference of opinion still remaining was as to the relative
importance of the two agencies, aqueous and igneous. Two great advances
took place about the beginning of this century: William Smith, by
patient, painstaking field observation and mapping, laid the foundation
of stratigraphy; and Cuvier, by his profound and brilliant studies of
the wonderful discoveries of extinct mammals in the Eocene basin of
Paris, laid the foundations of paleontology. These researches placed
in clearer light than ever before the existence of other time-worlds
before the present one. William Smith published his tabular view of the
British Strata in 1790, but his map was not completed and published
until 1815. Cuvier’s great work on the Organic Remains of the Paris
Basin was published in 1808.

Thus, early in the century the two bases of our science were laid by
Smith and Cuvier. We now proceed to touch lightly only the main steps
of subsequent growth through the century.

As, in the previous century and the early part of this, the discussion
was between the opposite schools of Neptunists and Plutonists, with
the final result of reconciliation in a more scientific view which
combined these two surface views into a stereoscopic reality, so now
the discussions began between catastrophism and uniformitarianism, and
ended with a similar final result. Geologists, in the early part of the
century, before the study of causes and processes now in operation was
generally acknowledged as the only rational basis of a true scientific
geology, seeing the frequent unconformities in the geological series
and the apparently sudden changes of life forms associated with these
unconformities, were naturally led to the conclusion that the whole
history of the earth consisted of a series of sudden and violent
catastrophes by which the bed of the ocean was suddenly raised and
its waters precipitated on the land as a great wave of translation,
carrying universal ruin and extermination of all life in its course.
Such catastrophes were supposed to be followed by periods of quiet,
during which the new earth was repeopled, by direct act of creation,
with new forms of life adapted to the new conditions.

This view was in perfect accord with the then accepted doctrine of
the supernatural origin and the permanence of species. Species were
supposed to have been created at once, out of hand, without natural
process, in some place (center of specific origin), spread in all
directions as far as physical conditions would allow, but remained
unchanged and unchangeable as long as they continued to live or until
another universal exterminating catastrophe. Species are “medals of
creation.” They are successive individuals struck from the same die,
until the die is worn out or broken. Then a new die is made, and the
process of coinage of identical individuals is renewed.

Thus the whole history of the earth was supposed to consist of
a succession of alternate supernatural and natural events. The
catastrophes were supernatural; the times of quiet were natural. The
creation of new dies or creation of first individuals was supernatural;
the coinage of individuals of successive generations was natural. But
on the whole the successive conditions of physical geography and the
successive faunas and floras were higher and more complex according to
a preordained plan. The great apostles of catastrophism were Cuvier
in France and Buckland in England. According to Buckland, the last
of these great catastrophes was the Quaternary or drift period, and
this period was, by him and by many others since, associated with the
Noachian Deluge.

Lyell opposed this view with all his power. According to him we can not
judge of geological causes and processes except by study of causes and
processes now in operation and producing effects under our eyes. The
slow operation of similar causes and processes is sufficient--given
time enough--to account for all the phenomena in geological history.
Thus arose the extreme opposite doctrine of _uniformitarianism_. Things
have gone on from the beginning and throughout all time much as they
are going on now. This view, of course, required illimitable time, and
was of great service in enforcing this idea. But, in revulsion from the
previous idea of catastrophism, it undoubtedly was pushed much too far.

Meanwhile the theory of evolution was incubating in the mind of Darwin.
Even Lyell, while he established the doctrine of slow uniform changes
so far as inorganic Nature was concerned, was still compelled to admit
supernatural catastrophic changes in organic Nature. Species, even for
Lyell, were still immutable--still there were supernatural creation of
first individuals, and continuance of similar individuals by natural
process of generation. On the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species
by Descent with Modification, Lyell at once embraced the new view
as a completion of his principle of causes now in operation and his
doctrine of uniformitarianism. In a certain superficial sense evolution
is certainly confirmatory of the doctrine of uniformity of causes and
processes in the past and the present, but in a deeper sense it is
quite contrary in its spirit. Uniformitarians of the Lyell school look
upon geology as a chronicle of events--evolutionists as a life history
of the earth. The one regards the slow changes as irregular, uncertain,
without progress or purpose or goal; the other as an evolution to
higher and higher conditions, as a gradual movement onward toward the
present condition and toward man as its goal. The recognition of this
is only now approaching clearness. If geology is the history of the
evolution of the earth from primal chaos until now, then the conditions
have changed at every step, and absolute uniformity is impossible.
Extreme uniformitarianism is therefore untenable. Catastrophism and
uniformitarianism are opposite extremes which must be combined and
reconciled. This reconciliation is only now being completed, and we
therefore put off its discussion for the present. Suffice it to say
now that geologic thought in this regard has passed through three
stages--catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and evolutionism. And this
latter is the final stage, because (1) it is a complete reconciliation
between the other two, and (2) because it is plastic and indefinitely
modifiable and progressive, while the other two are equally rigid and
unchangeable by their mutual antagonism.

With these fundamental principles in mind, we proceed to touch briefly
the most important advances during the century.


EVOLUTION OF EARTH FORMS.

The idea of the progressive development of the earth in its greater
features throughout all geologic time by the action of forces resident
in the earth itself preceded the acceptance of the evolution of organic
forms. We have said that the fundamental idea of geology is that of the
evolution of the earth through all time. Now, it was Dana who first
studied geology wholly from this point of view. For him geology was
the development of the earth as a unit. Before him, doubtless, geology
was a kind of history--i. e., a chronicle of thrilling events--but
Dana first made it a philosophic history. Before Dana, geology was an
account of the succession of formations and their fossil contents. Dana
made it an account of the evolution of earth forms and the concomitant
and resulting evolution of organic forms. It is true that first and for
a long time his evolutional conception was incomplete. It is true that
while he attributed the evolution of earth forms to natural causes and
processes, he still shrank from applying similar causes to the changes
in life forms, but this was the almost necessary result of the then
universal belief in the supernatural origin and the unchangeableness
of organic forms. He lived to make his conception of evolution as a
natural process, both of the earth and of organic forms, complete.

_Ocean Basins and Continents._--If we divide geological causes and
processes into two general kinds as to their origin--viz., internal,
or earth-derived, and external, or sun-derived--evidently the former
is the original and fundamental kind. These determine earth forms,
while the other only modify them; these determine the great features,
the other only the lesser features; the former rough-hews the earth
features, the latter shapes them. It is the effects of these interior
earth forces which are the most important to study. And among these
effects the most fundamentally important of all is the formation of
those greatest features--the ocean basins and continental arches.
The most probable view is that they are formed by unequal radial
contraction in the secular cooling of the earth. The earth was
certainly at one time an incandescently hot mass, which gradually
cooled and contracted to its present temperature and size. Now, if it
were perfectly homogeneous both in density and in conductivity in all
parts, then, cooling and contracting equally in every part, it would
retain its symmetric oblate-spheroid form, though diminishing in size.
But if there were any, the least, heterogeneity either in density or
especially in conductivity over large areas, then the more conductive
areas, contracting more rapidly toward the center radially, would form
hollows or basins, and the less conductive areas would stand out as
higher arches. Thus were formed the oceanic basin and the continental
arches of the lithosphere. The same causes which produced would
continue to increase them, and thus the ocean basins would increase in
depth and the continents in height.

The hydrosphere is still to be added. In the beginning of this process
doubtless the lithosphere was hot enough to maintain all the water
in the form of vapor in the atmosphere. But when the surface was
cool enough the water would precipitate and partly or wholly cover
the earth--whether partly or wholly would depend on the amount of
precipitated water and the amount of inequality which had already
taken place. The amount of water, as we know, is sufficient, if the
inequalities were removed, to cover the whole surface two and a half
miles deep. Inasmuch as the forming of the inequalities is progressive
and still going on, it seems improbable that the inequalities had
become sufficiently great, at the time of precipitation, to hold the
waters. If this be so, then the primeval ocean was universal and the
future continents existed only as continental banks in the universal
ocean.

However this may have been, there seems little doubt that the same
cause which produced the inequalities continued to operate to increase
them. The ocean basins, so far as these causes are concerned, must
have become deeper and deeper, and the continents larger and larger.
In spite of many oscillations producing changes mostly on the margins,
but sometimes extending over wide areas in the interior of the
continent, this, on the whole, seems to be in accordance with the
known geological history of the earth. If so, then _the oceanic basins
have always been oceanic basins, and the places of the continents have
always been substantially the same_. This introduces a subject on which
there has been much discussion recently--viz.:

_The Permanency of Ocean Basins._--Closely associated with the
Lyellian uniformitarianism was the doctrine of extreme instability
of earth features, especially the forms and places of sea and land.
Crust movements were irregularly oscillating to such a degree that
in the course of geologic history sea and land frequently and
completely changed places. Abundant evidence of this was supposed
to be found in the unconformities so frequent in the stratified
series. The tendency of that time was toward a belief in up-and-down
movements, back-and-forth changes, without discoverable law, rather
than progressive onward movement. On first thought it might seem
that such lawless movement was rather in keeping with catastrophism
than uniformitarianism. But not so, for the movements are supposed
to be very slow. Again, it might seem on first thought that gradual
progressive change--in a word, evolution--would be peculiarly in accord
with uniformitarian ideas. But again not so, because this doctrine
was, above all, a revulsion from the idea of supernatural purpose or
design or goal contained in catastrophism. Uniformitarianism strongly
inclined toward purposelessness, because of its supposed identity with
naturalism. Thus for a long time, and still with many geologists,
the tendency is toward a belief in irregular movements without
discoverable law, toward instability of even the greatest features of
the earth--viz., sea basins and continental arches. Geology for them is
a chronicle, not a life history.

The contrary movement of thought may be said to have commenced with
Dana. Dana studied the earth as a unit, as in some sense an organism
developing by forces within itself. The history of the earth is a
life history moving progressively toward its completion. The forces
originating oceanic basins and continental arches still continue
to deepen the former and enlarge the latter. From this point of
view, oceanic basins and continental arches must have always been
substantially in the same places. Oscillations there have been at
all times and in all places, but they affect mainly the outlines of
these great features, though sometimes affecting also the interior of
continents and mid-sea bottoms, but not sufficiently to change greatly
their general form, much less to interchange their places.

Such is the doctrine of permanency of oceanic basins. It is undoubtedly
a true doctrine, but must not be held in the rigid form characteristic
of early thought. The forces originating oceanic basins still continue
to deepen them and to increase the size and height of continents, but
other forces are at work, some antagonizing (i. e., cutting down the
continents and filling up the ocean beds), and still others determined
by causes we little understand, by oscillations over wide areas,
greatly modifying and often obscuring the effects of the basin-making
movements. Here, then, we have two kinds of crust movements: the one
fundamental and original, determining the greatest features of the
earth and moving steadily onward in the same direction, ever increasing
the features which it originates; the other apparently lawless,
uncertain, oscillating over very wide areas, modifying and often
obscuring the effects of the former. The old uniformitarians saw only
the effects of the latter, because these are most conspicuous; the
new evolutionists add also the former and show its more fundamental
character, and thus introduce law and order into the previous chaos.
The former is the one movement which runs ever _in the same direction
through all geologic time_. The latter are the most common and
conspicuous now and in all previous geologic time. The former underlies
and conditions and unifies the history; the latter has practically
determined all the details of the drama enacted here on the surface
of the earth. Of the causes of the former we know something, though
yet imperfectly. Of the causes of the latter we yet know absolutely
nothing. We have not even begun to speculate profitably on the subject,
and hence the apparent lawlessness of the phenomena. A fruitful theory
of these must be left to the coming century.

_Mountain Ranges._--If oceanic basins and continental domes constitute
the greatest features of the earth’s face, and are determined by the
most fundamental movements of the crust, surely next in importance
come great mountain ranges. These are the glory of our earth, the
culminating points of scenic beauty and grandeur. But they are so only
because they are also the culminating points, the theaters of greatest
activity, of all geological forces, both igneous and aqueous--igneous
in their formation, and aqueous both in the preparatory sedimentation
and in the final erosive sculpturing into forms of beauty. A theory
of mountain ranges therefore lies at the bases of all theoretical
geology. To the pre-geologic mind mountains are the type of permanence
and stability. We still speak metaphorically of the _everlasting_
hills. But the first lesson taught by geology is that nothing is
permanent; everything is subject to continuous change by a process of
evolution. Mountains are no exception. We know them in embryo in the
womb of the ocean. We know the date of their birth; we trace their
growth, their maturity, their decay, their death; we even find in the
folded structure of the rock, as it were, the fossil bones of extinct
mountains. In a word, we are able now to trace the whole life history
of mountains.

Mountains, therefore, have always been a subject of deepest interest
both to the popular and the scientific mind--an interest intensified
by the splendors of mountain scenery and the perils of mountain
exploration. The study of mountains is therefore coeval with the study
of geology. As early as the beginning of the present century Constant
Prevost observed that most characteristic structure of mountains--viz.,
their folded strata--and inferred their formation by lateral pressure.
All subsequent writers have assumed lateral pressure as somehow
concerned in the formation of mountains. But that the whole height
of mountains is due wholly to this cause was not generally admitted
or even imagined until recently. It was universally supposed that
mountains were lifted by volcanic forces from beneath, that the lifted
strata broke along the top of the arch, and melted matter was forced
through between the parted strata, pushing them back and folding them
on each side. And hence the typical form of mountain ranges is that
of a granite axis along the crest and folded strata on each flank.
But attention has lately been drawn to the fact that some mountains,
as, for example, the Appalachian, the Uintah, etc., consist of folded
strata alone, without any granite axis. In such ranges it is plain that
the whole height is due not to any force acting from below, but to a
lateral pressure crushing and folding the strata, and a corresponding
thickening and bulging of the same along the line of crushing. Then the
idea was applied to _all_ mountain ranges. So soon as the prodigious
amount of erosion suffered by mountains, greater often than all that is
left of them, was fully appreciated, it became evident that the granite
axis so characteristic of mountains was not necessarily pushed up from
beneath and protruded through the parted strata, but was in many cases
only a sub-mountain core of igneous matter slowly cooled into granite
and exposed by subsequent erosion greatest along the crest.

Next, attention was drawn to the enormous thickness of the strata
involved in the folded structure of mountains. From this it became
evident that the places of mountains before they were formed were
marginal sea bottoms off the coasts of continents, and receiving the
whole washings of the continents. Thus the steps of the process of
mountain formation were (1) accumulation of sediments on offshore sea
bottoms until by _pari passu_ subsidence an enormous thickness was
attained. This is the _preparation_. (2) A yielding along these lines
to the increasing lateral pressure with folding and bulging of the
strata along the line of yielding, until the mountain emerges above
the ocean and is added to the land as a coast range. This is mountain
_birth_. (3) As soon as it appears above the water it is attacked by
erosive agents. At first the rising by continuance of the crushing and
bulging is in excess of the erosion, and the mountain grows. This is
mountain _youth_. (4) Then supply and waste balance one another, and we
have mountain _maturity_. (5) Then the erosive waste exceeds the growth
by up-bulging, and mountain _decay_ begins. (6) Finally, the erosive
forces triumph and the mountain is clean swept away, leaving only the
complexly folded rocks of enormous thickness to mark the place of a
former mountain. This is mountain _death_. Such briefly is the life
history of a mountain range.

In all this we have said nothing about causes. In this connection there
are two points of especial importance: (1) Why does the yielding to
lateral pressure take place along lines of thick sediments? (2) What is
the cause of the lateral pressure?

1. _Cause of Yielding to Lateral Pressure along Lines of Thick
Sediments._--The earth was once very hot. It is still very hot within,
and still very slowly cooling. If sediments accumulate upon a sea
bottom the interior heat will tend to rise so as to keep at the same
distance from the surface. If the sediments are very thick, say five to
ten miles, their lower parts will be invaded by a temperature of not
less than 500° to 1,000° F. This temperature, in the presence of water
(the included water of the sediments), would be sufficient to produce
softening or even fusion of the sediments and of the sea floor on which
they rest. This would establish a line of weakness, and therefore a
line of yielding, crushing, folding, bulging, and thus a mountain
range. In the first formation of a range, therefore, there would
necessarily be a sub-mountain mass of fused or semifused matter which
by the lateral crushing might be squeezed into cracks or fissures,
forming dikes. But in any case the sub-mountain mass would cool into
a granite core which by erosion may be exposed along the crest. The
explanation seems to be satisfactory.

2. _Cause of the Lateral Pressure._--No question in geology has been
more discussed than this, and yet none is more difficult and the
solution of which is more uncertain. But the most obvious and as
yet the most probable view is that it is the result of the secular
contraction of the earth which has gone on throughout its whole
history, and is still going on.

It is admitted by all that in an earth cooling from primal
incandescence there must come a time when the surface, having become
substantially cool and receiving heat also from the sun, would no
longer cool or contract, but, the interior being still incandescently
hot, would continue to cool and contract. The interior, therefore,
cooling and contracting faster than the exterior crust, the latter
following down the ever-shrinking nucleus, would be thrust upon itself
by a lateral or tangential pressure which would be simply irresistible.
If the earth crust were a hundred times more rigid than it is, it still
must yield to the enormous pressure. It does yield along its weakest
lines with crushing, folding, bulging, and the formation of mountain
ranges.

This is the barest outline of the so-called “contractional theory of
mountain formation.” Very many objections have been brought against
it, some of them answerable and completely answered, but the complete
answer to others must be left to the next century. Perhaps the greatest
objection of all is the apparent insufficiency of the cause to produce
the enormous amount of folding found not only in existing mountains but
in the folded structure of rocks where mountains no longer exist. But
it will be observed that I have thus far spoken only of contraction by
loss of heat. Now, not only has this cause been greatly underestimated
by objectors, but, as shown by Davison and especially by Van Hise,
there are many other and even greater causes of contraction. It would
be out of place to follow the discussion here. The subject is very
complex, and not yet completely settled.

We have given the barest outline of the history of mountain ranges and
of the theory of their formation as worked out in the last third of the
present century, and, I might add, chiefly by American geologists. So
true is this, that by some it has been called the “American theory.”

_Oscillatory Movements of the Earth’s Crust over Wide Areas._--We
have already spoken of these as modifying the effect of the
ocean-basin-making movements, and therefore now touch them very
lightly. These differ from the movements producing oceanic basins
on the one hand and mountain ranges on the other, by the fact
that they are not continuously progressive in one direction, but
_oscillatory_--now up, now down, in the same place. Again, they do not
involve contraction of the whole earth, but probably are always more or
less local and compensatory--i. e., rising in one place is compensated
by down-sinking in some other place. Nevertheless, they often
affect very wide areas--sometimes, indeed, of more than continental
extent--as, for example, in the crust movements of the Quaternary
period or ice age.

These are by far the most frequent and most conspicuous of all
crust movements--not only now, but also in all geological times. If
ocean-basin-forming movements are the underlying cause and condition
of the evolution of the earth, these wide oscillations, by increasing
and decreasing the size and height of continents and changing greatly
their contours, have determined all the details of the drama enacted
on the surface, and were the determining cause of the varying rates
and directions of the evolution of the organic kingdom. These were the
cause of the unconformities and the corresponding apparent wholesale
changes in species so common in the rocky strata, and which gave rise
to the doctrine of catastrophism of the early geologists. These also
have so greatly modified the contours of the continents and their size
by temporary increase or decrease that they have obscured the general
law of the steady development of these, and therefore their substantial
permanency.

Although the most important of all crust movements in determining the
whole history of the earth, and especially of the organic kingdom, we
shall dwell no further on them, because no progress has yet been made
in their explanation. This, too, must be left to the workers of the
twentieth century.

_The Principle of Isostasy._--The principle of static equilibrium as
applied to earth forms was first brought forward (as so many other
valuable suggestions and anticipations in many departments of science)
by the wonderfully fertile mind of Sir John Herschel, and used by him
in the explanation of the sinking of river deltas under the increasing
weight of accumulating sediments.[C] It was afterward applied to
continental masses by Archbishop Pratt[D] and by the Royal Astronomer
Professor Airy.[E] But for its wide application as a principle in
geology, its clear definition, and its embodiment in an appropriate
name, we are indebted to Major Dutton, United States Army.[F]

    [C] Philosophical Magazine, vol. ii, p. 212, 1837; Quarterly
        Journal of Geological Society, vol. ii, p. 548, 1837.

    [D] Philosophical Magazine, vol. ix, p. 231, and vol. x, p.
        240, 1855.

    [E] Philosophical Trans., 1855, p. 101.

    [F] Philosophical Society of Washington, 1892.

The principle may be briefly stated as follows: A globe so large as the
earth, under the influence of its own gravity, must behave like a very
stiffly viscous body--that is, the general form of the earth and its
greatest inequalities must be in substantial static equilibrium. For
example, the general form of the earth is oblate spheroid, because that
is the only form of equilibrium of a rotating body. Rotation determines
a distribution of gravity with latitude which brings about this form.
With any other form the earth would be in a state of strain to which
it must slowly yield, and finally relieve itself by becoming oblate.
If the rotation stopped, the earth would accommodate itself to the new
distribution of gravity and become spherical.

The same is true of the large inequalities of surface. Oceanic
basins and continental arches must be in static equilibrium or they
could not sustain themselves. In order to be in equilibrium the
sub-oceanic material must be as much more dense than the continental
and sub-continental material as the ocean bottoms are lower than
the continental surfaces. Such static equilibrium, by difference of
density, is completely explained by the mode of formation of oceanic
basins already given.

So also plateaus and great mountain ranges are at least partly
sustained by gravitative equilibrium, but partly also by earth
rigidity. It is only the smaller inequalities, such as ridges, peaks,
valleys, etc., that are sustained by earth rigidity alone.

These conclusions are not reached by physical reasonings alone, but are
also confirmed by experimental investigations. For example, a plumb
line on the plains of India is deflected indeed toward the Himalayas,
as it ought to be, but much less than it would be if the mountain and
sub-mountain mass were not less dense and the sub-oceanic material
more dense than the average.[G] Again, gravitative determinations by
pendulum oscillations, undertaken by the United States along a line
from the Atlantic shore to Salt Lake City, show that the largest
inequalities, such as the Appalachian bulge, the Mississippi-basin
hollow, and the Rocky Mountain bulge, are in gravitative
equilibrium--i. e., the mountain and sub-mountain material is as much
lighter as the mountain region is higher than the Mississippi-basin
region.

    [G] Pratt, Philosophical Magazine, vol. ix, p. 231, 1855; vol.
        x, p. 340, 1855; vol. xvi, p. 401, 1858.

Now, so sensitive is the earth to changes of gravity that, given time
enough, it responds to increase or decrease of pressure over large
areas by corresponding subsidence or elevation. Hence, all places where
great accumulations of sediment are going on are sinking under the
increased weight, and, contrarily, all places where excessive erosion
is going on, as, for example, on high plateaus and great mountain
ranges, are rising by relief of pressure.

This principle of isostasy is undoubtedly a valuable one, which must be
borne in mind in all our reasonings on crust movements, although its
importance has been exaggerated by some enthusiastic supporters. Its
greatest importance is not as a cause _initiating_ crust movements or
determining the features of the earth, but rather as conditioning and
modifying the results produced by other causes. The idea belongs wholly
to the latter half of the present century. Commencing about 1840, it
has grown in clearness and importance to the present time.

[_To be concluded._]




THE APPLICATIONS OF EXPLOSIVES.

BY CHARLES E. MUNROE,

PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY.

[_Concluded._]


[Illustration: GUN COTTON SHELL AFTER IMPACT.]

It is apparent that the range of even the most highly perfected
torpedo is comparatively short, while their accuracy of travel is low.
Besides, their propelling, controlling, and discharging mechanisms are
complicated, delicate, and easily deranged, they are very expensive,
and not only the explosive chamber but the entire system is destroyed
in use. The superiority of gunpowder guns as a means of throwing
projectiles to great distances with accuracy is well known, and
their capacity for safely and efficiently projecting shells filled
with gunpowder has long been demonstrated. It was obvious that as
the superior destructive power of dynamite, gun cotton, and other
high explosives became known and their commercial manufacture was
assured, attempts would be made to employ them as bursting charges
for shells. Experiments to demonstrate how this might be done and
what effects could be expected were begun more than forty years ago,
and have been continued in many different places from time to time
ever since; but while it has proved that small charges might be
fired with low velocities and pressures in ordinary shell, and large
charges in specially constructed shell or in specially prepared forms
of charge, with comparative safety so far as the premature explosion
of the explosive charge itself is concerned, yet these bodies are so
sensitive to the shock resulting from the discharge of the propellant,
the heat generated by its combustion, and that arising from friction
in the “set-back” of the shell charge and the rotation imparted by
the rifling, that they can not be safely fired from modern high-power
guns under service conditions, particularly as these explosives all
require that the shell shall be fitted with a detonator in order that
the charge may be fully exploded. The most promising results with
explosives of this class have been obtained with compressed wet gun
cotton, which has been packed directly in the shell in rigid blocks
completely filling the shell cavity, or cut in cubes and cemented in
the cavity with carnauba wax, for shell filled in the former manner,
but unfused, were repeatedly fired, in 1887 and 1888, at Newport, R.
I., from 24-pounder Dahlgren howitzers and 20-pounder muzzle-loading
rifles with service charges of powder, and though they were fired
point blank into the masonry escarpment of the old fort on Rose
Island, but fifty yards distant from the muzzle, so that the shells
were broken up or distorted and the gun cotton in them subjected to a
powerful compression, yet not only was there no premature explosion,
but none of the shell exploded by impact. About the same time fused
shell containing cemented gun cotton were fired in Germany, with an
initial velocity of fourteen hundred feet per second, and they passed
completely through four inches and three quarters of compound armor,
backed with twenty-four inches of oak, and burst inside the bombproof,
while in 1897 fused armor-piercing shells containing wet gun cotton
were fired from the six-inch quick-firing gun, with a muzzle velocity
of nearly nineteen hundred feet per second, which completely perforated
three inches of steel and burst behind the plate. Encouraged by these
results, this system was adopted by our army officials, but, on trial
in larger calibers at Sandy Hook, it gave rise to premature explosions,
and the tale of disaster reached its climax on April 29, 1899, when
Captain Stuart, of the Ordnance Corps, was superintending the loading
of a twelve-inch torpedo shell with wet gun cotton by compressing
it into the shell, for an explosion resulted which killed four men
instantly and fatally wounded two others, Captain Stuart being one of
them.

[Illustration: SIMS-DUDLEY PNEUMATIC GUN, LIMBERED UP.

(Courtesy of the Scientific American.)]

[Illustration: SIMS-DUDLEY PNEUMATIC GUN, IN BATTERY.

(Courtesy of the Scientific American.)]

[Illustration: TYNDALL’S BRONZE BELL-MOUTHED GUN.]

The history of the attempts made to use nitroglycerin, dynamite,
explosive gelatin, and explosives of this class as bursting charges
for shell fired from service guns is even less satisfactory than that
given for gun cotton. It is not surprising, therefore, that inventors
should have proposed catapults, slings, rotary wheels, and other means
for projecting these powerful agents into the enemy’s midst, but the
Mefford air gun, as mounted on the United States steamship Vesuvius,
and the Sims-Dudley gun, in which a reduced charge of powder is fired
in a chamber exterior to the gun proper, were deemed to possess
sufficient merit to warrant their trial in the field. These devices
were employed in the recent war with Spain, the pneumatic guns on the
Vesuvius being used to throw shells containing three hundred pounds of
gun cotton, while the Sims-Dudley guns were used on land to throw small
charges of dynamite or explosive gelatin; but, beyond frightening the
enemy by the startling character of their reports, these superficial
charges produced no serious effect.

[Illustration: MIRROR OR REFLECTOR IN WHICH TO FIRE GUN COTTON.]

There is a widespread misapprehension in regard to the devastating
effect of these high explosives, for when unconfined the effect even of
large charges of them upon structures is comparatively slight. At the
Naval Ordnance Proving Ground, so long ago as 1884, repeated charges
of dynamite, varying from five pounds to one hundred pounds in weight,
were detonated on the face of a vertical target consisting of eleven
one-inch wrought-iron plates bolted to a twenty-inch oak backing, until
440 pounds of dynamite had been so detonated in contact with it, and
yet the target remained practically uninjured; while at Braamfontein
the accidental explosion of fifty-five tons of blasting gelatin, which
was stored in railway vans, excavated but 30,000 tons of soft earth.
This last may seem a terrible effect, but the amount of explosive
involved was enormous and the material one of the most energetic that
we possess, while if we compare it with the action of explosives when
confined its effect becomes quite moderate. Thus at Fort Lee, on the
Hudson, but two tons of dynamite placed in a chamber in the rock and
tamped brought down 100,000 tons of the rock; at Lamberis, Wales,
two tons and a half of gelatin dynamite similarly placed threw out
180,000 tons of rock; and at the Talcen Mawr, in Wales, seven tons of
gunpowder, placed in two chambers in the rock, dislodged from 125,000
to 200,000 tons of rock. We might cite many such examples, but on
comparing these we find that the gunpowder confined in the interior at
the Talcen Mawr was over forty-two times as efficient as the explosive
gelatin on the surface at Braamfontein, while the dynamite at Fort Lee
was over ninety times as destructive.

[Illustration: RAILROAD TORPEDOES FASTENED ON RAIL.]

[Illustration: STEEL DISKS UPON WHICH GUN COTTON HAS BEEN DETONATED TO
TEST THEIR RESISTANCE TO SHOCK. Midvale steel disks after second fire.]

Considerations similar to these led me, in 1885,[H] to point out that
high explosives for use in shells must be strongly confined, and in
the attack on armored ships they should be fired in projectiles that
can “either penetrate the armor partially and explode in place or
pierce it completely and burst inside the ship” to secure the greatest
efficiency. This requires that the projectiles shall be fired at
higher velocities than can be imparted to them by guns of the kind
just described, and which can only be realized at present in modern
breech-loading rifles. Although experience has shown the futility of
all our efforts to use gun cotton and nitroglycerin explosives in this
manner, it has been proved that the nitro-substitution explosives can
be employed with safety and effect.

    [H] Van Nostrand’s Engineering Magazine, vol. xxxii, pp. 1-9,
        1885.

The nitro-substitution explosives are made from nitrobenzenes,
nitrotoluenes, nitronaphthalenes, nitrophenols, and bodies of a similar
character, and one of them, called joveite, has given excellent results
in this country. After having demonstrated that the destructive effect
of joveite was greater than that of gunpowder, smokeless powder, or gun
cotton, and, by repeated trials under severe conditions, that service
shell loaded with it could be fired from service guns under service
conditions with safety, on November 3, 1897, the naval officials
at Indian Head fired a fused ten-inch Carpenter armor-piercing
projectile containing 8.25 pounds of joveite, with a velocity of 1,960
foot-seconds, at a Harveyized nickel-steel plate taken from the armor
for the United States steamship Kentucky. The shell passed completely
through the armor plate, where it was 14.5 inches in thickness, and
burst immediately behind the plate. In a second round an unfused
ten-inch Midvale semi-armor-piercing shell containing twenty-eight
pounds of joveite was fired with a velocity of 1,925 foot-seconds at
the same plate where it was sixteen inches thick. The shell penetrated
to a depth of twelve inches, and the heat produced by the upsetting of
the shell was so great as to explode the joveite, which broke the plate
and burst the shell with tremendous violence. In fact, the explosion
was so very severe that the heavy base plug of the shell was sheared
longitudinally, an effect never observed before with any explosive
fired at the proving ground.

[Illustration: SHOOTING AN OIL WELL WITH NITROGLYCERIN.]

Notwithstanding that no accident occurred in any of the many firings,
that the stability and safety of the explosive are assured, and that
the explosion has been effected with a well-known and long-used form
of fuse, no provision has yet been made to supply the service with
charges for its costly armor-piercing projectiles.

Happily, the force resident in explosives may be applied to the
saving as well as to the destruction of human life, advantage having
long since been taken of the penetrating power of the report from
the discharge of a gun to employ them as signals of distress at sea
or as warnings in foggy weather. The English Lighthouse Board, under
Professor Tyndall’s guidance, some years ago sought to find the form
of gun best suited to this purpose, and their experiments led them at
first to a bronze gun with a bell-shaped mouth. Subsequently, their
attention being called to the sharpness and carrying power of the
report from detonating gun cotton, an apparatus was devised in which
the gun cotton was detonated in the focus of a parabolic mirror. The
best results, however, were attained with rockets carrying gun cotton
charges arranged to be exploded in mid air.

[Illustration: SAFE TO BE OPENED BY DETONATION OF NITROGLYCERIN. Before
the charge was fired.]

[Illustration: AFTER FIRING CHARGE.]

Guns have also been arranged for projecting life-lines between stranded
ships and the adjacent shore, and are now employed on a smaller scale
for conveying lines to the upper stories of our monumental buildings
when they are on fire. By means of guns or rockets, projectiles filled
with oil may be cast to considerable distances from a vessel in a
raging sea, so that the oil, as it diffuses, may still the waters in
her course; while sounding-lines may be thrown far in advance of a
vessel while she is still under way, and the soundings taken without
her laying-to.

Inclosed in shallow tin boxes, which are fixed by lead strips to the
top of the rail, explosives are used as torpedoes in the railroad
service to give warning, by the report of their explosion as an engine
runs over them, that another train is on the same track and but a short
distance ahead, and by this means collisions in fogs or on curves are
frequently prevented.

Explosives find applications in many industries. The farmer uses them
in breaking bowlders, grubbing stumps and felling trees, in shaking
the soil to fit it for deep-soil cultivation, and, in the wine-growing
districts, to free it from phylloxera, while the farmer’s friend has
tried by this means, in times of drought, to shake the nerves of Jove
and to divert the hailstorm from its course.

[Illustration: SAFE PERFORATED BY HOLLOW DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE.]

The iron founder uses them in breaking up large castings. The iron
smelter employs them to clear out obstructions in blast furnaces while
the latter are still in operation, the dynamite, protected by a clay
envelope, being inserted in the red-hot mass which clogs the furnace.
The author has proposed to use the detonating explosives for testing
the integrity of large masses of metals and their resistance to shock.

Dynamite has been employed in fishing, since submarine explosions of
it will kill or stun fish for a long distance about the charge. This
method of fishing, which threatened to deplete the waters, has very
properly been prohibited by law, but guns are employed for projecting
harpoons in the whale fishery, and have reduced very much the danger
attending this extra-hazardous occupation.

Nitroglycerin, inclosed in tin cans three to five inches in diameter
and five to twenty-five feet in length, is used for shooting oil wells
to free them from the solid paraffins with which they become choked, or
to shake the oil-bearing sandstone so as to produce a greater yield. In
this work the loaded can, having a detonating cap attached to its top,
is lowered by a wire to the bottom of the well, which is often fifteen
hundred feet or more in depth. A perforated weight is then strung on
the wire, and when the torpedo is in place the weight is allowed to
fall, strike the cap, and explode the charge.

Dynamite has been used to knock out the blocking from the ways when
launching ships. Fired on an iron plate placed on the top of a pile
and covered with a tamping of earth or clay, it has successfully and
economically replaced the pile driver. It has been found efficient in
excavating holes in which to plant telegraph and telephone poles; in
driving water out of quicksands in which foundations are to be laid
or shafts to be driven; in slaughtering cattle; in breaking down ice
dams to prevent inundations; in blowing up buildings to prevent the
spread of conflagrations; in razing unsafe walls of burned buildings;
in destroying wrecks which endanger navigation, and even in freeing
vessels which are hard aground on shoals.

[Illustration: HOLLOW DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE; ELEVATION.]

An especially notable instance was in the blasting out of the _débris_
in the river at Johnstown after the frightful flood that occurred
there, which formed an enormous dam above the bridge and threatened
its existence, and which was successfully and expeditiously removed by
blasting after all other means had been tried in vain.

[Illustration: HOLLOW DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE.

View from below.]

In fact, the amount of explosives consumed in the industries
is so great that the quantity employed for military purposes
sinks into insignificance. Yet we have failed to refer to those
industries--quarrying and mining, and the engineering operations--in
which they are most extensively and commonly used, being employed so
largely in mining alone that it is an almost daily occurrence for
blasts containing twenty, thirty, and even fifty thousand pounds of
explosives to be used in a single charge; and the system of large
blasts has even become common in hard-rock excavations, such as
quarries and railroad cuttings, while in the blast at the blowing up
of Flood Rock, in New York Harbor, October 10, 1885, over one hundred
and forty-one tons of rack-a-rock, dynamite, and mercury fulminate were
used in a single shot.

Nor have I alluded to the use of explosives by the anarchists in
their dastardly outrages, through which the safety of the old and
young, feeble and strong, the innocent and the offending, are alike
endangered; but I will touch briefly upon the applications of these
powerful agents in the too-much cultivated industry of safe-robbing,
since I was called upon some years ago to demonstrate, before a
Government commission, how safes might be successfully attacked either
in a burglarious way or by a mob with explosives, meaning by the
burglarious operation that the safe should be made accessible within
twenty-four hours with means such as a party of men could smuggle into
a bank and which might be used without attracting attention or doing
material damage to the building, and by “mob violence,” meaning that
the vaults are supposed to be in the hands of a mob which has ample
time and quantities of explosives at command, and does not care how
much noise is made or destruction is wrought, provided the treasure is
secured.

[Illustration: FIRING ON IRON DISK, RESTING ON LEAD DISK, IN TESTING
THE EFFICIENCY OF GUN COTTON.]

[Illustration: GUN COTTON DISK. With indented inscription, and iron
plate upon which the indented inscription has been reproduced.]

In the experiments made in a burglarious way, among others, a
three-thousand-dollar square safe of the most approved construction was
attacked by inserting in the crevice about the locked door four and
eight tenths ounces of nitroglycerin, and in eight minutes after the
operation of loading was begun the charge was fired, with the result
that the whole of the jamb below the door was blown out and a hole
made in the door of sufficient size to admit the hand and arm, while
the doors and divisions of the interior compartments were completely
shattered. On repeating the operation with four ounces and a quarter of
forcite dynamite the door was completely torn off.

Among experiments made to demonstrate the resistance of structures
to attack by a mob was one upon a safe twenty-nine inches cube, with
walls four inches and three quarters thick, made up of plates of iron
and steel, which were re-enforced on each edge so as to make it highly
resisting, yet when a hollow charge of dynamite nine pounds and a half
in weight and untamped was detonated on it a hole three inches in
diameter was blown clear through the wall, though a solid cartridge of
the same weight and of the same material produced no material effect.
The hollow cartridge was made by tying the sticks of dynamite around
a tin can, the open mouth of the latter being placed downward, and I
was led to construct such hollow cartridge for use where a penetrating
effect is desired by the following observations:

[Illustration: HOLES PRODUCED IN IRON PLATES BY BORED GUN COTTON.]

In molding the gun cotton at the torpedo station, as stated above, a
vertical hole was formed in each cylinder or block in which to insert
the detonator, and in the final press a steel die was laid upon the
cake so that an inscription in letters and figures was forced upon it.
This inscription was indented in the cylinders and was raised upon the
surfaces of the blocks. When the gun cotton was fired untamped, in
testing it, the cylinder or block was usually placed with the inscribed
face resting on a polished iron plate or iron disk, and after firing,
if the gun cotton had detonated it was invariably found that not only
was a vortex-like cavity produced below the detonator, but that the
inscription on the gun cotton was reproduced on the iron plate, and,
what was most singular, when the inscription was indented in the gun
cotton it was indented in the iron plate, and when the inscription was
raised on the surface of the gun cotton it was reproduced raised on
the surface of the iron plate. In experimentally investigating this
phenomenon I eventually soaked several cylinders in water, so that
I could bore them without danger, and then bored holes of various
diameters and depths in them, until in the last instance I bored a
vertical hole an inch and three quarters in diameter completely through
the cylinder. These wet cylinders were each placed on a similar iron
plate, a similar dry disk was placed on each as a primer, and they were
successively fired, when it was found that the deeper and wider the
hole in the gun cotton the deeper and wider were the holes produced
in the iron plate, until when the completely perforated gun cotton
cylinder, from which at least half of the weight of explosive had
been removed by the boring, was fired, the iron plate was found to be
completely perforated.

Advantage was taken of this action of the rapidly moving molecules to
produce some beautiful effects by interposing laces, coins, leaves from
the trees, and stencils with various devices cut in them between the
base of the gun cotton and the iron plate, for after the detonation of
the gun cotton the objects were found to be reproduced upon the iron
with the utmost fidelity and in their most delicate parts, and the
impressions were raised upon the iron as the objects had been before
the explosion.

In one instance a disk of gun cotton was placed in a tin which had
been used in canning peas. The disk was covered with water so as to be
completely immersed in it, and a second dry disk, with which to fire
it, was placed upon the wet one. The face of the can resting in contact
with the iron plate was originally the top of the can, through which
the vegetable had been introduced, and it was consequently grooved
where the cover was soldered on, and it also had an irregular drop of
solder over the vent hole, the solder being raised, therefore, above
the general level of the face. On firing, the can was completely
volatilized or comminuted as usual, but the face of the can was
reproduced in every feature and with the original values of the
surface, the groove being indented in the iron, and the solder being
raised above the rest of the impression.

[Illustration: MAPLE LEAF REPRODUCED ON IRON PLATE.]

In another instance a disk of gun cotton three inches in diameter was
placed in a tin can five inches in diameter, and the can, which had
a smooth bottom, placed on the face of an iron I-beam. The can was
filled with water so as to just cover the gun cotton, a second dry
gun cotton disk was placed on the wet disk of a primer, both being in
constant contact with one side of the can, and the system detonated.
As a result the can and water disappeared and the face of the beam
was torn off, but on recovering the pieces and matching them it was
found that not only was the smooth base of the gun cotton and the face
of the can reproduced in the iron, but in the space between the gun
cotton and the side of the can, occupied by the water, three distinct
sets of waves were produced, having an increasing amplitude from the
center proceeding outward. It is evident that many curious effects can
be produced with explosive substances, and I do not doubt that useful
applications will be found through a close study of the phenomena
attending them.




A YEAR’S PROGRESS IN THE KLONDIKE.

BY PROF. ANGELO HEILPRIN.

    NOTE.--Acknowledgment is here made to Mr. E. A. Hegg for the use of
    most of the photographs accompanying this article.


Two years ago the difficulties of reaching the Klondike were thought to
be of such a nature as to preclude the probability or even possibility
of Dawson ever becoming a place of permanent habitation. The trials
of the Chilkoot and White Passes were exploited in magazine and
journal from one end of the continent almost to the other, and the
wrecks of humanity, and particularly of the thousands of beasts that
lay scattered along the trail--the tribute to the Sahara turned to
shame--were appealed to as grim testimony of the almost insuperable
barrier which separated man from the object of his search. To-day,
and since July 6th of the past year (1899), a steam railway traverses
the full forty-two miles of the White Pass trail, and the traveler
enjoys the beauties of the subarctic landscape in much the way that
he enjoys the trip through the Alleghany Mountains in the East, or of
the prairies in the West. Deposited at Bennett, on Lake Bennett, at
virtually the head of navigation of the mighty Yukon River (otherwise
known as the Lewes), he engages passage on one of several commodious
steamers heading down stream or northward, and with one change--at
the Miles Cañon and White Horse Rapids, where there is a five-mile
portage--reaches Dawson after a voyage, delightful in its change of
scene and novelty of experience, of from four to six days. It is a
fact, therefore, that with a strict timing of departures the traveler
from New York may make the journey to Dawson in summer time in twelve
days, and exceptionally even in less; and the journey has indeed been
made in eleven days and a half. Such is the change which the effort of
less than two years has accomplished.

[Illustration: BARTLETT BROTHERS’ PACK TRAIN, DAWSON.]

The Dawson of 1899 is no longer the Dawson of 1898, and much less that
of the year previous. The thousands of bateaux that were formerly lined
up against the river front, in rows six deep and more, and comprising
all manner of craft from the small canoe to sliced sections of scows,
have mostly disappeared, and in their place we now find the graceful
and ungraceful forms of varying types of steamboat. It is no uncommon
thing to find five or more of these larger craft tied up at one time to
the river front, and the amplitude and majesty of the Mississippi boats
gain but little in a comparison with some of the larger craft of the
Yukon River. Overhung signs call attention to the flying queens of the
river, the Bonanza King, Canadian, and Sibyl, and thousands are offered
upon the result of the race to the White Horse Rapids. So here, as in
the olden days of the Mississippi, the struggle for supremacy has led
to the opening of the throttle and to the scraping of the fire box.
Upward of a hundred arrivals from down the river were registered at
Dawson during the season of open water of 1899.

Dawson has been further put into comparatively close touch with
the outer world by the entry of the telegraph, and since the early
days of October messages have been freely going to the seaboard at
Skaguay. It is true that a cableless stretch of hundreds of miles
still separates this town from the nearest port of importance on the
continent, but doubtless before very long even this blank in the line
of communication will have been supplied. It may be first by means
of wireless telegraphy, as it is mooted that the Canadian Government
looks with favor upon experimentation with the Marconi system; or, what
is more likely, the desired end will be brought about by the laying
of a continuous wire. The extraordinary rapidity with which the five
hundred to six hundred miles of land wire were laid--five and seven
miles per day--speaks well for the _morale_ of the Canadian sapper and
engineering service.

In its commercial and residential aspects the city has made vast
progress. The days of ingulfing mires are virtually over, and from one
end of the town almost to the other, one may safely tread the streets
on secure board sidewalks. Not alone the main street is furnished in
this way, but also several of the streets running parallel with it, and
parts of streets that run across at right angles. A wise enactment,
not perhaps absolutely just in its details, has swept off the shacks
and booths from the river side of the front street, and one now enjoys
an almost uninterrupted view of the opposing bank of the stream,
already marred by giant advertising letters announcing bargain sales in
merchandise, and directing to particular shops in the metropolis of the
North.

[Illustration: DAWSON’S GREAT FIRE, APRIL 26, 1899.]

The shops of Dawson have risen to the dignity of establishments having
corrugated-iron covers, plate-glass fronts, and redwood shelves and
counters. Following closely upon the pioneer constructions--department
stores, they might be classed--of the Alaska Commercial Company are the
depots of the North American Trading and Transportation Company, the
Alaska Exploration Company, Ames Mercantile Company, and the Yukoner
Company, several with retaining warehouses placed beyond the reach of a
city fire and with dimensions that would lend dignity to locations of
much larger size than the emporium of the North. Many of the smaller
shops also carry a varied line of goods, but others are restricted to
a specialty, and their wares are now offered at rates which are in the
main only reasonably in advance of the “high” rates of the Western
coast towns. There are exceptions to this rule, however, especially
where skilled local labor is called into requisition in a manufacture.
Thus fourteen dollars for a pair of trousers made to order strikes the
imagination rather forcibly, when a first-grade quality of boot or shoe
can be obtained for five dollars and six dollars. Really good meals
may be procured almost everywhere for from a dollar to a dollar and
a half, and the best hotels supply twenty-one meals for twenty-five
dollars, and these do not absolutely reject delicacies of one kind
or another. Cow’s milk can now be had as a regular adjunct to coffee,
since the milcher is no longer a stranger to the country. The price of
rooms in the hotels still remains high--from four to six dollars per
night, without meals--but the character of these rooms has materially
improved, even though they would be considered with us decidedly third
rate. In a few establishments of a more private character, lodging for
a certain amount of permanency may be had for fifteen dollars the week,
or, where the condition of the surroundings is not closely scanned,
for even less. A new and capacious hotel, the Hotel Metropole, reared
from the wealth of the “King of the Klondike”--Alexander MacDonald--has
recently been added to those of less pretentious design which served
the community last year. A heavy cut in rates is promised.

The conflagration of April 26th, through which perhaps one quarter
of the business portion of Dawson was burned to the ground, has
given opportunity for the introduction of improvements, and the
most important of these is that which has resulted in the removal
of houses and resorts of evil repute from the heart of the city and
consigned them and their inmates to a localized area or “tenderloin”
district. Women of refinement may now parade the streets without
having their finer sensibilities offended through the public intrusion
of the immorals of the lower world. The tone of the public places of
amusement, the theaters and dance houses, has also been in a measure
elevated, even if far from sufficiently so, and some real talent
occasionally sparkles behind the footlights. A new “opera house,” with
a seating capacity of perhaps seven hundred or eight hundred, but
advertised for two thousand, was thrown open to the public last August,
after a construction, it is claimed, of only two weeks. Its season’s
_répertoire_ included, among other plays, Michael Strogoff and Camille,
both of which, even in their crudest type of presentation, felt well of
the public pulse.

School education plays as yet little part in the morals of the
Dawsonites. The greed of fortune has left scant time for the
consideration of educational matters, and what little of school
training is imparted to the youth of tender years comes largely in
the shape of a beneficence from private hands. If the issuance of
newspapers be properly classed as belonging to education, then Dawson
has made material advances during the past year, for, in addition to
the three weeklies which more than supplied all the information that
was needed to the inhabitants of 1898, it has now a daily (the Dawson
Daily News) and a Sunday paper (The Gleaner), while the pioneer Nugget
has been converted into a semi-weekly. Some of these journals, which
in typographical detail stand fully equal to many of the foremost
journals of the United States, are devoted largely to a vilification
of the Yukon government, and secondarily to the nonpartisan interests
of the community. But little space is given over to murders and daring
deeds of robbery, since occurrences of this kind, thanks to the
continued vigilance and efficiency of the Northwest Mounted Police, are
all but unknown, and the safety of possessions is as well established
as that of the person. The shooting of an actress by her lover,
followed by the suicide of the murderer, furnished the sensation for
the year; but previous suicides, also in the ranks of the theatrical
profession, had already paved a way to this form of excitement.

Two or more lines of telephone unite Dawson with the nearer mining
region, and a partial city service has also been established. The
city remains as yet without an electric-light plant, but it is by no
means unlikely that before the present season has passed the darkness
of the winter night will be lifted by the arc light, and much of
the oppressiveness of the closed season thereby removed. After two
winters of experience, the Dawsonites continue to think lightly of
the “terrors” of the cold, and to but few apparently is the extreme
of temperature a deterrent to exercise. Sleighing continues to be a
pastime, with the temperature marking 40° to 50° below zero, but only
with this season does it enter into the category of a fashionable
recreation. Hitherto dog-sled teams performed the full service of
winter travel, and divided with skating and “ski”-ing the winter
exercise; but this year the snow causeways will be lively with the
jingling of cutter bells and the rapid pacing of the horse.

One can not help remarking the vast improvement in the general tone of
Dawson society, if by that term we may include all that constitutes
the population of the city. More particularly is this marked in the
case of women, among whom it is no longer a rarity to meet with
strict refinement and culture. Musical _soirées_ register among the
events of the week, and literary recitals are not exceptional. The
male portion of the population has also undergone a refining process
through the departure of hundreds or even thousands of “bums,” who
only too late for their comfort discovered that their presence was
neither a necessity to Dawson nor a mainspring to the extraction of
gold from the soil. By their departure the city has probably suffered
a decrease in its population of some three thousand to four thousand,
but has more than received compensation in that stability of purpose
which such elimination always insures. As a city of about thirteen
thousand inhabitants, it enters upon its history in the year 1900 with
principles cast largely upon a pure business basis, and with a future
that is bound in with the product of the soil.

[Illustration: MIDNIGHT VIEW OF DAWSON, JUNE 21, 1899.]

The gold resource of the Klondike region seems fully to sustain the
anticipations which had been put forth touching the product of 1899.
The better-known creeks, such as the Bonanza, Eldorado, and Hunker,
have kept well up with their record of the previous year, and give
indications of continuing as important factors in the calculation of
output for some time to come in the future. The introduction of a
certain amount of mining machinery, such as steam drills, thawers,
and powerful pumps--applied more particularly to the deposits of
the benches and hillsides--coupled with a more definite method of
conducting extensive operations on a comparatively economic basis,
has given fresh impetus to the work of mine holders, and made largely
remunerative that which had promised to be little profitable. A more
just administration of the mining laws has helped to a considerate
feeling among the miners, and reduced very materially the grievances
which formerly fell with thick force upon the offices of the Recorder
and Gold Commissioner. Access is now easily had to the records of
claims, and individual “cases” receive an early and proper hearing.
Electric plants have been introduced on some of the claims, so that
there need be no interruption in work for the full twenty-four hours of
the day.

Apart from the discovery of rich pay-dirt on creeks and gulches,
such as Last Chance (tributary to Hunker), Gold Bottom (tributary to
Sulphur), and American, Magnet, and Adams (tributary to the Bonanza),
concerning which much skepticism was expressed last year, the filling
in of assumed barren gaps in the general line of creeks has done much
to inspire the feeling that more of the broad area is gold-bearing
than the first surveys and explorations “indicated”--a feeling to
which particular confidence has been given by the surprising wealth
which has been washed out from the hillsides. For a nearly continuous
four miles of the “left limit” of the Bonanza, extending northward
from Gold Hill at the confluence of the Eldorado to the “forties below
discovery,” the crests of the hills at an elevation of some one hundred
and eighty to two hundred feet above the creek are laid bare with the
work of the shovel, pick, and drill, and the same or a corresponding
stratigraphical height is pierced elsewhere along the stream. Gold
Hill (and French Hill, on the Eldorado side), Skookum, Adams, Magnet,
and American Hills, and Monte Cristo, all have their summits capped by
what is now familiarly known as the “white layer”--a feature in the
landscape as interesting to the casual tourist as the construction is
important to the more fortunate claim holders who are located here.

Up to this time no quartz locations determined to be of positive value
have been located, although a goodly number of “quartz reefs,” “lodes,”
and kidney masses have been staked, restaked, and recorded. Some of
these have shown gold in small quantity, but in by far the greater
number of cases they have proved absolutely barren, and are without
promise of yielding anything. The anticipation of many, naturally
fostered by individual wish and hope, that an originating or “mother”
lode must be present and found somewhere rests without any geological
support so far as evidence has been accumulated up to the present
time, and there is nothing that looks like a promise to the geological
eye. At the same time, it would be premature to assert that such a reef
or series of reefs may not be discovered in the future. The hill crests
that have furnished so much of the white material of the high benches
of the Bonanza and the Eldorado may perhaps be searched with best
advantage in this direction, and thence extended to the water parting
which surrounds or incloses the upper waters of Gay Gulch.

[Illustration: THE COLUMBIAN AND THE ELDORADO STARTING FROM DAWSON,
JULY 4, 1899, ON A RACE TO WHITE HORSE RAPIDS.]

No estimate, naturally, can yet be put to the total gold supply of
the Klondike region, but to inquiry that is frequently put regarding
the future existence of Dawson as an energetic mining camp one can
unhesitatingly answer that this existence is assured for many years to
come, and there are indications that point to a permanence independent
of the simple supply of gold.

[Illustration: STREET SCENE, DAWSON, JULY, 1899.]

The earlier conceptions of the extreme severity of the climate of the
Yukon Valley forbade the hope of agricultural possibilities, but a more
intimate knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the summer time--a
season of four to five months’ duration, with daylight and day heat
protracted far into the normal hours of night--and a comparison of
these conditions with somewhat similar conditions prevailing elsewhere,
have given hope not alone of a possibility, but of a probability, and
there are few to-day who doubt that agriculture may not be practiced
with at least a legitimate amount of success in many parts of the Yukon
basin. This probability has, indeed, been already emphasized by Prof.
George Dawson, and the more recent examinations of Alaskan territory,
made by Colonels Ray and Abercrombie, confirm with a conviction the
reference to American soil. The feeble but more than promising efforts
in agriculture and gardening that were made in the region about Dawson
in 1898 have borne surprising fruit in 1899, and while the results may
not, for various reasons, have proved in all cases remunerative to
the “prospector,” they at least clearly demonstrate the possibilities
to which the future may lay claim. Cabbages, turnips, peas, radishes,
lettuce, and beans are now raised to perfection in favored spots along
the Yukon and Klondike, and on scattered hillsides of the Bonanza and
Eldorado, and a good promise is also held out for the potato. In the
charming spot known as the Acklin Garden, situated on the Klondike
about two miles from Dawson, oats and barley, sown on April 26th
and May 22d respectively (1899), were grown to beautiful heads, and
harvested in the middle of August. No wheat had ripened up to that
time, and I suspect that, owing to a light frost which took place
on the 19th of the same month, none of this grain came to maturity.
Radishes sown on April 24th were collected on May 20th, and string
beans, whose seed was scattered on May 26th, were collected on August
1st. Other successful crops were those of beets, onions, and spinach.

The exquisite beauty of the flower garden in this spot rivets the
attention of all passers-by, and few there are who do not for a moment
lay aside their packs to enjoy the feast of color that is presented
to them. Poppies of the size and brilliance of those which adorn the
fields about Naples, chrysanthemums, gorgeous dahlias, pansies, the
cornflower, mignonette, and centaurea are part of the outside bloom,
to which Nature “beyond the fence” has fittingly added the wild rose,
anemone, fireweed, and forget-me-not. Such is the aspect of the region
which to-day illumines the far North, and carries with itself a hopeful
promise to many and the certainty of disappointment to many more.




THE DECLINE OF CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE IN AMERICA.

BY GINO C. SPERANZA.


The rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property
have been called the “rights of the people of England,” and may be
said to constitute the richest heirloom in the Anglo-Saxon family.
While, in a certain sense, they belong to all civilized people, yet,
in their practical application, they are peculiarly the creation of
Anglo-Saxon common sense and love of order. The underlying principle of
these rights, clothed by the Latins in the seductive garb of _Liberté_,
_Egalité_, _Fraternité_, gave us a Reign of Terror, a Commune, and
finally a doubtful republicanism; but the same principle, embodied in
the less dazzling formula, “That no man shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property without due process of law,” produced in the hands
of the Anglo-Saxons more enduring democracies “of the people, by the
people, and for the people.”

With the instinct of a race born for self-government, the Anglo-Saxons
have ever sought and almost always found the highest safeguard
for their ancient rights in the courts of law. Between a partisan
Legislature and a tyrannical Executive an honest judiciary has
generally been found ready to annul the excesses of the one and to
prevent any infringement by the other; so that it has become a belief,
having the force of faith, that in our courts will be found the bulwark
of those liberties which we consider essential to the full enjoyment of
life.

Laws and courts, however, are after all the creation of men, and, like
all such creations, they are necessarily imperfect and fallible; or,
more correctly, they are organisms which develop and improve. In other
words, justice and law are only relatively immutable and perfect.
They do, indeed, represent, in a sense, abstract perfection, and at
any given time they must be considered the highest criterion of human
conduct. But justice and law are not such divinities that they can
withdraw themselves from the operation of those forces which we call
progress. Seriousness, dignity, and venerability are not sufficient
to sustain the majesty of the law; it needs also adaptation to those
higher conditions and broader views which mark the growth of human
thought. The more we come to look upon law as the standard and gauge of
upright human action, the more do we grow to expect it in consonance
with the highest dictates of human knowledge and reason, for what is
above us must represent what is best in us, else it will be neither
respected nor obeyed. Whenever this consonance is not found, human
belief in the dignity of the law and in the efficacy of justice ceases.
For, theoretically at least, law is so near ideal perfection that the
least defect destroys it entirely; and by this “ideal perfection” is
meant that _laws must reflect the highest and soundest thought of
every age_. Laws that fail in this cease to be a power for good; they
are then looked upon either as ridiculous or as oppressive. If the
former, they defeat their ends by becoming dead laws; if the latter,
they become a source of disorder and discontent. Hence we see that
jurisprudence is essentially evolutionary and progressive, and that
the majesty of the law does not lie in its age but in its perennial
youth, or, more correctly, in its successive rejuvenescence. It is
true that in China the antiquity of a law is its highest prestige,
but, as a consequence, Chinese justice is proverbially inefficient and
barbarous. It therefore follows that the constant study and improvement
of what we have called the safeguards of our fundamental rights should
be our highest duty, and the object of the care and solicitude of the
State. It is not enough to rest contentedly in the thought that a Magna
Charta, a Petition of Rights, and sundry written constitutions protect
us. Their very existence is but an argument for our eternal vigilance.
Now, the question to be here examined is whether we have exercised that
care and vigilance which are essential to the free enjoyment of our
rights.

Let me premise the statement that the protection of the rights of life,
liberty, and property is peculiarly within the province of the criminal
law. What constitutes the right of life, liberty, and property can not
be defined or described, except negatively by a definition of what will
be deemed its infringements. These we call crimes. To declare what
acts come within the definition of such crimes is the function of the
criminal courts.

It is upon the criminal law, therefore, that we must rely for the
enunciation of what acts shall constitute a breach of the right of
life, liberty, and property, and it is to the criminal bench and bar
that we must turn for the correct interpretation and application of
such enunciations. Hence the more time and attention we devote to the
study of criminal legislation and to the enlightenment of the criminal
bench and bar, the more will the safety of our rights be increased and
strengthened. Likewise, the more we allow criminal legislation to be
the product of hasty consideration and the criminal bar to drift into
disrepute, the more the safety of our rights will be proportionally
weakened.

The first question that presents itself is, “_What is done by
our law schools for the study of criminal law?_” The answer is
not very encouraging. Let us take those law schools which are of
most importance, either by reason of their curriculum or of their
attendance. Harvard, with a three years’ course, devotes two hours
a week for one year to criminal law (including criminal procedure).
Allowing nine months of four weeks each to the scholastic year, and
a weekly average of eighteen hours, it will be found that the time
devoted to the study of criminal law (including procedure) is a little
over _three per cent_ of the entire course. By a similar computation
we find that Columbia devotes to criminal law (and procedure) a
little over _four per cent_ of the entire course, which is about
the percentage given by Yale and a little lower than that of the
Universities of Michigan, Cornell, and New York respectively.

These computations are based upon figures given in the catalogues of
those universities, or kindly furnished by the deans. Nothing more
eloquent of the decline of the study of criminal jurisprudence in our
country could be cited. But the catalogues of these law schools add
further proof. At none of them is there a professor whose instruction
is confined solely to criminal law. Nearly all the instructors in
criminal law devote but a small part of their time (and probably
of their study) to the teaching of this subject. In Columbia the
instructor in criminal law is professor of international law and
diplomacy;[I] at Harvard the incumbent of the chair of criminal law
teaches the law of carriers; that of Michigan teaches the law of bills
and notes and of public corporations; that of the New York University
the law of sales and wills. It is, moreover, a significant fact that
the faculties of the above-named institutions, while recommending to
law students the optional study of political economy, constitutional
history, taxation, physical science, English literature, and modern
languages as conducive to a higher standard of legal culture, utterly
fail to advise them to pursue courses in criminal anthropology,
criminology, or penology. In other words, it is deemed advisable that
the future lawyer should bring to the aid of his civil practice the
complementary knowledge of French and history, for instance, but it
is of no importance that he should be acquainted with the results of
modern criminologic and penologic research. Thus the conclusion is
forced upon us that the study of criminal law, whose importance I have
endeavored to set forth, has become a subject at sufferance in our
universities, a practically optional course of little consequence to
the student, and of no interest to the teacher.

    [I] This has since been changed; but the change makes the case
        worse, as the new instructor in criminal law teaches not
        only two branches of the law (as under last year’s course),
        but five--viz., Criminal Law, Wills and Administration,
        Common-Law Practice and Pleading Bankruptcy, and Bailments
        and Carriers.

From the very beginning of his legal career the future lawyer is
made to feel that the field of criminal law is not the one in which
to exercise his best talents. Both the school curriculum and popular
sentiment strengthen this prejudice. To the community at large our
criminal courts have come to mean places where criminals are sentenced
or rogues saved on technicalities; they have ceased to be centers of
justice, where innocent men are saved and guilty men tried according
to the law of the land. Hence has arisen the popular belief (despite
the rule that the accused shall be considered innocent until his guilt
is proved), shared in a measure by the bench and bar, that every
man accused of crime is criminal and depraved, and that, therefore,
contact with him should be avoided. Thus the criminal lawyer, who
necessarily must come in touch with such alleged crime and depravity,
is practically ostracized not only from the community but also from the
civil forum.

The existence of such prejudice against the criminal bar is most
deplorable. Men of ability and position will shun criminal practice,
leaving the field clear to unscrupulous shysters. Let it be remembered
that to a man charged with the commission of a crime and deprived
of his liberty the lawyer appears a savior; that the accused is
practically at his lawyer’s mercy, being under most trying duress and
very easily influenced. The temptation for unprofessional dealing is
here at its highest, because of the manifest advantage of the lawyer
who is able, or whom the client believes to be able, to unlock the
prison doors. It takes men of more than ordinary fiber to persistently
resist such temptation in all its forms. Hence the necessity of upright
and learned men at the criminal bar. But how few are our great criminal
practitioners! How often have I heard lawyers, too young and clientless
to allow themselves preferences, declare most decidedly that they were
willing to do anything “except criminal law”! They had been trained to
look upon it not merely as inferior but as degrading practice. Yet it
is common knowledge that in European countries, where less boast is
made of inalienable rights, it is the ambition of all lawyers to get a
reputation at the criminal bar. It is there, in fact, that reputations
are made.

It is likewise in those countries where many would make us believe
that life, liberty, and property are not as sacredly guarded as in our
own country, that the criminal laws are a constant object of scholarly
study and investigation. The great progress made in the study of crime,
the building up of a criminal science and a criminal sociology, is
almost exclusively the work of Continental criminologists. Penology
has indeed engaged our attention, but criminology has been almost
practically ignored by us.

Of criminal law it was long ago said that, “by reason of the numberless
unforeseen events which the compass of a day may bring forth,” the
knowledge of its provisions “is a matter of universal concern.” Yet,
despite this “universal concern,” our criminal law has been and still
is inferior to our civil law. I have pointed out at the beginning of
this article how the majesty of the law depended essentially upon its
ever-recurring rejuvenescence; that law was a living organism, subject
to change and the forces of evolution.

The theories on criminal responsibility and on crime in general, in the
light of modern medical, anthropologic, and sociologic sciences, have
completely supplanted the old doctrines, yet criminal legislation has
apparently taken no notice of them. Modern science tells us that our
antiquated tests of criminal responsibility result in sending hundreds
of men to prison who ought to be sent to asylums, but we do nothing to
avoid this scandal. Under our system the courts are obliged to let the
conclusions of the learned judges who occupied the bench three hundred
years ago have more weight than the positive investigations of the men
of science of our day, and so, consciously or unconsciously, numberless
crimes are committed in the name of _stare decisis_. True it is that in
some jurisdictions, and notably in New York, the courts have recognized
to some extent the progress of science and its influence upon juridic
theories. But even in these cases the concession has been made only
in _civil_ cases. Thus Mr. Bishop, in his Criminal Law, is obliged to
point out that our courts recognize _two kinds of insanity_--to wit,
_civil and criminal irresponsibility_. Why the test to be applied
in the case of the validity of a will should be different from that
applied in the case of murder does not seem very clear. The scientific
test as to insanity has been oftentimes recognized and applied by our
civil tribunals, but the criminal judges still cling with unabashed
attachment to the unscientific and unprogressive rule in McNaughten’s
case. The Guiteau trial, which followed that celebrated decision, added
fresh authority to the English view, and practically made the rule to
be applied in criminal trials a legal dogma.

In an able and exhaustive paper by Mr. J. H. Dougherty on this very
subject, before the Society of Medical Jurisprudence, the evils of
such dogmatism in criminal law are strikingly set forth. “Life,” he
said, “should be as sacred as property. While society needs protection
from the criminal, it does not require that the protection should be
insured through the application of a fallacious and discredited legal
dogma.”

This is but one example of the unprogressiveness of our criminal
jurisprudence. Yet, if we really have the ancient principle of the
right of life and liberty at heart we ought to recognize that this
legal dogma is a greater menace to the practical abrogation of the
right than the despotism of an unscrupulous executive. For while the
latter is an infringement of a right which the law forbids, the former
is a breach of a right which the law sanctions. Again, the theories
regarding the object of penal provisions have entirely changed.
Punishment has been scientifically shown to be practically useless
either as a deterrent or as a correctional remedy. Yet our penal codes
are confessedly based on the idea of punishment and retribution. We
have indeed made some little headway, such as indeterminate sentences
and suspension of judgment, but only in a scattered and tentative way.

The additions to or changes in our criminal codes have been unimportant
and unprogressive. What additions are made are slipshod in their
make-up, at times partisan in intent, seldom in harmony with the
teachings of modern science, and oftentimes in disregard of fundamental
principles. Our legislators grant “hearings” before passing a law
affecting the business of a few privileged men and give it due weight;
but criminal bills, which may affect the public, are generally “rushed
through,” probably because of an absolute lack of interest. This is but
a repetition of Blackstone’s complaint against criminal legislation in
his day. “It is never usual in the House of Commons,” he wrote, “even
to read a bill which may affect the property of an individual without
first referring it to some of the learned judges and hearing their
report thereon. And surely equal precaution is necessary when laws are
to be established which may affect the property, liberty, and perhaps
the lives of thousands.” And he thus concludes his observations: “The
enacting of penalties to which a whole nation should be subject ought
not to be left as a matter of indifference to the passions or interests
of a few, who upon temporary motives may prefer or support such a bill.”

The lack of public interest and of intelligent consideration by the
people and the bar in criminal problems and criminal legislation are
clearly shown by the paucity of criminal statistical data furnished by
various States.

Penological research is based on an intelligent study of statistics,
and civilized nations, recognizing this fact, have provided elaborate
systems of records based on the suggestions of statistical science.
But with us statistical facilities in the field of crime are not
merely primitive or old-fashioned, but in many cases shamefully
absent. In reply to requests addressed to the Secretaries of State of
various States for official statistics of crimes committed in their
respective jurisdictions, the answers I received were in a number of
cases negative. The officials mentioned replied that no statistics
were published by the State in Illinois, Georgia, New Jersey,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Vermont, California, Idaho, Missouri,
South Carolina, Connecticut, Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Mississippi,
Virginia, Colorado, and Kansas. It is true that in some of these
States this lacuna is filled in by special prison reports or reports
of commissioners or of the attorneys-general. But even in these cases,
as well as in those published officially by the State (Ohio, Indiana,
New York, Massachusetts, and Louisiana), the information furnished is a
monument of antiquated methods and of very little value to the student
of criminology. How, then, can we study the grave questions of crime
and criminals without a basis of computation?

It may be true, as some claim, that Continental jurists have refined
the criminal law to an unpractical degree and too much on classic and
theoretic lines, but it will not be claimed that by adhering to an
old-fashioned and obsolete criminal jurisprudence the Anglo-Saxons
are safeguarding their fundamental liberties. That there is something
essentially wrong, or at least antiquated, with our criminal law is
evidenced by the popular discontent against it, which is too widespread
and insistent to be the result of ignorance or sentiment. If there is
inertia as to changes in the law it is probably because, while feeling
that there is something wrong, the people either can not define it or
the conservatism of centuries in this field is unconsciously affecting
their better intentions. Who will deny (and I address this question
to lawyers and judges) that, under our system, guilty men escape and
innocent men suffer in larger numbers than it should be, even allowing
for the defects inherent in all human systems?--that technicalities and
not facts often save scoundrels; that unscrupulous lawyers do not avoid
them, and the best of judges are obliged by legal dogmas to respect
them? Who will deny (and I address this question to sociologists
and penologists) that the penal provisions of our present laws are
inappropriate, inelastic, and unscientific; that they neither prevent
nor reform; and that the basic principle of our penal codes is still
retribution and punishment? Can it be that the right of life, liberty,
and property is becoming a pious fraud? Of course, it is not claimed
that we have less liberty now than our fathers had three centuries
ago; progress never stops, and each day is something gained; but it
seems clear that the juridic basis and form of our liberties have
not kept up with the progress of those very liberties. Yet, what we
call rights must have a counterpart or reflection in our laws. We may,
while enjoying those rights, forget that the juridic basis on which
they stand is crumbling with age. Unless that basis is rejuvenated the
entire edifice must eventually fall. While we are in full possession of
our rights we need no laws to guarantee them; but it is when those laws
are encroached upon that there arises the necessity of juridic sanction
for them.

The right of life, liberty, and property constitutes the essence of
the “law of the land.” But the conception of rights, as we have seen,
changes and progresses. The law of the land must likewise change and
progress.

Laws may be the highest and best creation of man’s intellect, but they
are not “hedged in by any divinity.” That is why they are neither
infallible nor unchangeable. Yet, as the highest and best creation of
man’s intellect, and as the final criterion of human public conduct,
they should conform to the best thought and to the highest scientific
progress. If they do not approach this standard they are worse than
useless, for they become legalized means of oppression. It is then that
Justice needs a bandage over her eyes, not to avoid partiality, but to
hide her shame.




THE BLIND FISHES OF NORTH AMERICA.

BY CARL H. EIGENMANN,

PROFESSOR OF ZOÖLOGY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY.

    “An investigation into the history of degenerate forms often
    teaches us more of the causes of change in organic Nature than can
    be learned by the study of the progressive ones.”--WEISMANN.


The caves of the United States are inhabited by three cave salamanders,
two of them with degenerate eyes; by six cave fishes, all with impaired
vision--five of them with rudimentary eyes, one with eyes the most
degenerate among vertebrates; and by several mammals. It is thus seen
that among the interesting features of the North American fauna the
blind vertebrates are not the least. Yet during the past twenty-five
years the only additions to our knowledge, aside from diagnoses of new
species, have been a few random notes on the habits and a short account
of the eye of Troglichthys by Kohl.

Various classes of vertebrates have blind members, but no large
vertebrate has become blind or permanently taken up its home in caves.
Blatchley reports that a number of cats have established themselves
in Wyandotte Cave, where they bring forth and rear their young. They
have exterminated the cave rats, and now station themselves in a narrow
passage of the cave and capture bats as they fly through.

Among the permanent residents in dark places we have, among mammals,
the moles, which habitually live in burrows of their own make. In
Mammoth Cave lives a rat--Neotoma pennsylvanica. In Marengo Cave,
Indiana, white-footed mice have established themselves. Although with
unimpaired eyes, they have acquired ears and whiskers longer than the
rest of their kind living outside.

In Florida occurs a blind lizard--Rhineura floridana. It burrows in the
ground, and is colorless and blind.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--The cave salamander of the Mississippi Valley

(_Spelerpes maculicauda_).]

Of salamanders, one blind species lives in European caves. In the
large caves of the eastern United States no blind salamanders have
been found, although other species, especially Spelerpes maculicauda,
abound. In the caves of Missouri a veiled-eyed salamander,
Typhlotriton, has been described within recent years by Stejneger.
Still another salamander, Typhlomolge, having rudimentary eyes, has
been cast up from an artesian well at San Marcos, Texas, and occurs in
the cave streams about that place.

The most abundant of the blind vertebrates, both in individuals and
in species, are the blind fishes. These, from their geographical
distribution, may be separated into three groups: (1) Those inhabiting
the depths of the ocean; (2) those inhabiting dark places along the
shores of the ocean; (3) those inhabiting the underground fresh waters.

The fishes, blind or partially blind, living in the depths of the ocean
bordering the American continents, are as follows: 1. Ipnops Murrayi
Günther lives at depths varying from 955 fathoms to 2,158 and has the
very wide distribution suggested by the localities from which specimens
have been secured--viz., off the coast of Brazil, near Tristan da
Cumba, near Celebes, latitude 24° 36′ north, longitude 84° 51′ west,
and off Bequia. This is the only vertebrate in which no vestige of an
eye has been found. Ipnops stands alone in a family. 2. The Brotulidæ
have several members blind or with very much reduced eyes in various
parts of the globe. Aphyonus mollis G. and B., 955 fathoms, and
Alexeterion parfaiti Vaillant, 5,005 metres, are the only ones found
in the neighborhood of America. 3. The Lophiidæ are represented by
Mancalias Schufeldtii Gill, from a depth of 372 fathoms. Other blind
species are found in foreign waters, while others with small eyes
are found in American waters. The majority of deep-sea fishes have
well-developed eyes.

The shore fishes have their blind representative in Typhlogobius
californiensis St., which lives under rocks between tide water on the
coast of southern and Lower California. I have elsewhere described
the habits of this form. In the fresh-water caves of Cuba two blind
fishes--Stygicola denta Poey and Lucifuga subterraneus Poey--have been
found. Their relatives live in the ocean, Brotula barbata in Cuban
waters; some of the others are blind and inhabitants of deep water.

The inland fresh-water fishes are represented by Gronias nigrilabris
Cope, a catfish from cave streams of eastern Pennsylvania, and by
members of the Amblyopsidæ, concerning which a more detailed account is
given below.

THE AMBLYOPSIDÆ.--The Amblyopsidæ are a small family of fishes allied
to the Cyprinodontidæ. They are found in the Mississippi drainage
basin and in certain southeastern streams. Three of the members of
the family, the Chologasters, are provided with well-developed eyes,
while four other species are cave fishes in the strictest sense, being
blind and colorless. The distribution of the different members of the
Amblyopsidæ is as follows:

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--The larva and adult of the Missouri cave
salamander (_Typhlotriton_).]

Chologaster cornutus is found in lowland swamps of the Southern States
from the Dismal Swamp to the Okefinokee Swamp. Chologaster Agassizii is
found in subterranean streams in Tennessee and Kentucky. Chologaster
papilliferus has so far been found only in southwestern Illinois.

Amblyopsis is abundant in the cave streams of the Ohio Valley south of
the east fork of White River.

Typhlichthys subterraneus inhabits the region south of the Ohio and
east of the Mississippi. A single specimen of another Typhlichthys
has been found north of the Ohio River in a well at Corydon, Indiana.
Troglichthys rosæ inhabits the caves west of the Mississippi in
Arkansas and Missouri.

CHOLOGASTER.--Mr. E. B. Forbes secured a school of Chologaster
papilliferus for me, and he wrote: “The little fishes were found
under stones at the edges of the spring very close to the bluff, and
when disturbed they swam back under the cliff.... None were found at
any considerable distance from the face of the cliff.” I found the
Chologaster Agassizii to act similarly in the river Styx, in Mammoth
Cave. As soon as my net touched the water they darted in under the
ledge of rock at the side of the little pool in which I found them.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Blind salamander from an artesian well at San
Marcos, Texas (_Typhlomolge_).]

Chologaster papilliferus detects its food entirely by the sense of
touch. Two which were kept in an aquarium for over a year were starved
for a few days. They became very nervous, continually swimming along
the sides of the aquarium. Asellus was introduced. These, even if quite
near, produced no effect if moving in front of the Chologaster. The
moment one came in close proximity to the fish from any direction, by
a flashlike motion it was seized. None of them were swallowed. The
fish became very alert after the introduction of the sowbugs, and
when swimming forward would strike at a part of a leaf if it came in
contact with the head of the fish. It seemed evident that the eye
gave no information of the character of the object. As Asellus was
not altogether to their taste, Gammarus was introduced. One of these
swimming rapidly toward the chin of the Chologaster from behind and
below was instantly seized when it came in contact with the fish. The
eye could not have located the Gammarus at all. The action is in very
strong contrast to the action of a sunfish, which detects its food by
the sight. It is undoubtedly this peculiar method of locating and
securing food which has enabled the Amblyopsidæ to establish themselves
in caves.

The Chologaster in general make-up is like Amblyopsis, but is somewhat
longer-jointed. It sits with its pectorals extended. When it moves
horizontally for some distance the pectorals are usually pressed to the
sides, the propelling being done largely by the tail very much after
the manner of a salamander, which it resembles. In swimming toward the
surface it uses its pectoral fins chiefly, and the fish usually sinks
to the bottom as soon as its efforts to raise itself are stopped.

Individuals kept in aquaria with one end darkened either collected in
the darkened area floating about, or under leaves or sticks in any part
of the aquarium. They are frequently found under a floating board,
where they float with the tops of their heads in contact with the
board, their bodies slanting downward. They seek the dark, regardless
of the direction of the rays of light. These characteristics they
have, in great part, in common with the blind members of the family.
The adult Amblyopsis frequently floats with its head to the top of
the water, the tail sloping downward, and in swimming along ledges of
rock the top of the head is applied to the ledge. I have captured many
specimens simply by scraping my net along the surface of a ledge.

Typhlichthys, living in total darkness, has retained the habit of
staying under floating boards, sticks, and stones. Miss Hoppin noticed
that Troglichthys swims with its back to the sides of the aquarium, and
I have repeatedly noted the same in the young of Amblyopsis up to fifty
millimetres, and the still younger Amblyopsis frequently hides under
rocks.

AMBLYOPSIS.--The general impression given by Amblyopsis is that of
a skinned catfish swimming on its back. The expressions, “They are
catfish”; “They look as though they were skinned”; “They are swimming
on their backs,” are heard from those who see these fishes for the
first time.

The largest individual secured by me measured 135 millimetres in total
length. Individuals as large as this are rare. The usual length of an
adult is about 90 millimetres. One individual was mentioned to me at
Mammoth Cave having a length of 200 millimetres!

Amblyopsis is found in pools in the cave streams it inhabits. I have
secured as many as twelve from a pool perhaps ten by fifty feet in
size. Very rarely they are to be found in the riffles connecting the
pools. I have seen them lying at the bottom, or swimming, or rather
gliding, through the water like “white aquatic ghosts.” In the aquarium
they lie at the bottom or at various depths in the water, their axes
making various angles with the horizontal, their pectorals folded to
their sides. When swimming slowly it is chiefly by the use of the
pectorals. The strokes of the pectoral are lazily given, and the fish
glides on after a stroke till its impetus is exhausted, when another
stroke is delivered. The fishes frequently roll slightly from side
to side at the exhaustion of the result of a stroke. When swimming
rapidly the pectorals are folded to the sides, and their locomotion is
then similar to that of a salamander--by the motion of the tail. They
readily adjust themselves to different depths, and are usually perfect
philosophers, quiet, dignified, unconcerned, and imperturbed, entirely
different from such eyed species as minnows and sunfishes which are
sometimes found in caves and which are much more readily disturbed by
any motion in the water, making it almost impossible to capture them
when found in the caves. The pectorals are also almost exclusively
used when quietly rising in the water. At such times the pectorals are
extended laterally and then pressed to the sides, beginning with the
upper rays. A downward stroke is delivered in this way not quickly,
but with apparent lazy deliberation. In swimming the pectorals are
brought forward upper edge foremost. The center of gravity seems to
be so placed in regard to their various axes that the fish does not
lose its balance whatever its position. They float horizontally in the
water without any apparent effort to maintain their position, or with
the main axis inclined upward, with the snout sometimes touching the
surface of the water, apparently lifeless. Once one was seen resting on
its tail in a nearly vertical position, and one while quietly swimming
was once seen to leisurely turn a somersault and swim on undisturbed.
At another time the same individual rolled completely over. When one of
them is kept out of the water for a short time it frequently goes in a
corkscrew-shaped path through the water, continually spinning around
its long axis. In their quiet, floating position it is difficult to
determine whether they are alive or not.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Ipnops Murrayi_, living at a depth of 1,500 to
2,100 fathoms.

FIG. 5.--_Chlorophthalmus gracilis_, from 1,100 fathoms, off New
Zealand.]

I have not found the slightest difficulty in capturing Amblyopsis
with a small dip net, either from a boat or while wading through the
subterranean stream, and I have caught one in the hollow of my hand.
At such a time all the noise I could make did not affect the fishes
found swimming in the water. Frequently they were taken in the dip net
without apparently noting the vibrations produced in the water until
they were lifted out of it; very rarely a fish became evidently scared.
Such a one would dart off a few feet or a few inches, and remain on
the _qui vive_. If not pursued, it soon swam off quietly; if pursued,
it not infrequently escaped by rapidly darting this way and that;
when jumping out of the water, often an abrupt turn in the opposite
direction from which it started would land it in the net, showing
that their sense of direction was not very acute. At other times, if
disturbed by the waves produced by wading, one or another individual
would follow a ledge of rock to the bottom of the stream, where it
would hide in a crevice. But very frequently, much more frequently than
not, no attention was paid either to the commotion produced by the
wading or by the boat and dip net. In general, it may be said that the
fishes in their natural habitat are oblivious to disturbances of the
water until frightened by some very unusual jar or motion, probably a
touch with the net, when they become intensely alert. The fact that
they are not easily frightened suggests the absence of many enemies,
while their frantic behavior if once scared gives evidence either that
occasional enemies are present and that they are very dangerous, or
that the transmission of the instinct of fear is as tenacious as the
transmission of physical characters.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--_Brodula barbata_ from Havana, Cuba.]

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--_Stygicola dentatus_ from the caves of Cuba.]

Contrary to Sloan’s observation, that they detect the presence of a
solid substance in their path, I have never noticed that those in
confinement became aware of the proximity of the walls of the aquarium
when swimming toward it. Instead, they constantly use the padded,
projecting lower jaw as bumpers. Even an extremely rapid dart through
the water seems to be stopped without serious inconvenience by the
projecting jaw.

The first observations on the feeding habit of Amblyopsis are those of
Cope. He remarks that “the projecting lower jaw and upward direction
of the mouth render it easy for the fish to feed at the surface of the
water, where it must obtain much of its food.... This structure also
probably explains the facts of its being the sole representative of the
fishes in subterranean waters. No doubt many other forms were carried
into the caverns since the waters first found their way there, but most
of them were like those of our present rivers--deep-water or bottom
feeders. Such fishes would starve in a cave river, where much of the
food is carried to them on the surface of the stream.”

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--_Aphyonus gelatinosus_, 1,400 fathoms, between
Australia and New Guinea.

FIG. 9.--_Aphyonus mollis_, 955 fathoms, 24° 36′ north, 84° 5′ west.

FIG. 10.--_Tauredophidium hextii_, 1,310 fathoms, Bay of Bengal.

FIG. 11.--_Acanthonus armatus_, 1,050 fathoms, mid Pacific, off the
Philippines.

FIG. 12.--_Typhlonus nasus_, 2,150 to 2,440 fathoms, north of Australia
and north of Celebes.

FIG. 13.--_Hephthacara simum_, 902 fathoms, Coromandel coast.

FIG. 14.--_Alexeterion parfaiti_, 5,005 metres, North Atlantic.]

The observations of Cope are entirely erroneous, as we shall see, and
the speculations based on them naturally fall to the ground.

Dr. Sloan recorded one Amblyopsis which he kept twenty months without
food. “Some of them would strike eagerly at any small body thrown in
the water near them, rarely missed it, and in a very short time ejected
it from their mouths with considerable force. I tried to feed them
often with bits of meat and fish-worms, but they retained nothing. On
one occasion I missed a small one, and found his tail projecting from
the mouth of a larger one.”

Wyman found a small-eyed fish in the stomach of an Amblyopsis.

Hoppin was struck by the fact that, if not capable of long fasts,
Troglichthys must live on very small organisms that the unaided eye can
not discern. Garman found, in the stomachs of Troglichthys collected
by Hoppin in Missouri, species of Asellus, Cambarus, Ceuthophilus, and
Crangonyx.

All the specimens of Amblyopsis so far taken by me contained very
large fatty bodies in their abdominal cavity, a condition suggesting
abundance of food. The stomachs always contained the _débris_ of
crustaceans, a closer identification of which was not attempted. One
young Amblyopsis disappeared on the way home from the caves, and had
evidently been swallowed by one of the larger ones. A few old ones,
kept in an aquarium from May to July, were seen voiding excrement
toward the last of their captivity, and their actions at various
times suggested that they were scraping the minute organisms from the
side of the aquarium. The young Amblyopsis reared in the aquarium
seemed to feed on the minute forms found in the mud at the bottom
of its aquarium. Some Cœcidotæa placed in the aquarium of the young
soon disappeared, and the capture of one of these was noted under a
reading glass. The fish was quietly swimming along the side of its
aquarium; when it came within about an inch of the crustacean it became
alert, and with the next move of the Cœcidotæa it was captured with
a very quick, well-aimed dart on the part of the young fish. Others
were captured while crawling along the floor of the aquarium. From
all things noted, it seems very probable that Amblyopsis is a bottom
feeder, and that it also picks food from the walls of the caves. It is
not at all improbable or impossible that food should be captured at
the surface or in open water, but there seems no warrant for Cope’s
supposition that Amblyopsis is a top feeder. I have frequently seen
larger specimens, which had been in captivity for several weeks, nosing
about the bottom of the aquarium, with their bodies inclined upward in
the water and quietly taking in the organic fragments at the bottom.
An Asellus stirring about at such a time always produced an unusual
alertness.

The number of respiratory movements of Amblyopsis averaged nineteen a
minute in five observations, reaching a maximum of thirty in a small
individual and a minimum of fourteen in a large one. This is in strong
contrast to Chologaster, the number of whose respiratory motions
reached an average of eighty per minute in five observations, with
a minimum of fifty-six and a maximum of one hundred and eight in a
small specimen. Dr. Loeb has called my attention to the more rapid
absorption of oxygen in the light than in the dark; this extended would
probably mean the more rapid absorption of oxygen through the skin of
light-colored animals, a matter of doubtful value, however, to species
living in the dark.

The gill filaments are small as compared with the gill cavity.

Oxygenation probably takes place through the skin. Ritter[J] has
suggested the same for Typhlogobius.

    [J] Ritter, Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, vol. xxiv, p. 92.

“Cutaneous respiration is not unique in Typhlogobius and the
Amblyopsidæ. In the viviparous fishes of California the general
surface, and especially the fins, which have become enormously
enlarged, serve as respiratory organs during the middle and later
periods of gestation; the fins are a mass of blood-vessels, with merely
sufficient cellular substance to knit them together. There is, however,
no pink coloration.”

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--_Mancalias Schufeldtii_, 372 fathoms.]

Skin respiration would account for the extreme resistance to
asphyxiation in Amblyopsis and Typhlogobius. About forty-five
examples of Amblyopsis were carried in a pail of water four hundred
miles by rail, with only a partial change of water three times
during twenty-four hours. A smaller number may be kept for days or
weeks--probably indefinitely--in a pail of water without change. The
characteristics of Typhlogobius along this line have been set forth
elsewhere.

Sticks, straws, etc., are never avoided by the fishes even when
perfectly imperturbed. By this I mean that they are never seen to avoid
such an object when it is in their path. They swim against it and then
turn. An object falling through the water does not disturb them, even
if it falls on them. A pencil gently moved about in front of them does
not disturb the fishes much, but if the pencil is held firmly in the
hand it is always perceived, and the fish comes to a dead halt ten or
fifteen millimetres before it reaches such an object. On the other
hand, they may be touched on the back or tail before they start away.
They glide by each other leisurely and dignified, and if they collide,
as they sometimes do, they usually show no more emotion than when they
run against a stick. But this indifference is not always displayed, as
we shall see under the head of breeding habits.

A number kept in an aquarium with a median partition, in which there
was a small opening, were readily able to perceive the opening,
swimming directly for it when opposite it. This observation is in
direct contrast to their inability to perceive solid substances in
their path. A sharp tap on the sides of an aquarium in which six
blind fishes were swimming, where they had been for a number of days
undisturbed, in a dark room, caused nearly all of them to dart rapidly
forward. A second tap produced a less unanimous reaction. This repeated
on successive days always brought responses from some of the inmates
of the aquarium. Those responding were not necessarily the nearest to
the center of disturbance, but sometimes at the opposite side of the
aquarium or variously distributed through it. After a few days the
fishes took no notice of the tapping by any action observable in the
artificially lighted room.

Such tapping on a well-lighted aquarium containing both Chologaster
and Amblyopsis was always perceived by the Amblyopsis, but the only
response from these imperturbable philosophers was a slight motion of
the pectorals, a motion that suggested that their balance had been
disturbed and that the motion was a rebalancing. Chologaster, on the
other hand, invariably darted about in a frantic manner. One individual
of Amblyopsis floating on the water was repeatedly pushed down by the
finger without being disturbed. If, however, they are touched on the
side they always rapidly dart away.

From everything observed, it is quite evident that Amblyopsis is not
keener in perceiving objects or vibrations than other fishes, and
ordinarily pays much less attention to them. Whether it possesses a
greater power of discrimination of vibrations it would be difficult to
say. It certainly possesses very elaborate tactile organs about the
head. These tactile organs are probably more serviceable in detecting
and precisely locating prey in the immediate neighborhood than for
anything else. Some observations on young Amblyopsis are of interest in
this connection.

The young, with a large amount of yolk still attached, show a
well-developed sense of direction. A needle thrust into the water near
their heads and in front of them causes a quick reaction, the young
fishes turning and swimming in the opposite direction. They will do
this two or three times, then, becoming exhausted, will remain at rest.
Sometimes an individual will not move until it is actually touched by
the needle. The needle must come within about three or four millimetres
of the fish before it is noticed. Then, if it produces any result, it
causes the fish to quickly turn and swim some distance, when it falls
to the bottom again and remains at rest. If the needle is placed
behind the fish, it will swim directly forward; if at the side or about
the middle, it causes the fish to swim directly forward or to turn and
swim in a direction opposite the origin of the disturbance. Younger
specimens have, as yet, no power over the direction of their progress;
the wiggling of the tail simply produces a gyration, with the yolk as
pivot.

A young blind fish, six months old, swims about in a jerky manner,
chiefly by the use of its pectoral fins. It keeps close to the side
of the vessel, usually with its back to the glass. (The aquarium was
a cylindrical jar three hundred millimetres in diameter and three
hundred millimetres high.) It perceives a stick thrust toward it
as readily as a seeing fish can. It always perceives from whatever
direction it may be approached, and will invariably dart away a short
distance, sometimes making sharp turns to avoid the stick, and always
successfully. It can be approached from the top nearer than from the
sides or from in front. It does not avoid the sides of the aquarium,
which it frequently strikes. It is a bottom feeder; its intestinal
canal is always partially full.

A long series of experiments was made on Amblyopsis and Chologaster
to determine their reaction to white and monochromatic light. Without
going into the details of these experiments, it may be stated that
Amblyopsis avoids the light, regardless of the direction or the color
of the rays. The same is true of Chologaster, except that they were
positively attracted by the red rays of the spectrum as against the
blue.

We owe the first observations on the breeding habits of Amblyopsis to
Thompson, who states that a fish “was put in water as soon as captured,
where it gave birth to nearly twenty young, which swam about for some
time, but soon died; ... they were each four lines in length.” Little
or nothing has been added to our knowledge of this subject since that
time, but the highly interesting supposition of Thompson that they were
viviparous has gained currency, and it is therefore unfortunate that in
this respect he was in error.

Putnam adds to the above that, judging from some data in his
possession, the young are born in September and October, and further
along remarks that they are “undoubtedly” viviparous.

The eggs are laid by the female in under her gill membrane. Here they
remain for perhaps two months, till the yolk is nearly all absorbed.
If a female with young in her gill pouches is handled, some of the
young are sure to escape. This was observed, and gave rise to the idea
that this fish is viviparous. Eggs have been obtained as early as
March 11th and as late as September, and the indications are that the
breeding season extends throughout the year. The eggs are large--2.3
millimetres in diameter from membrane to membrane--and about sixty to
seventy are laid at one time.

Certain structures gain an entirely new significance in the light of
the breeding habits. These are the enlarged gill cavities, with the
small gills, the closely applied branchiostegal membrane, and the
position of the anus and sexual orifices. The latter are placed just
behind the gill membrane in such close proximity to it that they can
be covered by it. It is probable, therefore, that the membrane is
drawn over the sexual orifice and the eggs deposited directly into the
gill cavity. In an individual thirty-five millimetres long the anus
is situated between the origin of the pectorals; in one twenty-five
millimetres long it lies between the pectorals and ventrals. In the
young it lies behind the ventrals, as in other fishes.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--The embryo of _Typhlogobius_, showing the
well-developed eye.

FIG. 17.--A young _Typhlogobius_, times 4-2/9.

FIG. 18.--Adult _Typhlogobius_.

FIG. 19.--Adult _Gillichthys-y-cauda_ living in crab holes in San Diego
Bay.

FIG. 20.--Young _Gillichthys mirabilis_ under the same magnification as
Fig. 17.]

In an aquarium containing six Amblyopsis two took a great antipathy to
each other. Whenever they touched, a vigorous contest began. Frequently
they came to have a position with broadside to broadside, their heads
pointing in opposite directions. At such a time the fight consists
in quick lateral thrusts toward the antagonist to seize him with
the mouth. The motion is instantly parried by a similar move by the
antagonist. This blind punching may be kept up for a few seconds, when,
by their vigorous motions, they lose each other and jerk themselves
through the water from side to side, apparently hunting for each
other. At this time they are very agile, and move with precision. When
the belligerents meet one above the other, the snapping and punching is
of a different order. While jerking through the water immediately after
a round, if one of the belligerents touches one of the neutrals in the
aquarium it frequently gives it a punch, but does not follow it up, and
the unoffending fellow makes haste to get out of the road, the smaller
ones doing so most quickly. If, after an interval of a few seconds, a
belligerent meets a neutral they quietly pass each other without paying
any further attention, whereas if the two belligerents meet again there
is an immediate response. Whether they recognize each other by touch
or by their mutual excitability I do not know. At one time, in another
aquarium, I saw one belligerent capture the other by the pectorals.
After holding on for a short time it let go, and all differences were
forgotten. The thrust is delivered by a single vigorous flip of the
tail and caudal to one side. These fights were frequently noticed, and
always occurred between males.

The absence of secondary sexual differences in the cave fishes is a
forcible argument in favor of sexual selection as the factor producing
high coloration in the males. The absence of secondary sexual
differences in cave animals opposes the idea of Geddes and Thompson
that the differences are the external expression of maleness and
femaleness.

Attempts at acclimating Amblyopsis in outside waters have so far
failed.[K] A few were placed in Turkey Lake, Indiana. They were
surrounded by a fine wire net, to keep off other fishes. They died in
a few days, as the result of attacks of leeches, _saprolegnia_, or
fish mold, and from unknown causes. Others were kept in an elongated
box sunk into the ground, where fresh spring water flowed through it
constantly. _Saprolegnia_ sooner or later destroyed all of them. They
live longest in quiet aquaria, where the water is rarely changed. The
young I have secured died, with one exception, within a few weeks. The
difficulty of rearing the young is not at all insurmountable. They eat
readily. Their aquaria must be kept free from green plants, and have a
layer of fine mud, with a few decaying leaves, in the bottom. They will
feed on minute crustaceans and other micro-organisms. When they have
reached a sufficient size, examples of Asellus are greedily devoured.
Fish mold is the bane of the larvæ. Many of them were found with tufts
of the _hyphæ_ growing out of their mouths and gill openings.

    [K] Since the above was written an apparently successful
        attempt has been made to colonize them in a pool at Winona
        Lake. A record of this colony will be published later.




THE MAN OF SCIENCE IN PRACTICAL AFFAIRS.

BY F. W. CLARKE.


The human mind is addicted to the creation of types, a process which
implies classification and generalization of a somewhat low order. Some
prominent feature of the thing classified is selected for emphasis,
and there is often a degree of exaggeration which leads, in the end,
to caricature. John Bull, Brother Jonathan, the Jew of the comic
papers, and the stage Irishman are examples of this tendency. So, too,
a profession or occupation is summed up in one conventional character,
with a little truth distorted as if seen reflected from the surface of
a curved mirror. The likeness is there, but unlike the reality. The
individual embodiment of the type is rarely, if ever, encountered.

The man of science deals with questions which commonly lie outside
of the range of ordinary experience, which often have no immediately
discernible relation to the affairs of everyday life, and which
concentrate the mind upon apparent abstractions to an extraordinary
degree. Accordingly, the scholar, the scientific investigator, is
typified as an elderly dreamer in spectacles, who is so uncouth, so
self-forgetful, so absent-minded, and so ignorant of practical matters
as to be hardly more than a child. He is one to be cared for and
humored, like an imbecile--treated with some consideration, perhaps,
on account of his learning, but never to be trusted in the transaction
of business nor in the administration of public affairs. With him, as
an antithesis, is contrasted the practical man, who knows whither his
steps are tending, who has learned to control others, and who never
dreams of abstractions during office hours, if indeed he troubles
himself about them at all. The one is thought to be vague, visionary,
and unpractical; the other is deemed efficient, precise, prompt,
and clear. Has this distinction any basis in reality? Do scientific
pursuits disqualify a man for administrative responsibility?

These questions, like all other legitimate questions, are to be
answered by evidence, and the popular impression is entitled to no
weight whatever. This evidence is to be found by a study of the thing
itself, the man of science as he actually is; by an examination of
the training which he receives, the character of the work which he
does, and the results which he accomplishes. By this method it will be
found that the supposed type is purely imaginary, that the workers in
science exhibit all the variations which are found in any other group
of occupations, that the human race as a whole is their only symbol
or representative. The man of science may be grave or gay, moral
or immoral, social or unsocial, keen or visionary--in short, he may
exemplify any trait of human nature, except the traits of ignorance and
stupidity. He must be intelligent and educated, methodical and exact;
apart from these qualifications he may resemble any other man, chosen
from any other vocation. Indeed, his nearest analogue is the so-called
man of business, and the chief distinction between the two is that one
deals with unfamiliar, the other with familiar things.

The direct tendency of the scientific training is to develop as fully
as possible the positive traits which have been mentioned. Each
science is a body of systematic, well-organized knowledge, with clear
fundamental principles and distinct outlines. The study of science
is a continual discouragement of obscurity or vagueness; it is a
discipline in the statement and solution of definite problems, and it
trains one to see things as they are, apart from all irrelevancies. The
technicalities of science, so bewildering to the layman, are merely
aids to exactness, avoidances of circumlocution--in short, they are
practical devices whereby labor is saved. Economy of effort is one of
the features in which the scientific training excels.

The results of such a training vary, of course, with the individual,
and depend upon his personal peculiarities. A broad man is broadened by
it; a narrow man shuts himself up within the limits of a specialty. To
some extent specialization is necessary, but there is a wide difference
between the man who sees only his own province and one who realizes its
relations to other fields. The same distinction is found in commercial
life, and with the same results. The specialist in money, in stocks, in
iron, or in cotton may be just as narrow as the specialist in stars,
or reactions, or insects, and know little or nothing of any subject
outside his own. Neither narrowness nor breadth of view is monopolized
by any vocation. The mere fact that men of science rarely devote their
attention to accumulating wealth does not prove them to be unpractical.
They are not, as a rule, careless or thriftless in money matters;
they are as likely to handle their financial affairs intelligently
as any one else, but their main business lies in other directions.
If seldom a millionaire, the man of science is still more seldom a
bankrupt. In wild speculation the so-called practical man takes the
lead, and anything which bears the trade mark of electricity, from
the electrical refining of sugar to the extraction of gold from sea
water, can secure from otherwise shrewd financiers the support which
a worker in science would contemptuously refuse to give. A few years
ago the would-be rain-makers obtained the money for their experiments
from men of business, and from Congress even, in spite of advice based
upon scientific knowledge, and failure was the inevitable end. In that
borderland between business and research, which is known as applied
science, the scientific student is more practical than the financier.
When both work together, wealth is produced, but the seedtime of
abstract investigation always precedes the harvest. The commercial
value of exact knowledge is often very great, but to the prospective
investor this truth is not always evident.

The practical value of the scientific training is perhaps most fully
recognized in Germany. There the importance of the investigator, the
apparently abstract scholar, is thoroughly understood, and to his work
the great industrial advance of Germany is largely attributable. In
chemical and electrical industries this is particularly true, and their
growth can be directly traced to the influence of the universities.
The German professor is a man trained to research, and from among his
students many of the best investigators are chosen for service in
the factories. German competition in the commercial world is to-day
the bugbear of other European countries, and its success is due,
first of all, to the utilization of trained intelligences. In our own
country the importance of applied science is fully realized and its
achievements are beyond dispute, but the scholar as yet receives less
consideration than the commercial expert. The latter is practical, the
former is regarded as visionary. Accurate knowledge is a good thing,
but rule-of-thumb experience is often thought to be better. It is only
when knowledge and experience join hands that the highest practical
results are attainable, the one factor tending to advance, the other to
perpetuate, industry. The man of affairs is not a practical man until
he appreciates the force of these propositions.

At bottom the scientific training is a training in clear thought,
precise statement, accurate observation, the verification of evidence,
and the ascertainment of truth. Why should its recipient be unfitted
for practical things? Good administration, the effective transaction
of business, implies system, exactness, the judgment of evidence upon
its merits, and the prompt solution of problems as they arise, and to
each of these requisites the scientific education is directly related.
What other training is less likely to produce dreamers, or more likely
to develop efficient men? The main distinction between the workers
in science and men of other vocations is one of aim, a difference in
ambition, perhaps a difference in the point of view. The scientific
scholar seeks to discover and possibly to apply new truth; and after
that his ambition is to win the recognition of his fellows, to gain
reputation, rather than to acquire wealth. He may not be indifferent to
the latter purpose, but it is not his chief end. It is difficult to do
both things well.

For the administration of large interests, involving the control of men
and the building-up of great institutions, men of science have over
and over again demonstrated their fitness. In the scientific societies
of the world they have shown their capacity for organization, and in
the management of schools and colleges their ability has often been
proved. Among the presidents of universities and technical schools
who have been drawn from the ranks of science I may mention Eliot,
of Harvard; Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins; Drown, of Lehigh; Jordan,
of the Leland Stanford; Chamberlin, of Wisconsin; Morton, of the
Stevens Institute; and Mendenhall, of the Worcester Polytechnic. The
Institute of Technology in Boston has been directed successively by
Rogers, Runkle, Walker, and Crafts; the Columbia School of Mines was
built up by a group of scientific workers, aided by President Barnard;
and the list might be lengthened almost indefinitely. Have these men
fallen below the average of their fellows? Have they not shown at
least as high administrative ability as has been found elsewhere? The
mere statement of their names is a sufficient answer, and renders
argument unnecessary. With them the scientific training has not been
a disqualification, nor even a handicap; it has rather been to their
advantage, for to it they owe much of the insight, the power to grasp
great problems intelligently, the ability to interpret evidence, and
the tendency to prompt and decisive action, without which successful
administration is impossible.

Again, consider the scientific institutions of the world, the museums
and observatories, and the various governmental organizations in which
science is recognized. In our own country, the Smithsonian Institution
and National Museum were built up by Henry and Baird, in spite of
great and varied difficulties; the Coast Survey was created by Hassler
and Bache; and the Geological Survey was developed by a group of men
among whom Hayden, King, and Powell were pioneers. The last-named
organization has been controlled from the beginning by men of science,
and the Coast Survey has been weak only when under nonscientific
management. The Commission of Fish and Fisheries owes its existence
and a great part of its effectiveness to its creator, Baird; the Army
Medical Museum and Library represents the executive genius of Billings;
and in none of these institutions has partisan politics ever exerted
an appreciable influence. No bureaus of the Government have been more
wisely or more efficiently handled than those which men of science have
controlled; in none have there been fewer errors or scandals; there is
not one in which the essential purpose of its existence has been better
fulfilled.

Instead, then, of excluding the scholar, the investigator, the man
who knows, the man of scientific training, from his fair share of
public responsibility, we should do well to call him into service
more and more. He may be, he often is, averse to administrative work,
for the reason that it interferes with his chosen occupation, and
hinders the prosecution of research. But his training and his mental
bias are both needed in public affairs, wherein the scientific method
is too often unapplied. In European countries men of high scientific
rank are frequently found in legislative bodies and ministries; men
like Playfair, Roscoe, and Lubbock in England, Virchow in Germany,
Quintino Sella in Italy, and Berthelot in France. With us in America
the maker of speeches outranks the thinker in popular esteem, and is
given duties to perform in which he may become ridiculous. Both in
legislation and in diplomacy many questions arise which demand the most
careful scientific treatment, or which can be answered only by thorough
scientific knowledge, and many of these have been intrusted for
settlement to men of no specific training whatever. Of late years we
have had the fur-seal controversy, the question of forest reserves, the
irrigation of our arid lands, problems of sanitation and water supply,
and in each of these the man of science has played a part which was too
often subordinate to that of the politician. In an ideal government
the two should work together, each supplementing the peculiar ability
of the other. Many details of the tariff, and a notable part of the
coinage question, require scientific data for their proper settlement,
but the true expert has not always been consulted. The result of
this neglect is sometimes seen in courts of law, where questions
of interpretation arise which might have been averted, obscurity
in legislation being often due to the careless use of scientific
terminology or to ignorance of the relations in science between two
branches of industry. The voice of the trained investigator might well
be heard in Congress, but his testimony now is limited to the committee
room. Even there it is received with an attention which is too often
mingled with incredulity. The myth of the dreamer, the visionary, is
more than half believed.

The supposed type, then, is not a type, but an exception--a man of
straw, which is hardly worth overthrowing. But the belief in it has
been and still is mischievous, a hindrance to wise action, an obstacle
to progress. The misconception has worked injury to science. These
words of protest, therefore, are not wholly superfluous.




FORENOON AND AFTERNOON.

BY CHARLES F. DOWD, PH. D.


It is a fact of common observation, at different times of the year,
that the forenoon and afternoon, as to daylight, are of unequal
length. Along in later autumn the shortness of the afternoons is very
noticeable, and the shortness of forenoons along in later winter.
Whatever makes common facts more intelligible adds to the general
intelligence and to the general good. It is to this end that the
following brief statements are made.

Nothing is more evident than that the sun requires just as much time
to go from the eastern horizon to the midday meridian as to go from
that meridian to the western horizon. But, strange to say, there are
but four days during the whole year in which the sun reaches the midday
meridian at just twelve o’clock. The true noon point varies from about
fifteen minutes before to about sixteen minutes after twelve o’clock.
These extreme points in one set of variations fall in the first week
of November and in the second week of February, not to designate exact
days for years in general.

The calendars show that in the latitude of Saratoga (essentially
Boston latitude) on November 3, 1898, the sun rose at 6.30 and set at
five o’clock, thereby making the forenoon a half hour longer than the
afternoon. On that day the sun reached the midday meridian at 11.45. On
February 13, 1899, the sun rose at just seven o’clock and set at 5.30,
thereby making the afternoon a half hour longer than the forenoon, and
on this day the sun reached the midday meridian at 12.15. These are
facts plainly open to general view, and therefore need no verifying.

The causes of the foregoing are not so apparent to common observation.
It must be borne in mind that the mean or average solar day is the
basis for all time measurements, therefore its exact length is of
the greatest importance. Yet the general solar day, from which the
average one is derived, is a very indefinite term as to its length.
Its length in general may be defined, under view of the sun’s apparent
motion, as the time extending from the instant that the sun’s center
crosses any given meridian of the earth on one day to the instant that
center crosses the same meridian on the following day--i. e., the time
intervening between these two instants is the length of a solar day.

The motion of the sun, however, is only apparent; the actual motion
is in the earth’s revolution upon its axis. We should have one day
a year long if the earth did not revolve on its axis at all, since
the revolution of the earth around the sun once a year would in the
course of the year bring all sides facing the sun. Consequently the
earth makes one more revolution upon its axis each year than the number
of solar days in that year, and a little consideration of this fact
will show that in each solar day the earth makes one full revolution
on its axis and about 1/365 of another, which fractional addition is
occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit.

Another fact needs to be considered. Since the earth’s orbit is in the
form of an ellipse, with the sun at one of the foci, the earth must
pass nearer the sun in some parts of its orbit than in others. By the
laws of gravity, when nearer, the attraction between the earth and sun
is greater, and if this were not balanced by increased velocity along
its orbit the earth would fall into the sun; and, on the other hand,
when farther off this attraction is less, and if this were not balanced
by a diminution of velocity along its orbit the earth would fly off
into space. This varying velocity, together with other complications
too technical for a magazine article, gives varying lengths of orbit to
the several solar days of the year. If the earth’s orbit were laid out
upon paper and, by astronomical calculations, an exact proportionate
section were marked off for each solar day of the year, the variable
lengths of orbit for the different days of the year would plainly
appear to the eye.

But, as before explained, the time of a solar day is the time of one
revolution of the earth upon its axis, together with the fractional
part of another revolution occasioned by one day’s progress of the
earth along its orbit. Then it must follow that as the daily sections
of the orbit vary in length, the time of the solar day must vary in
length. No clock could be made to keep the variable time of true solar
days, and if this were possible, the hour, minute, etc., would be
variable of length, and hence no standard for time measurements. But
by working a simple arithmetical problem of addition and division an
average length of day for the year may easily be found. This average
day is the mean solar day adopted. Its time is arbitrary and exact,
forming a perfect standard for all time measurements. From this the
term _mean time_ gains its significance.

By referring to the foregoing earth’s orbit laid out on paper, with
the true solar days marked off in sections of mathematical exactness,
it will be seen that by dividing each section into two equal parts and
marking the division point with red ink, the true noon point of each
solar day in the year will be conspicuous upon the drawing, and in its
proportionate relations in every way. If now we set a pair of dividers
or compasses so that the opening shall reach over the exact space on
the orbit of one half of the mean solar day, and beginning at the red
noon point of one of the four days in the year when the true noon falls
at just twelve o’clock--say December 24th--and step the dividers around
on the orbit, making a blue point mark at each second step, then as the
blue points vary from the red so will the mean time which our clocks
keep vary from the true noon of each day of the year.

Variation in length of forenoon and afternoon, therefore, may be viewed
by common intelligence not only as a fact but as a necessity.




PRESIDENT JORDAN’S “NEMINISM.”


  OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY,
          PALO ALTO, CAL.
      POST OFFICE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

DEAR DR. YOUMANS:

The inclosed, from an anonymous but appreciative source, may interest
you. It is doubtless true that the philosophy of Neminism goes back to
India, through Hegel and Plato, but the high priestess does not know
this. She made it all out of her own head.

  Truly yours,
      DAVID S. JORDAN.

  THE UNIVERSITY OF MENTIPHYSICS,
          LYNN, MASS., _December 6, 1899_.


_President David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford University, California._

SIR: I have before me the last issue of one of our two or three great
scientific magazines, in which Mr. Giddings lays down the exact method
we are to follow in sociology, thereby creating the pleasing impression
that hereafter he intends to stick to it himself. But, sir, I wish to
say, as a student of “Neminism,” as you call it, that my emotions were
far less agreeable on perusing your brilliant plagiarism, the doctrine
of _Nihil nemini nocet_, an aphorism which apparently you wish to
make rival the _Cogito ergo sum_ of the Cartesian philosophy. I will
concede to you (I being, as it is perhaps necessary for me to remark, a
literary person) the undoubted right all real literary persons have of
appropriating everything of a literary nature that they can lay their
hands upon; but, while we are in perfect harmony upon this occasion,
in regard to that point, I regret to insist that the thing must be
done judiciously--_that_ is the art. Any mere plebeian can accumulate
facts--_that_ is the _raison d’être_ of the plebeian; his duty is to
work--but the real ethereal literary man, such as the monthly magazines
nourish, must disdain facts and theories and the truth, and must float
in the pure, soft twilight of his own imagination while he writes about
people who never existed, in a language which nobody can understand.
Yet, sir, in your unblushing appropriation of the late Professor
Hegel’s dictum of _Sein und nicht Sein sind dieselbe_ (which I presume
you, sir, to exculpate yourself, will swear you do not understand),
and in your changing that immortal antithesis to your _Nihil nemini
nocet_--in doing all this I declare that you have violated one of the
most sacred principles, in fact, the very essence of Neminism; for to
say, as you have said, that nothing hurts nobody, is to say a very
dull, prosaic, vulgar fact which any fool can understand; but to say
that “to be and not to be are the same” is to say something that is not
only very beautiful, but, what is far more to the point, is likewise
utterly incomprehensible; yet to do this _is_ the essence of Neminism,
as you yourself have shown.

As a confirmed Neminist glorying in his Neminism, as Pascal’s
Father Joseph, the Jesuit, gloried in “interpretation” of the words
“murder” and “charity,” I am, sir (and I hope my frequent use of this
monosyllable will not annoy you, for the first Neminist, Plato, uses Ω
Σωκρατες [Greek: Ô Sôkrates] quite as frequently, though his expression
requires four times as much wind or space as mine), I say, then, that I
am always anxious to be thought well of by people who are on top or are
getting there, in order, to use your own undignified and cruel metaphor
in the Rev. Mr. Lyman Abbott’s journal of news and Christianity, that I
may continue “to hold down” my position as the janitor and Professor of
Leibnitzian Monadology in the University of Mentiphysics. But there are
times, sir, when even a feminist rises above his interest, and, like
Richelieu in the play, exchanges the lion’s and the fox’s skins. In
short, I beg to inform you that I believe that you, seeing the growing
attachment of the vulgar mob for the _Wissenshaftliche Pädagogie_ of
the Robinson Crusoeans or concentrationists, have had the thought
to sap the foundations of their success by vulgarizing our noble
monopoly of Neministic science, and I should not be at all surprised
to see your name, after a little, as the editor of a “Journal of
Psycho-Materno-Kinder Apperceptics,” or of a strictly American “Great
Educator Series,” beginning with Pontiac and ending with Jim Fiske.

Or perhaps, sir, you are actuated by deeper motives. Our university
has not yet received the complimentary copy of your work on Imperial
Democracy, the Government probably holding it back until General
Young can catch Mr. Aguinaldo, but I see by the publishers’ lists
that it is out. Now, it is easy to see that if Imperial Democracy
gets within a stone’s throw of China it will get _into_ China, and,
with your knowledge of Aristotle’s Politics and the Highbinders in
Chinatown, you can not have failed to have recognized that Neminism
and Orientalism are very similar. To be or not to be; to be alive or
to be dead; to be drunk or to be sober--’tis all the same for the
people; ’tis _Nirvana_. You wish to vulgarize Neminism. What follows
your success? Immediately every State will make it an obligatory study
in the public schools, and when, in the distant future, we meet the
Chinamen face to face, we will be ready to exterminate them or be
exterminated by them; for it is an axiom of sociology, which it is
to be hoped Mr. Giddings will see the value of and will in the next
edition of his Social Euclid make number one, that when two societies
completely differing in origin, history, manners, institutions, and
laws come together they start in the more quickly to cut each other’s
throats when they have a common idea in which they can locate a
difference, and hence find a logical excuse to begin.

I would have preferred that our president had taken up this unpleasant
task of criticising your mischievous efforts to vulgarize our beautiful
science, which, like the true religion of the Egyptians, should be
retained _sub rosa_ in the temples; but she, as you yourself have
said, does not like controversial publicity, and has often remarked
that our science is like the mushroom, for, though it is the child of
darkness and Byzantian filth, it is eminently adapted to be retained by
weak stomachs, while for others it may be nauseating. I am, sir, very
respectfully,

      ANACHARSIS PANGLOSS, _M. Plane_.

Though religiously refraining from introducing my own personality
in the foregoing, it being a cardinal point in our science that it
is good form to appear modest--_videri quam esse_, as was said of
Cato--I am, nevertheless, obliged to observe that I am not at all in
any way related to the Dr. Pangloss, LL. D., A. S. S., mentioned in
the play of the Heir at Law, nor yet, though perhaps more spiritually
akin, to that other Dr. Pangloss--Dr. Leibnitz Pangloss, the tutor
of Candide mentioned by the late Monsieur Voltaire of happy memory.
Dr. L. Pangloss, a fine old fellow at bottom, was engaged in showing
how, in the best possible words, a cause always precedes its effect;
for instance, Monsieur the Baron Thunder den Trockendorf has a nose,
argues he--it will carry spectacles, hence the nose was created for
spectacles, and spectacles are created. It is plain that Dr. L.
Pangloss was a scientist. Now, I am a sociologist, and it is the
hope of my life to fill the chair of Monadology in the new American
university, where I intend to show that while the rich are becoming
richer the poor will become richer than the rich in contemplating how
much more satisfaction the rich get out of their riches than they, the
poor, get out of their poverty. This, as you will at once recognize,
is in the line of what Mr. Lester Ward calls Dynamic Sociology, and,
though it is not the acme of the application of dynamics such as that
which knocked Hebraism out of Saul of Tarsus, I beg to remind you that,
until German science has made further progress in the application of
electricity, we lack the means of producing the necessary phenomena by
which alone such effects can be secured.

      A. P.




Correspondence.


FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: In your editorial, in the issue of September, you speak of “faith
as the organ of religious apprehension.” This suggests some important
facts that are not always apprehended, or are forgotten. There is no
organ for the discovery, the proof, or the apprehension of truth but
reason, whether facts of Nature or of religion. “Faith” is not a sixth
sense which we do not use in scientific pursuits, but which comes to
our help when we seek for religious truth. Much of the difficulty
comes from the fact that the word “faith” is ambiguous, having two
meanings, which are not distinguished. It is (1) simply belief of a
fact because of evidence presented to and apprehended by the reason; or
is it (2) trust, confidence in, belief in, as in a person, resting on
the belief of that person’s competency and truthfulness, that belief
resting on evidence apprehended by the reason. Because of this “faith”
in the person we accept his testimony as to facts beyond our personal
cognizance, we believe them not because we have discovered them, or
may be are competent to discover them, but because of our “faith” in
a person whom we have seen reason to believe is trustworthy--i. e.,
competent and truthful.

Now, these two meanings of “faith” are often confused, interchanged.
Hence the discredit thrown upon belief of religious truth, because an
illegitimate use is made of the place of “faith” in its justification.
And writers defending religious belief have been great sinners in this
illegitimate use of “faith.”

The place of “faith” is the same in science as in religion--i. e., it
is the condition and justification of our acceptance of truth which is
beyond our personal cognizance. We accept it because of the testimony
of men in whom we have learned to have faith--e.g., How few of us who
accept the revelations of the spectrum analysis as to the composition
of the stars have any other justification for accepting them than just
this? We believe them simply because men, whom we, in the exercise
of our reason, have come to believe competent and truthful, tell us
what they have seen. We believe on their testimony because we trust
them. Our process involves three steps: (1) Belief of their competence
through appeal to reason; (2) trust in them because of this belief; (3)
belief of their testimony because of this trust or “faith” in them.
The only organ we have used is reason, in its initial act of belief of
the competence and truthfulness of the witnesses. Error in the use of
reason here vitiates all that follows. Correct use of reason here gives
a legitimate condition for correct results of the other steps. But
reason must go along with us and guide us in these, that we may come to
a rationally accepted belief of the truth.

Here is the place of “faith” in science, as belief and as trust. By its
use we accept the great issues of scientific truth which we believe,
and do it legitimately.

It is the same in all right acceptance of religious truth. Here appears
a person in human history claiming to reveal facts beyond our sphere
of cognizance. Now, the first (1) step is belief in his competence
and truthfulness as a witness, just as in cases of science. His only
appeal is to reason, our only organ for apprehending truth. We, because
of the evidence presented to our reason, believe him competent and
truthful--i. e., trustworthy--and we take the second step (2), as in
case of search for scientific truth. We trust him, we have “faith”
in him. Then (3) we believe his testimony as to facts beyond our
cognizance, as to God, as to the inner world and life, as to his
own person and work, and his agency in helping us to the true life.
Here are the same three steps as in our believing the great facts of
science, and they are equally legitimate, and the belief is equally
legitimate, and with the same use of “faith” in both cases, which use
is legitimate if we have applied our reason correctly.

It may be said that there is this difference in the two cases: We are,
it may be, competent with training to perceive with our reason the
facts to which the scientists witness, whereas in religion we are not
competent by any training, in our present state, to see what Jesus
Christ testified to; therefore the believing him is not legitimate.

Space forbids arguing this point, but the writer is confident it can
be shown that this does not vitiate the process in the least. The
only point now argued is that reason is the only organ of man for
the apprehension of truth, and that “faith” acts the same part in
scientific and religious belief.

      JOHN R. THURSTON.
  WHITINSVILLE, MASS., _September 30, 1899_.

[The point which our correspondent discusses is one which falls rather
within the province of theology or philosophy than within that of
science. In the article to which he refers we did not distinctly say
that “faith” was “the organ of religious apprehension.” What we said
was that _granting_ such was the case, the question still remained to
be settled where the line should be drawn between faith and knowledge.
We doubt whether the account which our correspondent gives of faith
would be widely accepted by those who approach the subject from the
theological side, while those who approach it from the scientific
side would--at least many of them would--be disposed to consider the
term one which might better be dispensed with in favor of the less
ambiguous word “belief.” Belief is the inclination of the mind toward a
proposition for which absolute or demonstrative proof is wanting, and
it is this condition of mind, it seems to us, that our correspondent
has in view. Faith in the religious sense, unless we are mistaken, is
something different. It is an affirmation made by the human conscience
or consciousness in its own behalf--a certain instinctive recognition
of a presence and power in the universe which, though inaccessible
to scientific investigation, sustains an intimate, profound, and
all-essential relation to man’s moral nature. If trust in an individual
ever rises to the level of faith in this sense, it is because the
influence of the individual harmonizes with and re-enforces the primal
instinct. That, at least, is how we view the matter.--EDITOR.]


FISKE’S VIEWS COMPARED.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: Will you permit me to say a few words supplementing your review
of Through Nature to God? To those who have perused Mr. Fiske’s latest
three scientifico-theological booklets, and also his Cosmic Philosophy,
it can not be new that their author has become entangled in hopeless
contradictions of himself. The limited space of a letter does not allow
of adducing more than one remarkable passage from Cosmic Philosophy,
demonstrating the antithesis between the arguments of this work and
Mr. Fiske’s latest opinions, these new thoughts having been developed,
as he tells us, by “carrying such a subject about in his mind for”
twenty-five years. We are told in Through Nature to God (page 12)
that “it has usually been found necessary to represent the Creator
as finite either in power or in goodness, although the limitation is
seldom avowed, except by writers who have a leaning toward atheism
and take a grim pleasure in pointing out flaws in the constitution
of things. Among modern writers” Comte and Mill are conspicuous for
such a “leaning toward atheism.” Then we are informed (page 20) that
the “shock which such a clear, bold statement gives to our religious
feelings is no greater than the shock with which it strikes counter
to our modern scientific philosophy.” And a little further on we find
that “the God which Mr. Mill offers us, shorn of the attribute of
omnipotence, is no God at all.”

If the reader will now open Cosmic Philosophy, he is told in vigorous
language (vol. ii, p. 405) that “if there exist a personal Creator of
the universe who is infinitely intelligent and powerful, he can not be
infinitely good; if, on the other hand, he be infinite in goodness,
then he must be lamentably finite in power or in intelligence. By this
two-edged difficulty, theology has ever been foiled.” Then (vol. ii,
p. 406) Mr. Fiske, quoting from Mill, expresses his entire concurrence
with the views of this eminent thinker, and adds (vol. ii, p. 407),
“With Mr. Mill, therefore, ‘I will call no being good who is not what
I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures.’ And, going a
step further, I will add that it is impossible to call that being good
who, existing prior to the phenomenal universe and creating it out of
the plenitude of infinite power and foreknowledge, endowed it with such
properties that its material and moral development must inevitably be
attended by the misery of untold millions of sentient creatures for
whose existence their Creator is ultimately alone responsible.”

No comment of mine can show more clearly than the passages cited above
the “conversion” of Mr. Fiske, against which imputation so much subtle
ingenuity is expended in the preface to The Idea of God.

That Mr. Fiske is merely reviving gross anthropocentric views he
himself admits. To him, man is “the goal toward which Nature’s work
has been tending from the first.” But might not also some pithecoid
ancestors of ours have deemed themselves the “goal toward which Nature
had been tending from the first”? What is Nature’s goal in the endless
cycle of evolution in which life is but an infinitesimal part? But with
Huxley I believe that “it would be a new thing in history if _a priori_
philosophers were daunted by a factious opposition of experience.” Mr.
Fiske’s latest writings, as all theodicies, bear testimony to the truth
of Huxley’s scathing remark.

But granting, for the sake of the argument, that “in the deepest sense
it is as true as it ever was held to be, that the world was made for
man,” there is an objection to be raised on moral grounds stronger than
any that could be founded on scientific arguments. Had this world been
created for man, entailing, as it does, the “misery of untold millions
of sentient creatures,” who but the crassest egotist could worship this
Fiskean God of iniquity?

The careful student of Thomas Huxley’s works may be surprised to find
Through Nature to God “consecrated” to the memory of him whose life
work was devoted to “untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit”
that shines through every page of Mr. Fiske’s latest writings. I echo
Mr. Fiske’s words: “I can never cease to regret that Huxley should have
passed away without seeing my [Mr. Fiske’s] arguments and giving me the
benefit of his comments.” The last stroke of Huxley’s pen was giving
Mr. Balfour “the benefit of his comments”; would that he could have
given them to the author of the excursion Through Nature to God!

      B. A. BEHREND.
  ERIE, PA., _December 5, 1899_.


_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: Your trenchant criticism of Mr. John Fiske’s discussion of the
mystery of evil recalls Mr. Spencer’s reminder that “there is a soul of
truth in all things erroneous.”

Mr. Fiske certainly has not made it plain that the meaning of the
universe is to be found (exclusively) in the higher developments
of love and self-sacrifice; but is it not equally a mistake to say
inferentially that “on a broad view of the world-wide struggle for life
there are no moral elements to be seen”? If we define morality as the
equivalent merely of love and self-sacrifice, the ever-present love
of mother and, in a degree, of father for the offspring imperatively
negatives such a conclusion.

But morality is something more than love and self-sacrifice. Morality
is right conduct, and right conduct in the last analysis is conformity
to the conditions of existence. The nearer the conformity, the more
complete the life, and life approaches completeness only as the
activities of men cease to be impeded by each other’s aggressions, the
highest life being reached when men help to complete one another’s
lives.

Conversely, evil must be defined as nonconformity to the conditions of
existence. Slowly but surely man is learning these conditions, and
as he learns it is not to be doubted that “evil” will lessen. If we
affirm acquisition of knowledge by man, we must postulate a precedent
or “necessary” condition of ignorance. Hence it may be truthfully said
that evil is a necessary correlative, and in a manner the necessary
condition of good; and also, I think, that a broad view of the
worldwide struggle for life shows not an absence of moral elements,
but rather that the ethical is inherent in the very nature of animate
things.

We may not all share Mr. Fiske’s exuberant optimism, and many can not
accept his teleological implications, but of the ultimate triumph of
good over evil, of knowledge over ignorance, we may not doubt.

      FRANK M. LOOMIS.
  BUFFALO, _November 10, 1899_.


THE LOCATION OF VINLAND.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:

SIR: I beg to take exception to the exploded Boston theory again
revived by Miss Cornelia Horsford in the last number of your valuable
magazine. It is astonishing to notice how little Prof. G. Storm’s
excellent prize essay and Mr. Reeve’s careful edition of the text
of sagas seem to have availed against the misplaced patriotism that
persists in carrying those Norse explorers down to New England in the
face of the numerous difficulties with which this feat is associated.
If I am not mistaken, not a single historian or antiquarian of note
has taken Professor Horsford’s extremely unscientific treatment of the
sagas or his Norse discoveries seriously, and the sober verdict of
Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson and Dr. V. Gudmundsson on the alleged Norse
ruins seems to show that Miss Cornelia Horsford has met with no better
success. To refute all the philological curiosities and illogical
conclusions drawn by Professor Horsford in his ten treatises on the
subject would, however, require a book of at least five hundred pages,
and nobody seems to think the question important enough to warrant such
an output. The fact that Mr. A. H. Keane, in his recent work, Man, Past
and Present, takes it for granted that the Norsemen met with Eskimos
in New England in the year 1000 seems to prove, however, that this
persistence in defending a baseless supposition is not merely a matter
of innocent patriotism. Fortunately, the current year, which marks the
nine hundredth anniversary of the discovery, will be sure to see some
valuable new treatises on the subject, and those who are sufficiently
interested furthermore need only consult the above-mentioned books to
discover how many serious objections the New England theory really has
to contend with. Permit me to mention one of them. Cape Cod has, it
is true, one singular feature that suggests the Keel Cape of the best
version of the Vinland manuscripts--viz., sandy shores. As everybody
can see for himself, however, by consulting Mr. Reeve’s book, the
explorers sailed south from Keel Cape on the eastern shore till the
country became indented with bays. At the mouth of one of these they
established their first winter quarters (the so-called Streamfirth),
and the next fall proceeded still farther south for a considerable time
till they came to “Hop,” the true Wineland. The extraordinary ease
with which Professor Horsford, in his book Landfall of Leif Ericson,
undertakes to chop up this version, in order to make the explorers
return to Boston from Cape Cod instead of continuing on their course,
is something remarkable in the annals of historical research. But
even then his theory fails utterly to satisfy the critical reader.
The trouble with most of the writers on this subject, not excluding a
professional historian like Prof. John Fiske, is that they have failed
to sift the material or see the force of Professor Storm’s criticism of
the Flat Island version. This being done, everything falls into line
for the Nova Scotia theory, due consideration being given to the fact
that an oral tradition of at least one hundred years intervened between
the events narrated and the first somewhat extended written record.

While, therefore, owing to the last-mentioned fact, it is not
altogether impossible that the Norsemen reached New England, it should
be distinctly understood that such a conclusion can only be drawn on
archæological lines, the test of the sagas pointing clearly in the
opposite direction.

      JUUL DIESERUD.

  FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM, CHICAGO,
    _December 7, 1899_.




Editor’s Table.


_THE WAR SPIRIT._

It must be a matter of deep regret to all right-thinking men that
there should have been during the latter half of the century now
expiring so marked a revival of the war spirit. In the middle of the
century it was thought by many that the world had learned wisdom from
the terrible experiences of the past, and that with the development
of international trade war would become an outworn mode of settling
international controversies. How different a turn things were destined
to take need not here be told. Coming to recent events, however, we
may say that it is lamentable our own country could not have won by
peaceful means whatever advantages it has secured by its recent war
with Spain. Equally lamentable is it that Great Britain, the other
great representative of Anglo-Saxon civilization, should at this moment
be engaged in a still bloodier struggle over questions which it is hard
to believe could not have been settled by negotiation. “Whence come
wars and fightings among you?” is a question that was asked very long
ago, and we do not know that it is possible to improve on the answer
then given: “From your lusts.”

We do not say that a nation should not resist to the death a distinct
aggression on its liberties or its independence. We do not say that
when horrors are being enacted in any part of the world force may not
righteously be employed to arrest them; but it is clear to our mind
that, in the present age, wars between civilized countries might be
almost wholly avoided if more reliance were placed upon moral force
and less rein given to the impulse to employ physical force. This is a
matter for the people in any state enjoying free institutions to take
to heart. Let every man in a time of national difficulty ask himself
this question: “Do I personally want to have blood shed over this
matter?” Or this one: “Am I personally indifferent whether or not this
dispute ends in bloodshed?” If a nation or the majority of a nation
wants to have blood shed over a dispute with another nation, or is
indifferent as to whether that shall be the outcome, the discussion
will be carried on in a very different spirit from what it would be
if there were a pronounced aversion to such a result. With nations,
as with individuals, everything depends upon the spirit and ulterior
purpose with which a question is approached. The cases must be very
few in which a great nation, safe itself from attack, might not, in
any matter in which minor interests are involved, resolve within
itself that it will not resort to war--that it will work, and continue
to work, on moral lines, trusting that, if it has right on its side,
it will in due time carry its point. If blood cries from the ground
against the slayer, what must be the responsibility of those who
heedlessly and ruthlessly give their voices for war, when patience,
moderation, and disinterestedness would have better accomplished every
legitimate purpose? Slaughter is slaughter, murder is murder, however
we may seek to weaken their import by a conventional treatment. War is
mutual murder carried on professionally and systematically. Yet the
primal command still makes its solemn appeal to the human heart and
conscience: “Thou shalt not kill.”

It is, unfortunately, only too easy to cultivate the military spirit
in almost any nation, and the military spirit, it need hardly be said,
is the spirit that seeks quarrels. To the military man war means
excitement, emulation, reputation, promotion, subject of course to the
possibility of injury or death. No one denies that deeds of heroism and
self-devotion are done on the battlefield; but that men should acquit
themselves nobly in the field is no compensation for the horrors of a
war brought on by the predominance of the military spirit.

  “‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,
      And our good Prince Eugene.’--
  ‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’
      Said little Wilhelmine.”

And every war is wicked and detestable that could consistently
with national honor be avoided. When we say “honor” we do not mean
“reputation.” Reputation depends on the canons of judgment prevailing
among those who presume to award it. In a dueling community a man’s
reputation might suffer by declining a challenge, but his honor would
be intact if he declined from sincere unwillingness to do a wrong act.
There is much honor sometimes in sacrificing reputation, particularly
the “bubble reputation” that is won “in the cannon’s mouth.” Every
appeal to the sword weakens the reliance placed upon principles of
justice, and thus undoes a vast amount of the work of peace. When war
is once set on foot, the national judgment is more or less blinded.
True, it is the action of a majority of the people only--admitting
that a majority wanted it--but who is uncompromising enough, when his
country’s armies are in the field, to proclaim that they are fighting
in a wrong cause? A few may do it, but they do it at their peril. In
all other matters a minority may censure with any degree of severity
the policy of the majority, but not in the matter of a war once entered
on. Yet how perverting such a situation is to right judgment, and how
injurious an effect it must have on the rising generation, are only too
apparent.

These reflections may not at first sight seem to have a very direct
bearing on the interests for which this magazine is supposed to stand,
but to our mind science, in the broad sense, has no function so
important as that of settling the education of the young upon a right
_moral_ basis. No system of education deserves to be called scientific
that does not place the idea of justice at the very foundation of
human life. You can not do this, however, without making it a working
principle, and without inculcating a belief in it as such. Applying
the principle to national affairs, we see at once that a strong nation
which desires to be just will take no advantage of its strength in
its dealings with other nations. If it has a demand to make, it will
make it simply in the name of justice, and cast no sidelong glances at
its up-to-date battle ships or its well-equipped battalions. It will
have unbounded patience with weaker communities, which, rightly or
wrongly, may seem to think they have right on their side. It will not
be ashamed to shrink from the shedding of blood. The “young barbarians”
of our public schools are always only too ready to exalt might above
right; but the judicious teacher into whom the true spirit of science
has entered will seize every favorable opportunity for inculcating the
great lesson that the moral law has a way of vindicating itself in the
end, and that the inheritance of the earth has been promised not to the
quarrelsome or the overweening, but to the meek. A generation brought
up on these principles would be slow to make war, and their influence
on the world would be in every way powerful for good.


_LANGUAGE AND LIFE._

The ordinary school education in language and grammar is doubtless
responsible for the impression which we find existing in so many minds
that, in all matters of verbal expression, there is some one absolute
standard of authority to which it implies simply ignorance not to
bow--some supreme court, as it were, empowered to decide for us what
words we are to use, how we are to pronounce them, and what rules of
syntax we are to follow. It would be difficult, doubtless, to impart
to children or very young people the wider and more scientific view of
language, inasmuch as they need, in the first place, clear guidance as
regards usage rather than correct theory. The idea, therefore, with
which they grow up, if their school studies take any hold upon them
at all and if no wider culture comes to change their way of looking
at things, is that some very wise man made an infallible grammar and
another very wise man an infallible dictionary, and that no one need be
in doubt in regard to what is orthodox in language who has access to
these tables of the law. We have known grown-up persons to turn away
with a very skeptical air, and a kind of look as if they had found out
a weak spot in your educational armor, when they were told that really
it was impossible to say which of two pronunciations of a word was
right and which was wrong--that either might be employed without mortal
offense against elegance of speech or good breeding.

A hidebound view of language tends so much to narrow thought on general
subjects that it seems to us of importance that the true and scientific
view of the subject should be brought forward whenever opportunity
offers. Mr. William Archer, the well-known English critic, contributed
an article not long ago to the Pall Mall Magazine which might be read
with much advantage by pedants and purists, and all blind followers of
authority. He takes the broad ground that language is a transcript,
as it were, of life, and that as life widens and becomes more varied,
language must do the same. It must reflect the fancy, the imagination,
and the humor of the day, and not merely the fancy, imagination, and
humor of past generations. If we want a language that is fixed and
unalterable in its forms we must seek one that has ceased to be spoken
by men. Even then we can not always get absolute decisions. Cicero is
perhaps the best standard of Latin prose, but no competent critic would
say that his writing was flawless. We know that grammatical questions
were much debated among the ancients, and we have no doubt that many
such questions were left unsettled. In a living language there must be
unsettled questions. There is a constant struggle for life going on
among the words and phrases with which men endeavor to express their
ideas, and, at a given moment, it is impossible to say which shall
prosper, this or that. The word or phrase that prospers--that commends
itself, after adequate trial, for expressiveness, convenience, or
euphony, or for any combination of useful qualities--will survive and
become classic; the expression that has nothing special to commend it,
beyond its novelty and slanginess, will probably pass, after a brief
and partial currency, into the vast limbo of the unfit. All we can say
of a word at a given moment is how far it has actually become current
and what kind of society it keeps. What its fortune will be we can only
guess. Just as in the financial world great fortunes are sometimes
very suddenly made and names before obscure spring into world-wide
notoriety, so, in the realm of language, a word of very uncertain
ancestry and no social repute may assert its right to recognition and
take its place among the best.

It does not follow from this that it can ever be a matter of
indifference what words we use or what tricks we play with language,
any more than it can be a matter of indifference what personal habits
we adopt. Language is the clothing of our thoughts, and as such it may
exhibit the same qualities which attach to the clothing of our bodies.
It may be marked by neatness and propriety, or by slovenliness and
want of taste. Some men are over-dressed, and some affect over-fine
language. Some go after the latest novelties in the tailoring world,
and some after the latest slang, asserting thereby their resolution
to be up to date. It is needless to draw the parallel further, but
it is evident that there is wide scope in the choice of language for
the exhibition of personal preference and personal character. We
think it safe to say that the interests of a language, considered as
an instrument of thought, will be best promoted by those who pay due
respect to its established forms, and only countenance such neologisms
as make good their claim to acceptance by supplying a real want. Mr.
Archer, in the article we have referred to, states, and we do not
doubt with truth, that the English language has been greatly enriched
and strengthened by the fact that it has been spoken and written by
millions of people on this side of the Atlantic, leading an intense and
vigorous life of their own, under conditions very different in many
respects from those prevailing in the mother country. The language
moves with a freer step, beats with a stronger pulse, and assumes a
more imperial bearing from the fact that it expresses the activity and
sums up the life of the foremost communities of the human race in both
hemispheres.

A great classical scholar not long ago wrote a letter to an English
weekly newspaper expressing a very contemptuous estimate of the French
language, as being only a degraded form of Latin. He thought it a great
disgrace to the language that it had no better word for “much” than
_beaucoup_, which, as he learnedly explained, came from two Latin words
meaning “fine” and “blow.” The most cursory examination of any language
will show that it abounds in just such verbal devices. We do not in
English put the words “great” and “stroke” together, but, using them
separately, we say “a great stroke” of luck and of many other things
when there is no question of “striking” at all. In the same way we
would say “a great hit,” when there is no question of hitting, except
by remote analogy. Languages grow rich and flexible precisely by the
adoption of such convenient combinations. What they may originally have
meant becomes a matter of little moment when once they have become
thoroughly accepted and thoroughly expressive. After they have become
welded together, as sometimes happens, in one word, it is an advantage
rather than otherwise if the separate meanings of their constituent
parts become lost to all except the professional etymologist. As long
as the separate parts retain their separate meaning some sense of
incongruity will sometimes arise in connection with the use of the
term. Thus to say “a handful of corn” is all right, but one might
feel that it was not all right to say “a mere handful of men.” Yet it
would be futile to criticise the expression which has become idiomatic
English. If the word “handful” had parted with its essential meaning
as completely as say the word “troop” has, for all but etymologists,
there would be no kind of incongruity in its employment for any small
number or quantity whatsoever.

The scientific view of language, then, is that it represents the effort
of mankind to use audible symbols for the expression of thought; that
it follows the development of man’s activity and enlarges with his
enlarging knowledge, and comprehension of things; that while its object
is essentially a practical one it gathers beauty with use and age, and
begins to react on the minds of its makers; that its makers are the
people, not the grammarians, these being merely its policemen, who,
useful in general, are sometimes too officious; that great writers are
the architects who felicitously arrange materials which the people have
gathered and shaped, placing the best of such materials where they can
be seen to best advantage; finally, that the language of each nation
is its most precious possession, the record of its civilization, and
the repository of all that is best in its moral and intellectual life,
and that it is therefore the duty of all who make any pretensions to
liberal training to watch over their heritage and, while allowing all
reasonable scope for further development, to guard it by all means in
their power against degradation and pollution. A great people will
have a great language: when a language shows signs of weakness or
declension, there is reason to fear for the civilization of which it is
the expression.




Fragments of Science.


=“Dark Lightning.”=--The attention of meteorologists and photographers
has been engaged to a considerable extent, within a few months past,
with the appearance on photographs of lightning of what seemed to
be dark flashes as well as bright ones. In the effort to account
satisfactorily for the phenomenon it has been referred to photographic
reversal, due to extreme brilliancy; to a predominance of infra-red
radiations; to the existence of flashes deficient in actinic rays; to
changes in the density of the air occasioned by the spark, when a dark
line with a light line within it is shown if the air is compressed,
and a light line inclosing a dark one if it is rarefied; and to some
qualities of the photographic plate. The first real light was thrown on
the subject by some experiments described by Mr. A. W. Clayden, who,
having photographed some electric sparks of different intensities,
before developing the plates exposed them to the diffused light of
a gas flame. The brilliant sparks then yielded images which might
either be called normal with a reversed margin, or reversed with a
normal core, while the fainter images were completely reversed--or,
in other words, came out darker than the background. The “fogging” of
the picture, to produce this reversal, must be done after the image of
the flash is impressed; for if it is done before, the image appears
lighter than the background. This effect, which is called the “Clayden
effect,” is accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon
by two of the authors who have most studied it--Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer
and Prof. R. W. Wood, of the University of Wisconsin. Professor Wood,
on repeating Mr. Clayden’s experiment, obtained dark flashes without
any difficulty, but as they failed to appear when the light of an
incandescent lamp was substituted for the electric spark, he concludes
that there is something in the spark essential to the reversal. Dr.
Lockyer summarizes his conclusion by saying that dark-lightning flashes
“do not exist in Nature, but their appearances on photographs are due
to some chemical action which takes place in the gelatin film.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=“Warming Up.”=--“Warming up” is the expressive term of general
currency, which Dr. E. G. Lancaster adopts to denote the process in
which one starting on any work in a little while suffers a short
period of fatigue, from which he soon recovers, to go on with new and
increased vigor. This occurs in the course of walks, with students
engaged in earnest reading or in writing, and in animals, as in dogs
on the chase, the animals pursued, and racehorses. “It is said of two
famous trotters, each of which has reduced the world’s record within a
few years, that the period of warming up was very characteristic....
Athletes, especially ball players, realize the importance of practice
just before the games, to be followed by a slight rest. A pitcher
would hardly enter the box till he had got his arm in working order
by a few minutes’ practice. Orators often are dull at first, but warm
up. It is said that Wendell Phillips was often hissed for his slow,
uninteresting speech, but rallied to the occasion at such times with
his masterly oratory.” Dr. Lancaster has experimented on the phenomena,
using a method like those of Mosso and of Lombard in the psychological
laboratory at Clark University, and publishes the results, with details
and curves, in the papers of the Colorado College Scientific Society.
He tried ten or twelve subjects, experimenting on the middle finger
of the right hand, and gaining most of his results from four or five
persons. He finds that warming up is general, but not universal. One
subject always did his best work first. He likewise showed no warming
up in his mental work. The phenomenon called “second mind” is closely
allied to warming up, but is not the same. The author is of the opinion
that the importance of this process is greatly misunderstood.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Sixty Years’ Improvements in Steamships.=--A review of what has
been accomplished in sixty years in the improvement of transatlantic
traffic, given by Sir William H. White in his address at the British
Association on Steam Navigation at High Speeds, shows that speed has
been increased from eight and a half to twenty-two and a half knots
an hour, and the time of the voyage has been brought down to about
thirty-eight per cent of what it was in 1838. Ships have been more than
trebled in length, about doubled in breadth, and increased tenfold in
displacement. The number of passengers carried by a steamship has been
enlarged from about one hundred to nearly two thousand. The engine
power has been made forty times as great. The ratio of horse power to
the weight driven has been quadrupled. The rate of coal consumption
per horse power per hour is now only about one third what it was in
1840. Had the old rate of coal consumption continued, instead of three
thousand tons of coal, nine thousand would have been required for a
voyage at twenty-two knots. Had the engines been proportionately as
heavy as those in use sixty years ago, they would have weighed about
fourteen thousand tons. In other words, machinery, boilers, and coal
would have exceeded the total weight of the Campania as she floats
to-day. “There could not be a more striking illustration than this
of the close relation between improvements in marine engineering at
high speed. Equally true is it that this development could not have
been accomplished but for the use of improved materials and structural
arrangements.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=American Advances in Forestry.=--The Department of Agriculture having
determined to prepare a book for the Paris Exposition, reviewing
what has been accomplished in scientific agriculture in the United
States, the Division of Forestry will contribute to it a short history
of forestry in the United States, with an account of the efforts of
private landholders to apply the principles of forestry. Much more has
been accomplished in the United States in the way of forestry than has
been supposed. Mr. Pinchot, the forester of the division, holds that
wherever private owners have made the effort to use the merchantable
timber on their woodland without injuring its productive power, and to
establish new forests, there has been the intention of true forestry.
The methods may have been imperfect, but they have tended toward
economic forest management so far as their object was the continued
use of the land for producing woods. Among the measures looking in
this direction Mr. Pinchot mentions in his circular the practice
which has been adopted “because it pays,” in some of the spruce lands
of the Northwest, of leaving the small trees standing, so that the
lumbermen can return for a second crop earlier than would otherwise
be possible; and the adoption by farmers of methods in getting their
wood, for saving the best trees and promoting their growth and that
of the new ones; of keeping sprout lands to be cut over regularly and
systematically, for periodical renewal, and of tree planting on waste
places, hillsides liable to be washed, and the banks of streams. Other
forms of planting are the institution of wind breaks in the treeless
West, and special plantations for fence posts, etc. A kind of forestry
practice is likewise indicated in the special pains that are taken
by farmers and in lumbering districts to lessen the danger of fires.
Forester Pinchot desires that all the information that can be gained be
communicated to him for the proposed article.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Professor Putnam on the Origins of the American Races.=--In his
address as retiring President of the American Association, Prof. F. W.
Putnam, after expressing his high opinion of the late Dr. D. G. Brinton
and his scientific labors, referred to the differences of opinion that
had existed between them in respect to the origin of the American
peoples, and proceeded to expound his own views on the subject. He
regarded the term “mound-builders” as comprehensive enough to include
all the peoples who had left the marks of their former presence in
this country. Even the shell heaps could not be regarded as the work
of one people. From the time of the earliest deposits--which were of
great antiquity--to the present, such refuse piles had been made and
many of the sites reoccupied, sometimes even by a different people.
So with the mounds of earth and stone; many of them are of great
antiquity, while others were made within the historic period, and even
during the first half of the present century. These works were devoted
to a variety of purposes, and there are many different kinds of them.
Besides the mounds, there are groups of earthworks of a different order
of structure, that must be considered by themselves--great embankments,
fortifications, and singular structures on hills and plateaus that are
in marked contrast to the ordinary conical mounds, and mounds in the
form of animals and of man. The considerable antiquity of these older
earthworks is proved by the accumulation of mold and the forest growth
upon them. “If all mounds of shell, earth, or stone, fortifications
on hills, or places of religious and ceremonial rites, are classed,
irrespective of their structure, contents, or time of formation, as
the work of one people, and that people is designated as the ‘American
Indian’ or the ‘American race,’ and considered the only people ever
inhabiting America north and south, we are simply ... not giving fair
consideration to differences, while overestimating resemblances.”
Citing analogies between our earthworks and Mexican structures, and
looking upon the Pueblos as a connecting link, “we must regard the
culture of the builders of the ancient earthworks as one and the same
with that of ancient Mexico, although modified by environment. Our
northern and eastern tribes came in contact with this people when
they pushed their way southward and westward, and many of their arts
and customs still linger among some of our Indian tribes. It is this
absorption and admixture of the stocks that has in the course of
thousands of years brought all our peoples into a certain uniformity.
This does not, however, prove a unity of race.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=Heat Insulators.=--Mr. C. L. Norton has made experiments, at the
request of Mr. Edward Atkinson, in order to determine the relative
efficiency of several kinds of steam-pipe covering now on the market;
to ascertain the fire risk attendant upon the use of certain methods
and materials employed for insulation of steam pipes; to show the gain
in economy attendant upon the increase of thickness of coverings; and
to find the exact financial return that may be expected from a given
outlay for covering steam pipes. A method of experimentation was
adopted which represented as nearly as practicable the conditions
existing in the actual use of steam pipes. Of sixteen non-conducting
preparations tried, the most efficient were found to be those made of
cork; next was a cover composed of an inner jacket of earthy material
and an outer jacket of wool felt; and next magnesia. In reference to
the last substance it is, however, observed that, while it is a most
effective non-conductor, the name has been applied to many compounds
of which the greater part consist of carbonate of lime or plaster of
Paris, materials which are not good as heat retardents. Asbestos is
merely a non-combustible material in which air may be entrapped, but,
when non-porous, is a good conductor of heat. Generally speaking, a
cover saves heat enough to pay for itself in a little less than a year
at three hundred and ten ten-hour days, and in about four months at
three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days. The decision as to
the choice of cover must, however, come from other considerations, as
well as from that of non-conductivity. Ability to withstand the action
of heat for a prolonged period without being destroyed or rendered
less efficient is of vital importance. The cork coverings were found
to respond to this test extremely well, and there can be no question
respecting magnesia; but Mr. Norton does not consider it safe to put
upon a steam pipe wool, hair, felt, or woolen felt in any form, though
the danger is not likely to accrue when an inch of fireproof material
stands between the felt and the pipe. In general it may be said that
if five years is the life of a cover, one inch is the most economical
thickness, while a cover which has a life of ten years may to advantage
be made two inches thick. The method of judging a pipe cover by the
warmth felt on putting the hand upon it is fallacious; the sensation
depends so much upon the nature of the surface that it utterly fails to
give any idea of the actual temperature.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Effect of Sea Water on Soil.=--In a paper read at the British
Association, 1899, on the chemical effect of the salts of the
salt-water flood of November 27, 1897, on the east coast of England,
Messrs. T. S. Dymond and F. Hughes recorded the remarkable result that,
although the proportion of salt left in the soil was insufficient to
prove injurious to growing crops, the earthworms were entirely removed,
with the consequence that very few crops were worth harvesting the
following year. In the next year nine tenths of the salt at first
present had disappeared from the soil, and young worms had again
made their appearance, but still the condition of the soil remained
unsatisfactory, the rate of percolation of water through the flooded
earth being only one half as rapid as through the unflooded. The
authors ascribe this to the action of the chlorides of the sea water on
the silicates of the soil with the formation of silicate of alumina in
a gelatinous condition.

       *       *       *       *       *

=The War against Monopolies.=--Mr. Robert Ewen writes, in the
Westminster Review, demanding free bank circulation as likely to
be a very effective weapon to be used in “the coming contest with
monopolists.” The subject seems to have attracted official attention
in England in 1875, when Sir Stafford Northcote was Chancellor of the
Exchequer. As chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the
working of the Bank Acts, he submitted a memorandum showing that,
while certain items of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of England
had been withdrawn, a residuum of restrictions on issuing banks still
remained unrepealed. Some other countries have found a way of giving
elasticity to the currency by buying in and laying aside their bonds,
as the United States has recently been doing. This can not be done
in Great Britain, because the Bank of England and the other bank
monopolists block the way. The bank is tied down by acts of Parliament
to buy and sell gold at a fixed price, and this restriction has been
a cause of panics, whereas had gold been allowed to rise and fall in
price, according to supply and demand, and the bank got a free hand in
dealing with that commodity and in issuing legal notes to supply the
circulating medium, “all would have gone well.” Foreign protectionists
now have the power to prevent British goods from getting into their
markets by imposing heavy duties on them, and at the same time forcing
their produce into British markets, because English laws allow
them to get gold from the English cheaper than their goods can be
obtained. “Suppose a merchant in Britain buys £100,000 worth of corn
from America and gives a check on the Bank of England for the amount
of the purchase. The American draws the £100,000 in gold and takes it
home; he will have to pay no export or import duty thereon--indeed,
the probability is he may get a premium on the gold in America. But
reverse the transaction: Suppose the British merchant sold £100,000
worth of his goods to America, there would, in the first place, be
the exorbitant duty imposed there upon our manufactures of from forty
to fifty per cent. Or suppose our merchant wished to buy corn or any
American produce in exchange for his goods in place of bringing money,
the case would be different--it would tell against the American farmer,
who would get a less price for his corn, etc., than he would have done
by free trade.” This instance is given “to show how free trade in
gold would bring about free trade and reciprocity between the United
States and Britain, and is applicable to every other state with which
we trade.... There should be full scope given to all good banks in
the country, large or small, to carry on banking business in the best
modern manner for the benefit of all parties, so as to encourage and
develop all trades and industries.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=Rats and the Plague.=--In his introductory address at the opening
of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Manson preached a war
of extermination against rats with the vigor of Cato calling for
the destruction of Carthage. “Were I asked,” he said, “how I would
protect a state from plague, I would certainly answer, Exterminate
the rats as a first and most important measure.” He added, “At the
present juncture, were I the responsible sanitary head of any town in
Europe, in anticipation of a possibility compared to which in horror
and in destructiveness a general European war would be a trifle, I
would do my best to have every rat and, if possible, every mouse in
my district promptly exterminated.” Dr. Manson does not reveal his
plan of campaign. Wholesale poisoning of sewers might have serious
disadvantages, and there would be difficulties about inveigling the
rodent population of these subterranean health resorts (as some
enthusiasts consider them to be) into a lethal chamber. Are we to cry
havoc and let slip the _cats_ of war? or to hurl an army of snakes
against the foe? In either case we might find ourselves in the awkward
position of a king who had called a too powerful auxiliary to his aid.
Already action is being taken on the rat theory of plague. The French
Government has ordered that special precautions are to be taken to
prevent the importation of rats in vessels from plague-stricken places.
It is to be hoped that similar precautions will be taken in regard to
the transports which convey the Indian contingent to the Cape, or the
situation there may become complicated by the intervention of an enemy
who will deal destruction impartially to Boers and to Britons.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Forestry in California.=--As a remedy for the devastation of the
forest lands of California, Marsden Manson, having shown that
Government administrations with politics in them can not be trusted in
the matter, recommends that all forest reservations and public lands
upon mountain slopes within the borders of the State be granted to the
University of California in trust, for the purpose of maintaining,
developing, and extending the water supply of those regions forever.
For this purpose the regents should be empowered to lease, under
proper control, the timber cutting and pasturage privileges of those
areas, and to use the resultant fund to protect the catchment areas,
to maintain a college of practical forestry, to construct reservoirs
at such points as may be necessary to the industries of the State, and
dispose of the water for the benefit of the trust, to acquire mountain
lands to be added to the catchment areas, and to do all such things as
may maintain wise systems of forest and water conservation and use.
The extent of income-bearing property which can be made available for
forest preservation and storage of flood waters, Mr. Manson says, is
far beyond the general idea.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Another New Element.=--The mineral pitchblende is distinguished for
its radio-activity, or the property it has of emitting the peculiar
light-rays which have recently attracted attention. The property
has been attributed to the presence of uranium, one of the most
radio-active among the known metals. About a year ago the chemists M.
and Madame Curie, examining the different substances in pitchblende,
found among them two new radiant substances, both more active than
uranium, which they called polonium and radium. Polonium was found
to be closely akin to bismuth, accompanying that metal in all its
reactions, but separable from it by fractionation. Radium resembles
barium in its chemical reactions. Recently M. A. Debierne, examining
one of the products of solution and precipitation of pitchblende,
observed intensified radio-active properties in a portion containing
titanium, and on further investigation found still another substance
showing the principal analytical properties of titanium, but which
emitted extremely active rays. While these rays were comparable with
those observed from polonium and radium, the chemical properties are
entirely different from those of these substances. Radium, however, is
spontaneously luminous, while the new substance is not.




MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Some recent experiments were made by Armand Gautier on the amount
of the chlorides contained in sea air. They were conducted at the
lighthouse at Rochedouvres, situated about fifty-five kilometres from
the coast, during and after the long continuance of a good breeze
directly inshore from the Atlantic. The air was drawn through a long
tube containing glasswork, and this well then analyzed. He found that
in a litre of air there was only 0.022 of a gramme of chloride of
sodium. Small as this quantity is, it suffices, perhaps, with the aid
of the traces of sodium present, to give sea air its tonic qualities.

       *       *       *       *       *

The second International Congress on Hypnotism is to be held in Paris,
August 12 to 16, 1900, Dr. Jules Voisin presiding. The programme of
discussions includes such topics as the terminology of hypnotism,
its relations to hysteria, its application to general therapeutics,
the indications of it and suggestions for the treatment of mental
disease and alcoholism, its application to general pedagogy and mental
orthopædics, its value as a means of pathological investigation, its
relation to the practice of medicine and to jurisprudence, and special
responsibilities arising from the practice of experimental hypnotism.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following is from a recent letter to Science by Prof. James H.
Hyslop, of Columbia University: “So much has been published far and
wide this last summer about my intention ‘to scientifically demonstrate
the immortality of the soul within a year,’ that it is due to the facts
bearing upon the choice between materialism and spiritism to say that I
have never made any such professions as have been alleged. I wish the
scientific public that still has the bad habit of reading and believing
the newspapers to know that I was careful to deny that I made any such
pretensions as were so generally attributed to me. More than one half
the interviews alleged to have been held with me were the fabrications
of reporters who never saw me, and the other half omitted what I did
say and published what I did not say.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Some novel results have been obtained by M. Baillaud, of the Toulouse
Observatory, France, from recent observations of the annular nebula in
Lyra and comparisons with photographs taken in 1890. Among them are
the discovery of small stars in the central space of the ring, the
existence of bright points on the ring itself, a more distinct figure
of the central star on the later photographs, giving it the aspect of
a true star, and greater brightness in the central space, and certain
changes in the shape of the edge of the ring, which shows at one
point, more distinctly than in 1890, an eminence indicating a jet of
matter escaping from the ring. Other nebulæ, especially that called
the Dumb-bell and the nebula in the Crown, are spoken of as exhibiting
similar phenomena.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Chicago Manual-Training School, which is said to be the first
independent manual-training school in the United States, is now in its
sixteenth year, having been founded in 1883 by the Commercial Club of
Chicago. It has been, since 1897, an integral part of the University
of Chicago. While its peculiar feature is manual training, it also
furnishes instruction in the essential studies of a high-school course.
The shop work and drawing are eminently practical. The making of a
machine, such as a lathe or steam engine, is begun by the pupils in the
drawing room, and is followed by them through the pattern-making shop,
the foundry, and the forge room, and is perfected in the machine shop.
The forge tools and engine-lathe tools are made by pupils. The courses
of the school include a business course, a technological course, and a
college preparatory course.


NOTES.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received, by the will of
Mr. Edward Austin, deceased at the age of ninety-four years, a bequest
of $400,000, the interest of which is to be used for the assistance
of needy and meritorious teachers in prosecuting their studies. In
addition to this bequest, the institute received, during 1898, an
accession of $928,000 to its general funds, and one of $46,000 to its
scholarship funds.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the recent meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies, at New Haven,
Conn., Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, was
chosen to act as retiring President of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, in place of Prof. Edward Orton, deceased.

       *       *       *       *       *

The meeting of the Allied Scientific Societies of the United States was
held in New Haven, Conn., during holiday week. It was much larger than
either of the meetings previously held, and was attended by nearly five
hundred members, representing ten societies--viz., the American Society
of Naturalists, the Association of American Anatomists, the American
Morphological, Physiological, Psychological, and Chemical Societies,
the Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Archæological
Association of America. The discussions were all interesting.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great Roman Catholic Missionary Society, the Sacred Congregation
of the Propagation of the Faith, is reported to have sent a circular
to all its missionaries urging them to interest themselves in the
collection of natural-history specimens for scientific societies and
institutions. This is intended, it is said, to interest and encourage
missionaries who have a scientific bent, and to inform the world that
the Church is not hostile to biological research.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have to record, among the later deaths of men in science, the
names of Francis Guthrie, formerly Professor of Mathematics in Graaff
Reinet College and afterward in South African College till 1898, aged
sixty-eight years; he was interested in botany, on which he gave public
lectures, and, with Harry Bolus, revised the order of Heaths for _Flora
capensis_; Prof. P. Knuth, botanist and author of researches on the
relations of insects and flowers and on cross-fertilization, at Kiel,
Germany, aged forty-five years; he had published two of the projected
three volumes of the _Handbuch der Blüten Biologie_; Prof. R. Yatube,
Japanese botanist; Ferdinand Tiemann, honorary Professor of Chemistry
in the University of Berlin; Alexander McDougall, inventor, sixty years
ago, of an atmospheric railway, and since of many useful mechanical and
chemical appliances, at Southport, England; Dr. Camera Pestana, chief
of the Bacteriological Institute at Lisbon, Portugal, of plague, which
he contracted while experimenting with it at Oporto; and Prof. Elliott
Coues, an American naturalist, most distinguished in ornithology, in
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, December 25th, after a surgical
operation, aged sixty-seven years; he had been a professor in Norwich
University, Vermont, and in the National Medical College in Washington,
and had done scientific work while in the military service of the
Government, in the Geological Survey, and in the United States Northern
Boundary Commission; and was the author of several books on ornithology
and on the Fur-bearing Animals, besides editing the journals of Lewis
and Clark and other books of American exploration.




PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.


Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Cornell
University: No. 172. The Cherry Fruit-Fly. A New Cherry Pest. By
M. V. Slingerland. Pp. 20.--Maryland: Twelfth Annual Report. Pp.
212.--Michigan: Horticultural Department. No. 176. Strawberry Notes for
1899. By L. R. Taft and H. P. Gladden. Pp. 14.--Ohio: Press Bulletin
No. 202. Results of Sugar-Beet Investigations in 1899, etc. Pp.
2.--United States Department of Agriculture: Practical Forestry in the
Adirondacks. By Henry S. Graves. Pp. 84.

American Chemical Society, Journal of the. Vol. XXI, No. 12. December,
1899.

Blatchley, W. S. Gleanings from Nature. Indianapolis: The Nature
Publishing Company. Pp. 348.

Capon Springs Conference, The Second, on Education in the South. 1899.
Proceedings. Pp. 109.

Catlin, Charles A. Baking Powders. A Treatise on the Character, Methods
for the Determination of the Values, etc. Providence, R. I.: Rumford
Chemical Works. Pp. 40.

Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. Zoölogical Series. Vol. I, No. 16.
List of Mammals obtained by Thaddeus Surber, chiefly in Oklahoma and
Indian Territories. By D. G. Elliot; No. 17. Notes on a Collection of
Fishes and Amphibia from Muskoka and Gull Lakes. Pp. 6. By S. E. Meek
and D. G. Elliot.

Knight, W. C., and Slosson, E. E. The Oil Fields of Crook and Uinta
Counties, Wyoming. University of Wyoming, Laramie. (Petroleum Series,
Bulletin No. 3.) Pp. 30.

Lange, D. Our Native Birds. How to protect them and attract them to our
Homes. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 162. $1.

Manson, Marsden, San Francisco, Cal. The Evolution of Climates. Pp. 100.

Morgan, William, 96 Bowery, New York. A New Scientific Discovery. The
Correct Reason why the Magnetic Needle points to the Pole. Pp. 14.

New Epoch, The, Publishing Company. The Bibliography of Progressive
Literature. New York. P. O. Box 136, Madison Square Branch. Pp. 96.

Orcutt, H. E. The Empire of the Invisibles. New York: The Metaphysical
Publishing Company. Pp. 80. $1.

Peabody Education Fund. Proceedings of the Trustees at their
Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting. New York, October 4, 1899. Pp. 58.

Sunset. Vol. III, No. 6. October, 1899. Monthly. San Francisco, Cal.
Southern Pacific Railway Company. Pp. 24.

Starr, Frederick, Chicago, Ill. Some North American Spear-Throwers.
Pp. 3, with plate; Survivals of Paganism in Mexico, Pp. 14; The
International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology. Pp. 8; Holy Week in
Mexico. Pp. 6; The Art of Benin City, Pp. 8.

Turner, Mrs. M. M. The Bible God, Bible Teachings, Selections from the
Writings of Scientists. (Library of Liberal Classics.) New York: Peter
Eckler. Pp. 139. 25 cents.

United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Pamphlet No. 424.
Experiments in Photography of Live Fishes. By R. W. Shufeldt. Pp. 5,
with nine plates; No. 425. Notes on the Tide-Pool Fishes of California,
with a Description of Four New Species. By Arthur White Greeley. Pp.
20; No. 426. The Synaptas of the New England Coast. By Hubert Lyman
Clark. Pp. 12, with plate; No. 427. Descriptions of New Genera and
Species of Fishes from Puerto Rico. By Barton W. Evermann and Millard
C. Marsh. Pp. 12.

United States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution). Directions
for collecting and rearing Dragon Flies, Stone Flies, and May Flies.
By James G. Needham. Pp. 12; Contributions to the Natural History of
the Commander Islands. (A New Species of Stalked Medusæ, Haliclystus
Stejnegeri.) By K. Kishinouye. Pp. 5; Report for the Year ending June
30, 1897. Part I. Pp. 1021.

University of California. The Inauguration of Benjamin Ide Wheeler as
President of the University. Berkeley: University Press. Pp. 30.

Ward, Lester F., Jenney, W. F., Fontaine, W. M., and Knowlton, F. H.
The Cretaceous Formation of the Black Hills as indicated by the Fossil
Plants. United States Geological Survey. Pp. 188.




Transcribers’ Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Words originally printed in Greek are shown that way in some versions
of this eBook. English transliterations were added to all versions by
the Transcribers and are indicated by [Greek: ].

Page 467: “Magna Charta” was printed that way.

Page 507: Quotation beginning “we must regard” was not ended by a
closing quotation mark. Transcriber added one at the end of the
paragraph, after “prove a unity of race.”





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