Produced by Greg Bergquist, Charlie Howard, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber.




CONTENTS


  Address of the President Before the British Association    561
  The Bubonic Plague    576
  Gasoline Automobiles    593
  Some Scientific Principles of Warfare    605
  Modern Mongols    618
  Religious Beliefs of the Central Eskimo    624
  Mental Energy    632
  Chapters on the Stars    638
  Discussion and Correspondence    660
  Scientific Literature    662
  The Progress of Science    664
  Index    669




  THE
  POPULAR SCIENCE
  MONTHLY

  EDITED BY
  J. McKEEN CATTELL

  VOL. LVII

  MAY TO OCTOBER, 1900

  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND COMPANY
  1900




  COPYRIGHT, 1900,
  BY McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND COMPANY.




THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1900.




ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.[A]

BY SIR WILLIAM TURNER, F. R. S.,

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

    [A] Given at Bradford on September 5, 1900.


Twenty-seven years ago the British Association met in Bradford,
not at that time raised to the dignity of a city. The meeting was
very successful, and was attended by about two thousand persons--a
forecast, let us hope, of what we may expect at the present assembly.
A distinguished chemist, Prof. A. W. Williamson, presided. On this
occasion the association has elected for the presidential chair one
whose attention has been given to the study of an important department
of biological science. His claim to occupy, however unworthily, the
distinguished position in which he has been placed, rests, doubtless,
on the fact that, in the midst of the engrossing duties devolving
on a teacher in a great university and school of medicine, he has
endeavored to contribute to the sum of knowledge of the science which
he professes. It is a matter of satisfaction to feel that the success
of a meeting of this kind does not rest upon the shoulders of the
occupant of the presidential chair, but is due to the eminence and
active coöperation of the men of science who either preside over
or engage in the work of the nine or ten sections into which the
association is divided, and to the energy and ability for organization
displayed by the local secretaries and committees. The programme
prepared by the general and local officers of the association shows
that no efforts have been spared to provide an ample bill of fare, both
in its scientific and social aspects. Members and associates will, I
feel sure, take away from the Bradford meeting as pleasant memories as
did our colleagues of the corresponding Association Française, when, in
friendly collaboration at Dover last year, they testified to the common
citizenship of the Universal Republic of Science. As befits a leading
center of industry in the great county of York, the applications of
science to the industrial arts and to agriculture will form subjects of
discussion in the papers to be read at the meeting.

Since the association was at Dover a year ago, two of its former
presidents have joined the majority. The Duke of Argyll presided
at the meeting in Glasgow so far back as 1855. Throughout his long
and energetic life, he proved himself to be an eloquent and earnest
speaker, one who gave to the consideration of public affairs a mind
of singular independence, and a thinker and writer in a wide range of
human knowledge. Sir J. Wm. Dawson was president at the meeting in
Birmingham in 1886. Born in Nova Scotia in 1820, he devoted himself to
the study of the Geology of Canada, and became the leading authority on
the subject. He took also an active and influential part in promoting
the spread of scientific education in the Dominion, and for a number of
years he was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the McGill University,
Montreal.


SCIENTIFIC METHOD.

Edward Gibbon has told us that diligence and accuracy are the only
merits which an historical writer can ascribe to himself. Without doubt
they are fundamental qualities necessary for historical research,
but in order to bear fruit they require to be exercised by one whose
mental qualities are such as to enable him to analyze the data brought
together by his diligence, to discriminate between the false and the
true, to possess an insight into the complex motives that determine
human action, to be able to recognize those facts and incidents which
had exercised either a primary or only a secondary influence on the
affairs of nations, or on the thoughts and doings of the person whose
character he is depicting.

In scientific research, also, diligence and accuracy are fundamental
qualities. By their application new facts are discovered and tabulated,
their order of succession is ascertained and a wider and more intimate
knowledge of the processes of nature is acquired. But to decide on
their true significance a well-balanced mind and the exercise of
prolonged thought and reflection are needed. William Harvey, the father
of exact research in physiology, in his memorable work, ‘De Motu Cordis
et Sanguinis,’ published more than two centuries ago, tells us of the
great and daily diligence which he exercised in the course of his
investigations, and the numerous observations and experiments which
he collated. At the same time he refers repeatedly to his cogitations
and reflections on the meaning of what he had observed, without which
the complicated movements of the heart could not have been analyzed,
their significance determined and the circulation of the blood in a
continuous stream definitely established. Early in the present century,
Carl Ernst von Baer, the father of embryological research, showed the
importance which he attached to the combination of observation with
meditation by placing side by side on the title page of his famous
treatise ‘Ueber Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere’ (1828) the words
_Beobachtung und Reflexion_.

Though I have drawn from biological science my illustrations of the
need of this combination, it must not be inferred that it applies
exclusively to one branch of scientific inquiry; the conjunction
influences and determines progress in all the sciences, and when
associated with a sufficient touch of imagination, when the power of
seeing is conjoined with the faculty of foreseeing, of projecting the
mind into the future, we may expect something more than the discovery
of isolated facts; their coördination and the enunciation of new
principles and laws will necessarily follow.

Scientific method consists, therefore, in close observation, frequently
repeated so as to eliminate the possibility of erroneous seeing;
in experiments checked and controlled in every direction in which
fallacies might arise; in continuous reflection on the appearances and
phenomena observed, and in logically reasoning out their meaning and
the conclusions to be drawn from them. Were the method followed out in
its integrity by all who are engaged in scientific investigations, the
time and labor expended in correcting errors committed by ourselves
or by other observers and experimentalists would be saved, and the
volumes devoted annually to scientific literature would be materially
diminished in size. Were it applied, as far as the conditions of life
admit, to the conduct and management of human affairs, we should not
require to be told, when critical periods in our welfare as a nation
arise, that we shall muddle through somehow. Recent experience has
taught us that wise discretion and careful provision are as necessary
in the direction of public affairs as in the pursuit of science, and in
both instances, when properly exercised, they enable us to reach with
comparative certainty the goal which we strive to attain.


IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS OF OBSERVATION.

While certain principles of research are common to all the sciences,
each great division requires for its investigation specialized
arrangements to insure its progress. Nothing contributes so much to the
advancement of knowledge as improvements in the means of observation,
either by the discovery of new adjuncts to research, or by a fresh
adaptation of old methods. In the industrial arts, the introduction
of a new kind of raw material, the recognition that a mixture or
blending is often more serviceable than when the substances employed
are uncombined, the discovery of new processes of treating the articles
used in manufactures, the invention of improved machinery, all lead
to the expansion of trade to the occupation of the people, and to
the development of great industrial centers. In science, also, the
invention and employment of new and more precise instruments and
appliances enable us to appreciate more clearly the signification of
facts and phenomena which were previously obscure, and to penetrate
more deeply into the mysteries of nature. They mark fresh departures in
the history of science, and provide a firm base of support from which a
continuous advance may be made and fresh conceptions of nature can be
evolved.

It is not my intention, even had I possessed the requisite knowledge,
to undertake so arduous a task as to review the progress which has
recently been made in the great body of sciences which lie within
the domain of the British Association. As my occupation in life
has required me to give attention to the science which deals with
the structure and organization of the bodies of man and animals--a
science which either includes within its scope or has intimate and
widespread relations to comparative anatomy, embryology, morphology,
zoölogy, physiology and anthropology--I shall limit myself to the
attempt to bring before you some of the more important observations
and conclusions which have a bearing on the present position of the
subject. As this is the closing year of the century it will not, I
think, be out of place to refer to the changes which a hundred years
have brought about in our fundamental conceptions of the structure of
animals. In science, as in business, it is well from time to time to
take stock of what we have been doing, so that we may realize where we
stand and ascertain the balance to our credit in the scientific ledger.

So far back as the time of the ancient Greeks it was known that the
human body and those of the more highly organized animals were not
homogeneous, but were built up of parts, the _partes dissimilares_ (τὰ
ἀνόμοια μέρη {ta anomoia merê}) of Aristotle, which differed from each
other in form, color, texture, consistency and properties. These parts
were familiarly known as the bones, muscles, sinews, blood-vessels,
glands, brain, nerves and so on. As the centuries rolled on, and
as observers and observations multiplied, a more and more precise
knowledge of these parts throughout the animal kingdom was obtained,
and various attempts were made to classify animals in accordance with
their forms and structure. During the concluding years of the last
century and the earlier part of the present, the Hunters, William and
John, in our country, the Meckels in Germany, Cuvier and St. Hilaire in
France, gave an enormous impetus to anatomical studies, and contributed
largely to our knowledge of the construction of the bodies of animals.
But whilst by these and other observers the most salient and, if I may
use the expression, the grosser characters of animal organization had
been recognized, little was known of the more intimate structure or
texture of the parts. So far as could be determined by the unassisted
vision, and so much as could be recognized by the use of a simple
lens, had indeed been ascertained, and it was known that muscles,
nerves and tendons were composed of threads or fibers, and the blood
and lymph-vessels were tubes, that the parts which we call fasciæ and
aponeuroses were thin membranes and so on.

Early in the present century, Xavier Bichat, one of the most brilliant
men of science during the Napoleonic era in France, published his
‘Anatomie Générale,’ in which he formulated important general
principles. Every animal is an assemblage of different organs, each of
which discharges a function, and acting together, each in its own way,
assists in the preservation of the whole. The organs are, as it were,
special machines situated in the general building which constitutes
the factory or body of the individual. But, further, each organ or
special machine is itself formed of tissues which possess different
properties. Some, as the blood-vessels, nerves, fibrous tissues, etc.,
are generally distributed throughout the animal body, whilst others,
as bones, muscles, and cartilage, etc., are found only in certain
definite localities. While Bichat had acquired a definite philosophical
conception of the general principles of construction and of the
distribution of the tissues, neither he nor his pupil Béclard was in a
position to determine the essential nature of the structural elements.
The means and appliances at their disposal and at that of other
observers in their generation were not sufficiently potent to complete
the analysis.

Attempts were made in the third decennium of this century to improve
the methods of examining minute objects by the manufacture of compound
lenses, and, by doing away with chromatic and spherical aberration, to
obtain, in addition to magnification of the object, a relatively large
flat field of vision with clearness and sharpness of definition. When
in January, 1830, Joseph Jackson Lister read to the Royal Society his
memoir “On Some Properties in Achromatic Object-Glasses Applicable to
the Improvement of Microscopes,” he announced the principles on which
combinations of lenses could be arranged, which would possess these
qualities. By the skill of our opticians, microscopes have now for more
than half a century been constructed which, in the hands of competent
observers, have influenced and extended biological science with results
comparable to those obtained by the astronomer through improvements in
the telescope.

In the study of the minute structure of plants and animals, the
observer has frequently to deal with tissues and organs, most of
which possess such softness and delicacy of substance and outline
that, even when microscopes of the best construction are employed,
the determination of the intimate nature of the tissue, and the
precise relation which one element of an organ bears to the other
constituent elements, is, in many instances, a matter of difficulty.
Hence additional methods have had to be devised in order to facilitate
study and to give precision and accuracy to our observations. It is
difficult for one of the younger generation of biologists, with all
the appliances of a well-equipped laboratory at his command, with
experienced teachers to direct him in his work, and with excellent
text-books, in which the modern methods are described, to realize the
conditions under which his predecessors worked half a century ago.
Laboratories for minute biological research had not been constructed,
the practical teaching of histology and embryology had not been
organized, experience in methods of work had not accumulated; each
man was left to his individual efforts, and had to puzzle his way
through the complications of structure to the best of his power.
Staining and hardening reagents were unknown. The double-bladed knife
invented by Valentin, held in the hand, was the only improvement on
the scalpel or razor for cutting thin, more or less translucent slices
suitable for microscopic examination; mechanical section-cutters and
freezing arrangements had not been devised. The tools at the disposal
of the microscopist were little more than knife, forceps, scissors,
needles; with acetic acid, glycerine and Canada balsam as reagents.
But in the employment of the newer methods of research care has to be
taken, more especially when hardening and staining reagents are used,
to discriminate between appearances which are to be interpreted as
indicating natural characters, and those which are only artificial
productions.

Notwithstanding the difficulties attendant on the study of the
more delicate tissues, the compound achromatic microscope provided
anatomists with an instrument of great penetrative power. Between the
years 1830 and 1850 a number of acute observers applied themselves with
much energy and enthusiasm to the examination of the minute structure
of the tissues and organs in plants and animals.


CELL THEORY.

It had, indeed, long been recognized that the tissues of plants were
to a large extent composed of minute vesicular bodies, technically
called cells (Hooke, Malpighi, Grew). In 1831 the discovery was made
by the great botanist, Robert Brown, that in many families of plants a
circular spot, which he named areola or nucleus, was present in each
cell; and in 1838 M. J. Schleiden published the fact that a similar
spot or nucleus was a universal elementary organ in vegetables. In
the tissues of animals also structures had begun to be recognized
comparable with the cells and nuclei of the vegetable tissues, and in
1839 Theodore Schwann announced the important generalization that
there is one universal principle of development for the elementary
part of organisms, however different they may be in appearance, and
that this principle is the formation of cells. The enunciation of the
fundamental principle that the elementary tissues consisted of cells
constituted a step in the progress of biological science which will
forever stamp the century now drawing to a close with a character and
renown equalling those which it has derived from the most brilliant
discoveries in the physical sciences. It provided biologists with the
visible anatomical units through which the external forces operating
on, and the energy generated in, living matter come into play. It
dispelled forever the old mystical idea of the influence exercised by
vapors or spirits in living organisms. It supplied the physiologist and
pathologist with the specific structures through the agency of which
the functions of organisms are discharged in health and disease. It
exerted an enormous influence on the progress of practical medicine. A
review of the progress of knowledge of the cell may appropriately enter
into an address on this occasion.


STRUCTURE OF CELLS.

A cell is a living particle, so minute that it needs a microscope for
its examination; it grows in size, maintains itself in a state of
activity, responds to the action of stimuli, reproduces its kind and in
the course of time it degenerates and dies.

Let us glance at the structure of a cell to determine its constituent
parts and the rôle which each plays in the function to be discharged.
The original conception of a cell, based upon the study of the
vegetable tissues, was a minute vesicle inclosed by a definite wall,
which exercised chemical or metabolic changes on the surrounding
material and secreted into the vesicle its characteristic contents. A
similar conception was at first also entertained regarding the cells
of animal tissues; but as observations multiplied, it was seen that
numerous elementary particles, which were obviously in their nature
cells, did not possess an inclosing envelope. A wall ceased to have a
primary value as a constituent part of a cell, the necessary vesicular
character of which therefore could no longer be entertained.

The other constituent parts of a cell are the cell plasm, which forms
the body of the cell, and the nucleus embedded in its substance.
Notwithstanding the very minute size of the nucleus, which even in
the largest cells is not more than one-five-hundredth of an inch in
diameter, and usually is considerably smaller, its almost constant
form, its well-defined sharp outline and its power of resisting the
action of strong reagents when applied to the cell, have from the
period of its discovery by Robert Brown caused histologists to bestow
on it much attention. Its structure and chemical composition; its mode
of origin; the part which it plays in the formation of new cells, and
its function in nutrition and secretion have been investigated.

When examined under favorable conditions in its passive or resting
state, the nucleus is seen to be bounded by a membrane which separates
it from the cell plasm and gives it the characteristic sharp contour.
It contains an apparently structureless nuclear substance, nucleoplasm
or enchylema, in which are embedded one or more extremely minute
particles called nucleoli, along with a network of exceedingly fine
threads or fibers, which in the active living cell play an essential
part in the production of new nuclei within the cell. In its chemical
composition the nuclear substance consists of albuminous plastin and
globulin; and of a special material named nuclein, rich in phosphorus
and with an acid reaction. The delicate network within the nucleus
consists apparently of the nuclein, a substance which stains with
carmine and other dyes, a property which enables the changes, which
take place in the network in the production of young cells, to be more
readily seen and followed out by the observer.

The mode of origin of the nucleus and the part which it plays in the
production of new cells have been the subject of much discussion.
Schleiden, whose observations, published in 1838, were made on the
cells of plants, believed that within the cell a nucleolus first
appeared, and that around it molecules aggregated to form the nucleus.
Schwann again, whose observations were mostly made on the cells of
animals, considered that an amorphous material existed in organized
bodies, which he called cytoblastema. It formed the contents of cells,
or it might be situated free or external to them. He figuratively
compared it to a mother liquor in which crystals are formed. Either in
the cytoblastema within the cells or in that situated external to them,
the aggregation of molecules around a nucleolus to form a nucleus might
occur, and, when once the nucleus had been formed, in its turn it would
serve as a center of aggregation of additional molecules from which
a new cell would be produced. He regarded, therefore, the formation
of nuclei and cells as possible in two ways--one within preëxisting
cells (endogenous cell-formation), the other in a free blastema lying
external to cells (free cell-formation). In animals, he says, the
endogenous method is rare, and the customary origin is in an external
blastema. Both Schleiden and Schwann considered that after the cell was
formed the nucleus had no permanent influence on the life of the cell,
and usually disappeared.

Under the teaching principally of Henle, the famous Professor of
Anatomy in Göttingen, the conception of the free formation of nuclei
and cells in a more or less fluid blastema, by an aggregation of
elementary granules and molecules, obtained so much credence,
especially amongst those who were engaged in the study of pathological
processes, that the origin of cells within preëxisting cells was to
a large extent lost sight of. That a parent cell was requisite for
the production of new cells seemed to many investigators to be no
longer needed. Without doubt this conception of free cell-formation
contributed in no small degree to the belief, entertained by various
observers, that the simplest plants and animals might arise, without
preëxisting parents, in organic fluids destitute of life, by a process
of spontaneous generation; a belief which prevailed in many minds
almost to the present day. If, as has been stated, the doctrine of
abiogenesis cannot be experimentally refuted, on the other hand it has
not been experimentally proved. The burden of proof lies with those who
hold the doctrine, and the evidence that we possess is all the other
way.


MULTIPLICATION OF CELLS.

Although von Mohl, the botanist, seems to have been the first to
recognize (1835) in plants a multiplication of cells by division,
it was not until attention was given to the study of the egg in
various animals and to the changes which take place in it, attendant
on fertilization, that in the course of time a much more correct
conception of the origin of the nucleus and of the part which it
plays in the formation of new cells was obtained. Before Schwann had
published his classical memoir in 1839, von Baer and other observers
had recognized within the animal ovum the germinal vesicle, which
obviously bore to the ovum the relation of a nucleus to a cell. As the
methods of observation improved, it was recognized that, within the
developing egg, two vesicles appeared where one only had previously
existed, to be followed by four vesicles, then eight, and so on in
multiple progression until the ovum contained a multitude of vesicles,
each of which possessed a nucleus. The vesicles were obviously cells
which had arisen within the original germ-cell or ovum. These changes
were systematically described by Martin Barry so long ago as 1839
and 1840 in two memoirs communicated to the Royal Society of London,
and the appearance produced, on account of the irregularities of the
surface occasioned by the production of new vesicles, was named by him
the mulberry-like structure. He further pointed out that the vesicles
arranged themselves as a layer within the envelope of the egg or zona
pellucida, and that the whole embryo was composed of cells filled
with the foundations of other cells. He recognized that the new cells
were derived from the germinal vesicle or nucleus of the ovum, the
contents of which entered into the formation of the first two cells,
each of which had its nucleus, which in its turn resolved itself
into other cells, and by a repetition of the process into a greater
number. The endogenous origin of new cells within a preëxisting cell
and the process which we now term the segmentation of the yolk were
successfully demonstrated. In a third memoir, published in 1841, Barry
definitely stated that young cells originated through division of
the nucleus of the parent cell, instead of arising, as a product of
crystallization, in the fluid cytoblastema of the parent cell or in a
blastema situated external to the cell.

In a memoir published in 1842, John Goodsir advocated the view that
the nucleus is the reproductive organ of the cell, and that from it,
as from a germinal spot, new cells were formed. In a paper, published
three years later, on nutritive centers, he described cells, the nuclei
of which were the permanent source of successive broods of young cells,
which from time to time occupied the cavity of the parent cell. He
extended also his observations on the endogenous formation of cells
to the cartilage cells in the process of inflammation and to other
tissues undergoing pathological changes. Corroborative observations on
endogenous formation were also given by his brother, Harry Goodsir,
in 1845. These observations on the part which the nucleus plays by
cleavage in the formation of young cells by endogenous development from
a parent center--that an organic continuity existed between a mother
cell and its descendants through the nucleus--constituted a great
step in advance of the views entertained by Schleiden and Schwann,
and showed that Barry and the Goodsirs had a deeper insight into the
nature and functions of cells than was possessed by most of their
contemporaries, and are of the highest importance when viewed in the
light of recent observations.

In 1841 Robert Remak published an account of the presence of two nuclei
in the blood corpuscles of the chick and the pig, which he regarded as
evidence of the production of new corpuscles by division of the nucleus
within a parent cell; but it was not until some years afterwards (1850
to 1855) that he recorded additional observations and recognized that
division of the nucleus was the starting-point for the multiplication
of cells in the ovum and in the tissues generally. Remak’s view was
that the process of cell division began with the cleavage of the
nucleolus, followed by that of the nucleus, and that again by cleavage
of the body of the cell and its membrane. Kölliker had previously, in
1843, described the multiplication of nuclei in the ova of parasitic
worms, and drew the inference that in the formation of young cells
within the egg the nucleus underwent cleavage, and that each of
its divisions entered into the formation of a new cell. By these
observations, and by others subsequently made, it became obvious that
the multiplication of animal cells, either by division of the nucleus
within the cell, or by the budding off of a part of the protoplasm
of the cell, was to be regarded as a widely spread and probably a
universal process, and that each new cell arose from a parent cell.

Pathological observers were, however, for the most part inclined
to consider free cell-formation in a blastema or exudation by an
aggregation of molecules, in accordance with the views of Henle,
as a common phenomenon. This proposition was attacked with great
energy by Virchow in a series of memoirs published in his ‘Archiv,’
commencing in Vol. 1, 1847, and finally received its death-blow in his
published lectures on Cellular Pathology, 1858. He maintained that
in pathological structures there was no instance of cell development
_de novo_; where a cell existed, there one must have been before.
Cell-formation was a continuous development by descent, which he
formulated in the expression _omnis cellula e cellulâ_.


KARYOKINESIS.

While the descent of cells from preëxisting cells by division of the
nucleus during the development of the egg, in the embryos of plants and
animals, and in adult vegetable and animal tissues, both in healthy and
diseased conditions, had now become generally recognized, the mechanism
of the process by which the cleavage of the nucleus took place was
for a long time unknown. The discovery had to be deferred until the
optician had been able to construct lenses of a higher penetrative
power, and the microscopist had learned the use of coloring agents
capable of dyeing the finest elements of the tissues. There was reason
to believe that in some cases a direct cleavage of the nucleus, to
be followed by a corresponding division of the cell into two parts,
did occur. In the period between 1870 and 1880 observations were made
by Schneider, Strasburger, Bütschli, Fol, van Beneden and Flemming,
which showed that the division of the nucleus and the cell was due to
a series of very remarkable changes, now known as indirect nuclear and
cell division, or karyokinesis. The changes within the nucleus are of
so complex a character that it is impossible to follow them in detail
without the use of appropriate illustrations. I shall have to content
myself, therefore, with an elementary sketch of the process.

I have previously stated that the nucleus in its passive or resting
stage contains a very delicate network of threads or fibers. The first
stage in the process of nuclear division consists in the threads
arranging themselves in loops and forming a compact coil within the
nucleus. The coil then becomes looser, the loops of threads shorten and
thicken, and somewhat later each looped thread splits longitudinally
into two portions. As the threads stain when coloring agents are
applied to them, they are called chromatin fibers, and the loose coil
is the chromosome (Waldeyer).

As the process continues, the investing membrane of the nucleus
disappears, and the loops of threads arrange themselves within the
nucleus so that the closed ends of the loops are directed to a common
center, from which the loops radiate outwards and produce a starlike
figure (aster). At the same time clusters of extremely delicate lines
appear both in the nucleoplasm and in the body of the cell, named the
achromatic figure, which has a spindle-like form with two opposite
poles, and stains much more feebly than the chromatic fibers. The loops
of the chromatic star then arrange themselves in the equatorial plane
of the spindle, and bending round turn their closed ends towards the
periphery of the nucleus and the cell.

The next stage marks an important step in the process of division of
the nucleus. The two longitudinal portions, into which each looped
thread had previously split, now separate from each other, and whilst
one part migrates to one pole of the spindle, the other moves to the
opposite pole, and the free ends of each loop are directed toward its
equator (metakinesis). By this division of the chromatin fibers, and
their separation from each other to opposite poles of the spindle, two
starlike chromatin figures are produced (dyaster).

Each group of fibers thickens, shortens, becomes surrounded by a
membrane, and forms a new or daughter nucleus (dispirem). Two nuclei
therefore have arisen within the cell by the division of that which had
previously existed, and the expression formulated by Flemming--_omnis
nucleus e nucleo_--is justified. Whilst this stage is in course of
being completed, the body of the cell becomes constricted in the
equatorial plane of the spindle, and, as the constriction deepens, it
separates into two parts, each containing a daughter nucleus, so that
two nucleated cells have arisen out of a preëxisting cell.

A repetition of the process in each of these cells leads to the
formation of other cells, and, although modifications in details are
found in different species of plants and animals, the multiplication of
cells in the egg and in the tissues generally on similar lines is now a
thoroughly established fact in biological science.

In the study of karyokinesis, importance has been attached to the
number of chromosomes in the nucleus of the cell. Flemming had seen
in the Salamander twenty-four chromosome fibers, which seems to be a
constant number in the cells of epithelium and connective tissues.
In other cells, again, especially in the ova of certain animals, the
number is smaller, and fourteen, twelve, four and even two only have
been described. The theory formulated by Boveri that the number of
chromosomes is constant for each species, and that in the karyokinetic
figures corresponding numbers are found in homologous cells, seems to
be not improbable.

In the preceding description I have incidentally referred to the
appearance in the proliferating cell of an achromatic spindle-like
figure. Although this was recognized by Fol in 1873, it is only during
the last ten or twelve years that attention has been paid to its more
minute arrangements and possible signification in cell-division.

The pole at each end of the spindle lies in the cell plasm which
surrounds the nucleus. In the center of each pole is a somewhat opaque
spot (central body) surrounded by a clear space, which, along with the
spot, constitutes the centrosome of the sphere of attraction. From
each centrosome extremely delicate lines may be seen to radiate in two
directions. One set extends towards the pole at the opposite end of the
spindle, and, meeting or coming into close proximity with radiations
from it, constitutes the body of the spindle, which, like a perforated
mantle, forms an imperfect envelope around the nucleus during the
process of division. The other set of radiations is called the polar
and extends in the region of the pole towards the periphery of the cell.

The question has been much discussed whether any constituent part of
the achromatic figure, or the entire figure, exists in the cell as a
permanent structure in its resting phase; or if it is only present
during the process of karyokinesis. During the development of the
egg the formation of young cells, by division of the segmentation
nucleus, is so rapid and continuous that the achromatic figure, with
the centrosome in the pole of the spindle, is a readily recognizable
object in each cell. The polar and spindle-like radiations are in
evidence during karyokinesis, and have apparently a temporary endurance
and function. On the other hand, van Beneden and Boveri were of
opinion that the central body of the centrosome did not disappear
when the division of the nucleus came to an end, but that it remained
as a constituent part of a cell lying in the cell plasm, near to
the nucleus. Flemming has seen the central body with its sphere in
leucocytes, as well as in epithelial cells and those of other tissues.
Subsequently Heidenhain and other histologists have recorded similar
observations. It would seem, therefore, as if there were reason to
regard the centrosome, like the nucleus, as a permanent constituent
of a cell. This view, however, is not universally entertained. If not
always capable of demonstration in the resting stage of a cell, it is
doubtless to be regarded as potentially present, and ready to assume,
along with the radiations, a characteristic appearance when the process
of nuclear division is about to begin.

One can scarcely regard the presence of so remarkable an appearance
as the achromatic figure without associating with it an important
function in the economy of the cell. As from the centrosome at the pole
of the spindle both sets of radiations diverge, it is not unlikely
that it acts as a center or sphere of energy and attraction. By
some observers the radiations are regarded as substantive fibrillar
structures, elastic or even contractile in their properties. Others,
again, look upon them as morphological expressions of chemical and
dynamical energy in the protoplasm of the cell body. On either theory
we may assume that they indicate an influence, emanating, it may be,
from the centrosome and capable of being exercised both on the cell
plasm and on the nucleus contained in it. On the contractile theory,
the radiations which form the body of the spindle, either by actual
traction of the supposed fibrillæ or by their pressure on the nucleus
which they surround, might impel during karyokinesis the dividing
chromosome elements toward the poles of the spindle, to form there the
daughter nuclei. On the dynamical theory, the chemical and physical
energy in the centrosome might influence the cell plasm and the nucleus
and attract the chromosome elements of the nucleus to the poles of the
spindle. The radiated appearance would therefore be consequent and
attendant on the physico-chemical activity of the centrosome. One or
other of these theories may also be applied to the interpretation of
the significance of the polar radiations.


CELL PLASM.

In the cells of plants, in addition to the cell wall, the cell body
and the cell juice require to be examined. The material of the cell
body, or the cell contents, was named by von Mohl (1846) protoplasm,
and consisted of a colorless tenacious substance which partly lined the
cell wall (primordial utricle) and partly traversed the interior of
the cell as delicate threads inclosing spaces (vacuoles) in which the
cell juice was contained. In the protoplasm the nucleus was embedded.
Nägeli, about the same time, had also recognized the difference between
the protoplasm and the other contents of vegetable cells, and had
noticed its nitrogenous composition.

Though the analogy with a closed bladder or vesicle could no longer
be sustained in the animal tissues, the name ‘cell’ continued to be
retained for descriptive purposes, and the body of the cell was spoken
of as a more or less soft substance inclosing a nucleus (Leydig). In
1861 Max Schultze adopted for the substance forming the body of the
animal cell the term ‘protoplasm.’ He defined a cell to be a particle
of protoplasm in the substance of which a nucleus was situated. He
regarded the protoplasm, as indeed had previously been pointed out by
the botanist Unger, as essentially the same as the contractile sarcode
which constitutes the body and pseudopodia of the Amœba and other
Rhizopoda. As the term ‘protoplasm,’ as well as that of ‘bioplasm’
employed by Lionel Beale in a somewhat similar though not precisely
identical sense, involves certain theoretical views of the origin and
function of the body of the cell, it would be better to apply to it the
more purely descriptive term ‘cytoplasm’ or ‘cell plasm.’

Schultze defined protoplasm as a homogeneous, glassy, tenacious
material, of a jelly-like or somewhat firmer consistency, in which
numerous minute granules were embedded. He regarded it as the part
of the cell especially endowed with vital energy, whilst the exact
function of the nucleus could not be defined. Based upon this
conception of the jelly-like character of protoplasm, the idea for a
time prevailed that a structureless, dimly granular, jelly or slime
destitute of organization, possessed great physiological activity, and
was the medium through which the phenomena of life were displayed.

More accurate conceptions of the nature of the cell plasm soon began
to be entertained. Brücke recognized that the body of the cell was
not simple, but had a complex organization. Hemming observed that the
cell plasm contained extremely delicate threads, which frequently
formed a network, the interspaces of which were occupied by a more
homogeneous substance. Where the threads crossed each other, granular
particles (milkrosomen) were situated. Bütschli considered that he
could recognize in the cell plasm a honeycomb-like appearance, as if
it consisted of excessively minute chambers in which a homogeneous
more or less fluid material was contained. The polar and spindle-like
radiations visible during the process of karyokinesis, which have
already been referred to, and the presence of the centrosome, possibly
even during the resting stage of the cell, furnished additional
illustrations of differentiation within the cell plasm. In many cells
there appears also to be a difference in the character of the cell
plasm which immediately surrounds the nucleus and that which lies at
and near the periphery of the cell. The peripheral part (ektoplasma)
is more compact and gives a definite outline to the cell, although
not necessarily differentiating into a cell membrane. The inner part
(endoplasma) is softer and is distinguished by a more distinct granular
appearance and by containing the products specially formed in each
particular kind of cell during the nutritive process.

By the researches of numerous investigators on the internal
organization of cells in plants and animals, a large body of evidence
has now been accumulated, which shows that both the nucleus and the
cell plasm consist of something more than a homogeneous, more or less
viscid, slimy material. Recognizable objects in the form of granules,
threads, or fibers can be distinguished in each. The cell plasm and
the nucleus respectively are therefore not of the same constitution
throughout, but possess polymorphic characters, the study of which in
health and the changes produced by disease will for many years to come
form important matters for investigation.

  (To be concluded.)




THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.

BY FREDERICK G. NOVY, SC.D., M.D.,

JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.


The province of Yunnan in China adjoins French Tonkin and British
Burmah. It is of interest to the student of epidemiology because from
this mountainous and difficultly accessible region there has issued but
recently a disease which has been considered as practically extinct.
Frightful as have been the ravages of the pest in the middle ages, it
is noteworthy that during the past hundred years, with the exception of
two slight outbreaks (Noja in Italy in 1815, and Vetlianka in Russia
in 1878), the disease has been unknown in Europe. During this time the
pest has not been extinct, but has existed to a greater or less extent
in certain parts of Asia and in Africa. Four and possibly five of these
endemic foci are known to-day. The province of Yunnan is one of these
regions. The mountainous district of Gurhwal, lying along the southern
slope of the Himalayas, is another center where the pest has continued
to prevail. The recent travels of Koch in eastern Africa have brought
to light a third region about Lake Victoria, in the British province of
Uganda, and the German Kisiba, where the plague has existed from time
immemorial, cut off as it were from the outer world. Only last year
Sakharoff called attention to a fourth focus in northeastern China, and
it is quite likely that a fifth focus exists in Arabia. These regions
are of great importance in so far as the existence of permanent endemic
foci sheds not a little light upon the development and spread of those
great epidemics which, like great tidal waves, have in the past swept
over whole countries and even continents.

It is not known when or from whence the pest was first introduced into
Yunnan. Unquestionably, it has existed in the extreme western parts of
the province for many decades. Eventually the disease spread throughout
the province, and frightful ravages are known to have occurred in
1871-73. Repeated visitations of this dread disease have taught the
natives of Yunnan, as well as those of Gurhwal and of Uganda, to desert
their villages as soon as an unusual mortality is found to prevail
among the rats. In spite of the frequent recurrence of the plague, it
did not spread to neighboring provinces, largely because of the fact
that little or no communication exists between Yunnan and the adjoining
Chinese states. Recently, however, the plague did succeed in crossing
the frontier, and, in so doing, it has given rise to an epidemic
which, as will be presently seen, has already made an unenviable record
and has a future that no one can foretell.

The way in which the disease spread from Yunnan has been quite clearly
established. Along the Tonkin frontier, throughout the provinces of
Quan-si and Yunnan, the Chinese maintain a large number of military
posts. Mule supply-trains for these posts passed from province to
province over the difficult mountain paths. The mule-drivers were
natives of Yunnan. In 1892 the plague existed in Yunnan, and it was in
the summer of 1893 that the disease appeared at Long-Cheou in Quansi
among the Yunnan mule-drivers. These drivers arriving at the post of
Lieng-Cheng, after one of their journeys from Yunnan, repaired to the
city of Long-Cheou, about ten miles distant. During their sojourn in
this city the muleteers developed the first known cases of the plague.
From these men the disease spread throughout the city and to the
neighboring posts and villages.

From Long-Cheou the plague descended the Canton River and reached
Naning-Phu. From thence it followed overland to the seaport Pakhoi,
some hundred and fifty miles distant. A few months later, in February,
1894, it reached Canton, either by descending the river from Naning-Phu
or by boat from Pakhoi. That the plague at Canton, in 1894, had not
lost any of its old-time destructiveness is seen in the fact that it is
estimated to have caused not less than one hundred thousand deaths in
Canton in the short space of two months.

From Canton the plague spread to Hong Kong in April, 1894. It was
during the existence of this epidemic that the first bacteriological
studies of the disease were made and resulted in the discovery of the
plague bacillus. In the fall of 1894, the disease died out in Hong
Kong, but it reappeared in 1895 and 1896. Considering the fact that
Hong Kong is one of the most important maritime centers, it is not
surprising to find that in the spring of 1896 the plague was carried
by shipping to the Island of Formosa. It is quite certain that about
the same time the plague was carried from Hong Kong to Bombay. At all
events, the existence of this disease was recognized in Bombay in
September, 1896, by Doctor Viegas. Previous to this date, the mortality
in Bombay was abnormally high, undoubtedly due to the very unsanitary
condition of the overcrowded city.

The existence of famine in India, together with the filthy, overcrowded
condition of the population, enabled the plague to gain a firm foothold
in a relatively short time. Indeed, there can be no doubt but that the
disease was well established at the time it was first recognized. It
is no wonder, then, that in spite of the most stringent precautions,
it spread like wildfire, so that in a short time the weekly deaths
from the plague rose to nearly 2,000. In the face of such a relentless
enemy, it is but natural that a large proportion of the population
should seek safety in flight. It is believed that fully 300,000 people
left Bombay shortly after the plague developed. There can be no doubt
but that these refugees, directly or indirectly, carried the disease
to the neighboring villages, and thus contributed to the enormous
dissemination of the pest throughout Western India. In the Presidency
of Bombay there were reported, in less than three years, more than
220,000 cases, with more than 164,000 deaths. When it is furthermore
recognized that the natives concealed the existence of the disease
as much as possible, it will be evident that these figures reveal a
partial but, nevertheless, a grim truth.

With Bombay and the surrounding country thus seriously infected, it
became merely a question of time when the disease would be carried to
other ports and countries, by vessels and by overland routes. In spite
of the sanitary perfection which we may flatter ourselves on having
attained in recent years, it is nevertheless a fact that the disease
is slowly but steadily and, as it were, stealthily invading port after
port. That the sanitary methods, however, are not at fault is seen
in the fact that when an early and prompt recognition occurred, the
disease has been held in check. The insidious spread of the disease is
rather due to the enormous development of commerce and to the rapid
means of communication with distant countries.

From Bombay the plague has spread to ports on the Persian Gulf, on
the Red Sea, and has reached Alexandria. Aden, Djeddah, Port Said,
Cairo, have all had outbreaks of the disease. Beirut and Smyrna have
each developed straggling cases. Isolated cases have been met with
in London, at St. Petersburg and in Vienna. However, only three
appreciable outbreaks have as yet occurred on European soil. The first
was that at Oporto in Portugal, where one hundred and sixty cases,
with fifty-five deaths, have developed up to the present time. The
second outbreak occurred at Kolobovka, a village near Astrakhan. Of
the twenty-four cases that developed there in July and August, 1899,
twenty-three died. The last outbreak is that at Glasgow, where the
disease made its appearance but a few weeks ago.

In addition to following the great international highway of Suez,
the disease has insidiously spread to the countries of East Africa.
Mauritius and Madagascar, with the adjoining mainland of Mozambique and
Lorenzo Marquez, have become more or less infected, and, if reports
are to be credited, it has also appeared in one of the Boer towns
and also on the Ivory Coast in Western Africa. Last fall the disease
reached South America. It apparently was first recognized at Santos,
in Brazil, during October, although early in September, according to
reports, a peculiar disease, causing swelling of the glands and death
within forty-eight hours, was reported at Asunçion, the capital of
Paraguay. At the present time Rio Janeiro is infected. The sanitary
condition of these South American cities is far from being the best,
and, consequently, there is but little hope that the disease will be
eradicated or even held in check. With South America more or less
thoroughly infected, it is evident that the United States, as well as
Europe, are now threatened from all sides. The gravity of the situation
is seen in the fact that already last November two cases of the plague
were found in New York harbor aboard a coffee ship from Santos. Several
cases have also developed on ships bound from the latter city for
Mediterranean ports.

The United States is threatened not merely from the East Atlantic
and South Atlantic, but also from the Pacific. As a matter of fact,
the danger to our Pacific ports is greater, owing to the direct
communication with the Orient. It has been already indicated that
Hong Kong has continued to be infected ever since 1894. On several
occasions it disappeared during the winter months, only to reappear in
spring. With the more or less constant prevalence of the plague at this
great seaport, it necessarily will lead directly or indirectly to a
dissemination of the disease along the entire Pacific. Already it has
prevailed at Amoy, and has even extended to other Chinese ports as far
as Niu-Chwang. For several years it has already persisted on the island
of Formosa. Japan was invaded last fall at Kobe and at Osaka, and
although it disappeared during the winter, yet only a few weeks ago it
has reappeared at the latter city. Sidney in Australia, and Noumea in
New Caledonia, are also infected at the present time.

Manila, Honolulu and San Francisco have successively become infected.
In all these places the disease, with but very few exceptions, has
attacked the native or Oriental population. The extinction of the
plague in the Hawaiian Islands since the end of March is a splendid
demonstration of what energetic, vigorous measures can accomplish. The
presence of the plague since March 8 in Chinatown, in San Francisco, is
readily recognized as a most serious condition, especially after the
courts have granted an injunction restraining the health officers from
carrying out the necessary vigorous preventive measures.

A few words should be given here to the overland dissemination of the
disease. Europe is not merely threatened by infected ships which may
come from China, India, Eastern Africa or South America. The overland
routes from China and India are fully as grave a source of danger.
Indeed, as will be presently shown, these are the routes along which
the great epidemics of cholera and plague have always traveled in the
past.

One of these great caravan routes leads from Lahore in Punjab through
Afghanistan into the Russian province of Turkestan, where it meets the
Trans-Caspian railway. This railway begins at Samarcand in Turkestan,
and passes through Bokhara, Merv, Askabad and ends at Uzun Ada on the
Caspian Sea opposite Baku. Early in 1899 an outbreak of the plague
occurred near Samarcand, undoubtedly brought up from India. The
precautions taken to prevent the spread were entirely successful, and
although no accounts have been officially published as to the means
employed, nevertheless it will be seen that the radical procedure
employed by Loris Melikoff some twenty years ago was again resorted
to. Inasmuch as the entire village was said to be afflicted it was
surrounded by troops, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. The
village and all that it contained was destroyed by fire. With this
route open continually it is evident that fresh importation must be
expected sooner or later.

Apparently a new plague focus, independent of that in Yunnan and Hong
Kong, has been recently discovered in Manchuria. The plague seems
to have existed in this province for more than ten years under the
name of Tarabagan plague, and is believed to be spread by a rodent,
the Arctomis cobuc, which is subject to a hemorrhagic pneumonia. The
presence of such an independent endemic focus in Manchuria indicates
the possibility of the spread of the disease by caravan to Lake Baikal,
and thence by the Siberian railroad to Russia. Indeed, the epidemic
of pneumonic type which began July, 1899, at Kolobovka, in Astrakhan,
while it may have been imported from Persia, might also owe its origin
to the Mongolian focus.

Russia, however, is not the only country endangered by the overland
transmission of the disease. There are commercial highways which lead
from Northwestern India through Baluchistan and Persia to the Caucasus,
and through Turkey to Constantinople. Grave danger threatens from this
source, and more especially from the cities along the Persian Gulf. Two
important cities here are already infected, namely, Bushire, in Persia,
and Bassorah on the Tigris, in Turkey. It would appear as if Turkey and
Persia would escape with difficulty from a visitation of this dread
disease.

Such, then, is the geographical distribution of the present outbreak
of the plague. This, an apparently extinct disease, has suddenly
reappeared and given evidence of its power to spread death and
desolation. Fortunately, however, modern sanitary precautions are quite
able to restrict its progress, provided they be applied at the proper
time and place. Filth and overcrowding, protracted wars and famine,
have been the powerful allies of the plague in the past. Through their
aid this disease has made a deep impression upon the pages of history.
It may not be out of place, therefore, to turn from the present
outbreak of the disease and trace its grewsome past.

In ancient writings references are found which would seem to indicate
the existence of the plague at a very early date. The Bible contains
several such references (Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, paragraph 27. Samuel
I, Chapter 5, paragraphs 6, 9). The latter especially deals with the
plague which attacked the Philistines after they took the ark. The
rôle of rats in the dissemination of the disease is, as some believe,
apparently referred to in the trespass offering of “five golden emerods
and five golden mice.” The return of the ark, together with this
trespass offering, brought also the plague, “because they had looked
into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand
and threescore and ten men.” Poussin’s painting of this Philistine
plague, exhibited in the Louvre, shows several dead rats on the
streets. It is evident that the susceptibility of the rat to the plague
had been noticed even at this early date. The plague of boils visited
upon the Egyptians as related in Exodus (Chapter 9, paragraphs 9 and
10) has also been taken to indicate the pest of today, but neither of
these scriptural references can be said to be sufficiently definite.

The Attic plague, which ravaged the Peloponnesus 430 years before
Christ, has been accurately described by an eye-witness, the historian
Thucydides. His narration may be considered the earliest exact record
of an epidemic. Like all the great epidemics of subsequent ages, it was
ushered in by the overcrowding, the misery and the famine consequent
upon prolonged wars. The combustible material was there, and all that
necessary was the spark to begin the work of death and devastation. It
is noteworthy that the origin of the pest was traced by Thucydides to
Egypt or Ethiopia, from whence it spread gradually overland to Asia
Minor and thence by boat to Athens. The nature of this first great
historic epidemic is and will remain uncertain. There are those who
consider the Attic pestilence as one of bubonic plague, but the fact
that in the very careful description of the disease no mention is
made of buboes and the statement that death occurred from the seventh
to the ninth day would indicate that the disease was something else.
Buboes are characteristic, it is true, of the plague, but it should
be remembered that outbreaks of the pneumonic form, with little or no
glandular enlargement are not uncommon. Death, however, in the case of
plague is very common on the second or third day, and is less liable
to occur in more protracted cases. These facts lead to the commonly
accepted belief that the Attic pest was not the bubonic plague. It may
have been typhus fever, possibly smallpox.

The great pestilence which devastated Rome and its dependencies in 166,
Anno Domini, is known as the plague of Antoninus or of Galen. This
prolonged epidemic was brought to Rome by the returning legions from
Seleucia. It was not characterized by buboes, and it is very probable
that it was largely smallpox. On the other hand, the plague of Saint
Cyprian, which prevailed from 251 to 266 Anno Domini, may have been
partly bubonic in nature, since, it prevailed during the fall and
winter months and ceased during the hot summer. The disease was said
to be communicated by means of clothing and by the look. It spread from
Ethiopia to Egypt and thence through the known world.

Although the above early epidemics cannot be identified with the
bubonic plague, there is nevertheless excellent evidence of the
existence of this disease in remote antiquity. The first undoubted
testimony on this point is that furnished by Rufus of Ephesus, who
lived in the first century of the Christian era. The writings of this
author are no longer extant, but they are quoted by Oribasius, the
physician and friend of Julian the Apostate, who lived in the fourth
century. The writings of Oribasius were discovered in the Vatican
Library and were published early in this century by Cardinal Mai.
In the forty-fourth “Book of Oribasius” occurs the extract taken
from Rufus of Ephesus, from which it appears that “the so-called
pestilential buboes are all fatal and have a very acute course,
especially when observed in Libya, Egypt and in Syria. Dionysius
mentions it. Dioscorides and Posidonius have described it at length in
their treatise upon the plague which prevailed during their time in
Libya.” The description which then follows of the buboes and of the
disease is an exact counterpart of the present plague. The writings
of the authors quoted by Rufus are no longer extant, but one thing
is certain, and that is that the Dionysius referred to lived not
later than 300 years before Christ. The other two physicians lived in
Alexandria contemporaneous with the birth of Christ. It may, therefore,
be considered as an established fact that the plague existed in Egypt,
Libya and Syria as early as 300 years before Christ. This is of
especial interest in view of the recent discovery by Koch of an endemic
plague focus in British Uganda and German Kisiba, at the headwaters of
the Nile. Whether it ever invaded European territory prior to the sixth
century is unknown.

The great plague of Justinian which broke out in 542, Anno Domini,
appeared first in Egypt, and from thence it spread east and west
throughout the known world and persisted for more than a half century.
So unknown was the plague in Europe at that time that the physicians
of Constantinople considered it a new disease. Procopius, who was an
eye-witness of the plague at Constantinople, states that the daily
mortality in that city was at times over 10,000.

The pandemic of Justinian resulted in the distribution of the plague
for the first time throughout the length and breadth of known Europe.
From that time on the early chroniclers make repeated mention of
devastating plagues consequent upon the miseries of war and famine.
The descriptions of these pestilences are, as a rule, insufficient
to identify them with the bubonic plague. Typhus, scurvy, smallpox
and other diseases undoubtedly alternated in the work of destruction.
Of the scores of epidemics thus recorded during the eight centuries
following this first visitation few, indeed, can be identified to a
certainty with the bubonic plague, and yet there can be no doubt but
that this disease occupied no second rank during the dreary darkness
of the middle ages. This era in history may be said to have been
ushered in by the Justinian plague, and it was closed by an even more
disastrous outbreak of this same disease. All the ravages and slaughter
consequent upon the great historic battles, when taken together, pale
into insignificance on comparison with that dread visitation of the
fourteenth century, the ‘black death’.

It is noteworthy that this great historic epidemic did not originate
in Egypt, as did many of its predecessors. Without exception the
contemporaneous writers ascribe its origin to Cathay, or the China of
today. This fact is of interest when it is borne in mind that at the
present time we know of the existence of two endemic foci in China,
besides that of Gurhwal in India, of Beni Cheir in Arabia and of Uganda
and Kisiba in Africa. Whatever may have been its source, the fact is
that it advanced from the Orient along the three principal routes of
travel. One of these led from the Persian Gulf through Bassorah and
Bagdad along the Euphrates, across Arabia to Egypt and Northern Africa.
Another route passed from India through Afghanistan, and skirting the
southern borders of the Caspian and Black Seas, eventually reached Asia
Minor. A third route from Turkestan and China led around the northern
shore of the Caspian Sea to Crimea, and thence to Constantinople. It
was along these several routes that the plague advanced and spread over
most of Western Asia and Northern Africa.

The European black death, however, can be traced with accuracy to the
Crimean peninsula. Gaffa, a town in Crimea, now known as Theodosia,
had been founded and fortified by the Genoese. It, as well as other
cities along the Black Sea, was largely populated by Italians. One
of these, Gabriel de Mussis, a lawyer in Gaffa, has left a faithful
account of his experience and share in the introduction of the plague
into Europe. In 1346 in the Orient numberless Tartars and Saracens
were attacked with an unknown disease and sudden death. In the city
of Tanais, through some excess, a racial struggle ensued between the
Tartars and the Italian merchants. The latter eventually escaped and
took refuge in Gaffa, which in time was besieged by the Tartars. During
the siege, which lasted three years, the Tartar hordes were attacked
by the plague, which daily carried off many thousands. The besiegers,
despairing of reducing the city by direct attack, attempted to do so
in another way. By means of their engines of war they projected the
dead bodies into the beleaguered city, which, as a result, soon became
infected. The Christian defenders took to their ships, and abandoning
Gaffa, sailed westward, touching at Constantinople, Greece, Italy and
France.

Wherever the infected vessels touched they left the plague.
Constantinople thus became infected early in 1347. During the summer
Greece, Sardinia, Corsica and parts of the Italian coast developed
the disease. In the fall it reached Marseilles. The following year it
spread inland into Italy, France, Spain, and even into England. In
another year or two it spread over Germany, Russia, and crossed to the
Scandinavian peninsula. Within four years it had completed the circuit
of Europe, spreading untold death and misery. No greater catastrophe
has been recorded in the history of the world.

The rapidity with which the disease spread among the fugitives from
Gaffa, and in the cities visited by their ships, is despairingly
narrated by De Mussis, who, returning in one of the ships to Genoa,
says: “After landing we entered our homes. Inasmuch as a grave disease
had befallen us, and of the thousands that journeyed with us scarcely
ten remained, the relatives, friends and neighbors hastened to greet
us. Woe to us who brought with us the darts of death, who scattered
the deadly poison through the breath of our words.” According to this
writer 40,000 died in Genoa, leaving scarcely a seventh of the original
population. Venice was said to have lost 100,000, Naples 60,000, Sienna
70,000, Florence 100,000. All told, Italy lost half of its population.

Of the contemporaneous writers none has printed the horrors of the
plague more vividly than does Boccaccio in his introduction to the
‘Decameron.’

“What magnificent dwellings, what notable palaces were then depopulated
to the last person! What families extinct! What riches and vast
possessions left, and no known heir to inherit! What numbers of both
sexes in the prime and vigor of youth, whom in the morning either
Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius himself but would have declared in
perfect health, after dining with their friends here have supped with
their departed friends in the other world!”

From Marseilles the plague spread through Provence with disastrous
results. In some monasteries not even a single survivor was left. In
one of these Petrarch’s brother buried thirty-four of his companions.
At Avignon, the seat of the Pope, 1,800 deaths occurred in three days.
In Paris more than fifty thousand died of the plague.

In England the black death appeared in August, 1348, and continued
till the autumn of 1349, when it disappeared. London, which at that
time probably had a population of 45,000, had a mortality of about
20,000. No exact statement can be made of the relative mortality in
England, although many undoubtedly extravagant guesses are recorded by
contemporaneous writers.

It is estimated that the population of Europe previous to the outbreak
of the black death was about one hundred and five millions. One quarter
of the population, or about twenty-five millions, are said to have
died of the plague. This may be but a mere estimate, it may be grossly
inaccurate, but it nevertheless indicates the deadly character of the
pestilence. According to a report made to Pope Clement VI, the total
mortality for the known world was placed at forty-three millions.
One-half the population of Italy succumbed. The Order of Minorites in
Italy lost 300,000 members. The Order of Capuchins in Germany lost
126,000 members, while the total of deaths in Germany was placed at
1,200,000.

The invasion of Europe by the black death was sudden and rapid. The
seeds of the disease, once planted on European soil, persisted, as
might be expected, for no little time. Although the great epidemic was
said to have lasted till 1360, it must not be inferred that it then
ceased altogether. Diverse localities retained the infection, and, as
a result, new outbreaks, though to a less extent, continued to outcrop
during the following years. From that time on every decade or two
witnessed more or less pronounced outbreaks of the disease in France,
England and Italy. The chroniclers of those local outbreaks during the
latter half of the fourteenth and during the entire fifteenth century
did not always make it clear that the pestilence described was the
real plague. It was but natural to include typhus and other diseases
under the dreaded term of pest. Nevertheless, the frequency of these
outbreaks indicates the persistence and the wide dissemination of the
plague during those years.

During the sixteenth century the plague apparently began to show a
decrease in its frequency, although during this period, as before,
other epidemic diseases were mistaken for it. Germany, Holland, certain
cities in France, and especially in Italy were scourged by the plague
during this century. The noteworthy outbreak in Italy in 1575-77 was
due to fresh importation from the Orient. The disease spread throughout
Italy, and the devastation it caused was not inferior to that of the
great plague two centuries before. For example, in 1576 in Venice
70,000 died of the disease.

During the seventeenth century the plague asserted itself with great
severity. Following a famine, it prevailed in Russia in 1601-1603, and
some idea of its destructiveness may be gained when it is stated that
in Moscow alone 127,000 lives were taken. During the following decade
even greater epidemics prevailed in Western Europe. France and England
were invaded, and in Switzerland it even penetrated to the highest
Alps. Basel in 1609-1611 had 4,000 deaths, while London in 1603 yielded
33,000.

The terrible epidemic which ravaged Northern Italy in 1629-1631
deserves more than a passing notice. During those years more than a
million died of the disease. Scarcely a town in Northern Italy escaped.
The city which, perhaps, suffered the most was Milan, where, in 1630,
the deaths from all diseases are said to have amounted to 186,000.
The Milan outbreak has been graphically described by Manzoni, in his
celebrated ‘I Promessi Sposi.’ Unrecognized, the disease entered
Milan in October, 1629. The mild cases which were met with during
the winter months lulled the fears of the people and encouraged the
mass of physicians to deny the existence of the plague. But in April
the disease began to assert itself in terrible earnest. The frenzied
populace, blind to the contagiousness of the disease, were possessed
with the strange hallucination that obtained during former plague
epidemics in other Italian cities, that the pest spread because of
poison scattered about by evil-minded persons. Suspicious strangers
were, as a result, stoned in the streets, imprisoned and even put to
death by legal process because of such fanatical beliefs. To offset
the growing pestilence, the people demanded of the Archbishop that
a solemn religious procession be held, and that the holy relics of
Saint Charles be exposed. At first this was refused, but eventually
it was granted. The procession bearing the saintly body was solemnly
held on the 11th of June. The fanatical security which these devotions
engendered was rudely shattered when, a few days later, the disease
burst forth with renewed activity among all classes in all parts of the
city. Nevertheless, as Manzoni observes, the faith was such that none
recognized that the procession itself was directly the cause of the new
outburst of the disease by facilitating the spread of the contagion.
Again the belief asserted itself that the ‘untori,’ or poisoners, mixed
with the crowd and with their unguents and powders had infected as
many as possible. From that day the fury of the contagion continued
to grow to such an extent that scarcely a house remained exempt from
the disease. The number of patients in the pesthouse rose from 2,000
to 12,000, and later reached 17,000. The daily mortality rose from 500
to 1,200, then 1,500, and is even said to have reached 3,500. Milan,
before the epidemic, was said to have had a population of from 200,000
to 250,000. The loss by death has been variously estimated at from
140,000 to 186,000. All these deaths were not due to the plague. Thus,
large numbers of children died as a result of starvation consequent
upon the death of their parents from the plague.

The horrors attendant upon such a dreadful visitation can well be
imagined. Scarcity of help in removing the dead and in taking care
of the sick made itself felt, to say nothing of the lack of food.
Enormous trenches, one after another, were filled with the bodies of
the victims, carried thither by the hardened _monatti_, the counterpart
of the Florentine _becchini_, so well portrayed by Lord Lytton in his
‘Rienzi.’ These bearers of the sick and dead were naturally recruited
from the lowest criminal classes, and it can, therefore, cause but
little wonder that an epidemic of the worst of crimes was associated
with that of the plague.

In 1656 Italy was again invaded by the plague, and on that occasion
Genoa lost 65,000 of its population by death. About the same time
terrible epidemics of the disease ravaged Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

London, in 1665, suffered dreadfully from the plague. The disease
appears to have been imported from Holland, where it was known to have
existed for some time. The progress of the disease in London has been
vividly portrayed by Defoe in the ‘Journal of the Plague Year’ and in
the ‘Due Preparations for the Plague.’

It is supposed that the pest had been imported in bales of goods from
Smyrna into Holland in 1663. From thence it crossed over to London,
where the first deaths were reported about the first of December in
1664. Toward the end of that month another death occurred in the same
house, but during the following six weeks no new case developed. About
the middle of February, however, a person died of the plague in another
house. From that time only occasional cases of plague were reported,
although the weekly mortality was rapidly rising and was greatly in
excess of the usual rate. Thus, while the ordinary weekly mortality
ranged from two hundred and forty to three hundred, this was gradually
increased, so that in the third week in January it had risen to four
hundred and seventy-four. After a slight remission, the mortality again
rose, so that early in May plague cases were reported more frequently.
It soon became evident that the plague, as in Milan in 1630, had
slowly but surely gained a firm foothold. The increased mortality was
undoubtedly due to unsuspected plague cases of either the pneumonic or
the septicemic type.

During May, and especially during the hot weather in June, the disease
continued to spread. At the same time, the panic-stricken people began
to leave the city in large numbers. In July the condition was truly
deplorable. To quote Defoe:

    “London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did
    not go about the streets, indeed, for nobody put on black or made
    a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the
    voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of
    women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where
    their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were
    so frequent to be heard as we passed in the streets, that it was
    enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them.
    Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially
    in the first part of the visitation; for toward the latter end
    men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their
    eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of
    their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the
    next hour.”

London at this time had a population of nearly half a million. The
deaths from the plague during 1665, as reported in the bills of
mortality, are 68,596. By far the larger number of these occurred in
August, September and October. The weekly mortality from the disease
rose from a few cases in May to over 7,000 per week in September. It
may, indeed, be close to the truth when Defoe states that 3,000 were
said to have been buried in one night.

The great plague of London in 1665 was by no means the only visitation
of that kind. From the time of the black death in 1348, London had a
continuous record of plague infection. On an average it had an epidemic
of plague every fifteen years. Some of these were fully as severe as
that of 1665. Thus, in 1603, with a population of 250,000, there were
over 33,000 reported deaths from the plague. In 1625, 41,000 died of
pest out of a population of 320,000.

One of the most remarkable facts in connection with the great plague
is this--that it was the last in England. The great fire of 1666 is
supposed to have extinguished the plague, but this cannot be said to
be true. The disease continued to a slight extent in 1666 and isolated
cases were reported as late as 1679, but after that date it disappeared
completely and from that time until this year England has been
absolutely free from the plague. The sudden extinction of the plague in
England after it had become domesticated, so to speak, for nearly three
centuries, is indeed difficult to explain. Creighton sees an inhibiting
influence in the growth of the practice of burial in coffins. But the
absence of famine, together with the cessation of domestic wars and
strife and the abeyance of want and misery, had not a little effect. As
will presently be seen, the extinction of the plague in England was no
more remarkable than its disappearance from Western Europe.

The history of plague in the seventeenth century does not close with
the London epidemic. From 1675-1684 the disease ravaged Northern
Africa, Turkey, and from thence invaded Austria and even reached
Southern Germany. The Vienna outbreak of 1679 can be said to have been
no less terrible than that of Milan or of London. The deaths from the
plague in Vienna in that year have been variously estimated at from
70,000 to double that number.

From Vienna the plague reached Prague, where in 1861 it is said to
have caused no less than 83,000 deaths. It is not to be wondered at
that a nation scourged by thirty years of relentless warfare, by
religious persecution and finally tried thus severely by the plague
should inscribe upon the equestrian statue of their patron saint the
heart-rending appeal, ‘Lord, grant that we do not perish.’

The close of the seventeenth century saw the disappearance of the
plague from Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, however, the disease
continued to exist even during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless,
a change had taken place for the better, and as the years went on the
retrogression of the plague became more and more distinct.

During the first two decades of the eighteenth century the plague
was widely distributed in Eastern Europe. It was present especially
in Constantinople and in the Danubian provinces. From the latter it
extended to Russia (Ukraine), and from thence to Poland. The disastrous
invasion of Russia by Charles XII. of Sweden, ending in his defeat at
Poltawa in 1709, led to its further dissemination to Silesia, Eastern
Prussia, the Baltic provinces and seaports, and even to Scandinavia.
It was during this epidemic that Dantzic, in 1709, lost 33,000, and
Stockholm 40,000 by the plague. During the years 1709 and 1710 the
plague mortality in the Baltic provinces exceeded 300,000. Three years
later, in 1713, the plague spread up the Danube and reached Vienna,
Prague and even Bavaria.

During these two decades Western Europe was entirely free from the
dread disease. In 1720 the disease suddenly developed in Marseilles and
extended from thence to neighboring towns and the country districts of
Provence. Terrible as was this visitation it is of interest, inasmuch
as it was the last occurrence of the plague on French soil, and the
last in Western Europe until the recent outbreak in Portugal.

The plague was said to have been imported into Marseilles by a merchant
vessel, the ‘Grand Saint Antoine’, from Syria. On its way to Marseilles
several deaths occurred on shipboard, but the cause was overlooked.
On the 25th of May, 1720, two days after the arrival of the vessel,
another death occurred among the crew. The disease was still not
believed to be the plague, and although quarantine was instituted,
new cases appeared among the crew and the dock laborers employed in
unloading the vessel, and it was not until the disease reached the
city that its true nature was recognized. The germs of the disease
had then been scattered broadcast. Unsanitary a city as Marseilles is
to-day, it must have been vastly more so in 1720. The result of the
addition of plague germs to the want, misery and filthy condition was
at once evident. During August the mortality averaged four and even
five hundred per day. In September the daily mortality rose to 1,000.
So great was the terror of the populace that it became impossible to
secure bearers of the dead, to obtain nurses and attendants. The dead
were left in heaps upon the streets, so that it became necessary to
transfer to the city 700 galley slaves, who were required to remove
the bodies. These same galley slaves were even pressed into service
as nurses. The diseased were abandoned by friends and relatives, and
under such conditions it need not be wondered at that they received
little or no attention from others. Food and water were denied to the
unfortunates, and when food was administered to the pesthouses it was
thrown into the windows by machinery.

The disease continued in Marseilles until December, 1721, but isolated
cases persisted until April, 1722. During the fifteen months of its
duration it carried off 40,000 of the population. According to Defoe,
there died of the plague in Marseilles and within a league of its walls
60,000.

From Marseilles the plague reached Aix, and in the winter of 1720 and
1721 it carried off 18,000 of its people. It also reached Arles, where,
in 1721, out of a population of 23,000, 10,000 died (forty-five per
cent). The same year, in Toulon, which had a population of 26,000, the
plague attacked 20,000 of the population, and of these 13,000, or about
one-half of the original population, died.

The country districts about Marseilles were likewise invaded. Out of
a population of 248,000, there died of the plague 88,000, or fully
thirty-five per cent.

It is evident from this description that the plague of 1720 was in
nowise inferior to that of 1348. Fortunately, the disease did not
spread beyond Provence. It is noteworthy that in many instances, in
Marseilles, people secluded themselves in their houses, avoiding all
communication with the outer world, and in this way escaped. Similar
isolation of cloisters, insane asylums, likewise resulted in freedom
from the disease which stalked so freely throughout the stricken city.
It was experience of this kind in isolation of the healthy which led
Defoe to write his ‘Due Preparations for the Plague.’

Toward the middle of the century the plague reasserted itself in the
Danubian provinces, the constant battleground between the Turks and
Russians and Austrians. In 1738 it not only prevailed in Russia but
also invaded Hungary. Of more importance than this occurrence is the
outbreak of the plague in 1743 in Sicily. The last epidemic of plague
had occurred in Messina in 1624. After a lapse of one hundred and
twenty years, it reappeared with terrible results. In Messina, as in
Marseilles and in London, the first cases were not recognized as plague
cases and, as a result, the infection spread until, like a veritable
explosion, the disease developed all over the city. The plague, with
its attendant misery of lack of food, and even of water, was in vain
combated by religious processions. The plague corpses were in heaps in
the streets, as in Marseilles, and cremation was resorted to in order
to effect their removal. That year 30,000 died of plague in the city of
Messina. With the exception of a slight epidemic at Noja in 1815, this
outbreak in Messina in 1743 was the last one to appear in Italy.

In 1755, the plague was introduced into Transylvania by an Armenian
merchant from the Black Sea. Before it was extinguished, 4,300 deaths
were recorded.

Next to that of Marseilles and of Messina, the most noteworthy outbreak
of plague was that which occurred in 1771 in Moscow. The disease was
introduced by troops returning from the Danubian provinces. As so often
has been the history of plague, the first cases were not recognized,
and the existence of pest was denied. When the plague was demonstrated
to be present, it is said by Haeser that three-fourths of the populace
deserted the city. The disease began early in March and increased
during the early summer months. In August over 7,000 deaths resulted,
while in September the records show that 21,000 died. In October the
plague decreased, but still 17,000 deaths attested to its fearful
power. Early in January it became extinct, after a duration of ten
months, and after having caused the death of more than 52,000 people.

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, at the time of the
Napoleonic invasion of Egypt and Syria, the French armies came into
contact with the plague. Bonaparte’s visit to the pest-stricken
soldiers at Jaffa has been perpetuated in the historic canvas which is
to be seen at Versailles.

During the nineteenth century the plague ravaged Northern Africa on
diverse occasions. Constantinople was invaded in 1802, 1803, 1808. It
was also present to a slight extent in the Caucasus and in Astrakhan.
A notable plague epidemic appeared in Egypt in 1812, and soon spread
through Turkey and Southern Russia. Constantinople and Odessa were
severely scourged. In Odessa out of a population of 28,000 there died
12,000.

It is a noteworthy fact that the Napoleonic wars, with all their
incident hardships and misery, did not develop or spread the plague in
Europe. The outbreaks of the disease were limited during this period
to Africa and to Turkey, Bosnia, Roumania, Dalmatia and to Southern
Russia. Two exceptions, however, are to be noted. In 1812 the Island
of Malta was infected and more than 6,000 of its people yielded to
the disease. The epidemic of 1815 at Noja, in Apulia, was the first
recurrence of the plague on Italian soil since 1743, and thus far it
has been the last.

The Balkan Peninsula and Southern Russia were visited from time to
time by the plague up to about 1841. For nearly forty years Europe was
wholly free from the disease, which, however, continued its existence
in Northern Africa, in Mesopotamia and in India. The Russo-Turkish
war of 1878 brought the Russian troops into contact with the disease
in the Caucasus, and the epidemic at Vetlianka on the lower Volga was
unquestionably introduced by such returning soldiers.

Such, then, has been the history of the bubonic plague. No other
epidemic disease can be traced authentically as far back as the ‘Black
Death.’ The characteristic symptoms, the rapid death, the excessive
mortality are all features which have been noted through more than
twenty centuries. The plague bacillus discovered in 1894 by Yersin,
judged by its effect, is neither more nor less virulent than its early
progenitors. It has often died out in a given locality or country, it
has even been forced back to its original ancestral home, but still the
same type, the same species has perpetuated itself unchanged. If the
plague on its present world-wide journey does not cause such terrible
outbreaks as it has in the past, it will be not because the germ has
been altered by time, but because man has changed in so far as he has
slowly learned and profited by the lessons of previous epidemics.




GASOLINE AUTOMOBILES.

BY WILLIAM BAXTER, JR.


To understand the operation of a gasoline vehicle it is necessary to
be somewhat familiar with the principle on which gasoline motors act.
Briefly stated, it is as follows: The gasoline is converted into a
vapor, and in this state is mixed with a sufficient amount of air to
cause it to ignite when heated to a proper temperature. This mixture
of air and vapor is admitted into a cylinder in which a piston moves
freely, this part being substantially the same as in a steam engine.
By means of an electric spark or a hot tube, the mixture is ignited,
burning so violently as to expand the products of the combustion with
such rapidity as virtually to become an explosion. The force of this
explosion pushes the piston to the further end of the cylinder, and by
means of a connecting rod and a crank this movement imparts a rotary
motion to a shaft.

[Illustration: FIG. 1. GASOLINE MOTOR.]

The entire operation is made perfectly clear by the aid of Fig. 1,
which is a simple diagram of a single cylinder motor. The chamber _R_
contains the gasoline. Air enters this chamber through tube _b_, as
indicated by the arrow, and passes out between the plate _c_ and the
surface of the gasoline. The float _d_ keeps the plate _c_ in the
proper position regardless of the amount of liquid in the reservoir.
The heated gases exhausted from the cylinder pass through the pipe
_r_, and thus heat the gasoline so that it vaporizes freely and the
air passing under _c_ becomes charged with the necessary proportion of
vapor. The mixed air and vapor enter a valve chamber _S_, from which
the flow into pipe _e_ is regulated by the movement of handle _a_.
In this chamber there is another valve, operated by an independent
handle, and by means of this more air can be admitted into the mixture
when desired. Through the pipe _e_ and the valve _f_ the vapor enters
chamber _Q_, which connects with the top of the cylinder. Suppose the
shaft _G_ is rotating, then the piston will be drawn down from the
position in which it is shown and thus a vacuum will tend to form in
chamber _Q_. This action will cause the valve _f_ to open and the
mixture of air and vapor will flow into _Q_ until the piston reaches
its lowest position and begins to ascend. At this instant the valve _f_
will close, and then the upward movement of the piston will compress
the mixture in the chamber _Q_. When the piston reaches the upper
position, after completing the down and up strokes, the lever _l_ and
the contact point _p_ will come together, and an electric current
developed in the induction coil _M_ will pass through the wires _j_
and _k_ and produce a spark at _i_ between the ends of the metallic
terminals passing through the plug of insulating material, which is
shown in dark shading. This spark will cause the mixed air and vapor
to ignite, producing an explosion that will force the piston down for
the second time. On the second upward movement of the piston the gases
produced by the combustion of the vapor will be forced out through the
valve _h_ into the chamber _T_ and the pipe _r_. The valve _h_ and the
lever _l_ are operated by cams mounted on the shaft _m_, and they are
so set that the spark at _i_ occurs when the chamber _Q_ is full of the
explosive mixture and the piston is at the top of the cylinder. The
valve opens when the piston begins to move upward after the explosion
has forced it to the bottom position.

As will be seen, the piston must move down to draw in a supply of the
explosive mixture; it then moves upward to compress it, and on the
second down stroke it is pushed by the force of the explosion. From
this action it can be clearly realized that the power developed by the
motor comes from the force exerted by explosions at every alternate
revolution of the shaft. On that account the cams that move the valve
_h_ and the lever _l_ are placed on a separate shaft, which is geared
to the main shaft in the ratio of two to one; that is, the wheel _K_ is
twice the diameter of the wheel _J_. As the force of the piston acts
on the shaft only once in every two revolutions it is necessary to
provide a heavy fly wheel _O_, which will store up enough momentum to
continue the rotation of the motor through the ineffective revolution.
Before the motor can put forth an effort it is necessary for the piston
to move downward so as to draw in a supply of explosive gases and then
to move up so as to compress them and produce an explosion; therefore,
the motor will not start of its own accord, but must be set in motion.
In the act of starting the wheel _O_ is turned by hand.

The combustion of the gasoline vapor within the chamber _Q_ and the
upper end of the cylinder develops a large amount of heat, and unless
means are provided for dissipating it the temperature will soon rise
to a point that will interfere with the proper action of the motor.
Two ways are employed to carry off the heat. One is by surrounding the
cylinder with a water jacket, as shown in the diagram at _NN_; and the
other is to provide the exterior of the cylinder with numerous thin
ribs so as to increase the surface exposed to the air and thus increase
the radiation.

[Illustration: FIG. 2. PETROLEUM SPIRIT MOTOR.]

The electric spark is a very effective igniter for the explosive
mixture, and, by properly setting cam _n_ the explosion can be made
to take place just at the position of the piston that may be found
the most desirable; but the points at _i_ are liable to get out of
order, and the battery that actuates the induction coil _M_ and the
coil itself can become a source of more or less trouble, and on that
account the igniting is effected in some motors by means of a hot tube.
When this is used the cam _n_, the lever _l_ and the electrical parts
of the apparatus are not required. In their stead a tube is placed
on the upper side of the chamber _Q_ and this tube is maintained at
a red heat by means of a flame impinging against its outer surface.
When the explosive mixture is compressed it rises in the interior of
the hot tube, and when it reaches the portion that is hot enough to
produce combustion an explosion takes place. By many engineers this
arrangement is regarded as superior to the electric spark on account of
its simplicity.

Gasoline motors are made with one, two or more cylinders, but in each
cylinder the action that takes place is that described above. The
actual construction of a motor is not so simple as might be assumed
from the appearance of Fig. 1; many details are required which are
not here shown. A more perfect idea of the actual construction of a
gasoline motor can be had from Fig. 2, which is a working drawing of a
recent European invention. In this design it will be noticed that the
cylinder is cooled by radiation into the surrounding air, the exterior
surface being increased by numerous circular ribs and also by extending
a hollow trunk from the upper side of the piston, so as not only to
increase the radiating surface, but also to allow the hot air to escape
from the chamber _T_ in which the crank discs revolve. In this drawing
_E_ is the explosion chamber, corresponding to _Q_ in Fig. 1, and the
valve _s_ is the counterpart of _f_, while _s’_ corresponds to the
valve _h_. The upper pipe _t_ is the pipe _e_ of Fig. 1 and the lower
pipe _t’_ is the pipe _r_ of the same figure. Although the crank discs,
connecting rods and other details are different in shape, it will
readily be seen that their relation to each other is the same.

[Illustration: FIG. 3. REVERSING MECHANISM.]

Since a gasoline motor cannot start of its own accord, it is necessary
in vehicles in which they are used so to arrange the driving gear that
the motor may be kept in motion all the time and always in the same
direction, hence, to reverse the direction of the carriage, reversing
mechanism, independent of the motor, must be provided. The most simple
mechanism for a gasoline vehicle employing spur gearing exclusively is
shown in diagrammatic form in Fig. 3. In this figure _A_ represents
the cylinder of the motor, _B_ the crank disc chamber and _M_ the
vaporizing receptacle, which is generally called the carburator. The
pinion _C_, on the end of the motor shaft, meshes into a gear _D_
which is mounted upon a sleeve _E_ which revolves freely round shaft
_G_. This sleeve has its ends formed so as to engage with the gears
mounted upon shaft _G_, and by means of a lever, which is not shown,
but which works in groove _a_, the clutch either _s_ or _ss_ can be
thrown into engagement with its corresponding gear. If _s_ is thrown
into gear, as shown in the drawing, the wheel _F_ will turn _H_ and the
pinion _I_ will rotate the gear _J_ which is mounted upon the axle of
the carriage. If the clutch _ss_ is thrown into engagement, the gear
_G_ will turn _K_ and this wheel will turn _l_; but, as can be clearly
seen, the direction in which _l_ will revolve will be opposite to its
motion when driven through _F_ and _H_, therefore, if when _F_ drives
the carriage runs forward, when _G_ drives it will run backward, and
when _E_ is moved to the central position, so that neither _s_ nor _ss_
engages with their respective gears, the vehicle will stand still, but
the motor will continue to revolve.

[Illustration: FIG. 4. PLAN AND ELEVATION OF UNDERBERG MOTOR
VOITURETTE.]

This diagrammatic arrangement is more simple than the gearing actually
used and is not as complete in action as many of the devices, as it
only provides means whereby the direction of rotation of the axle may
be changed, while in many carriages the gearing also varies the ratio
between the speed of the motor and the driving wheels. It is also quite
common to combine in the train of gearing spur gears and sprocket
wheels, and in some instances even belts. Fig. 4 illustrates a French
gasoline automobile made by Underberg, of Nantes. The first figure is a
side view, and the second is a plan of the truck and driving mechanism.

[Illustration: FIG. 5. CHERRIER TWO-SPEED GEAR.]

The motor, which is of the single cylinder type, cooled by radiation
into the air, is located at _N_. The pinion on the end of the motor
shaft engages with the wheel on the end of shaft _A_. This shaft
carries four gears, which can be moved by means of lever _C_, so as
to engage with corresponding gears on shaft _B_, thus providing four
different speeds. The motion of _B_ is transmitted to the rear axle
by means of a belt that runs over the pulleys _p_ and _P_, the latter
being carried by a differential gear, so as to run the two driving
wheels at proper velocities. The circular ribs surrounding the motor
cylinder are well shown in the figure, in which the carburator of _C_
is also seen. The housing for the motor is open at the sides so as to
give air currents free access. In Fig. 4 the speed changing gears are
shown, the reversing train being omitted; but if it were also drawn in,
the diagram would be far more elaborate than Fig. 3.

Another form of variable speed gear is shown in Fig. 5. This provides
for two speeds. The large wheel _E_ is on the carriage axle, and it is
driven either by a pinion _F_, or by _J_. Upon the shaft _O_ there are
two friction clutches _C D_, and when _C_ acts the pinion _F_ drives
_E_, and when _D_ acts the pinion _G_ drives _H_, which in turn drives
_I_, and this wheel is mounted on the same shaft as _J_.

Some of the best-known makers of gasoline vehicles do not employ
variable gears and depend for changes in the speed wholly upon
variation in the velocity of the motor. The De Dion carriages are made
in this way, the gearing being substantially as illustrated in Fig. 3.

[Illustration: FIG. 6. PANHARD & LEVASSOR VEHICLE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 7. MOTOR OF VEHICLE.]

Fig. 6 shows a gasoline vehicle made by Panhard & Levassor, who are
perhaps the best known French manufacturers of automobiles, as their
vehicles have been the winners in all the notable races held within the
past few years. The motor they use is shown in Fig. 7, and, as can be
readily seen, is of the two-cylinder type, cooled by a water jacket,
just as in Fig. 1. The explosion is produced by means of a hot tube,
as explained in connection with the last-named figure. This motor is
placed under the body of the vehicle, and is connected with the rear
axle by means of a train of gearing which terminates in sprocket wheels
and chains that connect with driving wheels, each one being operated
by a separate chain. In Fig. 6 the sprocket wheel and chain are well
defined, and forward of these can be seen the outline of the casing
enclosing the gearing.

[Illustration: FIG. 8. GENERAL VIEW OF RENAULT VOITURETTE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 9. PLAN OF THE TRUCK.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10. VARIABLE SPEED GEAR.]

Fig. 8 shows another European design, in which a variable-speed gear
is used. The plan of the truck, showing the general arrangement
of the mechanism, is presented in Fig. 9, and the details of the
variable-speed gear are shown in Fig. 10. The motor is located at _A_,
and through a friction clutch _B_, and the variable speed gear _C_, it
rotates the shaft _H_, which runs lengthwise of the vehicle. Motion is
imparted to the hind axle by means of bevel gears contained within the
casing _D_. The large bevel gear on the axle is of the differential
type, so as to drive the wheels _R R_ at the proper velocities.

When a high speed is desired, the variable speed gear, Fig. 10, is set
so that shaft _M_ drives _N_ direct, the clutch at _E_ being moved
so as to interlock. _N_ is the end of shaft _H_, so that with this
connection the bevel pinion, which meshes into the axle gear at _D_,
revolves at the same velocity as the motor shaft. By moving the handle
_V_, Fig. 9, to the right, an intermediate speed is obtained, and by
moving it to the left, the carriage is run at the lowest velocity. When
the handle _V_ is turned to the right, the ends _M_ and _N_, which form
the clutch _E_, Fig. 10, are separated, and at the same time the lower
shaft _H_ is moved toward _M_, so as to cause gear 1 to mesh into gear
2, and also 3 into 7. By this means the end _N_ of the axle-driving
shaft is rotated through the train of gears 1, 2, 3 and 7. If the
handle _V_ is turned to the left, the shaft _I_ is moved toward _M_, so
as to cause gear 1 to mesh into gear 4, and gear 6 into 8, the latter
being secured to end _N_ of the axle-driving shaft. The speeds obtained
by these changes are in the ratio of nearly 1, 2 and 4.

[Illustration: FIG. 11. PLAN OF THE TÜRGAN-FOY VOITURETTE.]

Fig. 11 shows the plan of a light French carriage, which is equipped
with a double cylinder motor, set in a horizontal position above the
front axle, and arranged to impart motion to the hind axle by means
of belts. The motor, which is located at _A_, turns a vertical shaft,
and this, through spur gears, rotates a horizontal fly wheel, _B_. Two
pulleys are mounted upon the motor shaft, and from these belts run
to tight and loose pulleys on a countershaft, _S_. From the latter
the rear axle is driven through two sets of spur gearing, which give
two different speeds. By means of the belts, two other speeds are
obtained, thus giving, in all, four different velocities. To stop and
start, the belts are shifted from the tight to the loose pulleys by a
belt-shifter, _f_. At _h_, a muffling chamber is located, into which
the motor exhausts, so as to reduce the noise.

The elevation and plan of one of the celebrated French racing-machines,
the Vallée car, is shown in Fig. 12. The motor of this machine is of
sixteen horse-power capacity, has four cylinders, and is connected so
as to impart motion to the hind axle by means of a single wide belt,
which is marked _G_ in both the line drawings. The driving-pulley on
the motor shaft is located at _H_, and the axle pulley at _H’_. Within
the latter there is a train of gears for reversing the direction
of rotation of the axle, and also for obtaining the differential
velocities of the two driving wheels. There is no mechanism for
variable speed, this being obtained wholly by changes in the velocity
of the motor. The motor speed can be made to vary through a wide
range by using four cylinders, with which it is possible to reduce
the velocity so low that it would be likely to bring the machine to a
standstill if provided with one, or even two, cylinders. The change
in the motor velocity is obtained in part by the action of a governor
located in a chamber at _A_, and in part by the action of the electric
ignition device which is arranged so that the time when the spark is
produced can be varied. The rear axle is so held that it can be moved
through a short distance, horizontally, by manipulating the lever _D_,
and in this way the belt _G_ can be made tight or loose, thus affording
another means for varying the speed. A brake is provided which presses
against the inner side of the axle pulley, _H_. This brake is used
ordinarily, but in the case of an emergency another brake can be
operated which presses against the outside of the wheel in the space
between the two sides of the belt. It is claimed for this vehicle that
by the elimination of mechanical speed-changing devices, a great deal
of weight is saved, and that this is more than enough to compensate for
the extra weight of the motor, arising from the use of four cylinders.
In most gasoline carriages it is necessary to provide a slow-speed gear
for hill-climbing, as the motor cannot put forth a sufficient effort to
ascend a steep grade at the normal velocity. With this racing-machine
such a gear is not required owing to the enormous power of the motor.

[Illustration: FIG. 12. ELEVATION AND PLAN OF VALLEE CAR.]

There are quite a number of gasoline automobiles manufactured in this
country, and, as in the case of the steam and the electric carriages,
they compare most favorably with the best European products, in so
far as the artistic effect is concerned. That such is the case can
be realized at once by an examination of Figs. 13 and 14. We regret
our inability to illustrate the mechanism of these vehicles, but
the truth is, that the manufacturers appear to be unwilling to make
public the details of their designs. In the phaeton shown in Fig. 13,
a single-cylinder motor is used, and it is so arranged that it can
run at different velocities, so that no variable speed mechanism is
required, except a single train of gears, which is thrown into action
when running uphill. The motor itself can be run at any velocity from
200 to 800 revolutions per minute, thus giving a speed variation of
four to one. A carriage of this make competed in the last international
automobile race from Paris to Lyons, France, and although it failed
to come in first, it made a remarkable showing, which might have
been considerably improved if it had not been for an accident which
compelled it to retire from the contest.

[Illustration: FIG. 13. WINTON PHAETON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 14. OAKMAN VEHICLE.]

The vehicle shown in Fig. 14 is of small size and light construction,
although amply strong for the purpose for which it is intended. The
power of the motor, which is located under the seat, is transmitted
through friction wheels. In looking at the illustration it will be
noticed that the hind wheels have a circular rim attached to the inner
side, and of a diameter somewhat smaller than the wheel itself. Two
small friction wheels are placed so that either one may be pressed
against the inner surface of this rim. The shape of the rim, as well
as that of the small wheels, is such that they hug each other firmly,
so that the rim is carried around in a direction which corresponds
with the direction of rotation of the friction wheel. In operating the
carriage the motor is set in motion, and then one or the other of the
two friction wheels is pressed against the rim on the driving wheel,
according to whether it is desired to run forward or backward. While
this arrangement might not operate with entire success if applied to a
heavy vehicle, it appears to be all that could be desired for a light
carriage.

Three-wheel vehicles have been used, but there is a difference of
opinion as to their value, as the construction has disadvantages as
well as advantages. It is evident that such a vehicle can be steered
with greater ease than one running on four wheels, but on country
roads, where the wagon wheels roll down a smooth surface, and leave
the space between in a rough condition, it is equally evident that
the third wheel, in passing over this uneven surface, would jolt the
vehicle to a considerable extent. On a smooth pavement the three-wheel
vehicle will run fully as well as the four-wheel; but, on the other
hand, on such a pavement the latter can be steered with as little
effort as the former, so that the question of superiority of design is
one that probably depends upon individual taste.

From the descriptions of automobiles given in this and the two
preceding articles, it will be seen that although many of them
are used, especially in France, they are not entirely free from
objectionable features. The electrical vehicles are provided with the
most simple and durable machinery, and, being noiseless, odorless and
free from smoke, are all that could be desired in so far as their
operation is concerned; but they are heavy and can only be used in
places where the batteries can be recharged. The steam vehicles are
light, have simple mechanism and can run anywhere; but they exhaust
steam into the air, which is clearly visible in cold or wet weather,
and the heat from the engine and boiler is an objection, at least in
summer time. The gasoline vehicles run well, but are noisy, and the
odor of the gasoline is disagreeable as well.




SOME SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF WARFARE.

BY WILLIAM J. ROE.


As in boxing, fencing, saber and bayonet exercises, there are
comparatively few postures, guards, thrusts and strokes, so in warfare,
whether the numbers be large or small, the arms most modern or ancient,
there are just a few principles to whose steady adherence and skilful
manipulation all success is due. In order that these may become
apparent without irksome study of military details, let us imagine a
command of say a thousand men, fairly well drilled, of good ordinary
intelligence and engaged in a cause worthy of being fought for. We have
been in camp for some time, but an order has now come to join the main
army. This is a long distance off, the railway communications have been
broken, and the intervening country, though possessed of good roads, is
more or less in the hands of the enemy.

Our scouts have kept us informed as to the condition of the country for
several miles around; our first day’s march is, therefore, not hampered
with any especial dread of surprise. We move quickly and at ease. Safe
as everything appears to be, the commander relaxes none of the needful
precautions; at least fifty men, under command of an experienced
officer, are sent quite far to the front, the distance varying with the
nature of the country--the farther, the more broken it may be. The best
roads are followed; the men are allowed to march at ease, though always
preserving-their company organization, while the officers are always
more or less on the alert. There is a small rear guard, but it is upon
the advance that the main responsibility falls. Of the fifty thrown
forward, about half will remain together; the rest are scattered; some
far to the front along the highway; others on either side of the route,
riding up the hills on either hand, making sure that no deep gorge,
dense growth of forest or thicket, nor even a field of grain conceals
an enemy. It is upon the alertness of those vedettes on front and
flanks that the safety of the force in great measure depends. History
records many relaxations of this principle of precaution, and for lack
of it sudden ambushes and deplorable disasters. It was thus, in spite
of Washington’s repeated warnings, that Braddock fell into a cunning
ambuscade, and thus (not to multiply examples) that Custer and his
command were massacred to a man among the high Rockies.

On the annexed map the men may be located at ‘A’ marching from ‘D’ in
the direction of the village, ‘F’. The advance is at ‘B’, the rear
guard at ‘C’. The commander rides with the main column, near the
front. The black dots, with pennons, indicate the general position of
the vedettes at this point, though, of course, they are continually
advancing. The commander has noted on his map a foot path, beginning at
‘D’, leading over the rugged hills. By taking this path a considerable
distance could be saved; but it is quite impracticable for the wagons,
and the troops, therefore, continue along the high road. The valley is
gently undulating, with a gradual slope from the low hills towards the
stream.

[Illustration]

The projecting hills near the head of the column form an especially
dangerous point. What easier than for an enemy to plant batteries
here on either side of the road. A sudden, heavy fire would throw a
negligent force at once into disorder; a situation to be taken instant
advantage of by a vigorous adversary; a charge of horse concealed
behind the hill at ‘O’, and nothing might be left except flight, with
great loss of life, and surrender with loss--if not of honor, at least
of reputation as a safe leader.

Happily, we shall avoid both alternatives. Our scouts have explored
most thoroughly every possible vantage ground. They have not been
content with any mere glances; their instructions are to take nothing
for granted. That field, marked ‘G’, looks innocent enough, but the
tall, thick rye or corn may cover a skilfully placed battery. The plot
marked ‘M’ may be simply a vineyard; but it does no harm to inquire.
The inhabitants of the country are friendly, and, therefore, the
chances are not favorable to this sort of surprise; but in war it is
often not the likely, but the unexpected that happens; the commander
who knows his business guards against the remote possibility.

Though we have imagined a force of a thousand, it must not be lost
sight of that the same kind of precautions should be employed for very
much larger numbers; indeed, you need only alter the scale of the map,
imagine additional roads, a railway line or two, increase to thousands,
if necessary, the fifty of our vanguard, and the result is but an
application of the very first principle of warfare: Eternal vigilance
is the price of safety as well as of liberty.

The troops have been in camp for some time; their condition is
excellent for a long march. As the corn and rye are not yet gathered,
the time is early summer. The roads are in prime condition. They set
out by sunrise and halted for perhaps two hours at noon. It is by thus
sparing his troops during the heat of the day that the colonel will
have a body of men fresh enough at nightfall to march, if necessary,
all night. But no such urgency exists; it is nearing sunset, and
preparations are now being made to encamp. By his map the colonel has
informed himself in the matter of distances, and has decided that they
shall pitch their tents somewhere in the vicinity of the village (‘F’).
The scouts report an eligible location for camp at ‘S’, and this is
finally chosen. It has several advantages, being comparatively level,
and yet upon high ground, and has in close proximity several wells of
good water. The train containing provisions and ammunition is parked
in the safest locality, the horses picketed, and the guns--perhaps two
or three field pieces and machine guns--placed where they can be most
easily handled.

By all means, give the men as good a supper as the neighborhood
affords. It will be wise not to encroach upon the rations, but rather
draw supplies from the village; there are, no doubt, purveyors of one
sort or another to be found ready enough to supply us, the more so that
they will be amply paid.

Refreshed by their supper the men are ready to turn in at tattoo; by
the time ‘taps’ have sounded most are soundly sleeping. But some are
awake; if doing their full duty, wider awake than ever they are likely
to be in times of peace. The same attention to the bodily comfort of
his men which impelled the colonel to give them a long rest at midday
and a comfortable meal, applies with increased force to those detailed
early in the morning for the night’s guard; during the march these
have been spared as far as possible, even being allowed a lift now and
then in an ambulance. Such privileges are not granted by a commander
who knows his craft as a concession to the laziness, but rather as a
preparation for the effectiveness of his men. This is a principle of
action, and may apply to business as well as war, that the strong head
never withholds reasonable and proper indulgence; the better, it may be
said, to enforce at needful times reasonable and proper exertions.

As soon as the camp is established the guards are posted. If great
precautions were needed during the day, much more are they by night.
If fifty were sufficient on the march we need a hundred during the
hours of darkness. In the case of a large army an elaborate system of
night guards is necessary: First, ‘advanced guards’, occupying strong
positions at some distance from the main body; beyond these are the
picket guards; further still towards the front what are called ‘grand
guards’, from which are thrown forward the outposts, to which the line
of sentinels is directly attached. In case of alarm, the sentinels fall
back upon the outposts; these upon the grand guards; they, in turn,
if necessary, upon the pickets; the necessities of the case and the
strength of the enemy’s demonstration determining the movements of the
defense, even perhaps to the ‘long roll’ and rousing of the entire army.

In our case, no such elaborate system is possible; we content ourselves
with outposts and the line of sentinels, all that will be needed, if
vigilant, to guard against surprise. The colonel, attended by the
officer in command of the guard, will select the sites for outposts.
These, five in number, are marked by stars upon the map. The direction
from which an attack is most probable is from the ridge (‘R’, ‘R’).

The men are usually on the sentinel line for two hours at a time, with
opportunity for four hours’ sleep; that is, with shifts, or, as they
are called, ‘reliefs’ of three parties, two hours on and four off. This
is not, however, invariable, it being sometimes wiser to relieve the
men oftener or not so often, this being regulated by circumstances--the
state of weather, distance of posts apart, fatigue of the men, etc.,
etc. The sentinels will be posted on clear nights generally upon high
ground; in bad or foggy weather the foot of the slope is preferable.
The officer will see that no obstacle prevents the sentinel from
retreating upon his outpost if attacked. The men will be directed to
take advantage of any cover that offers, always to keep in easy touch
with one another and watchful, never to raise a false alarm, but
quickly and decidedly a real one, and while not failing to discover the
meaning of anything unusual in their front, never to expose themselves
from mere bravado.

What measures shall be taken in case of an attack in force must, of
course, depend entirely upon circumstances. A night attack, intended
merely as an annoyance, or ‘feeler’, or at most to stampede some of the
cattle, or to gather information as to strength, resources, etc., is
quite a different affair from one planned for the purpose of complete
victory, either the destruction, dispersal or capture of the command.

A mere night foray is generally executed by comparatively few. The
opposing chief may be desirous of getting information concerning the
force that his scouts have reported is advancing down the valley.
A little expedition like ours sometimes serves as a disguise for a
momentous strategical movement. The chief determines to find out all
he can as to our purpose. He has found us vigilant by day; he resolves
to try what the night may disclose. This sort of surprise is apt to
produce better results than the project of some dashing subaltern,
anxious for the bauble reputation.

For such an attack an hour near midnight is usually selected, that the
information may be gathered or the mischief done and a retreat effected
under cover of darkness. A dark, wet, blustering, or--if the time be
winter--an especially cold night is chosen. The degree of success to be
attained depends naturally upon the element of surprise. Unless this
be complete the attacking party will find their attempt usually quite
futile.

The other sort of attack--that which has for its object the capture
of the position--is usually planned to take place during the extreme
darkness just preceding daybreak. The enemy has perhaps crawled on
hands and knees up the slopes towards the line of sentinels. The van of
this force is composed entirely of picked men, officered by the coolest
heads. Signals are agreed upon, exact times for action arranged, and
everything calculated to a nicety to insure that suddenness which is
the very soul of success.

It is in the planning of such an expedition that true qualities of
generalship are shown. It is the fashion rather to decry the military
merits of Washington; yet I know of few events in history that show
more sagacity than the swift crossing of the wintry Delaware and
the surprise of Trenton. It was sagacious chiefly for the accurate
comprehension of the probabilities. Washington knew the convivial
habits of Rahl’s Hessians, especially at Christmas-tide; he reckoned
upon finding them in the midst of carousals, and the result proved the
value of his forethought.

Under ordinary circumstances, on the march, to quarter a command inside
four walls is never advisable. The men are not as readily under the
eye of their officers; in case of surprise they cannot be called into
the ranks as quickly; discipline insensibly relaxes, and the machine
(for an armed force ought to be that, however intelligent its units)
fails to respond instantaneously to the word of the chief. In case
of a serious attack, however, the village may serve a most important
purpose. Should the houses be substantial ones of stone or brick,
each may become a most efficient, if temporary fortification. One
consideration which might have prevented its occupation has now no
longer any weight. Apart from any natural feeling of good will for our
fellow citizens, how unwise it would be to unnecessarily exasperate
them. But now in the face of the enemy, it will be surprising if any
soul is churl enough to grudge a patriotic hospitality. Most of the
denizens will, indeed, make haste to hide their precious persons in the
cellar, but will seldom grumble at the necessity.

With the utmost celerity the baggage and horses are moved to the most
sheltered spot; the guns, under strong guards, posted where they may
be best utilized; some of the men, previously detailed for just such
an emergency, are engaged in throwing up earthworks, piling logs,
stones, anything that can be utilized for barricades. The officer
charged with that duty, if possible a skilled engineer, goes quickly
from place to place, hurriedly indicating the lines of defense; these
connecting the several buildings in such a manner as to enclose the
entire command within lines of quite formidable intrenchments. All this
time the troops, having taken possession of the houses, have poured an
uninterrupted fire upon the assailants, obliging them to retire, or
at least giving the diggers--or sappers, as they are called--time to
complete their labor of defense. Surrounded by a force sufficiently
large to make resistance in the field quite hopeless, we are at least
in position to protract the struggle, and one capable of defense,
except against an assault in overwhelming numbers, or against heavy
artillery. The latter they are not provided with, or the measures we
are taking might all go in the end for nothing. Several assaults are
attempted during the day, but are easily repulsed with no small loss.
The enemy at last withdraws, and we now see that he is busy throwing
up intrenchments. Meanwhile, we have not been idle. To facilitate
communication, and to enable us to concentrate our forces under cover,
passageways have been constructed between the various buildings, inner
partitions preventing free access from room to room within the houses
have been broken through, and the débris, together with beds broken up,
mattresses and ‘any old thing’ capable of arguing with a bullet, piled
in the window embrasures, leaving loopholes here and there, as occasion
offers, while galleries may be constructed with loopholes in the floor
to fire downwards.

[Illustration: 2]

One of the most important matters to be attended to is the securing of
as many good positions as possible, from which fire may be concentrated
upon exposed points. In a regular siege the points of attack selected
will always be those most exposed, on account of their projecting
beyond the line of defense. In the case of a village like this
resisting an attempt at capture the principles are identical; it will
certainly be the points that project that will be danger spots and
which will therefore require especial attention.

[Illustration: 3]

You observe on the enlarged map of the village that there are
double lines between the outer buildings; these are the improvised
intrenchments. Notice that they have not been constructed flush with
the face of the outer walls in any instance; but always considerably
retired. The object of this arrangement is more effectually to defend
the barricades. In the annexed sketch (No. 3) ‘A’ and ‘B’ represent
the two adjacent buildings and the lines ‘CD’ the breastwork. In the
buildings are windows--‘E’ and ‘F’--from which a heavy fire can be
concentrated upon the assailants, as may be seen from the direction
of the arrow heads. On the outer line are several projecting, and,
therefore, especially exposed points; such as those at ‘A’, ‘B’
and ‘C’. The arrow heads show the direction of protective fire. As
additional protection, it might be wise to hold the two buildings (‘H’,
‘H’) outside the village. If not held, they ought, if possible to be
destroyed, as also those marked ‘JJ’, not included in the defensive
lines, as they offer excellent cover for the enemy. The utmost care
should be taken to provide a safe magazine for the ammunition and to
cover well the place selected for a hospital. The wagons and horses
would be best protected in the space marked ‘LLL’.

Should our defense prove too obstinate for direct assault, it may be
that the enemy will construct regular intrenchments from which to dig
a trench deep enough to protect, and large enough to hold a body of
troops, thus enabling them to approach sufficiently near to assail
some weak point, without too great risk. The modern repeating rifle,
dangerous at a thousand yards, and fatal at a hundred, has given the
defense so great preponderance that it requires quick work indeed to
capture a stronghold. Observe the broken lines ‘OF and ‘PF’; these
show the direction of possible trenches dug by the enemy. But ‘OF’
would be raked by the fire from the outlying house, ‘H’; the other is,
therefore, the only feasible mode of approach.

The principle of defense, shown by the direction of the arrow heads in
the case of the beleaguered village, is applicable to all conditions
where ramparts are used. Suppose the command whose fortunes we have
followed had been attacked while on the march at the point ‘A’ on Map
1. The opposing force was manifestly too strong for resistance in the
field; they retreat to the rocky eminence ‘K’ and there proceed to
fortify the position. A glance at Diagram 4 will show what they will
try at least to accomplish. In military language that shaded portion
of the work to be constructed is called a bastion; it consists of two
faces (‘AX’ and ‘AY’), and the two flanks (‘JY’ and ‘HX’). The faces of
this bastion are defended (as the arrow heads indicate) by the flanks
of adjacent bastions; that is, the face ‘AY’ is swept by a raking fire
from ‘ZE’, and the face ‘AX’ from ‘FG’. Reciprocally, ‘HX’ rakes the
face ‘BG’, and ‘JY’ the face ‘ED’, and so on round the intrenchment.

[Illustration: 4]

All that has been said as to protecting the ammunition and stores will
apply to this work as it did to the village. If a spring of water can
be included, as at ‘O’, this will be found of incalculable advantage.
Of all forms of defensive ramparts the straight line is the worst;
if time does not permit a work with bastions, however irregular, an
enclosure shaped somewhat like a star is serviceable (shown in Diagram
6, Figs. ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’). Should an enclosed work be impracticable,
the line should have its ends (or ‘flanks’) strongly guarded, and be
broken up, as in Diagram 5 ‘D’ into short straight lines nearly at
right angles, to serve for mutual support. This principle of mutual
support, however achieved, is called that of ‘defensive relations’, and
is capable of adaptation to all kinds of defensive works, whether of
a few men beleaguered in an improvised fortification, a considerable
number in a scientifically constructed work--permanent or field
fortification--a fortress with an entire army behind its ramparts, or a
cordon of forts surrounding a great city.

[Illustration: 5, 6]

The ground plan of the work having been decided upon and staked out the
men start in with pick and shovel, digging, if possible, a ditch, and
throwing the material into the shape of the shaded portion of Diagram
7. The ditch, outside the fort, indicated by the figure ‘FGHJ’ serves
the twofold purpose of getting material for the parapet ‘ABCDEF’,
and for embarrassing an enemy in any attempt at assault. To further
embarrass him every sort of obstacle that may be at hand should be put
to use--trees, butts turned our way, boughs interlacing; stakes driven
deep into the soil close together; barbed wires wound in and out; in
short, every expedient that may delay his advance and keep him as long
as possible exposed to our most effective fire.

[Illustration: 7]

The drawing (7) was made with no attempt at exactness of proportion,
and simply to show the essentials; the slope ‘EF’ is made as steep as
the nature of the soil will permit; ‘DE’ slopes enough to enable a
soldier standing upon ‘BC’ to fire upon an enemy entangled among the
obstacles at ‘J’, but never enough to weaken the mass of earth at and
near ‘D’.

Observe how common-sensible all these arrangements are; not one too
many or too few; just the things that a practical man, if he could
think as he felt, would do if suddenly called to command with an enemy
advancing upon him. Unfortunately, perhaps, for the purposes of a
patriotic and peaceful people, men are inclined, even though brave as
courage itself, to get nervous or nerveless in the immediate presence
of danger. This is the reason, rather than for any especial erudition
involved in war’s art, that we need trained soldiers--men trained to
think mechanically and to act automatically amid the uproar of battle.

[Illustration: 8]

We have carefully, if briefly, considered the requirements of the
first maxim of strategy--CAUTION--the need of it, and the practical
methods of securing it; and also of the second maxim--DEFENSIVE
RELATIONS--their necessity, and how to secure them. It now remains
to consider the meaning of that phrase, ‘turning a position’, or
‘flanking’ an enemy, as to which of late we read so much in the daily
press. The map (marked 8) gives an idea of a section of country where
two armed bodies meet under conditions that permit one flank to be
completely guarded from attack; these are the left flank of the force
‘A’, and the right flank of ‘B’. Both rest upon a lake or broad river.
A steep precipice or deep morass, as at ‘H’, would serve as well.
Suppose our force has advanced from the direction ‘C’, the enemy
down the road from ‘E’ to ‘G’. Soon they form opposed lines facing
each other, the reserve somewhat to the rear and sheltered by some
inequality of ground, the ‘thin blue line’, almost, but not quite,
touching elbows, stretched along the crest of the ridge in front,
taking advantage of every chance to protect themselves--trees, stone
walls, ditches; kneeling, crawling, lying face down, eyes along the
rifle barrel, finger on trigger, keen and murderous, but prudent,
and parsimonious of life. The solid formations, such as went out of
vogue with old-time weapons, would melt away before machine guns and
Krag-Jörgensens like frost before an August sun. It seems as if all
chivalry had departed; it has but changed its ways.

The object of ‘flanking’ a position is to so manage as to turn that
attenuated line into a mass of men upon which to let loose with
dire effect either the quick-firing guns or the sharp edges of our
horsemen’s sabers.

Notice those long, bent, black lines, bending like fish hooks. The
arrow heads indicate the direction of a flanking attack; from ‘F’,
through the woods, up the ravine, to fall upon the exposed end of
the enemy’s front at ‘K’. Such would be our most feasible method of
flanking; the foe might, however, have anticipated us, either by
providing a bloody hospitality somewhere in that ravine, or by a flank
movement of his own, as the bent black line shows, around the woods, to
fall upon our right flank at ‘F’. Such an operation, if successful for
them, would be utterly disastrous to us.

Surprised by a sudden and unexpected attack upon the weakest point and
unable to change front in time, men lose heart, forget discipline,
huddle in masses, confused and disorganized, or fly like sheep, in
either case food for firearms, gluttonous of such occasions. It
requires sometimes but a very small force upon a flank to produce great
results; the appearance upon the field, even at a distance, of Joseph
E. Johnston’s corps at the first Bull Run was sufficient to demoralize
the whole Union army, and at the battle of Arcola, Bonaparte completely
flanked the Austrians with a few flourishes of his trumpets.

So we have for a third maxim of war the necessity of PROTECTED FLANKS.
If we know or think that a Johnston lurks on either hand, we ought to
be sure of our Pattersons; if we apprehend an unfriendly visit from a
Blucher, we should see to it that our Grouchy is trustworthy.

Let us now broaden our view of operations, that we may see how the
principles established for a limited number of men on the march, in
the field, or behind fortifications, may apply upon a larger scale.
To this end a brief study of the map (9) will show four contiguous
countries--‘A’, very populous, powerful and wealthy, having a navy
capable of control of the high seas, and a large and efficient army;
‘C’ represents a country even more populous, but not aggressive, ‘D’
an insignificant power, while ‘B’ is a country considerable in extent,
but largely mountainous, and sparsely inhabited by a rude but warlike
people.

A cause of war comes up between ‘A’ and ‘B’. In ancient times the
ruder nation would have been the aggressor, tempted by the wealth and
invited by the enervated populace of the larger civilization. Now the
conditions are likely to be reversed. However, war begins; the forces
of ‘A’ move hastily towards the frontier, while his fleet blockades
‘B’s’ solitary seaport at the point ‘E’. The maxim of CAUTION now
naturally expands; instead of information culled by a few daring
riders from a narrow circuit, it should be made to embrace the widest
area of country and the utmost latitude of information--the condition
of the enemy as to armament, resources, position of forces, possible
disaffection among the people--everything. In war no item comes
amiss. The wealthier country will here have a manifest advantage; it
can afford to hire spies, and can even (as England did during the
Revolution) purchase the treason of some disaffected chief. Caution
for the lesser country will--if good generalship prevails--take the
shape of occupying and strengthening the natural strategic positions.
These are nothing but flanks of a bastion on a large scale. Upon the
map round black dots represent strategic positions along the frontier.
They are points susceptible of thorough fortification which control
the several passes in the mountain range between the two nations; also
heads of valleys, where several meet, and from which attacks could be
made at will in a number of directions. This entire frontier, which may
be hundreds of miles broad, is mountainous, capable of being fortified
at countless points, and having natural ‘defensive relations’ needing
only the art of warcraft to render them almost impregnable. Modern
murderous arms lend their services more readily to defense than to
offense. It is even possible that the country ‘B’, warned in due season
of the purposes of her powerful rival, may have plotted out each rod of
ground among those mountain passes, and that artillery service, once a
matter of gunnery, has now become a matter of mathematics.

[Illustration: 9]

We now come to the fourth maxim of war; it is that of efficient
SUPPLY. An army, as the saying is, moves on its belly. An invading
force must ordinarily provide for all its needs from some safe place in
the rear, called a ‘base of operations’; it must also provide that the
line of transit of its provisions and ammunition to the front shall not
be liable to interference. Assuming that at ‘F’ is a strongly fortified
city, the railway line or the adjacent rivers would furnish ‘A’ with
a practical base; his line of advance would be in the direction ‘FG’,
called the ‘line of operations’; ‘G’, a fortified pass, the proximate,
and ‘J’, the capital of ‘B’, the ultimate objective point of the
campaign. But it will be noted with what facility a determined enemy
could fall upon ‘A’s’ communications from the point ‘H’, which would
also be the case were the advance made from ‘K’ towards ‘L’.

Of course, in the end, the larger resources will prevail; but it may be
that ‘A’, baffled and exasperated by a stubborn resistance, and finding
that ‘B’ is being supplied through the neutral and insignificant
country ‘D’, may finally conclude, “in the interests of a higher
civilization,” to violate their territory, seize the port ‘M’, and
thus, by a far-reaching and bold flank movement, gain entrance into
‘B’s’ country. Such devices are not unknown in the history of war.
Such a course would be a distinct violation of the ‘law of nations’;
but there would be apologies and ample indemnity to ‘D’, with which,
doubtless, she would be satisfied.

In imagining such a campaign no account has been taken of the attitude
of the country ‘C’, or of that of any foreign nation. In war these
things must be reckoned with. Neutral nations are always liable,
however disposed to maintain neutrality, to be touched at some
sensitive point by one or the other of the contending parties.




MODERN MONGOLS.

BY F. L. OSWALD, M.D., A.M.


The political supremacy of the Caucasian race was supposed to have been
decided by the fall of Carthage, more than two thousand years ago,
but was thrice afterwards imperiled by an encounter with a rival of
long-unsuspected resources.

The Scythians of Strabo were probably not Tartars, but Slavs
(‘Sarmatians’), or, like their allies, the Getæ, Slavs, mingled with
Teutons. Parthia, too, had a semi-Aryan population; but the campaign of
Attila gave the champions of Europe a chance to measure their strength
with that of a new foe, as shifty as the Semites, and of far greater
staying-power. His Huns were undoubtedly Mongols, and came so near
overpowering the inheritors of Roman strategy that at one time the fate
of western civilization hung upon the issue of a single battle. The
western coalition triumphed, yet its victory on the plains of Chalons
(October, 451), was due to the numerical inferiority of their enemies
as much as to the predominance of their own skill or valor. The very
retreat of the vanquished chief established his claim to the prestige
of a superlative tactician.

Again, in 1402, only the accidental quarrel of two Mongol conquerors
saved Europe from the fate of its ravaged borders. Sultan Bajazet had
vanquished all his western foes, and the union of his forces with
those of Tamerlane would undoubtedly have sealed the doom of the
Mediterranean coast lands, if not all of Christendom.

A hundred years later the generals of Solyman II. came very near
retrieving the neglected chance. They vanquished Austrian, Hungarian
and Italian armies, and in 1560 defeated the combined armadas of the
Christian sea-power at Port Jerbeh--so completely, indeed, that the
allies were eager to make peace by betraying each other.

And it would be a great mistake to ascribe these victories to a mere
triumph of brute strength. That same Solyman, with all his fanaticism,
was a patron of every secular science, and at a time when western
princes had to sign their names by proxy, Mohammed Baber Khan, the
conqueror of India, wrote essays in four different languages and
published memoirs abounding with shrewd comments on social and ethical
questions and problems of political economy. He was a poet, too, and
liberal enough to compose a dirge in memory of a prince whom he had
slain in single combat.

Ethnologically, there is, therefore, nothing abnormal in the outburst
of intellectual vigor that has lifted Japan to the front rank of
civilized nations. It is merely a revival, analogous to the dambreak
of pent-up energies that followed the collapse of mediæval despotism.
Instead of having to work out their salvation by tentative efforts,
the Japanese, it is true, had the advantage of ready-made patterns,
but that difference has perhaps been more than offset by achievements
affecting the reforms of four centuries in as many decades, and by
modifications which, in more than one instance, have improved upon
Caucasian models.

“The organization of the Japanese transport system,” says a press
dispatch from Taku, “was a revelation to western staff officers; bodies
of troops, with their equipments of stores and camping outfit, were
landed without a hitch, in quick succession, and moved to the front
without a moment’s loss of time. No delay, no confusion, no blockades
of wharf-boats and baggage carts; everything worked in smooth grooves
and in evident conformity with a prearranged and oft-rehearsed plan.”

And in 1897, after the affront of the Russian intervention, the
victorious islanders, compelled to forfeit half the rewards of their
valor, proceeded to make the very best of the other half, and their
provoked diplomats managed to preserve their dignity, as well as their
complete presence of mind. The Japanese police enforces law and order
without waging Blue-Law wars against harmless amusements; there are no
associations for the prosecution of bathing youngsters, no anti-concert
crusades, no suppression of outdoor sports on the day when ninety-nine
of a hundred wage-earners find their only chance for leisure.

The ‘Yankees of the Orient’ have a code of honor without duellos,
trade syndicates without ‘trusts’, giant cities and ghetto suburbs
without anarchists. Their labor riots are settled by a dispassionate
court of appeal. Their schools, Professor Arnold informs us, are
hampered by ‘fads’ and experiment committees, but not by boards of
bigot trustees. In spite of Buddhist conventicles, the emergence of
the educated classes from the shadows of religious feudalism is a
complete emancipation. The Japanese ‘Council of Finance’ has adopted
American custom-house methods and Belgian systems of graded taxation.
There is, indeed, a good deal of eclecticism in the supposed surrender
of indigenous institutions; foreign methods have been adopted only on
the evidence of their efficiency, and always with a view to making
them subservient to national purposes. The key to the distinctive
characteristics of the North Mongols can be found in Sir Edwin
Randall’s definition of ‘Perseverance combined with shiftiness.’
The Asiatic Yankees can turn, dodge and deviate while keeping a
pre-determined aim steadily in view, and it is by no means improbable
that Mongol influences have impressed similar peculiarities on the
character of the northeastern Slavs. Muscovy was a Tartar Khanate for a
number of centuries, and Russian diplomats, since the days of Czarina
Katherine, have accommodated themselves to emerging circumstances
by crawling or strutting, without ever losing sight of the road to
Constantinople.

In the shaggy Ainos of Yesso (probably the original home of our
‘Shetland’ ponies), that perseverance takes the form of mulish
stubbornness. They strenuously object to foreign imports and stick to
their sheepskin cloaks like Scotch Highlanders to their kilts, but
in stress of famine seem now to take an interest in the harpoon-guns
of their Russian neighbors, and now and then sell specimens of their
poodle-faced youngsters to the agents of a transpacific museum.

Japan still produces athletes, as well as unrivaled acrobats, partly,
no doubt, on account of bracing climatic influences, but partly, also,
of a vice-resisting worship of physical prowess. About sixty years ago
the slums of the large seaport towns were expurgated by a national
revolt against the spread of the opium habit, and the consequent reform
movement appears to have kept step with the Swedish crusade against the
spread of the alcohol curse.

China may be forced into the arena of regeneration, but thus far
seems to view the collapse of her ring-wall only as a blessing in a
rather effective disguise. The policy of non-intercourse, indeed, had
the sanction of a physical necessity in the opinion of as shrewd a
statesman as the vizier of the great Kooblai Khan, who conquered rebels
from Mantchooria to Siam, but recognized the hopelessness of ordinary
measures for protecting the peaceful toilers of the eastern provinces
against the predatory hordes of the northwest. A standard army of
home-guards, he argued, would have to be composed either of natives
who could not fight, or of foreign auxiliaries who might revolt; so,
all things considered, it was deemed best to bar a foe that could not
be beaten. Strategically, the plan succeeded, stone walls being then
so inexpugnable to spear-armed besiegers that the proprietors of a
stone-built robber castle could defy the wrath of the public for a
series of generations. The Tartar marauders were kept at bay, but so
were trading caravans and traveling philosophers; the disadvantages
of all obstacles to free competition began to assert themselves. The
nation, as it were, sickened in a marasmus of intellectual inbreeding.
Protected incompetence propagated its species; monopolies flourished.
The survival of the fittest no longer favored the brave; cowards and
weaklings could find refuge under the telamonian shield of the big wall.

Within the last hundred years that process of degeneration has been
hastened by two incidental afflictions--spring floods and summer
droughts. The rapid increase of population has driven home-seekers into
the highlands of the far west, and the destruction of land-protecting
forests avenged itself in the usual manner. Every heavy snowfall in
the mountains became a menace to the settlers of the lowlands; a
sudden thaw was always apt to turn brooks into rivers and rivers into
raging seas. The summers, at the same time, became warmer and drier.
Famines, such as only India had seen before, crowded the cities with
refugees. Charitable institutions were managed by agents of a paternal
government, and paupers were rarely suffered to perish in wayside
ditches, but hundreds of thousands were huddled together in parish
suburbs and fed on minimum rations of the cheapest available food.

It was then that the masses were forced to apostatize from the dietetic
tenets of Buddhism; abstinence from animal food became impossible;
sanitary scruples had to be disregarded; whole settlements of famine
victims were compelled to subsist exclusively on offal.

Millions of mechanics had to fight to struggle for existence by
reducing their wants. The prices of food had doubled, and in order to
pay the cost of one daily meal all luxuries had to be relinquished.
Sleep and oblivion of misery became the only alternatives of hopeless
toil, and those who could save a few _taels_ yielded to the temptation
of supplementing those blessings by means of chemical anodynes.
Opium-smoking became a national vice.

The ‘opium war’ did not rivet the yoke of that curse. It merely
clinched the grip of a British trading company. The Chinese government
had attempted to cancel their franchise, but only with a view to
diverting its profits into the pockets of their own speculators. The
total suppression of the traffic would have been not only difficult,
but practically impossible. We might as well try to prohibit tobacco in
North America.

Yet the results of these coöperating factors of degeneracy have stopped
short of the extremes that might have been expected in a land of
earth-despisers. Buddhism in its orthodox Chinese form is radically
pessimistic. It inculcates a belief in the worthlessness of all
terrestrial blessings, and considers life a disease, with no cure but
death. And not death by suicide, either; the victims of misery must
drain life’s cup to the dregs, to cure the very love of existence, and
thus prevent the risk of re-birth.

The value of health and wealth is thus depreciated in a manner that
might tend to aggravate the recklessness of life-weariness; yet the
South Mongol is conservative, even in his vices. An inalienable
instinct of thrift makes him shrink from senseless excesses. Tavern
brawls are less frequent in Canton than in Edinburgh; the topers of
the Flowery Kingdom get less efflorescent than ours, their love-crazed
swains less extravagant. Absolute imbecility, as a consequence of
poison habits, is a rare phenomenon in Mongoldom; nine out of ten sots
remain self-supporting; the heritage of industrial habits is hardly
ever lost altogether.

Nor should we forget to distinguish the primitive rustics of the
inland provinces from the vice-worn population of the coast plains.
Degeneration has not left its marks far above tide-water, and has
hardly begun to affect the natives of the highlands, the Yunan hunting
tribes, for instance, who, though South Mongols, have renounced the
tenets of Buddha and adopted those of militant Mohammed.

Their chieftains welcomed war for its own sake, while the lowland
conscripts were in the predicament of desert dwellers, caught in
the flood of a sudden cloudburst. Thousands at first succumbed
almost without a struggle; the levies drilled to oppose the Japanese
invasion stood to be slaughtered like sheep, being, moreover, morally
handicapped by a misgiving that the war with the champions of the north
had been wantonly provoked.

Discipline has begun to break the spell of that apathy, but the
desperate valor that surprised the veterans of the allies at Taku and
Yangtsun had a very different significance. Fury supplied the defects
of military training; the listless life-renouncers had at last been
goaded into a frenzy of nationalistic resentment. It was the same
delirium of retributive wrath that rallied a million Frenchmen around
the standards of the invaded Republic, and hurled a horde of Russian
volunteers into the bullet-storm of Borodino.

‘A united nation of fifteen millions is not vincible’, wrote Jean
Jacques Rousseau, in reply to an appeal of the Polish patriots. South
Mongols were supposed to be hardly worth an expedition of Caucasian
regulars, but even a world coalition might find use for intrenchments
if the vendetta rage of a war for national existence should arouse a
land of 385,000,000 inhabitants.

Whether that storm will purify the social atmosphere of the vast empire
or subside into the calm of exhaustion, is a different question. It
would even be premature to accept the appearance of a few able leaders
as a propitious omen of regeneration. In a land ten times the size of
France the crisis of a fearful peril will always evolve a Carnot, a
Danton and a Dumouriez, if not a storm-compelling Bonaparte.

The days of the West Mongol Empire, the dominion of the turbaned Turk,
are undoubtedly numbered, but not as a result of national decrepitude.
The successor of Sultan Bajazet will succumb, not as a ‘sick man’, but
as a cripple; an invalid worn out in a fight against hopeless odds.
Within the last hundred years the stadtholders of the Prophet had
to defend their throne against Russian, Austrian, Greek, French and
British attacks, and more than once against a West-European alliance,
backed by African and Asiatic insurgents. Within that period 3,000,000
Mongol Mussulmans have perished on the battlefield, a million for every
generation of an impoverished and not specially reproductive race.
Their empire will collapse, but its defenders are still the hardiest
soldiers of Europe, the most unconquerable by hardships, wounds and
hunger. The burden-carriers of Constantinople are still the stoutest
men of our latter-day world. We might as well impeach the degeneracy
of the Circassian highlanders, who resisted the power of the Russian
monarchy for sixty-five years, and in their last stronghold stood
at bay with drawn hunting knives--after blunting their sabres and
exhausting a stock of ammunition purchased by the sacrifice of their
herds and harvests. For these heroic mountaineers, too, were Mongols,
kinsmen of the martial Turkomans and chivalrous Magyars. The Turanian
race--a synonym of the Pan-Mongolians--comprises as many different
types as the Aryans and Semites taken together.

In 1863 some twenty clans of the vanquished highlanders left the
Caucasus _en masse_ to settle in the mountains of the Turkish province
of Adrianople. They will share the fate of their protectors, and may
soon be obliged to follow their flight across the Hellespont.

But the final expulsion of the West Mongols will, after all, mean
only that the Caucasians have recovered lost ground, and freed at
least Europe from an intrusive tribe of their most persistent and most
formidable rivals.




RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE CENTRAL ESKIMO.[B]

BY PROFESSOR FRANZ BOAS.

    [B] A description of the religious beliefs of the Central
        Eskimo, based upon observations made by the writer, was
        published in the Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of
        Ethnology. The following account embodies observations
        which Capt. James S. Mutch, of Peterhead, Scotland,
        following a suggestion of the writer, had the kindness to
        make. The material for this study was collected by Capt.
        Mutch during a long-continued stay in Cumberland Sound.


The Eskimo who inhabit the coasts of Arctic America subsist mainly by
the chase of sea-mammals, such as seals of various kinds, walruses and
whales. Whenever this source of supply is curtailed, want and famine
set in. The huts are cold and dark--for heat and light are obtained by
burning the blubber of seals and whales--and soon the people succumb
to hunger and to the terrors of the rigorous climate. For this reason
the native does everything in his power to gain the good-will of the
sea-mammals and to insure success in hunting. All his thoughts are bent
upon treating them in such a manner that they may allow themselves to
be caught. On this account they form one of the main subjects of his
religious beliefs and customs. They play a most important part in his
mythology, and a well-nigh endless series of observances regulates
their treatment.

The mythological explanation of all the prevailing customs in regard to
sea-mammals is contained in a tale which describes their origin:

“A girl named Avilayuk refused all her suitors, and for this reason she
was also called ‘She who does not want to marry.’ There was a stone
near the village where she lived. It was speckled white and red. The
stone transformed itself into a dog and took the girl to wife.

“She had many children, some of whom became the ancestors of various
fabulous tribes. The children made a great deal of noise, which annoyed
Avilayuk’s father, so that he finally took them across the water to a
small island. Every day the dog swam across to the old man’s hut to get
meat for his family. His wife hung around his neck a pair of boots that
were fastened to a string. The old man filled the boots with meat, and
the dog took them back to the island.

“One day, while the dog was gone for meat, a man came to the island in
his kayak[C] and called the young woman. ‘Take your bag and come with
me,’ he shouted. He had the appearance of a good-looking, tall man,
and the woman was well pleased with him. She took her bag, went down
to the kayak, and the man paddled away with her. After they had gone
some distance, they came to a cake of floating ice. The man stepped
out of the kayak on to the ice. Then she noticed that he was quite a
small man, and that he appeared large only because he had been sitting
on a high seat. Then she began to cry, while he laughed and said, ‘Oh,
you have seen my seat, have you?’ [According to another version, he
wore snow-goggles made of walrus-ivory, and he said, ‘Do you see my
snow-goggles?’ and then laughed at her because she began to cry.] Then
he went back into his kayak, and they proceeded on their journey.

    [C] The one-man hunting canoe of the Eskimo.

“Finally they came to a place where there were many people and many
huts. He pointed out to her a certain hut made of the skins of yearling
seals, and told her that it was his, and that she was to go there. They
landed. The woman went up to the hut, while he attended to his kayak.
Soon he joined her in the hut, and staid with her for three or four
days before going out sealing again. Her new husband was a petrel.

“Meanwhile her father had left the dog, her former husband, at his
house, and had gone to look for her on the island. When he did not find
her, he returned home, and told the dog to wait for him, as he was
going in search of his daughter. He set out in a large boat, traveled
about for a long time, and visited many a place before he succeeded in
finding her. Finally he came to the place where she lived. He saw many
huts, and, without leaving his boat, he shouted and called his daughter
to return home with him. She came down from her hut, and went aboard
her father’s boat, where he hid her among some skins.

“They had not been gone long when they saw a man in a kayak following
them. It was her new husband. Soon he overtook them, and when he came
alongside he asked the young woman to show her hand, as he was very
anxious to see at least part of her body, but she did not move. Then he
asked her to show her mitten, but she did not respond to his request.
In vain he tried in many ways to induce her to show herself; she kept
in hiding. Then he began to cry, resting his head on his arms, that
were crossed in front of the manhole of the kayak. Avilayuk’s father
paddled on as fast as he could, and the man fell far behind. It was
calm at that time and they continued on their way home. After some time
they saw something coming from behind toward their boat. They could
not clearly discern it. Sometimes it looked like a man in a kayak.
Sometimes it looked like a petrel. It flew up and down, then skimmed
over the water, and finally came up to their boat and went round and
round it several times and then disappeared again. Suddenly ripples
came up, the waters began to rise, and after a short time a gale was
raging. The boat was quite a distance away from shore. The old man
became afraid lest they might be drowned; and, fearing the revenge
of his daughter’s husband, he threw her into the water. She held on
to the gunwale; then the father took his hatchet and chopped off the
first joints of her fingers. When they fell into the water they were
transformed into whales, the nails becoming the whalebone. Still she
clung to the boat; again he took his hatchet and chopped off the second
joints of her fingers. They became transformed into ground seals. Still
she clung to the boat; then he chopped off the last joints of her
fingers, which became transformed into seals. Now she clung on to the
boat with the stumps of her hands, and her father took his steering-oar
and knocked out her left eye. She fell backward into the water and he
paddled ashore.

“Then he filled with stones the boots in which the dog was accustomed
to carry meat to his family, and only covered the top with meat. The
dog started to swim across, but when he was halfway the heavy stones
dragged him down. He began to sink and was drowned. A great noise was
heard while he was drowning. The father took down his tent and went
down to the beach at the time of low water. There he lay down and
covered himself with the tent. The flood tide rose and covered him, and
when the waters receded he had disappeared.”

This woman, the mother of the sea-mammals, may be considered the
principal deity of the Central Eskimo. She has supreme sway over the
destinies of mankind, and almost all the observances of these tribes
are for the purpose of retaining her good-will or of propitiating her
if she has been offended. Among the eastern tribes of this region she
is called Sedna, while the tribes west of Hudson Bay call her Nuliayuk.
She is believed to live in a lower world, in a house built of stone and
whale-ribs. In accordance with the myth, she is said to have but one
eye. She cannot walk, but slides along, one leg bent under, the other
stretched forward. Her father lives with her in this house, and lies
covered up with his tent. The dog watches the entrance, being stationed
on the floor of the house.

The souls of seals, ground seals and whales are believed to proceed
from her house. After one of these animals has been killed its soul
stays with the body for three days. Then it goes back to Sedna’s abode,
to be sent forth again by her. If, during the three days that the soul
stays with the body, any taboo or prescribed custom is violated, the
violation becomes attached to the animal’s soul. Although the latter
strives to free itself of these attachments, which give it pain, it is
unable to do so, and takes them down to Sedna. The attachments, in some
manner that is not explained, make her hands sore, and she punishes the
people who are the cause of her pains by sending to them sickness, bad
weather and starvation. The object of the innumerable taboos that are
in force after the killing of these sea animals is therefore to keep
their souls free from attachments that would hurt their souls as well
as Sedna.

The souls of the sea animals are endowed with greater powers than those
of ordinary human beings. They can see the effect of the contact with a
corpse, which causes objects touched by it to appear of a dark color;
and they can see the effect of flowing blood, from which a vapor rises
that surrounds the bleeding person and is communicated to every one and
every thing that comes in contact with such a person. This vapor and
the dark color of death are exceedingly unpleasant to the souls of the
sea animals, that will not come near a hunter thus affected. The hunter
must therefore avoid contact with people who have touched a body, or
with such as are bleeding. If any one who has touched a body or who is
bleeding should allow others to come in contact with him he would cause
them to become distasteful to the seals and therefore also to Sedna.
For this reason the custom demands that every person must at once
announce if he has touched a body or if he is bleeding. If he does not
do so, he will bring ill luck to all the hunters.

These ideas have given rise to the belief that it is necessary to
announce the transgression of any taboo. The transgressor of a custom
is distasteful to Sedna and to the animals, and those who abide with
him will become equally distasteful through contact with him. For
this reason it has come to be an act required by custom and morals to
confess any and every transgression of a taboo, in order to protect the
community from the evil influences of contact with the evil-doer. The
descriptions of Eskimo life given by many observers contain records of
starvation which, according to the belief of the natives, was brought
about by some one transgressing a law and not announcing what he had
done.

I presume this importance of the confession of a transgression with a
view to warning others to keep at a distance from the transgressor has
gradually led to the idea that a transgression, or we might say a sin,
can be atoned for by confession. This is one of the most remarkable
religious beliefs of the Central Eskimo. There are innumerable tales
of starvation brought about by the transgression of a taboo. In vain
the hunters try to supply their families with food; gales and drifting
snow make their endeavors fruitless. Finally the help of the angakok[D]
is invoked, and he discovers that the cause of the misfortune of the
people is due to the transgression of a taboo. Then the guilty one is
searched for. If he confesses, all is well, the weather moderates, and
the seals will allow themselves to be caught; but if he obstinately
maintains his innocence, his death alone will soothe the wrath of the
offended deity.

    [D] The medicine-man or shaman of the Eskimo.

While thus the reason appears clear why the taboos are rigorously
enforced by public opinion, the origin of the taboos themselves is
quite obscure. It is forbidden, after the death of a sea mammal or
after the death of a person, to scrape the frost from the window, to
shake the beds, or to disturb the shrubs under the bed, to remove
oil-drippings from under the lamp, to scrape hair from skins, to cut
snow for the purpose of melting it, to work on iron, wood, stone, or
ivory. Women are, furthermore, forbidden to comb their hair, to wash
their faces and to dry their boots and stockings.

A number of customs, however, may be explained by the endeavors of the
natives to keep the sea mammals free from contaminating influences. All
the clothing of a dead person, more particularly the tent in which he
died, must be discarded; for if a hunter should wear clothing made of
skins that had been in contact with the deceased, these would appear
dark and the seal would avoid him. Neither would a seal allow itself to
be taken into a hut darkened by a dead body, and all those who entered
such a hut would appear dark to it and would be avoided.

While it is customary for a successful hunter to invite all the men of
the village to eat of the seal that he has caught, they must not take
any of the seal meat out of the hut, because it might come in contact
with persons who are under taboo, and thus the hunter might incur the
displeasure of the seal and of Sedna.

It is very remarkable that the walrus is not included in this series of
regulations. It is explicitly stated that the walrus, the white whale
and the narwhal are not subject to these laws, which affect only the
sea animals that originated from Sedna’s fingers. There is, however, a
series of laws that forbid contact between walrus, seal and caribou. It
is not quite clear in what mythical concept these customs originate.
There is a tradition regarding the origin of walrus and caribou which
is made to account for a dislike between these two animals. A woman
created both these animals from parts of her clothing. She gave the
walrus antlers and the caribou tusks. When man began to hunt them, the
walrus upset the boats with his antlers and the caribou killed the
hunter with his tusks. Therefore the woman called both animals back and
took the tusks from the caribou and gave them to the walrus. She took
the antlers, kicked the caribou’s forehead flat and put the antlers
on to it. Ever since that time, it is said, walrus and caribou avoid
each other, and the people must not bring their meat into contact.
They are not allowed to eat caribou and walrus meat on the same day
except after changing their clothing. The winter clothing which is made
of caribou-skin must be entirely completed before the men will go to
hunt walrus. As soon as the first walrus has been killed, a messenger
goes from village to village and announces the news. All work on
caribou-skins must cease immediately. When the caribou-hunting season
begins, all the winter clothing, and the tent that has been in use
during the walrus-hunting season, are buried, and not used again until
the following walrus-hunting season. No walrus hide, or thongs made of
such hide, must be taken inland, where is the abode of the caribou.

Similar laws, although not quite so stringent, hold good in regard
to contact between seal and walrus. The natives always change their
clothing or strip naked before eating seal during the walrus season.

The soul of the salmon is considered to be very powerful. Salmon must
not be cooked in a pot that has been used for boiling other kinds of
meat. It is always cooked at some distance from the hut. Boots that
were used while hunting walrus must not be worn when fishing salmon,
and no work on boot-legs is allowed until the first salmon has been
caught and placed on a boot-leg.

The fact that these taboos are not restricted to caribou and walrus
suggests that the mythical explanation given above does not account for
the origin of these customs, but must be considered as a later effort
to explain their existence.

The transgressions of taboos do not affect the souls of game alone.
It has already been stated that the sea mammals see their effect upon
man also, who appears to them of a dark color, or surrounded by a
vapor which is invisible to ordinary man. This means, of course, that
the transgression also affects the soul of the evil-doer. It becomes
attached to it and makes him sick. The shaman is able to see, by the
help of his guardian spirit, these attachments, and is able to free the
soul from them. If this is not done the person must die. In many cases
the transgressions become attached also to persons who come in contact
with the evil-doer. This is especially true of children, to whose souls
the sins of their parents, and particularly of their mothers, become
readily attached. Therefore when a child is sick the shaman, first of
all, asks its mother if she has transgressed any taboos. The attachment
seems to have a different appearance, according to the taboo that has
been violated. A black attachment is due to removing oil-drippings from
under the lamp. As soon as the mother acknowledges the transgression of
a taboo, the attachment leaves the child’s soul and the child recovers.

The souls of the deceased stay with the body for three days. If a taboo
is violated during this time the transgression becomes attached to the
soul of the deceased. The weight of the transgression causes the soul
pain, and it roams about the village, endeavoring to free itself of
its burden. It seeks to harm the people who, by their disobedience to
custom, are causing its sufferings. It causes heavy snows to fall and
brings sickness and death. Such a soul is called a tupilak. Toward the
middle of autumn it hovers around the doors of the huts. When a shaman
discovers the tupilak he advises the people, who assemble, and prepare
to free it of its burden. All the shamans go in search of it, each a
knife in hand. As soon as they find it, they stab it with their knives,
and thus cut off the transgressions. Then the tupilak becomes a soul
again. The knives with which it was stabbed are seen by the people to
be covered with blood.

The Central Eskimo believe that man has two souls. One of these stays
with the body, and may enter temporarily the body of a child which is
given the name of the departed. The other soul goes to one of the lands
of the souls. Of these there are several. There are three heavens, one
above another, of which the highest is the brightest and best. Those
who die by violence go to the lowest heaven. Those who die by disease
go to Sedna’s house first, where they stay for a year. Sedna restores
their souls to full health and then she sends them up to the second
heaven. Those who die by drowning go to the third heaven. People who
commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark and where they
go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature
births go to Sedna’s abode and stay in the lowest world.

The other soul stays with the body. When a child has been named after
the deceased, the soul enters its body and remains there for about four
months. It is believed that its presence strengthens the child’s soul,
which is very light and apt to escape from the body. After leaving the
body of the infant, the soul of the departed stays nearby, in order
to re-enter its body in case of need. When a year has elapsed since
the death of the person, his soul leaves the grave temporarily and
goes hunting, but returns frequently to the grave. When the body has
entirely decayed it may remain away for a long time.

Evidently the Eskimo also believe in the transmigration of souls. There
is one tradition in which it is told how the soul of a woman passed
through the bodies of a great many animals, until finally it was born
again as an infant. In another story it is told how a hunter caught a
fox in a trap and recognized in it the soul of his departed mother. In
still another tale the soul of a woman, after her death, entered the
body of a huge polar bear in order to avenge wrongs done to her during
her lifetime.

Almost the sole object of the religious ceremonies of the Eskimo is
to appease the wrath of Sedna, of the souls of animals, or of the
souls of the dead, that have been offended by the transgressions of
taboos. This is accomplished by the help of the guardian spirits of the
angakut. The most important ceremony of the Eskimo is celebrated in
the fall. At this time of the year the angakut, by the help of their
guardian spirits, visit Sedna and induce her to visit the village,
and they endeavor to free her of the transgressions that became
attached to her during the preceding year. One angakok throws her
with his harpoon, another one stabs her, and by this means they cut
off all the transgressions. The ceremony is performed in a darkened
snow-house. After the ceremony the lamps are lighted again and the
people see the harpoon and the knife that were used in the ceremony
covered with blood. If the angakut should fail to free Sedna from the
transgressions, bad weather and hunger would prevail during the ensuing
winter. On the following day Sedna sends her servant, who is called
Kaileteta, to visit the tribe. She is represented by a man dressed in
a woman’s costume and wearing a mask made of seal-skin. On this day
the people wear attached to their hoods pieces of skin of that animal
of which their first clothing was made after they were born. It seems
that the skins of certain animals are used for this purpose, each month
having one animal of its own. It is said that if they should not wear
the skin of the proper animal, Sedna would be offended and would punish
them.

The angakut also cure sick persons and make good weather with the help
of their guardian spirits. They discover transgressions of taboos and
other causes of ill luck. One of the most curious methods of divination
applied by the angakut is that of ‘head-lifting.’ A thong is placed
around the head of a person who lies down next to the patient. The
thong is attached to the end of a stick which is held in hand by the
angakok. Then the latter asks questions as to the nature and outcome of
the disease, which are supposed to be answered by the soul of a dead
person, which makes it impossible for the head to be lifted if the
answer is affirmative, while the head is raised easily if the answer is
negative. As soon as the soul of the departed leaves, the head can be
moved without difficulty.

Amulets are extensively used as a protection against evil influences
and to secure good luck. Pregnant women wear the teeth of wolves on
the backs of their shirts. These same teeth are fastened to the edge
of the infant’s hood. The string which passes under the large hood of
the woman who carries her child on her back is fastened at one end
to a bear’s tooth, which serves to strengthen the child’s soul. When
the child begins to walk about, this string and the bear’s tooth are
attached to its shirt and worn as amulets. Pyrites, when thrown upon a
spirit, are believed to drive it away.

As compared with the beliefs of the Greenlanders, the beliefs of the
Central Eskimo are characterized by the great importance of the Sedna
myth and the entire absence of the belief in a powerful spirit called
Tonarssuk, which seems to have been one of the principal features of
Greenland beliefs. There is an evident tendency among the Central
Eskimo to affiliate all customs and beliefs with the myth of the origin
of sea animals. This tendency seems to have been one of the principal
causes that molded the customs and beliefs of the people into the form
in which they appear at the present time.




MENTAL ENERGY.[E]

BY EDWARD ATKINSON.

    [E] Presented before the New York meeting of the American
        Association for the Advancement of Science.


According to the common conception, political economy is held to deal
with material forces only; with land, labor and capital; with the
production, distribution and consumption of the materials of human
existence. These are food, clothing and shelter. It, therefore, bears
the aspect of a purely material study of material forces. Yet no more
purely metaphysical science exists, and there can be, in my view of the
subject, no more ideal conceptions than those which are derived from
the study of these purely material forces. Many of the errors commonly
presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the
limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.

We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of
nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general
term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is
to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new
forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. In a material
sense all that any one can get in or out of life, be he rich or poor,
is what we call our board and clothing. Such being the fact, what a man
consumes is his cost to the community; what he spends yields to others
the means of buying the supplies for their own wants; their consumption
is then their cost to the community.

The physical forces of nature are limited. The earth is endowed with a
fixed quantity of materials that we call gaseous, liquid and solid. It
receives a certain amount of heat from the sun which, for all practical
purposes, may be considered a fixed quantity of energy, even if in
eons it may be exhausted. The physical energy of man is devoted to the
transformation of these physical forces under the law of conservation;
he can neither add to nor diminish the quantity. He can transform solid
into gas and gas into liquid. He can, according to common speech,
consume some of these products, but his consumption is only another
transformation. His own body is but one of the forms of physical energy
on the way toward another form. These elements of nature, formerly
limited to earth, air and water, are now listed under many titles of
what are called elements; I believe over sixty that have not yet been
differentiated, but all may yet be resolved into a unit of force.

You will observe that in our arithmetic we have ten numerals which
can be divided into fractions. In our music we deal with seven notes
and their variants. In our alphabet we have twenty-six letters. These
factors correspond in some measure to what we call elements in nature.
There is a limit to the number of combinations that can be made of the
numerals and their fractions, to the notes of music and their variants,
and of the letters of the alphabet; but in each case this limit is so
remote as to be negligible, like the exhaustion of the heat of the sun.
May we not deal with the elements of nature in the same way? Can any
one prescribe a limit to their conversion and reconversion to the use
of mankind? Is it not in these processes of conversion that we derive
our subsistence?

We make nothing. All that we can do is to move something. We move the
soil and we move the seed; nature gives the harvest. We direct the
currents of falling water, of heat and of steam; nature imparts the
force or energy to which man has only given a new direction. We are now
imparting new directions to the force that we call electricity, and to
what we call cold. What is the force from which we derive this power of
transforming physical energy? May we not call it mental energy? Is not
mental energy the factor in mankind by which he is differentiated from
the beast? Does not man only accumulate experience, and is there any
limit to the power of mind over matter?

If these points are well taken, mental energy is the fourth and
paramount factor in providing for material existence, and the science
of political economy, which deals with land, labor and capital, becomes
a purely metaphysical science when we admit the force of mental energy
into the combination.

We deal, as I have said, with sixty elements, so-called, more or
less, but the unity of nature is the most important fact ever proved
by science; the correlation of all forms of physical energy leading
logically from the idea of manifold forces or gods to the unity of
creation, necessarily ending in the conception of unity of a creator,
or the one God. This modern development of mental science is but the
Hebrew concept of the creation in a new form. The Hebrew race was
the first one of the historic races with whom the unity of creation
and the unity of the creator became an article of faith. I doubt not
that it was in that concept and the power derived from it that the
Hebrew intellect asserted its preëminence in the history of the world.
According to that concept, to man is given “dominion over the fish of
the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth.” By what force does man hold dominion unless it
is through his mental energy and his capacity to accumulate experience?

All the industrial arts are antedated by the industries of animals.
The tailor finds his prototype in the tailor bird; the mason in the
wasp; the farmer in the agricultural ant; the bridge-builder in the
spider; the weaver in the weaver bird; the creator of water power in
the beaver, and so on. Yet no other animal except man has developed or
extended any of these arts. No other animal except man has learned to
make and use fire and not to run away from it.

If, then, man by his power of mental energy converts the original and
crude forces with which the earth is endowed into new forms, and by
giving them new direction increases his power of production of the
means of his own subsistence and enjoyment of life, _does it not follow
that creation is a continuous procession in which man is a factor_?
“There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.”
The ideal of ‘an honest God the noblest concept of man’ becomes the
converse of an honest man the noblest work of God--honest in a broad
sense in his dealings with the forces of nature; true to his function.

There is a painful side to statistical and economic study. The penalty
of being able to read what is written between the lines and the
columns of the figures is the conclusion that after we have all done
the best work that the present conditions of science will permit, the
entire product barely suffices to keep mankind in existence; his fixed
capital, so-called, is at the mercy both of time and of the inventor
who substitutes better methods which at less cost of effort or labor
yield more abundance to the community as a whole. But on the other
hand, no matter how hard the struggle for existence may be, we find
the promise of future abundance even in the insufficient product which
has been derived from the application of science and invention up to
date. Witness the relative progress of the last century as compared
with all the previous centuries; then attempt to conceive what will be
the condition of humanity a century hence, knowing, as we do, that the
applications of science through mental energy now proceed in geometric
progression, reversing the dogma of Malthus and leading to the concept
of production unlimited, consumption limited.

If it be true that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind
over matter or to the number of conversions of force that can be
developed, providing in increasing measure for the wants of the human
body, it follows that pauperism is due to poverty of mental energy, not
of material resources.

The next step in the development of this theory may be presented in
this form: _No man is paid by the measure in time or physical effort,
for the work or labor that he performs._ No man can claim payment in
money or in kind on the ground that he has done a day’s work of a
greater or less number of hours. In all civilized countries we are
members one of another; rich or poor; whether we work with our hands
or our heads, or both combined. Material existence is supported by
conversion of one form of physical energy into another. Social energy
is maintained by the exchange of one form of service for another. The
measure of compensation is not the number of hours of labor put into
the product or service. _The standard by which services are measured
is what the buyer is saved from doing, not what the seller does._ Each
of us might possibly be able to house, clothe and feed ourselves if we
were cast upon an island possessing sufficient natural resources. If a
hundred persons representing all the classes in society were wrecked
upon such an island, each adult or each person above ten years old
would probably find a way to house, feed and clothe himself. Why do we
not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the hundred
representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each do his
own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason that men
are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or different
aptitudes are developed in their environment. Each one finds out that
by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own time
and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, while
the next man finds out what he can do for him.

There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or
estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or
manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another.
That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of
both parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard
to the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that
he had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression
of benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while
the quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others,
filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under
the pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of
service are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits
constitute more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges.

The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every
country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also
leads to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and
animosity are kept up. The false conception that in international
commerce what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by
the advocates of protection, many of whom very honestly believe
that through the exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may
be promoted, wholly ignoring the fact that arts and industries are
developed by intelligence and not by legislation.

The advocates of bounties and of special legislation also ignore
the fact that in this country, where mental energy is more nearly
free in its action than in any other, manufactures and the mechanic
arts develop in due proportion according to the age and the natural
resources of the territory or state, nine-tenths or more of the
occupations which are listed under these titles being free in the
nature of things from any possibility of foreign competition through
the import of a product of like kind.

There may be nothing new in this essay, but until my own observation
had led me to the conclusion that land, labor and capital were alike
inert and incapable without the cöordinating power of mental energy,
the doubt continued to exist in my mind which is often expressed about
the possibility of economic science having any real existence or right
to the title. Also, until my own observation led me to the conclusion
that the cost of a man to the community is what he consumes, and not
what he secures in the way of income, the correlation of wealth and
welfare had not been satisfactorily reconciled. I think that a very
large part of what is written under the title of political economy
would be greatly modified, and perhaps never have been written, had
these concepts been derived by the writers from experience, as they
have been in my own observation.

I have not much patience with abstract or _à priori_ theories, my
own method being one of observation, then referring to the various
authorities in order to find out whether my observations or their
abstract theories have been shallow and superficial.

Again, I find in the ideal of the continuous miracle of creation in
which man is a factor the solution of many intellectual difficulties.
In the face of such a perception of the methods of the universe, the
larger part of the dogmas that have been put forth under the name of
religion take their place with much of the historic rubbish which
passes under the name of history. When it becomes plain that every man
has his place in the progress of continuous creation, and is a factor
in it; that nothing is constant but change; that there is no such thing
as fixed capital; all the doubts and fears regarding the future of
humanity vanish in the light of sure progress.

What greater stimulus can there be than for every man each in his own
way rendering service for service, his objective point being only the
welfare of himself and his family, when he attains the conviction
that by so much as his mental energy adds to the sum of the utilities
by which mankind lives, so may that part which he consumes and which
represents his cost to the community be fully justified, even though it
is earned with more apparent ease and less physical exertion than are
called for from his poorer neighbors.

Incomplete as his studies were, I have always found in the ‘Harmonies’
of Frederic Bastiat the greatest encouragement and the greatest
incentive to the work which I have undertaken under the name of
political economy, leading more and more to the conviction that war
and warfare, whatever influence they may have had in developing
progress in the past, are now due to ignorance and greed; the war of
tariffs due to selfishness and stupidity; and the contest of labor and
capital due to the errors of the ignorant workman and the ignorant
capitalist alike. All interests are harmonious. The evolution of
science and invention will surely bring them together on the lines of
righteousness, peace and material abundance.

This essay has been condensed from a lecture prepared and given before
a Clergymen’s Club some months ago. In it I tried to show the necessary
connection of religion and life as developed by economic study, the law
of mutual service being the rule by which commerce lives and moves and
has its being. This lecture has since been read to several clubs of
very different types of men, and from the great interest excited I am
led to think there is something in it fit for the student of facts and
figures to say.

I may, therefore, venture to repeat the statement of two principles
which are presented in this treatise, which I think have been seldom
if ever fully developed in any of the standard works upon political
economy. To my own mind these are basic principles which when applied
may profoundly modify many of the concepts of students of economic
science. I join in the view that the family is the unit of society,
the home the center. The end of all production is consumption.
Nothing is constant but change, and there is no such thing as fixed
material capital of any long duration in the progress of time. The two
principles which I have endeavored to enforce are as follows:

First. The cost of each person or head of the family is what he and his
immediate dependents consume. His income, whether measured in terms of
money or in products, is, therefore, no measure of his cost; what he
distributes in payment for service rendered being expended by those who
receive it in procuring the commodities which constitute their cost to
the community.

Second. No person who is occupied or is in the employment or service of
others is paid for what he does. His work may occupy long hours and may
be applied to arduous manual labor, or it may be done in a short number
of hours per day, with but little physical effort. Neither the hours
nor the effort constitute any measure on which payment can be based.
The measure of payment is fixed by the measure of the work saved to him
who makes the payment, consciously or unconsciously estimated.

These two precepts or principles, coupled with the theory that there is
no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter, or to the number
of transformations of physical energy to which direction may be given
in the material support of humanity, bring the visions of the Utopians
within the scope of a law of progress in material welfare to which no
limit can be put in time or space.




CHAPTERS ON THE STARS.

BY PROF. SIMON NEWCOMB, U. S. N.


VARIABLE STARS.

It is a curious fact that the ancient astronomers, notwithstanding
the care with which they observed the heavens, never noticed that
any of the stars changed in brightness. The earliest record of such
an observation dates from 1596, when the periodical disappearance of
Omicron Ceti was noticed. After this, nearly two centuries elapsed
before another case of variability in a star was recorded. During the
first half of the nineteenth century Argelander so systematized the
study of variable stars as to make it a new branch of astronomy. In
recent years it has become of capital interest and importance through
the application of the spectroscope.

Students who are interested in the subject will find the most complete
information attainable in the catalogues of variable stars, published
from time to time by Chandler in the ‘Astronomical Journal.’ His third
catalogue, which appeared in 1896, comprises more than 300 stars whose
variability has been well established, while there is always a long
list of ‘suspected variables’--whose cases are still to be tried. The
number to be included in the established list is continually increasing
at such a rate that it is impossible to state it with any approximation
to exactness. The possibility of such a statement has been yet
further curtailed by the recent discovery at the Harvard Observatory
that certain clusters of stars contain an extraordinary proportion
of variables. Altogether at the time of the latest publication, 509
such stars were found in twenty-three clusters. The total number of
these objects in clusters, therefore, exceeds the number known in the
rest of the sky. They will be described more fully in a subsequent
chapter. For the present we are obliged to leave this rich field out
of consideration and confine our study to the isolated variable stars
which are found in every region of the heavens.

Variable stars are of several classes, which, however, run into each
other by gradations so slight that a sharp separation cannot always be
made between them. Yet there are distinguishing features, each of which
marks so considerable a number of these stars as to show some radical
difference in the causes on which the variations depend.

We have first to distinguish the two great classes of irregular and
periodic stars. The irregular ones increase and diminish in so fitful a
way that no law of their change can be laid down. To this class belong
the so-called ‘new stars’, which, at various periods in history, have
blazed out in the heavens, and then in a few weeks or months have
again faded away. It is a remarkable fact that no star of the latter
class has ever been known to blaze out more than once. This fact
distinguishes new stars from other irregularly variable ones.

Periodic stars are those which go through a regular cycle of changes in
a definite interval of time, so that, after a certain number of days,
sometimes of hours, the star returns to the same brightness. But even
in the case of periodic stars, it is found that the period is more
or less variable, and, in special cases, the amount of the variation
is such that it cannot always be said whether we should call a star
periodic or irregular.

The periodic stars show wide differences, both in the length of the
period and in the character of the changes they undergo. In most cases
they rapidly increase in brightness during a few days or weeks, and
then slowly fade away, to go through the same changes again at the end
of the period. In other cases they blaze up or fade out, from time
to time, like the revolving light of a lighthouse. Some stars are
distinguished more especially by their maximum, or period of greatest
brightness, while others are more sharply marked by minima, or periods
of least brightness. In some cases there are two unequal minima in the
course of a period.

Chandler’s third catalogue of variable stars gives the periods of
280 of these objects, which seem to have been fairly well made out.
A classification of these periods, as to their length, will be
interesting. There are, of periods:

  Less than 50 days         63 Stars.
  Between 50 and 100 days    6   ”
     ”   100  ”  150  ”      9   ”
     ”   150  ”  200  ”     18   ”
     ”   200  ”  250  ”     29   ”
     ”   250  ”  300  ”     40   ”
     ”   300  ”  350  ”     44   ”
     ”   350  ”  400  ”     44   ”
     ”   400  ”  450  ”     18   ”
     ”   450  ”  500  ”      6   ”
     ”   500  ”  550  ”      1   ”
     ”   550  ”  600  ”      1   ”
     ”   600  ”  650  ”      1   ”

It will be seen from this that, leaving out the cases of very short
period, the greater number of the periods fall between 300 and 400
days. From this value the number falls off in both directions. Only
three periods exceed 500 days, and of these the longest is 610 days. We
infer from this that there is something in the constitution of these
stars, or in the causes on which their variation depends, which limits
the period. This limitation establishes a well-marked distinction
between the periodic stars and the irregular variables to be hereafter
described.

Returning to the upper end of the scale, the contrast between the great
number of stars less than fifty days, and the small number between
fifty and one hundred, seems to show that we have here a sharp line
of distinction between stars of long and those of short period. But,
when we examine the matter in detail, the statistics of the periods
do not enable us to draw any such line. About eight periods are less
than one day, and the number of this class known to us is continually
increasing. About forty are between one and ten days, and from this
point upwards they are scattered with a fair approach to equality
up to a period of one hundred days. There is, however, a possible
distinction, which we shall develop presently.

[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE LAW OF CHANGE IN A VARIABLE STAR.]

The law of change in a variable star is represented to the eye by a
curve in the following way. We draw a straight horizontal line _A X_ to
represent the time. A series of equidistant points, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_,
etc., on this will represent moments of time. One of the spaces, _a_,
_b_, _c_, etc., may represent an hour, a day, or a month, according
to the rapidity of change. We take _a_ to represent the initial
moment, and erect an ordinate _aa’_, of such length as to represent
the brightness of the star on some convenient scale at this moment. At
the second moment, _b_, which may be an hour or a day later, we erect
another ordinate _bb’_, representing the brightness at this moment. We
continue this process as long as may be required. Then we draw a curve,
represented by the dotted line, through the ends of all the ordinates.
In the case of a periodic star it is only necessary to draw the curve
through a single period, since its continuation will be a repetition of
its form for any one period.

We readily see that if a star does not vary, all the ordinates will
be of equal length, and the curve will be a horizontal straight line.
Moreover, the curve will take this form through any portion of time
during which the light of the star is constant.

There are three of the periodic stars plainly visible to the naked eye
at maximum, of which the variations are so wide that they may easily
be noticed by any one who looks for them at the right times, and knows
how to find the stars. These stars are:

  Omicron Ceti, called also _Mira Ceti_.
  Beta Persei, or Algol.
  Beta Lyræ.

It happens that each of these stars exemplifies a certain type or law
of variations.

_Omicron Ceti._ On August 13, 1596, David Fabricius noticed a star in
the constellation Cetus, which was not found in any catalogue. Bayer,
in his ‘Uranometria’, of which the first edition was published in 1601,
marked the star Omicron, but said nothing about the fact that it was
visible only at certain times. Fabricius observed the star from time to
time, until 1609, but he does not appear to have fully and accurately
recognized its periodicity. But so extraordinary an object could
not fail to command the attention of astronomers, and the fact was
soon established that the star appeared at intervals of about eleven
months, gradually fading out of sight after a few weeks of visibility.
Observations of more or less accuracy having been made for more than
two centuries, the following facts respecting it have been brought to
light:

Its variations are somewhat irregular. Sometimes, when at its
brightest, it rises nearly or quite to the second magnitude. This
was the case in October, 1898, when it was about as bright as Alpha
Ceti. At other times its maximum brightness scarcely exceeds the fifth
magnitude. No law has yet been discovered by which it can be predicted
whether it shall attain one degree of brightness or another at maximum.

Its minima are also variable. Sometimes it sinks only to the eighth
magnitude; at other times to the ninth or lower. In either case it is
invisible to the naked eye.

As with other stars of this kind, it brightens up more rapidly
than it fades away. It takes a few weeks from the time it becomes
visible to reach its greatest brightness, whatever that may be. It
generally retains this brightness for two or three weeks, then fades
away, gradually at first, afterward more rapidly. The whole time of
visibility will, therefore, be two or three months. Of course, it can
be seen with a telescope at any time.

The period also is variable in a somewhat irregular way. If we
calculate when the star ought to be at its greatest brightness on the
supposition that the intervals between the maxima ought to be equal,
we shall find that sometimes the maximum will be thirty or forty days
early, and at other times thirty or forty days late. These early or
late maxima follow each other year after year, with a certain amount of
regularity as regards the progression, though no definable law can be
laid down to govern them. Thus, during the period from 1782 to 1800 it
was from thirteen to twenty-four days late. In 1812 it was thirty-nine
days late. From 1845 to 1856 it was on the average about a month too
early. Several recent maxima, notably those from 1895 to 1898, again
occurred late. Formulæ have been constructed to show these changes, but
there is no certainty that they express the actual law of the case.
Indeed, the probability seems to be that there is no invariable law
that we can discover to govern it.

Argelander fixed the length of the period at 331.9 days. More recently,
Chandler fixed it at 331.6 days. It would seem, therefore, to have
been somewhat shorter in recent times. It was at its maximum toward
the end of October, 1898. We may, therefore, expect that future maxima
will occur in July, 1901; June, 1902; May, 1903; April, 1904, and so
on, about a month earlier each year. During the few years following
1903 the maxima will probably not be visible, owing to the star being
near conjunction with the sun at the times of their occurrence. The
most plausible view seems to be that changes of a periodic character,
involving the eruption of heated matter from the interior, of the body
to its surface, followed by the cooling of this matter by radiation,
are going on in the star.

The star _Algol_, or _Beta Persei_, as it is commonly called in
astronomical language, may, in northern latitudes, be seen on almost
any night of the year. In the early summer we should probably see it
only after midnight, in the northeast. In late winter it would be seen
in the northwest. From August until January one can find it at some
time in the evening by becoming acquainted with the constellations.
It is nearly of the second magnitude. One might look at it a score
of times without seeing that it varied in brilliancy. But at certain
stated intervals, somewhat less than three days, it fades away to
nearly the fourth magnitude for a few hours, and then slowly recovers
its light. This fact was first discovered by Goodrick in 1783, since
which time the variations have been carefully followed. The law of
variation thus defined is expressed by a curve of the following form:

[Illustration: FIG. 2. LAW OF VARIATION OF A STAR OF THE ALGOL TYPE.]

The idea that what we see in the star is a partial eclipse caused by
a dark body revolving round it, was naturally suggested even to the
earliest observers. But it was impossible to test this theory until
recent times. Careful observation showed changes in the period between
the eclipses, which, although not conclusive against the theory, might
have seemed to make it somewhat unlikely. The application of the
spectroscope to the determination of radial motions, enabled Vogel, of
Potsdam, in 1889, to set the question at rest. His method of reasoning
and proceeding was this:

If the fading out which we see is really due to an eclipse by a dark
body, that body must be nearly or quite as large as the star itself,
else it could not cut off so much of its light. In this case, it is
probably nearly as massive as the star itself, and therefore would
affect the motion of the star. Both bodies would, in fact, revolve
around their common center of gravity. Therefore, when after the dark
body has passed in front of the star, it has made one-fourth of a
revolution, which would require about seventeen hours, the star would
be moving towards us. Again, seventeen hours before the eclipse, it
ought to be moving away from us.

The measurement of six photographs of the spectrum, of which four
were taken before the eclipses and two afterward, gives the following
results:

    Before eclipses: Velocity _from_ the sun equals 39 km. per second.

    After eclipses: Velocity _toward_ the sun equals 47 km. per second.

These results show that the hypothesis in question is a true one, and
afforded the first conclusive evidence of a dark body revolving around
a distant star. A study of the law of diminution and recovery of the
light during the eclipse, combined with the preceding motions, enabled
Vogel to make an approximate estimate of the size of the orbit and of
the two bodies. The star itself is somewhat more than a million of
miles in diameter; the dark companion a little less. The latter is
about the size of our sun. Their distance apart is somewhat more than
three millions of miles; the respective masses are about one-half and
one-fourth that of the sun. These results, though numerically rather
uncertain, are probably near enough to the truth to show us what an
interesting system we here have to deal with. We can say with entire
certainty that the size and mass of the dark body exceed those of any
planet of our system, even Jupiter, several hundred fold.

The period of the star is also subject to variations of a somewhat
singular character. These have been attributed by Chandler to a motion
of the whole system around a third body, itself invisible. This theory
is, however, still to be proved. Quite likely the planet which causes
the eclipse is not the only one which revolves around this star. The
latter may be the center of a system like our solar system, and the
other planets may, by their action, cause changes in the motion of
the body that produces the eclipses. The most singular feature of the
change is that it seems to have taken place quite rapidly, about 1840.
The motion was nearly uniform up to near this date; then it changed,
and again remained nearly uniform until 1890. Since then no available
observations have been published.

It is found that several other stars vary in the same way as Algol;
that is to say, they are invariable in brightness during the greater
part of the time, but fade away for a few days at regular intervals.
This is a kind of variation which it is most difficult to discover,
because it will be overlooked unless the observer happens to notice the
star during the time when an eclipse is in progress, and is thoroughly
aware of its previous brightness. One might observe a star of this
kind very accurately a score of times, without hitting upon a moment
when the partial eclipse was in progress. On the principle that like
effects are due to like causes, we are justified in concluding that in
the cases of all stars of this type, the eclipses are caused by the
revolution of a dark body, now called ‘Algol variables,’ round the
principal star.

A feature of all the Algol variables is the shortness of the periods.
The longest period is less than five days, while three are less than
one day. This is a result that we might expect from the nature of the
case. The nearer a dark planet is to the star, the more likely it
will be to hide its light from an observer at a great distance. If,
for example, the planet Jupiter were nearly as large as the sun, the
chances would be hundreds to one against the plane of the orbit being
so nearly in the line of a distant observer that the latter would ever
see an eclipse of the sun by the planet. But if the planet were close
to the sun, the chances might increase to one in ten, and yet farther
to almost any extent, according to the nearness of the two bodies.

Still, we cannot set any definite limit to the period of stars of this
type; all we can say is that, as the period we seek for increases, the
number of stars varying in that period must diminish. This follows not
only from the reason just given, but from the fact that the longer the
interval that separates the partial eclipses of a star of the Algol
type, the less likely they are to be detected.


STARS OF THE BETA LYRÆ TYPE.

The star Beta Lyræ shows variations quite different in their nature
from those of Algol, yet having a certain analogy to them. Anyone
who looks at the constellation Lyræ a few nights in succession and
compares Beta with Gamma, a star of nearly the same brightness in its
neighborhood, will see that while on some evenings the stars are of
equal brightness, on others Beta will be fainter by perhaps an entire
magnitude.

A careful examination of these variations shows us a very remarkable
feature. On a preliminary study, the period will seem to be six and
one-half days. But, comparing the alternate minima, we shall find them
unequal. Hence the actual period is thirteen days. In this period there
are two unequal minima, separated by equal maxima. That is to say, the
partial eclipses at intervals of six and one-half days are not equal.
At the alternate minima the star is half as bright again as at the
intermediate minima.

It is impossible to explain such a change as this merely by the
interposition of a dark body, and this for two reasons. Instead of
remaining invariable between the minima, the variation is continuous
during the whole period, like the rising and falling of a tide.
Moreever, the inequality of the alternating minima is against the
theory.

Pickering, however, found from the doubling of the spectral lines that
there were two stars revolving round each other. Then Prof. G. W.
Myers, of Indiana, worked out a very elaborate mathematical theory to
explain the variations, which is not less remarkable for its ingenuity
than for the curious nature of the system it brings to light. His
conclusions are these:

Beta Lyræ consists of two bodies, gaseous in their nature, which
revolve round each other, so near as to be almost touching. They are
of unequal size. Both are self-luminous. By their mutual attraction
they are drawn out into ellipsoids. The smaller body is somewhat darker
than the other. When we see the two bodies laterally, they are at their
brightest. As they revolve, however, we see them more and more end
on, and thus the light diminishes. At a certain point one begins to
cover the other and hide its light. Thus the combined light continues
to diminish until the two bodies move across our line of sight. Then
we have a minimum. At one minimum, however, the smaller and darker of
the two bodies is projected upon the brighter one, and thus diminishes
its light. At the other minimum, it is hiding behind the other, and
therefore we see the light of the larger one alone.

This theory receives additional confirmation from the fact, shown
by the spectroscope, that these stars are either wholly gaseous, or
at least have self-luminous atmospheres. Some of Professor Myers’s
conclusions respecting the magnitudes are summarized as follows:

The larger body is about 0.4 as bright as the smaller.

The flattening of the ellipsoidal masses is about 0.17.

The distance of centers is about 1-7/8 the semi-major axis of the
larger star, or about 50,000,000 kilometers (say 30,000,000 miles).

The mass of the larger body is about twice that of the smaller, and 9½
times the mass of the sun.

The mean density of the system is a little less than that of air.[F]

    [F] ‘Astrophysical Journal’, Vol. VII, January, 1898.

It should be remarked that these numbers rest on spectroscopic results,
which need further confirmation. They are, therefore, liable to be
changed by subsequent investigation. What is most remarkable is that we
have here to deal with a case to which we have no analogy in our solar
system, and which we should never have suspected, had it not been for
observations of this star.

The gap between the variable stars of the Algol type and those of
the Beta Lyræ type is, at the present time, being filled by new
discoveries in such a way as to make a sharp distinction of the two
classes difficult. It is characteristic of the Algol type proper that
the partial eclipses are due to the interposition of a dark planet
revolving round the bright star. But suppose that we have two nearly
equal stars, _A_ and _B_, revolving round their common center of
gravity in a plane passing near our system. Then, _A_ will eclipse
_B_, and, half a revolution later, _B_ will eclipse _A_, and so on
in alternation. But, when the stars are equal, we may have no way of
deciding which is being eclipsed, and thus we shall have a star of the
Algol type, so far as the law of variation is concerned, yet, as a
matter of fact, belonging rather to the Beta Lyræ type. If the velocity
in the line of sight could be measured, the question would be settled
at once. But only the brightest stars can, so far, be thus measured, so
that the spectroscope cannot help us in the majority of cases.

The most interesting case of this kind yet brought to light is that
of Tau Cygni. The variability of this star, ordinarily of the fourth
magnitude, was discovered by Chandler in December, 1886. The minima
occurred at intervals of three days. But in the following summer he
found an apparent period of 1 d. 12 h., the alternate minima being
invisible because they occurred during daylight, or when the star was
below the horizon. With this period the times of minima during the
summer of 1888 were predicted.

It was then found that the times of the alternate minima, which,
as we have just said, were the only ones visible during any one
season, did not correspond to the prediction. The period seemed to
have greatly changed. Afterward, it seemed to return to its old
value. After puzzling changes of this sort, the tangle was at length
unraveled by Dunér, of Lund, who showed that the alternate periods were
unequal. The intervals between minima were one day nine hours, one
day fifteen hours, one day nine hours, one day fifteen hours, and so
on, indefinitely. This law once established, the cause of the anomaly
became evident. Two bright stars revolve round their common center of
gravity in a period of nearly three days. Each eclipses the other in
alternation. The orbit is eccentric, and, in consequence, one-half
of it is described in a less time than the other half. If we could
distinguish the two stars by telescopic vision, and note their relative
positions at the four cardinal points of their orbit, we should see the
pair alternately single and double, as shown in the following diagrams:

                                           A          B
  Position (1), stars at pericenter        *          *
       Interval, 16 hours.

  Position (2), A eclipses B                    *
       Interval, 20 hours.

                                           B          A
  Position (3), stars at apocenter         *          *
       Interval, 20 hours.

  Position (4), B eclipses                      *
       Interval, 16 hours.

  Position (1) is repeated                 *          *

_U_ Pegasi is a star which proved as perplexing as Tau Cygni. It was
first supposed to be of the Algol type, with a period of about two
days. Then it was found that a number of minima occurred during this
period, and that the actual interval between them was only a few hours.
The great difficulty in the case arises from the minuteness of the
variation, which is but little more than half a magnitude between the
extremes. The observations of Wendell, at the Harvard Observatory, with
the polarizing photometer, enabled Pickering to reach a conclusion
which, though it may still be open to some doubt, seems to be the most
likely yet attainable. The star is of the Beta Lyræ type; its complete
period is 8 hours 59 minutes 41 seconds, or 19 seconds less than nine
hours; during this period it passes through two equal maxima, each of
magnitude 9.3, and two unequal minima 9.76 and 9.9, alternately.

[Illustration: FIG. 3. LIGHT CURVE OF U PEGASI, OF THE BETA LYRÆ TYPE,
FROM OBSERVATIONS BY WENDELL AT THE HARVARD OBSERVATORY. MAGNITUDE AT
MAXIMUM, 9.32; AT PRINCIPAL MINIMUM, 9.90; AT SECONDARY MINIMUM, 9.76.
PERIOD, 9 HOURS.]

The difference of these minima, 0m. 14, is less than the errors which
really ordinarily affect measures of a star’s magnitude with the best
photometers. Some skepticism has, therefore, been felt as to the
reality of the difference which, if it does not exist, would reduce the
periodic time below four and one-half hours, the shortest yet known.
But Pickering maintains that, in observations of this kind upon a
single star, the precision is such that the reality of the difference,
small though it be, is beyond reasonable doubt.

Taking Pickering’s law of change as a basis, Myers has represented
the light-curve of _U_ Pegasi on a theory similar to that which he
constructed for Beta Lyræ. His conclusion is that, in the present case,
the two bodies which form the visible star are in actual contact. A
remarkable historic feature of the case is that Poincaré has recently
investigated, by purely mathematical methods, the possible forms of
revolving fluid masses in a condition of equilibrium, bringing out a
number of such forms previously unknown. One of these, which he calls
the apiodal form, consists of two bodies joined into one, and it is
this which Myers finds for _U_ Pegasi.

Quite similar to these two cases is that of Zeta Herculis. This star,
ordinarily of the seventh magnitude, was found, at Potsdam, in 1894,
to diminish by about one magnitude. Repeated observations elsewhere
indicate a period of very nearly four days. Actually it is now found
to be only ten minutes less than four days. The result was that during
any one season of observation the minima occur at nearly the same hour
every night or day. To an observer situated in such longitude that they
occur during the day, they would, of course, be invisible.

Continued observations then showed a secondary minimum, occurring
about half-way between the principal minima hitherto observed. It
was then found that these secondary minima really occur between one
and two hours earlier than the mid-moment, so that the one interval
would be between forty-six and forty-seven hours and the other between
forty-nine and fifty. The time which it takes the star to lose its
light and regain it again is about ten hours. More recent observations,
however, do not show this inequality, so that there is probably a rapid
motion of the pericenter of the orbit.

It will be seen that this star combines the Algol and Beta Lyræ types.
It is an Algol star in that its light remains constant between the
eclipses. It is of the Beta Lyræ type in the alternate minima being
unequal.

From a careful study, Seliger and Hartwig derived the following
particulars respecting this system:

  Diameter of principal star, 15,000,000 kilometers.
  Diameter of smaller   star,  12,000,000 kilometers.
  Mass of the larger star, 172 times sun’s mass.
  Mass of the smaller star, 94 times sun’s mass.
  Distance of centers, 45,000,000 kilometers.
  Time of revolution, 3d. 23h. 49m. 32.7s.

It must be added that the data for these extraordinary numbers are
rather slender and partly hypothetical.

Beta Lyræ is always of the same brightness at the same hour of its
period, and Algol has always the same magnitude at minimum. It is true
that the length of the period varies slowly in the case of these stars.
But this may arise from the action of other invisible bodies revolving
around the visible stars. This general uniformity is in accord with the
theory which attributes the apparent variations to the various aspects
in which we see one and the same system of revolving stars.

Another variable star showing some unique features is Eta Aquilæ. What
gives it special interest is that spectroscopic observations of its
radial motion show it to have a dark body revolving round it in a very
eccentric orbit, and in the same time as the period of variation. It
might therefore be supposed that we have here a star of the Algol or
Beta Lyræ type. But such is not the case. There is nothing in the law
of variation to suggest an eclipsing of the bright star, nor does it
seem that the variations can readily be represented by the varying
aspects of any revolving system.

The orbit of this star has been exhaustively investigated by Wright
from Campbell’s observations of the radial motion. The laws of change
in the system are shown by the curves below, which are reproduced, in
great part, from Wright’s paper in the ‘Astrophysical Journal.’

[Illustration: FIG. 4. LIGHT-CURVE AND RADIAL VELOCITY OF ETA AQUILÆ.]

The lower curve is the light-curve of the star during a period of 7.167
days. Starting from a maximum of 3.5 mag., it sinks, in the course of 5
days, to a minimum of 4.7m. It was found by Schwab that the diminution
is not progressive, but that a secondary maximum of 3.8m. is reached
at the end of the second day. After reaching the principal minimum it
rises rapidly to the principal maximum in 2¼ days.

The upper curve shows the radial velocity of the star during the
period of variation. It will be seen that the epoch of greatest
negative velocity, which referred to the center of mass of the system,
is 16.2 km. per second, occurs at the time of maximum brightness. The
greatest positive velocity, 23.9 km., occurs during the sixth day of
the period just after the time of minimum brightness.

Finally, the moments of inferior and superior conjunction of the dark
body with the bright one are neither of them an epoch of minimum
brightness, which takes place half-way between the two.

The most plausible conclusion we can draw is that the light of the star
is affected by the action of the dark body during its revolution. But
how the change may be produced we cannot yet say.


CLASSIFICATION OF VARIABLE STARS.

A classification of variable stars, based on the period of variation
and the law of change, was proposed by Pickering. It does not, however,
seem that a hard and fast line can yet be drawn between different types
and classes of these bodies, one type running into another, as we have
found in the case of the Algol and Beta Lyræ types. Yet the discovery
of the cause of the variation in these types makes it likely that a
division into two great classes, dependent on the cause of variation,
is possible. We should then have:

(1) Stars, or systems, constituting to vision a single star, of which
the apparent variability arises from the rotation of the system as a
whole, or from the revolution of its components around each other.

(2) Stars of which the changes arise from other and as yet unknown
causes.

The main feature of the stars of the first class is that we are under
no necessity of supposing any actual change in the amount of light
which they emit. Their apparent variations are purely the effect of
perspective, arising from the various aspects which they present to us
during their revolution round each other. If we could change our point
of view so that the plane of the orbit of Algol’s planet no longer
passed near our system, Algol would no longer be a variable star.
Under the same circumstances the apparent variations in a star of the
Beta Lyræ type would cease to be noticeable, if they did not disappear
entirely.

The stars of this class are also distinguished by the uniformity and
regularity with which they go through their cycle of change.

The stars of the other class, which we may call the Omicron Ceti type,
are different not only in respect to the length of the period, but
in the character of the variation. There are certain general laws of
variation and irregularities of brightness which stars of this class go
through. Starting from the time of the minimum, the increase of light
is at first very slow. It grows more and more rapid as the maximum is
approached, in which time there may be as great an increase in two or
three days as there formerly was in a month. The diminution of light
is generally slower than the increase. The magnitude at corresponding
times in different periods may be very different. Thus, as we have
already remarked, Omicron Ceti is ten times as bright at some maxima as
it is at others. The periods also, so far as they have been made out,
vary more widely than those of stars of the other type.

The idea has sometimes been entertained that these variations of
light are due to a revolution of the star on its axis. A very little
consideration will, however, show that this explanation cannot be
valid. However bright a star might be on one side, or however dark
on the other, any one region of its surface would be visible to us
half the time and a change of brightness from different degrees of
brilliancy on different sides would be gradual and regular.

It is not impossible that the variability may be in some way connected
with the action of a body revolving round the star. This seems to be
the case with Eta Aquilæ. The radial motion of this object shows the
existence of a dark body revolving round it in the same period as that
of the star’s variation.

From what has been said, it will be seen that, although a sharp line
cannot be drawn, there seems to be some distinction between the stars
of short and long periods. The number of stars which have been known to
belong to the first class is quite small, only about fifteen, all told.
On the other hand, there are still left some stars having a period less
than ten days, which are otherwise not distinguishable from the Omicron
Ceti type. It seems quite likely that the variations in the periods of
these stars are, in some way, connected with the revolution of bright
or dark bodies round them.

They also vary more widely than those of stars of the other two types.
This might easily happen in the case of stars really variable through
a cycle of changes going on in consequence of the action of interior
causes.

The periodic stars of short period, which have not been recognized as
of the Algol or Beta Lyræ type, form an interesting subject of study.
Although the separation between them and the stars of long period is
not sharp, it seems likely to have some element of reality in it. But
no conclusions on the subject can be reached until the light-curves of
a large number of them are carefully drawn; and this requires an amount
of patient and accurate observation which cannot be carried out for
years to come.


SUSPECTED VARIATIONS IN THE COLOR OF STARS.

The question whether certain stars vary in color without materially
changing their brightness has sometimes been raised. This was at one
time supposed to be the case with one of the stars of Ursa Major. This
suspected variation has not, however, been confirmed, and it does not
seem likely that any such changes take place in the color of stars not
otherwise variable.


POSSIBLE SECULAR VARIATIONS IN THE BRILLIANCY OF STARS.

All the variations we have hitherto considered take place with such
rapidity that they can be observed by comparisons embracing but a short
interval of time--a few days or months at the outside. A somewhat
different question of great importance is still left open. May not
individual stars be subject to a secular variation of brilliancy,
meaning by this term a change which would not be sensible in the course
of only one generation of men, but admitting of being brought out by
a comparison of the brightness of the stars at widely distant epochs?
Is it certain that, in the case of stars which we do not recognize
as variable, no change has taken place since the time of Hipparchus
and Ptolemy? This question has been investigated by C. S. Pierce and
others. The conclusion reached is that no real evidence of any change
can be gathered. The discrepancies are no greater than might arise from
errors of estimates.

There is, however, an analogous question which is of great interest and
has been much discussed in recent times. In several ancient writings
the color of Sirius is described as red. This fact would, at first
sight, appear to afford very strong evidence that, within historic
times, the color of the brightest star in the heavens has actually
changed from red to a bluish white.

Two recent writers have examined the evidence on this subject most
exhaustively and reached opposite conclusions. The first of these was
Dr. T. J. J. See, who collated a great number of cases in which Sirius
was mentioned by ancient writers as red or fiery, and thus concluded
that the evidence was in favor of a red color in former times. Shortly
afterwards, Schiaparelli examined the evidence with equal care and
thoroughness and reached an opposite conclusion, showing that the
terms used by the ancient authors, which might have indicated redness
of color, were susceptible of other interpretations; they might mean
fiery, blazing, etc., as well as red in color, and were therefore
probably suggested by the extraordinary brightness of Sirius and the
strangeness with which it twinkled when near the horizon. In this
position a star not only twinkles, but changes its color rapidly. This
change is not sensible in the case of a faint star, but if one watches
Sirius when on the horizon, it will be seen that it not only changes in
appearance, but seems to blaze forth in different colors.

It seems to the writer that this conclusion of Schiaparelli is the
more likely of the two. From what we know of the constitution of
the stars, a change in the color of one of these bodies in so short
a period of time as that embraced by history is so improbable as
to require much stronger proofs than any that can be adduced from
ancient writers. In addition to the possible vagueness or errors of
the original writers, we have to bear in mind the possible mistakes or
misinterpretations of the copyists who reproduced the manuscripts.


THE PARALLAXES OF THE STARS.

It needs only the most elementary conceptions of space, direction
and motion to see that, as the earth makes its vast swing from one
extremity of its orbit to the other, the stars, being fixed, must have
an apparent swing in the opposite direction. The seeming absence of
such a swing was in all ages before our own one of the great stumbling
blocks of astronomy. It was the base on which Ptolemy erected his proof
that the earth was immovable in the center of the celestial sphere. It
was felt by Copernicus to be a great difficulty in the reception of his
system. It led Tycho Brahe to suggest a grotesque combination of the
Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, in which the earth was the center of
motion, round which the sun revolved, carrying the planets with it.

With every improvement in their instruments, astronomers sought to
detect the annual swing of the stars. Each time that increased accuracy
in observations failed to show it, the difficulty in the way of the
Copernican system was heightened. How deep the feeling on the subject
is shown by the enthusiastic title, _Copernicus Triumphans_, given by
Horrebow to the paper in which, from observations by Roemer, he claimed
to have detected the swing. But, alas, critical examination showed
that the supposed inequality was produced by the varying effect of the
warmth of the day and the cold of the night upon the rate of the clock
used by the observer, and not by the motion of the earth.

Hooke, a contemporary of Newton, published an attempt to determine the
parallax of the stars, under the title of “An Attempt to Prove the
Motion of the Earth,” but his work was as great a failure as that of
his predecessors. Had it not been that the proofs of the Copernican
system had accumulated until they became irresistible, these repeated
attempts might have led men to think that perhaps, after all, Ptolemy
and the ancients were somehow in the right.

The difficulty was magnified by the philosophic views of the period. It
was supposed that Nature must economize in the use of space as a farmer
would in the use of valuable land. The ancient astronomers correctly
placed the sphere of the stars outside that of the planets, but did not
suppose it far outside. That Nature would squander her resources by
leaving a vacant space hundreds of thousands of times the extent of
the solar system was supposed contrary to all probability. The actual
infinity of space; the consideration that one had only to enlarge his
conceptions a little to see spaces a thousand times the size of the
solar system look as insignificant as the region of a few yards round a
grain of sand, does not seem to have occurred to anyone.

Considerations drawn from photometry were also lost sight of, because
that art was still undeveloped. Kepler saw that the sun might well be
of the nature of a star; in fact, that the stars were probably suns.
Had he and his contemporaries known that the light of the sun was more
than ten thousand million times that of a bright star, they would have
seen that it must be placed at one hundred thousand times its present
distance to shine as a bright star. If, then, the stars are as bright
as the sun, they must be one hundred thousand times as far away, and
their annual parallax would then have been too small for detection with
the instruments of the time. Such considerations as this would have
removed the real difficulty.

The efforts to discover stellar parallax were, of course, still
continued. Bradley, about 1740, made observations on γ Draconis, which
passed the meridian near his zenith, with an instrument of an accuracy
before unequalled. He thus detected an annual swing of 20″ on each
side of the mean. But this swing did not have the right phase to be
due to the motion of the earth; the star appeared at one or the other
extremity of its swing when it should have been at the middle point,
and _vice versa_. What he saw was really the effect of aberration,
depending on the ratio of the velocity of the earth in its orbit to
the velocity of light. It proved the motion of the earth, but in a
different way from what was expected. All that Bradley could prove was
that the distances of the stars must be hundreds of thousands of times
that of the sun.

An introductory remark on the use of the word parallax may preface a
statement of the results of researches now to be considered.

In a general way, the change of apparent direction of an object arising
from a change in the position of an observer is termed _parallax_. More
especially, the parallax of a star is the difference of its direction
as seen from the sun and from that point of the earth’s orbit from
which the apparent direction will be changed by the greatest amount. It
is equal to the angle subtended by the radius of the earth’s orbit, as
seen from the star. The simplest conception of an arc of one second is
reached by thinking of it as the angle subtended by a short line at a
distance of two hundred and six thousand times its length. To say that
a star has a parallax of 1″ would therefore be the same thing as saying
that it was at a distance of a little more than two hundred thousand
times that of the earth from the sun. A parallax of one-half a second
implies a distance twice as great; one of one-third, three times as
great. A parallax of 0″20 implies a distance of more than a million
times that of our unit of measure.

The first conclusive result as to the extreme minuteness of the
parallax of the brighter stars was reached by Struve, at Dorpat, about
1830. In the high latitude of Dorpat the right ascension of a star
can be determined with great precision, not only at the moment of its
transit over the meridian, but also at transit over the meridian below
the pole, which occurs twelve hours later. He, therefore, selected a
large group of stars which could be observed twice daily in this way
at certain times of the year, and made continuous observations on them
through the year. It was not possible, by this method, to certainly
detect the parallax of any one star. What was aimed at was to determine
the limit of the average parallax of all the stars thus observed. The
conclusion reached was that this limit could not exceed one-tenth of a
second and that the average distance of the group could not, therefore,
be much less than two million times the distance of the sun; if,
perchance, some stars were nearer than this, others were more distant.

By a singular coincidence, success in detecting stellar parallax was
reached by three independent investigators almost at the same time,
observing three different stars.

To Bessel is commonly assigned the credit of having first actually
determined the parallax of a star with such certainty as to place the
result beyond question. The star having the most rapid proper motion on
the celestial sphere, so far as known to Bessel, was 61 Cygni, which
is, however, only of the fifth magnitude. This rapid motion indicated
that it was probably among the stars nearest to us, much nearer, in
fact, than the faint stars by which it is surrounded.

After several futile attempts, he undertook a series of measurements
with a heliometer, the best in his power to make, in August, 1837, and
continued them until October, 1838. The object was to determine, night
after night, the position of 61 Cygni, relative to certain small stars
in its neighborhood. Then he and his assistant, Sluter, made a second
series, which was continued until 1840. All these observations showed
conclusively that the star had a parallax of about 0″.35.

While Bessel was making these observations, Struve, at Dorpat, made
a similar attempt upon Alpha Lyræ. This star, in the high northern
latitude of Dorpat, could be accurately observed throughout almost the
entire year. It is one of the brightest stars near the Pole and has
a sensible proper motion. There was, therefore, reason to believe it
among the nearest of the stars. The observations of Struve extended
from 1835 to August, 1838, and were, therefore, almost simultaneous
with the observations made by Bessel on 61 Cygni. He concluded that the
parallax of Alpha Lyræ was about one-fourth of a second. Subsequent
investigations have, however, made it probable that this result was
about double the true value of the parallax.

The third successful attempt was made by Henderson, of England,
astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope. He found from meridian
observations that the star Alpha Centauri had a parallax of about
1″. This is a double star of the first magnitude, which, being only
30° from the south celestial pole, never rises in our latitudes. Its
nearness to us was indicated not only by its magnitude, but also by its
considerable proper motion.

Although subsequent investigation has shown the parallax of this body
to be less than that found by Henderson, it is, up to the time of
writing, the nearest star whose distance has been ascertained. The
extreme difficulty of detecting movements so slight as those we have
described, when they take six months to go through their phases, will
be obvious to the reader. He would be still more impressed with it
when, looking through a powerful telescope at any star, he sees how it
flickers in consequence of the continual motions going on in the air
through which it is seen and how difficult it must be to fix any point
of reference from which to measure the change of direction.

The latter is the capital difficulty in measuring the parallax. How
shall we know that a star has changed its direction by a fraction of a
second in the course of six months? There must be for this purpose some
standard direction from which we can measure.

The most certain of these standard directions is that of the earth’s
axis of rotation. It is true that this direction varies in the course
of the year, but the amount of the variation is known with great
precision, so that it can be properly allowed for in the reduction
of the observations. The angle between the direction of a star and
that of the earth’s axis, the latter direction being represented by
the celestial pole, can be measured with our meridian instruments. It
is, in fact, the north polar distance of the star, or the complement
of its declination. If, therefore, the astronomer could measure the
declination of a star with great precision throughout the entire year,
he would be able to determine its parallax by a comparison of the
measures. But it is found impossible in practice to make measures of so
long an arc with the necessary precision. The uncertain and changing
effect of the varying seasons and different temperatures of day and
night upon the air and the instrument almost masks the parallax. After
several attempts with the finest instruments, handled with the utmost
skill, to determine stellar parallax from the declinations of the
stars, the method has been practically abandoned.

The method now practiced is that of relative parallax. By this method
the standard direction is that of a small star apparently alongside one
whose parallax is to be measured, but, presumably, so much farther
away that it may be regarded as having no parallax. In this assumption
lies the weak point of the method. Can we be sure that the smaller
stars are really without appreciable parallax? Until recent times it
was generally supposed that the magnitude of the stars afforded the
best index to their relative distances. If the stars were of the same
intrinsic brilliancy, the amount of light received from them would, as
already pointed out, have been inversely as the square of the distance.
Although there was no reason to suppose that any such equality really
existed, it would still remain true that, in the general average, the
brighter stars must be nearer to us than the fainter ones. But when the
proper motions of stars came to be investigated, it was found that the
amount of this motion afforded a better index to the distance than the
magnitude did.

The diversity of actual or linear motion is not so wide as that of
absolute brilliancy. Stars have, therefore, in recent times, been
selected for parallax very largely on account of their proper motion,
without respect to their brightness. It is now considered quite safe to
assume that the small stars without proper motion are so far away that
their parallax is insensible.

Ever since the time of Bessel the experience of practical astronomers
has tended toward the conclusion that the best instrument for delicate
measurements like these is the heliometer. This is an equatorial
telescope of which the object glass is divided along a diameter into
two semicircles, which can slide along each other. Each half of the
object glass forms a separate image of any star at which the telescope
may be pointed. By sliding the two halves along each other, the images
can be brought together or separated to any extent. If there are two
stars in proximity, the image of one star made by one-half of the
glass can be brought into coincidence with that of the other star made
by the other half. The sliding of the two halves to bring about this
coincidence affords a scale of measurement for the angular distance of
the two stars.

The most noteworthy forward steps in improving the heliometer are due
to the celebrated instrument-makers of Hamburg, the Messrs. Repsold,
aided by the suggestions of Dr. David Gill, astronomer at the Cape of
Good Hope. The latter, in connection with his coadjutor, Elkin, made an
equally important step in the art of managing the instrument and hence
in determining the parallax of stars. The best results yet attained are
those of these two observers and of Peter, of Germany.

Yet more recently, Kapteyn, of Holland, has applied what has seemed to
be the unpromising method of differences of right ascension observed
with a meridian circle. This method has also been applied by Flint, at
Madison, Wis. Through the skill of these observers, as well as that
of Brünnow and Ball, in applying the equatorial telescope to the same
purposes, the parallax of nearly 100 stars has been measured with some
approach to precision.

A rival method to that of the heliometer has been discovered in
the photographic telescope. The plan of this instrument, and its
application to such purposes as this, are extremely simple. We point a
telescope at a star and set the clock-work going, so that the telescope
shall remain pointed as exactly as possible in the direction of the
star. We place a sensitized plate in the focus and leave it long enough
to form an image both of the particular star in view and of all the
stars around it. The plate being developed, we have a permanent record
of the relative positions of the stars which can be measured with a
suitable instrument at the observer’s leisure. The advantage of the
method consists in the great number of stars which may be examined for
parallax, and in the rapidity with which the work can be done.

The earliest photographs which have been utilized in this way are those
made by Rutherfurd in New York during the years 1860 to 1875. The
plates taken by him have been measured and discussed principally by
Rees and Jacoby, of Columbia University. Before their work was done,
however, Pritchard, of Oxford, applied the method and published results
in the case of a number of stars.

One of the pressing wants of astronomy at the present time is a
parallactic survey of the heavens for the purpose of discovering all
the stars whose parallax exceeds some definable limit, say 0″1. Such a
survey is possible by photography, and by that only. A commencement,
which may serve as an example of one way of conducting the survey,
has been made by Kapteyn on photographic negatives taken by Donner at
Helsingfors.

These plates cover a square in the Milky Way about two degrees on the
side, extending from 35° 50′ in declination to 36° 50′, and from 20h.
1m. in R. A. to 20h. 10m. 24s. Three plates were used, on each of which
the image of each star is formed twelve times. Three of the twelve
impressions were made at the epoch of maximum parallactic displacement,
six at the minimum six months later, and three at the following
maximum. The parallaxes found on the plates can only be relative to the
general mean of all the other stars, and must therefore be negative as
often as positive. The following positive parallaxes, amounting to 0″1,
came out with some consistency from the measures:

  Star, B. D., 3972  Mag. 8.6  R.A.  20h., 2m.  0s.  Dec. +35°.5
      Par. +0″.11

  Star, B. D., 3883  Mag. 7.1  R.A.  20h., 2m.  3s.  Dec. +36°.1
      Par. +0″.18

  Star, B. D., 4003  Mag. 9.2  R.A.  20h., 4m. 58s.  Dec. +35°.4
      Par. +0″.10

  Star, B. D., 3959  Mag. 7.0  R.A.  20h., 9m. 14s.  Dec. +36°.3
      Par. +0″.10

Against these are to be set negative parallaxes of -0″.09, -0″.08 and
several a little smaller, which are certainly unreal.

The presumption in favor of the actuality of one or more of the above
positive values, which is created by their excess over the negative
values, is offset by the following considerations: The area of the
entire sky is more than 40,000 square degrees, or 10,000 times the area
covered by the Helsingfors plates. We cannot well suppose that there
are 1,000 stars in the sky with a parallax of 0″.10, or more without
violating all the probabilities of the case. The probabilities of the
case are therefore against even one star with such a parallax being
found on the plates. Yet the cases of these four stars are worthy of
further examination, if any of them are found to have a sensible proper
motion.

On an entirely different plan is a survey just concluded by Chase with
the Yale heliometer. It includes such stars having an annual proper
motion of 0″.05 or more as had not already been measured for parallax.
The results, in statistical form, are these:

   2 stars have parallaxes between +9″.20 and +0″.25.

   6 stars have parallaxes between +0″.15 and +0″.20.

  11 stars have parallaxes between +0″.10 and +0″.15.

  24 stars have parallaxes between +0″.05 and +0″.10.

  34 stars have parallaxes between +0″.00 and +0″.05.

   8 stars have parallaxes between -0″.05 and  0″.00.

   5 stars have parallaxes between -0″.10 and -0″.05.

   2 stars have parallaxes between -0″.15 and -0″.10.
  --
  92, total number of stars.

It will be understood that the negative parallaxes found for fifteen of
these stars are the result of errors of observation. Assuming that an
equal number of the smaller positive values are due to the same cause,
and subtracting these thirty stars from the total number, we shall
have sixty-two stars left of which the parallax is real and generally
amounts to 0″.05, more or less. The two values approximating to 0″.25
seem open to little doubt. We might say the same of the six next in the
list. The first two belong to the stars 54 Piscium and Weisse, 17h.,
322.




DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE.


_THE MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION._

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a
membership ranging from 1,900 to 2,000. Of this number probably at no
one time was there an aggregate of 300 persons present at the recent
annual meeting in New York.

When the Association meets in an Eastern city the attendance is
generally twice if not three times as large as when it convenes in the
West. So little was made of the recent meeting, locally or officially,
that an intelligent resident of the city remarked: “Why, I intended
to have attended some of the meetings, but seeing no reference in the
daily papers, it entirely escaped my mind.”

Of the 2,000 members, about 800 are fellows; the 1,200 and more
registered as members are, presumably, persons devoting little or no
time to independent research along scientific lines, but persons who
while not actively so engaged are more than ordinarily interested
in the discussion of scientific topics. These have in the past paid
dues and attended the meetings of the Association with more or less
regularity. It is a question in the minds of some of the 1,200 if
their attendance at the meetings is desired. Their membership, so far
as it relates to the five dollars initiation fee and three dollars
dues, is without question acceptable, and to persons reading papers
in the various sections their presence is preferable to empty seats,
but in view of the fact that during recent years the management of the
Association has eliminated, so far as possible, the popular features
of the general programme, the question is reasonably asked: “Does the
management desire the attendance of the 1,200, or is their financial
support all that is desired?”

It was stated some years ago that the purpose of the Association was to
furnish not only an occasion for scientists to present original papers,
but also to interest the public by holding the meetings annually in
different parts of the country; but if attendance is not secured (by
preparation and publication of interesting features of a programme) no
great interest will be awakened by a meeting held in any part of the
country.

I should like to suggest the following ways of increasing the interest
of the meetings:

The general daily sessions might be made occasions of rare interest by
the introduction of prominent men of science who would make at least
brief remarks. This would make it possible for those who have limited
time to become familiar with the faces of those whom they would like to
know, and the little ‘sample’ of scientific thought thrown out would
doubtless awaken desire for more.

It will be objected that the meetings of the council immediately
preceding the general session prevent holding an official meeting
at that hour. The public and the 1,200 would care little whether
the session were official or unofficial so it were interesting and
instructive.

The officers of the several sections could easily secure distinguished
representatives of their respective sciences to give brief addresses
followed by discussion, and thus the morning hour would prove an
attraction to citizens and others who might be unable to attend the
sessions following.

Again, citizens, where the meetings are held, would be pleased to
provide excursions to points of local interest and extend social
courtesies, if they were given in return the mental food in digestible
form, with which the Association is so amply supplied.

It remains with the management to decide whether attendance shall be
restricted to the few actively engaged in scientific pursuits, or
whether it shall include the 1,200 and more who would be glad to avail
themselves of the benefits of a programme suited to average scholarship
and intellectual capacity.

There is no better medium for discussion of the above views than
through the widely read pages of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

      M. E. D. TROWBRIDGE.
  _Detroit, Mich._

[The questions brought up by our correspondent have been carefully
considered by all those who are interested in the American Association
for the Advancement of Science. When the Association was founded
fifty years ago there was no division into sections; the papers and
discussions were intelligible and interesting to all members. At that
time there were but few members, the scientific life of the country was
small, and it was a privilege for a city to entertain the Association.
But fifty years have brought changes in many directions. Specialization
in science has become essential for its further progress, and it has
been necessary to divide the Association into numerous sections and
to found special societies. Hospitality can now only be provided at
great expense, and Eastern cities no longer regard it as a privilege to
entertain the numerous societies that gather within their hotels. The
newspapers do not regard a meeting of the Association as an important
event and will not devote space to it.

The Association must do the best it can to adapt itself to existing
conditions. The recent meeting in New York had perhaps the largest
attendance of scientific men of any in the history of the Association
with the exception of the anniversary meeting two years ago, but New
York City, especially in the month of June, is not a desirable place
for social functions. It is not reasonable for a member interested in
science as an amateur to expect to purchase for three dollars a week’s
entertainment. His dues secure reduced railway and hotel rates; he can
meet his friends and become acquainted with scientific men; he can
always find on the programme papers that are of interest; he receives
the annual volume of ‘Proceedings’ and the weekly journal, ‘Science,’
the cost of which is five dollars per year. But apart from these
direct returns, he is surely repaid for membership by knowing that
he is one of those who are united for the advancement of science in
America.--EDITOR, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.]


_THE COLOR RED._

TO THE EDITOR OF THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY: Mr. Havelock Ellis, in
your August number, in ‘The Psychology of Red,’ says, ‘A great many
different colors are symbolical of mourning ... but so far as I am
aware, red never.’ The following may possibly be of interest in this
connection:

“Our English Pliny, Bartholomew Glantville, who says after Isydorus,
‘Reed clothes ben layed upon deed men in remembrance of theyr
hardynes and boldnes, whyle they were in theyr bloudde.’ On which
his commentator, Batman, remarks: ‘It appereth in the time of the
Saxons that the manner over their dead was a red cloath, as we now use
black. The red of valiauncie, and that was over kings, lords, knights
and valyaunt souldiers; white over cleargie men, in token of their
profession and honest life, and over virgins and matrons.’”--(Dr.
Furness’s Variorum. Merchant of Venice, p. 56.)

      CHAS. E. DANA.
  _University of Pennsylvania._




SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.


_MENTAL AUTOMATISM._

A recent work by Prof. Th. Flournoy, entitled ‘Des Indes à la
Planète Mars,’[G] contains an account of a remarkable case of mental
automatism, or sub-conscious personality. The subject is a young woman
of about thirty years, apparently in good health, but always of a
nervous and imaginative type. She developed tendencies towards lapses
of consciousness, hallucinations and automatic actions; and these
developed later, under the inspiration of spiritualistic séances, into
a series of cycles, or automatic dramas, in which the medium speaks
or writes and acts under the influence of several diverse subordinate
personalities. In one of these cycles--which, it must be understood,
are continued from one sitting to another, although in her intermediate
normal life she knows nothing of what she has said or done in the
trance--she becomes Marie Antoinette, and is said to act the part
with unusual dramatic skill. In another and far more elaborate cycle
the scene is transferred to the planet Mars, and the houses, scenery,
plants and animals, peoples, customs and goings-on of the planet are
described; sketches are made, and reproduced in the volume, of these
extra-mundane appearances. Still more remarkable is the appearance of
the Martian language, which in successive séances the subject hears,
speaks, sees before her in space, and, in the end, even writes. From
the mystery of Mars we are taken to the equally mysterious Hindu cycle;
here the medium becomes an Indian princess of the fifteenth century,
reveals her history and that of her associates in the Oriental life,
tells of herself as Simandini; of Sivrouka, her prince, who reigned
over Kanara and built in 1401 the fortress of Tschandraguiri. Wonderful
to relate, these names are not fictitious, but are mentioned by one De
Marlès in a volume published in 1828; the author, however, does not
enjoy a high reputation as a historian. When occasional utterances
of the Hindu princess are taken down, they are found in part to have
close resemblance to Sanskrit words; while in her normal condition the
medium is as ignorant of Sanskrit as she is of any language except
French, and is entirely ignorant of both De Marlès and the people
of India five hundred years ago. Surely this is a tale, bristling
with mystery and improbability, which, if told carelessly or with a
purpose, we should dismiss as a willful invention! M. Flournoy has been
unusually successful in revealing the starting points of the several
automatisms and of connecting them with intelligible developments of
the medium’s mental life; and the manifestations, though they remain
as remarkable examples of unconscious memory and elaboration of ideas,
nowhere transcend these limitations. The sketches of Martian scenery
are clearly Japanesque or vaguely Oriental; the Martian language is
pronounced an ‘infantile’ production, and is clearly modeled after the
French, the characters being the result of an attempt to make them as
oddly different from our own as possible; the Sanskrit goes no farther
than what one could get from a slight acquaintance with a Sanskrit
grammar; and while there is a copy of De Marlès in the Geneva Library
(where the medium lives), no connection can be established between
either De Marlès or the grammar and the subject of this study. Most
of this knowledge of these remarkable sub-conscious states would have
been impossible were it not for ‘spirit control’ of one Leopold, who,
in accordance with the doctrine of reincarnation which permeates the
several cycles, was in his life the famous Cagliostro. By suitable
suggestion, Leopold can be induced to make the entranced subject speak,
write, draw, or interpret her strange messages from other worlds; and
where Leopold says ‘nay’ all progress is stopped. This case has many
analogies with other cases that have been recorded, but goes beyond
most of them in the complexity and bizarre character of the unconscious
elaborations and in the feats of memory and creative imagination which
it entails. These accomplishments, it should be well understood, never
appeared suddenly or fully developed, but only after a considerable
period of subliminal preparation, and then only hesitatingly, and
little by little, just as is the case with the acquisitions of normal
consciousness; and all these acquisitions bear unmistakable marks of
belonging to the same person. The special value of this account thus
lies in the accuracy of the description and the success with which the
account has been made thoroughly intelligible and significant.

    [G] The book has just been published by the Harpers in an
        English version, under the title ‘She Lived in Mars.’


_THE MOSQUITOES OF THE UNITED STATES._

Dr. L. O. Howard, the entomologist of the United States Department of
Agriculture, has just published a bulletin entitled, “Notes on the
Mosquitoes of the United States: Giving some Account of their Structure
and Biology, with Remarks on Remedies.” The author has, for some years,
been interested in the general subject of the biology of mosquitoes
and of remedies to be used against them, and has brought together in
this bulletin all the published and unpublished notes which he has been
collecting during this period. The bulletin contains synoptic tables
of all North American mosquitoes, prepared by Mr. D. W. Coquillett,
and gives detailed facts regarding the geographical distribution of
the different species mentioned. All the five North American genera
are illustrated and full, illustrated accounts are given of the life
history of the two principal genera, Culex and Anopheles, as studied
in _Culex pungens_ and _Anopheles quadrimaculatus_. The author calls
special attention to the two genera of large mosquitoes, Psorophora and
Megarhinus, and urges the importance of the study of these two genera,
especially by physicians in the South, in regard to their possible
relation to the spread of malaria. Considerable space is given to the
subject of remedies, the principal ones considered being kerosene
on breeding pools, the introduction of fish in fishless ponds, the
artificial agitation of water and general community work. It is clearly
shown not only that the mosquito may be, in many localities, readily
done away with at comparatively slight expense, but that by careful
work many malarious localities may be made healthy. The subject of
mosquitoes and malaria is not discussed in the bulletin, which contains
simply references to available papers on this subject, like the article
by Dr. Patrick Manson, published in THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for
July, the aim of the author being to bring together all available
facts about the mosquitoes of the United States, in order to assist
physicians who are studying the malarial relation from the point of
view of local conditions.




THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.


The British, French and German Associations for the Advancement of
Science have held their annual meetings in the course of the past
month. In each of these countries and in most other European countries,
as well as in America, there are migratory scientific congresses of the
same general character. As these have grown up somewhat independently,
they evidently meet a common need. Science cannot be advanced by a
man working independently and in isolation. The printing press was
essential to the beginnings of modern science, while at the same time
it was usual for the scientific student to travel from place to place
that he might learn and teach. Then in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, as the cultivation of science became more general, royal
academies were founded. The Royal Society was established at London
in 1660 under the patronage of Charles II., the Academy of Sciences
at Paris in 1666 under Louis XIV., the Royal Academy at Berlin in
1700 under Frederick I., the Imperial Academy at St. Petersburg in
1724 under Peter the Great, and in other cities similar academies
were founded under similar auspices. Then in the first half of the
present century, as science continued to grow, the more democratic
organizations for the advancement of science were established. The
Society of German Scientific Men and Physicians was formed, chiefly
through the efforts of Humboldt, in 1822; the Swiss Association in
1829, and the British Association in 1831. Our own Association was
established in 1847, but was then the intergrowth of a society dating
from 1840. These associations are significant of the spread of science
among all the people. Science is no longer the concern of a few men
under royal patronage, but the two great movements of the present
century--the growth of democracy and the growth of science--have united
for their common good.

       *       *       *       *       *

The British Association held its annual meeting at Bradford, beginning
on September 5, under the presidency of Sir William Turner, professor
of anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. We are able to publish,
from a copy received in advance of its delivery, his presidential
address, which traces the growth during the present century of
knowledge regarding fundamental biological problems. The addresses of
the presidents before the sections are usually written in a way that
can be readily understood by those who are not specialists, and are
consequently of greater interest to a general audience than some of the
corresponding addresses before the American Association. The addresses
at Bradford were: Before the section of mathematical and physical
science Dr. Joseph Larmor discussed recent developments of physics with
special reference to the extent to which explanation can be reduced
purely to description; before the section of chemistry Prof. H. W.
Perkin argued that radical changes should be made in the methods of
teaching inorganic chemistry; before the section of geology Prof. W. J.
Sollas spoke of the development of the earth, including the different
critical periods in its history; before the section of zoölogy Dr.
R. H. Traquair chose as his subject the bearing of fossil fishes on
the doctrine of descent; before the section of geography Sir George
Robertson considered certain geographical aspects of the British Empire
and the changes brought about by improved means of intercommunication;
before the section of economic science and statistics Major P. G.
Craigie spoke of the use of statistics in agriculture; before
the section of mechanical science Sir Alexander Binnie traced the
historical development of science; before the section of anthropology
Prof. John Rhys dealt with the ethnology of the British Isles, with
special reference to language and folk-lore; before the section of
botany Prof. Sidney H. Vines reviewed the development of botany during
the present century. In addition to these addresses, evening discourses
were given by Prof. Francis Gotch on ‘Animal Electricity,’ and by Prof.
W. Stroud on ‘Range Finders.’ The usual lecture to workingmen was given
by Prof. Sylvester P. Thompson, his subject being ‘Electricity in the
Industries.’

       *       *       *       *       *

Bradford is situated in the coal regions, and is an industrial center
devoted especially to the manufacture of textiles. More attention was
paid to local interests than is usual at the meetings of the American
Association. An exhibit was arranged to show the development of the
elaborate fabrics from the unwashed fleeces, and another consisting
of a collection of carboniferous fossils found in the neighborhood.
A joint discussion was arranged between the sections of zoölogy and
botany on the conditions which existed during the growth of the forests
which supplied material for the coal, and there were a number of papers
devoted to the coal measures and the fossils which they contain.
Another subject connected with the place of meeting was the report of
the committee on the underground water system in the carboniferous
limestone. By the use of chemicals the course of the underground
waters has been traced, including their percolation through rock
fissures, and excursions were made to the site of the experiments. The
local industries received treatment from several sides. Among other
discussions of more than usual interest was that on ‘Ions’ before the
physical section and on ‘What is a Metal?’ before the chemical section.
Features of popular interest were accounts of adventures in Asia,
Africa and the Antarctic regions, by Captain Deasy, Captain George and
Mr. Borchgrevinck, respectively, and Major Ross’s paper on ‘Malaria and
Mosquitoes.’

       *       *       *       *       *

The French Association met at Paris in the month of August, with the
numerous other congresses. General Sebert, in his presidential address,
reviewed the progress of the mechanical industries during the century
and devoted the last third of his time to a discussion of international
bibliography, but without mentioning the International Catalogue which
now seems to be an accomplished fact. The secretary of the Association,
in his review of the year, devoted special attention to the joint
meetings of the British and French associations last summer at Dover
and Calais. The treasurer was able to make a report that the treasurers
of other national associations will envy. The capital is over $250,000,
and the income from all sources about $17,000, of which about $3,000
was awarded for the prosecution of research and to defray the cost of
publication of scientific monographs. The national association for
the advancement of science of Germany--the ‘Gesellschaft deutscher
Naturforscher und Aerzte’--held its annual meeting at Aachen toward the
middle of September. An account of the proceedings has not yet reached
us, but the congresses are always largely attended and the combination
of addresses of general interest, of special papers before the numerous
sections and of social functions, is perhaps more effective than in
any other society. It also appears to be a considerable advantage for
medical men and scientific men to meet together.

       *       *       *       *       *

While from the scientific point of view the present century has
been notable for the development of national associations for the
advancement of science, its latter decades have witnessed a growth
of international scientific meetings which may be expected to become
dominant in the twentieth century. There are at least one hundred
congresses, having more or less reference to science, meeting at Paris
during the present summer. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these, from
the point of view of the organization of science, is the International
Association of Academies, which was established last year at a
conference held at Wiesbaden. In this Association eighteen of the great
academies of the world, including our own National Academy of Sciences,
have been united to promote the interests of science. Literature is
also included--of the eighteen academies, twelve include in their scope
both science and literature, four are devoted to science only and two
to literature only. It is planned to have a general meeting every three
years, to which each academy will send as many delegates as it regards
as desirable, though each academy will have but one vote. In the
interval between the general meetings, the business of the Association
is to be directed by a committee, on which each academy is represented.
The object of the Association is to plan and promote scientific work of
international interest which may be proposed by one of the constituent
academies, and generally to promote scientific relations between
different countries. The Royal Society has proposed the measurement, by
international coöperation, of an extended arc of the meridian in the
interior of Africa.

       *       *       *       *       *

The International Congress of Physics marked an advance owing to the
fact that it met for the first time this year, and it appears that
the proceedings were of unusual interest. This was in a large measure
due to the arrangements of the French Physical Society, which did not
simply make up a programme from a mass of heterogeneous researches,
but secured some eighty reports on the present condition of physical
science. These were prepared by many of the leading physicists of
the world and when published--as they are about to be in three
volumes--will set forth the condition of the science with completeness
and authority. There were in all seven sections. In the first, which
was concerned with measurement, in addition to numerous reports
several propositions were brought forward in regard to units, which,
being international in character, are specially fitted for discussion
at such a congress. As the members, however, were not in most cases
delegates from governments and scientific bodies, no definite action
was taken, though some recommendations were made. The decimalization
of time was not recommended, nor was the proposal to give a name to
units of velocity and acceleration. It was, however, decided that the
‘Barrie’ be adopted as the unit of pressure. The other sections were
for mechanical physics, for optics, for electricity, for magneto-optics
and radio-activity, for cosmical physics and for biological physics.
Among the reports and papers of commanding interest only two can be
mentioned--the introductory address by M. Poincaré, discussing the
relations between experimental and mathematical physics, and one by
Lord Kelvin on the waves produced in an elastic solid traversed by
a body acting on it by attraction or repulsion, in which, from a
strictly mathematical point of view, he advanced the hypothesis of a
movable atom surrounded by an immovable ether. In addition to various
receptions, a session was held at the Sorbonne, where Messrs. Becquerel
and Curie gave demonstrations with radio-active substances, and one at
the Ecole Polytechnique, where President Cornu showed apparatus which
had been used in the determination of the velocity of light. At the
close of the congress the foreign secretaries placed a crown on the
tomb of Fresnel.

       *       *       *       *       *

While a physical congress was meeting at Paris this year for the
first time, the Geological Congress, which was one of the first
international congresses to be organized, held its eighth session,
beginning on August 16. America, in spite of the number and importance
of the inventions it has given to the world, has not as yet done
its share for the advancement of physical science, but in geology
it occupies a foremost place. It was natural, therefore, that while
American physicists were scarcely represented on the programme of the
Physical Congress, they occupied a prominent place on the programme
of geological papers. Among the three hundred members present, the
representation from America included Messrs. Stevenson, Hague, Osborn,
Ward, Willis, White, Cross, Scott, Todd, Kunz, Choquette, Adams, Mathew
and Rice, and they presented a number of the more important papers. M.
Karpinsky, the retiring president, gave the opening address, which was
followed by an address of welcome by M. Gaudry, the president of the
congress. A geological congress can offer special attractions in the
way of excursions, and these were admirably arranged on the present
occasion--both the shorter excursions to the classic horizons in the
neighborhood of Paris and the more extended ones that followed the
close of the meeting. The guide for the twenty long excursions and
numerous shorter trips, prepared by the leading French geologists, was
an elaborately illustrated volume representing the present condition of
our knowledge of French geology. The ninth geological congress will be
held at Vienna three years hence.

       *       *       *       *       *

The International Congress of Mathematics met for the second time at
Paris, though there had been a preliminary meeting on the occasion of
the Chicago Exposition. There were about two hundred and twenty-five
mathematicians in attendance, including seventeen from the United
States. M. Poincaré presided, and the vice-presidents, some of whom
were not present, were Messrs. Czuber, Gordon, Greenhill, Lindelöf,
Lindemann, Mittag-Leffler, Moore, Tikhomandritzky, Volterra, Zeuthen
and Geiser. The sections and their presiding officers were as follows:
(1) Arithmetic and Algebra: Hilbert; (2) Analysis: Painlevé; (3)
Geometry: Darboux; (4) Mechanics and Mathematical Physics: Larmor;
(5) Bibliography and History: Prince Roland Bonaparte; (6) Teaching
and Methods: Cantor. Valuable papers were presented by M. Cantor
on works and methods concerned with the history of mathematics,
by Professor Hilbert on the future problems of mathematics and by
Professor Mittag-Leffler on an episode in the life of Weierstrass,
but the programme appears to have been not very full nor particularly
interesting. Time was found for a half-day’s discussion of a universal
language, but not to carry into effect the plans begun at Zurich three
years ago for a mathematical bibliography. The next congress will meet
four years hence in Germany, probably at Baden-Baden.

       *       *       *       *       *

The untimely death of James Edward Keeler, director of the Lick
Observatory, is a serious blow to astronomy and to science. Born at
La Salle, Ill., forty-three years ago, he was educated at the Johns
Hopkins University and in Germany. When only twenty-one years old he
observed the solar eclipse of 1878, and drew up an excellent report.
Three years later he was a member of the expedition to Mt. Whitney
under Professor Langley, whose assistant he had become at the Allegheny
Observatory, and whose bolometric investigations owe much to him. He
became astronomer at the Lick Observatory while it was in course of
erection, and in 1891 he succeeded Professor Langley as director of the
Allegheny Observatory. He was called to the directorship of the great
Lick Observatory in 1898. Keeler’s work in astrophysics, including
his photographs of the spectra of the red stars and his spectroscopic
proof of the meteoric constitution of Saturn’s rings, demonstrated what
he could accomplish at a small observatory unfavorably situated. At
Mt. Hamilton he was able in the course of only two years to organize
thoroughly the work of the Observatory, and to adapt the Crossley
reflector for his purpose, taking photographs of the nebulæ that have
never been equalled. His discovery that most nebulæ have a spiral
structure is of fundamental importance. It is not easy to overestimate
what might have been accomplished by Keeler in the next twenty or
thirty years, both by his own researches and by his rare executive
ability, for it must be remembered that his genius as an investigator
was rivaled by personal qualities which made his associates and
acquaintances his friends.

       *       *       *       *       *

Henry Sidgwick, late Knightbridge professor of moral philosophy at
Cambridge, died on August 28, at the age of sixty-two years. There
are usually not many events to record in the life of a university
professor, but Sidgwick had an opportunity to prove his character
when he resigned a fellowship in Trinity College because holding it
implied the acceptance of certain theological dogmas. Liberalizing
influences, however, were at work, of which he himself was an important
part, and he was later elected honorary fellow of the same college,
and in 1883 became professor of moral philosophy in the University.
Sidgwick published three large works--‘Methods of Ethics’ (1874),
‘Principles of Political Economy’ (1883) and ‘Elements of Politics’
(1891)--in addition to a great number of separate articles. All these
works, especially the ‘Ethics,’ show an intellect to a rare degree both
subtle and scientific. There was a distinction and a personal quality
in what he wrote that made each book or essay a work of art, as well
as a contribution to knowledge. Those who knew Professor Sidgwick--and
the writer of the present note regards it as one of the fortunate
circumstances of his life that he was for several years a student
under him--realize that the qualities of the man were even more rare
than those of the author. His hesitating utterance, always ending in
exactly the right word, but represented the caution and correctness of
his thought. Subtlety, sincerity, kindliness and humor were as happily
combined in his daily conversation as in his writings. It is said that
he was never ‘entrapped into answering a question by yes or no,’ but
his deeds and his influence were positive without qualification or
limitation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who died on almost the same day as
Sidgwick, was also a writer on ethics and once a university professor,
but the life and writings of the two men present a strange contrast.
Where Sidgwick’s touch was light as an angel’s, Nietzsche trampled like
a bull; the one was the embodiment of reason, caution, consideration
and kindliness, the other represented paradox, recklessness, violence
and brute force. Still Nietzsche deserves mention here, as his ethical
views, based on the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fit, are
not unlikely to be urged hereafter by saner men, and to become an
integral part of ethics when ethics becomes a science. As a matter
of fact, after resigning his professorship at Zurich, and even while
writing his remarkable books, Nietzsche suffered from brain disease,
and during the past eleven years his reason was completely lost.




INDEX.

NAMES OF CONTRIBUTORS ARE PRINTED IN SMALL CAPITALS.


  Academies, International Association of, 666.

  Academy, National, Retiring President of, 219;
    Work of the, 219.

  Adirondacks, Birds of the, GEORGE CHAHOON, 40.

  Agassiz’s Investigations on Coral Islands, 103.

  Agriculture, U. S. Department of, Appropriations for, 335.

  Air, Liquid, 102.

  Air-Ship, Count Zeppelin’s, 559.

  Aluminum, How it is Made, 104.

  American Association, 220;
    President of the, 332;
    New York Meeting of, 332;
    Address of the Retiring President, 442;
    President of New York Meeting, 442;
    Proceedings, 443;
    Officers, 446;
    Meetings of the, M. E. D. TROWBRIDGE, 660.

  Animals Helping One Another, 107.

  Anthropology, 217, 445.

  Anthropometry, 445.

  Appropriations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 335.

  Argyll, Duke of, Death of, 223.

  Assembly, International, 220.

  Association, American, 220;
    President of the, 332;
    Address of the Retiring President, 439;
    President of New York Meeting, 442;
    Proceedings, 443;
    Officers, 446;
    Meetings of the, M. E. D. TROWBRIDGE, 660;
    British, French and German, 664.

  ATKINSON, EDWARD, Mental Energy, 632.

  Atkinson’s Lessons in Botany, 215.

  Automatism, Mental, 662.

  Automobiles, Evolution and Present Status of, WILLIAM BAXTER, JR.,
        406;
    Steam, 406;
    Electric, 479;
    Gasoline, 593.


  Barisal Guns, 105.

  Barnes’s Outlines of Plant Life, 215.

  BAXTER, JR., WILLIAM, The Evolution and Present Status of the
        Automobile, Steam, 406;
    Electric Automobiles, 479;
    Gasoline Automobiles, 593.

  Beach on the Marine Mollusca of Cold Spring Harbor, 106.

  Beagle, The Fate of the, V. MARSHALL LAW, 86.

  Bertrand, Joseph, Death of, 222.

  BIGELOW, FRANK H., The Coming Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1.

  Biltz on Molecular Weights, 213.

  Biographical Sketch of an Infant, CHARLES DARWIN, 197.

  Biological, Lectures from the Marine Laboratory at Wood’s Holl, 329;
    Laboratories, Marine, 555.

  Biologique, L’Année, 551.

  Biology, 329.

  Birds, as Flying Machines, FREDERIC A. LUCAS, 473;
    of the Adirondacks, GEORGE CHAHOON, 40.

  Blind Fishes, Structure of, 48;
    Causes of Degeneration in, CARL H. EIGENMANN, 397.

  BOAS, FRANZ, Religious Beliefs of the Central Eskimo, 624.

  BOLTON, HENRY CARRINGTON, New Sources of Light and of Röntgen Rays, 318.

  Bootblack, A Mechanical, 105.

  Botanical Garden, The New York, D. T. MacDOUGAL, 171.

  Botany, 215, 328.

  British Association, 664;
    Address of the President before the, SIR WILLIAM TURNER, 561.

  Bruncken’s North American Forests and Forestry, 216.

  Bubble-blowing Insect, E. S. MORSE, 23.

  Bubonic Plague, FREDERICK G. NOVY, 576.


  Catalogue of Scientific Literature, 448, 558.

  CHAHOON, GEORGE, Birds of the Adirondacks, 40.

  Chapman’s Bird Studies with a Camera, 440.

  Character, National, and Scientific Study, ALBERT B. CROWE, 90.

  Chemical, Fertilization, 223;
    Research, Recent, Some Phases of the Earth’s Development in the
        Light of, EDWARD RENOUF, 295.

  Chemistry, 213;
    A Hundred Years of, F. W. CLARKE, 59.

  Chewing Gum Habit, Antiquity of, ROBERT E. C. STEARNS, 549.

  City, The Most Expensive in the World, BIRD S. COLER, 16.

  CLARKE, F. W., A Hundred Years of Chemistry, 59.

  Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory, 556.

  COLER, BIRD S., The Most Expensive City in the World, 16.

  COLLIER, JAMES, Colonies and the Mother Country, 139, 248, 390.

  Colonies and the Mother Country, JAMES COLLIER, 139, 248, 390.

  Color, Red, CHARLES E. DANA, 661.

  Congresses of the Paris Exposition, 537.

  Conway, Sir Martin, on the Bolivian Andes, 439.

  Coral Islands, Agassiz’s Investigations on, 103.

  Crazes, Psychology of, G. T. W. PATRICK, 285.

  Cytology, 330.


  DANA, CHAS. E., The Color Red, 661.

  DARWIN, CHARLES, A Biographical Sketch of an Infant, 197.

  Davenport’s Elementary Zoölogy, 440.

  DAVIS, W. M., The Physical Geography of the Lands, 157.

  Deaths, 108, 222, 335, 667.

  Degeneration in Blind Fishes, Causes of, CARL H. EIGENMANN, 397.

  Dugmore on Bird Homes, 441.


  Earth’s Developments, Some Phases of, in the Light of Recent Chemical
         Research, EDWARD RENOUF, 295.

  Eclipse, 224, 560;
    Total, of the Sun, FRANK BIGELOW, 1;
    Solar of May 28, 1900, S. P. LANGLEY, 302.

  Education, 331;
    Technical, in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, G. F.
        SWAIN, 257;
    in the United States, 331;
    Higher, for Colored Youth, ANDREW F. HILYER, 436.

  Educational, and Scientific Institutions of New York City, 333;
    Association, the National, 447.

  EIGENMANN, CARL H., The Structure of Blind Fishes, 48;
    Causes of Degeneration in Blind Fishes, 397.

  ELIOT, C. W., Legislation against Medical Discovery, 436.

  Elliott and Ferguson’s Qualitative Analysis, 213.

  Ellis on the Analysis of White Paints, 213.

  ELLIS, HAVELOCK, Psychology of Red, 365, 517.

  Endowment of American Universities, 333.

  Energy, Mental, EDWARD ATKINSON, 632.

  Engine, The Human Body as an, E. B. ROSA, 491.

  Eskimo, Central, Religious Beliefs of the, FRANZ BOAS, 624.

  Ewart’s Penycuik Experiments, 126.

  Expenditure of the Working Classes, HENRY HIGGS, 527.


  Farm Homes for City Children, 106.

  Fauna, Cave, of North America, 446.

  Fayerweather Bequest, 558.

  Fertilization, Chemical, 223.

  Fiction and Science, 324, 336.

  Fishes, Blind, Structure of, CARL H. EIGENMANN, 48;
    Causes of Degeneration in, CARL H. EIGENMANN, 397.

  Flournoy’s Des Indes à la Planète Mars, 662.

  Flying Machines, Birds as, FREDERIC A. LUCAS, 473.

  French Association for the Advancement of Science, 664.


  Gas and Gas Meters, HUBERT S. WYNKOOP, 179.

  Gasoline Automobiles, WILLIAM J. BAXTER, JR., 593.

  Geography, 439;
    Physical, of the Lands, W. M. DAVIS, 157.

  Geologic Time, Rhythms and, G. K. GILBERT, 339.

  Geology, 439;
    International Congress of, 666.

  German Association for the Advancement of Science, 664.

  Gibbs, Wolcott, Portrait of, 114;
    Works of, 219.

  GILBERT, G. K., Rhythms and Geologic Time, 339.

  Gilbert, G. K., Portrait of, 226;
    Work of, 332;
    on Recent Earth Movements, 439.

  Greatness, Comparative Longevity and, JOSEPH JASTROW, 206.

  GREELY, A. W., Scientific Results of the Norwegian Polar Expedition, 420.

  GROFF, GEORGE C., The Conquest of the Tropics, 540.


  HADDON, A. C., Expedition to Torres Straits, 217.

  HAFFKINE, W. M., Preventive Inoculation, 115, 240.

  HIGGS, HENRY, Expenditure of the Working Classes, 527.

  HILYER, ANDREW F., Higher Education of Colored Youth, 436.

  Hollick on Geological Formations and Forests in New Jersey, 107.

  Homes, Farm, for City Children, 106.

  Howard on the Mosquitoes of the United States, 663.

  Huggins’s Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra, 552.

  Human Body as an Engine, E. B. ROSA, 491.

  Humiliating Situation, 100.

  Hydrogen, Solidification of, 223.


  Importation of Animals, Legislation regarding, 560.

  Infant, A Biographical Sketch of an, CHARLES DARWIN, 197.

  Ingle’s Chemistry of Fire and Fire Prevention, 214.

  Inoculation, Preventive, W. M. HAFFKINE, 115, 240.

  Insect, Bubble-blowing, E. S. MORSE, 23.

  International Assembly, 220.


  Jackson’s Glossary of Botanical Terms, 328.

  JACOBY, HAROLD, The Sun’s Destination, 191.

  JASTROW, JOSEPH, Comparative Longevity and Greatness, 206;
    The Modern Occult, 449.

  Jesup, North Pacific Expedition, 217.

  Jones, H. C., Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation, 213.


  Keane on Man, Past and Present, 218.

  Keeler, James Edward, Death of, 667.

  Keeler’s Bird Notes Afield, 215;
    Our Native Trees, 328.

  Kingsley’s Vertebrate Zoölogy, 214.

  Kite Flying, Scientific, 559.


  Laboratory, National Physical, 221.

  Lange’s Chemische-technische Untersuchungsmethoden, 214.

  LANGLEY, S. P., Solar Eclipse of May 28, 1900, 302.

  Law, International, and the Peace Conference, JAMES HARRIS
        VICKERY, 76.

  LAW, V. MARSHALL, The Fate of the Beagle, 86.

  Legislation, against Medical Discovery, C. W. ELIOT, 436;
    regarding the Importation of Animals, 560.

  Light, New Sources of, and of Röntgen Rays, HENRY CARRINGTON
        BOLTON, 310.

  Liquid Air, 102.

  Longevity, Comparative, and Greatness, JOSEPH JASTROW, 206.

  Lounsberry’s Guide to the Trees, 216.

  LUCAS, FREDERIC A., Birds as Flying Machines, 473.


  McCarthy on Familiar Fish, 553.

  MacDOUGAL, D. T., The New York Botanical Garden, 171.

  MacDougal’s Nature and Work of Plants, 216.

  McMillan’s Electro-metallurgy, 214.

  Malaria, and the Malarial Parasite, PATRICK MANSON, 310;
    and Mosquitoes, 336.

  Manson, Marsden, Mount Tamalpais, 69.

  MANSON, PATRICK, Malaria and the Malarial Parasite, 310.

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical Education in, G. F.
        SWAIN, 257.

  Mathematical Physics, 327.

  Meat, Diseased, in Paris, 104.

  Mental Energy, EDWARD ATKINSON, 632.

  Milne-Edwards, Alphonse, Death of, 222.

  Mineral Industry, 214.

  Mivart, St. George, Death of, 223.

  Mongols, Modern, F. L. OSWALD, 618.

  MORSE, E. S. A Bubble-blowing Insect, 23.

  Mosquitoes, and Malaria, 336;
    of the United States, 663.


  National Academy, Retiring President of, 219;
    Work of the, 219.

  Negro, The, since the Civil War, N. S. SHALER, 29;
    Future of, in the United States, N. S. SHALER, 147.

  Nietzsche, Frederick, Death of, 668.

  NOVY, FREDERICK G., The Bubonic Plague, 576.

  NEWCOMB, SIMON, Chapters on the Stars, 227, 376, 500, 638.

  Newton’s Dictionary of Birds, 215.

  New York Botanical Garden, D. T. MacDOUGAL, 171.

  North’s Catalogue of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Australia, 215.

  Norwegian Polar Expedition, Scientific Results of the, A. W.
        GREELY, 420.


  Occult, The Modern, JOSEPH JASTROW, 449.

  Ornithology, 440.

  OSWALD, F. L., Modern Mongols, 618.


  Paget on Experiments on Animals, 553.

  Parasite, Malarial, and Malaria, PATRICK MANSON, 310.

  Paris Exposition and its Congresses, 557.

  Parker and Haswell’s Manual of Zoölogy, 214.

  Parker’s Practical Zoölogy, 215.

  PATRICK, G. T. W., Psychology of Crazes, 285.

  Peace Conference and International Law, JAMES HARRIS VICKERY, 76.

  Pearson’s Grammar of Science, 550.

  Penycuik Experiments, Professor Ewart’s, 126.

  Pfeffer’s Plant Physiology, 216.

  Photographing Live Fishes, 106.

  Photography of Sound Waves, R. W. WOOD, 354.

  Physical Geography of the Lands, W. M. DAVIS, 157.

  Physical Laboratory, National, 221.

  Physics, Mathematical, 327;
    International Congress of, 666.

  Pitt-Rivers, Sir Fox-Lane, Death of, 335.

  Plague, Bubonic, FREDERICK G. NOVY, 576.

  Pneumatic Dispatch Tubes, 103.

  Poetry and Science, L. W. SMITH, 546.

  Polar Expedition, Norwegian, Scientific Results of the, A. W.
        GREELY, 420.

  Preventive Inoculation, W. M. HAFFKINE, 115, 240.

  Promotion of Men of Science, 221.

  Psychology, of Crazes, G. T. W. PATRICK, 285;
    of Red, HAVELOCK ELLIS, 365, 517.


  Quantitative Study of Variation, 445.


  Radio-active Substances, 558.

  Rayleigh, Lord, Scientific Papers, 327.

  Red, Psychology of, HAVELOCK ELLIS, 365, 517;
    The Color, CHAS. E. DANA, 661.

  Reform, School, 210.

  Religious Belief of the Central Eskimo, FRANZ BOAS, 624.

  RENOUF, EDWARD, Some Phases of the Earth’s Development in the Light
        of Recent Chemical Research, 295.

  Research Work and Courses of Instruction, 556.

  Reynolds, Osborne, Papers on Mechanical and Physical Subjects, 328.

  Rhythms and Geologic Time, G. K. GILBERT, 339.

  ROE, WILLIAM J. Some Scientific Principles of Warfare, 605.

  Röntgen Rays, New Sources of Light, and, HENRY CARRINGTON
        BOLTON, 310.

  ROSA, E. B., The Human Body as an Engine, 491.

  Rydberg’s Flora of Montana and the Yellowstone Park, 329.


  School Reform, 210.

  Science, Study and National Character, ALBERT B. CROWE, 90;
    and Fiction, 324, 336;
    and Poetry, L. W. SMITH, 546.

  Scientific, Societies, Meetings of, 333;
    and Educational Institutions of New York City, 333;
    Literature, International Catalogue of, 448, 558.

  SHALER, N. S., The Negro since the Civil War, 29;
    The Future of the Negro in the United States, 147.

  Sharp, David, on Insects, 215.

  Sharpe, R. Bowdler, Nomenclature Avium, 215.

  Shelley’s Birds of Africa, 215.

  Sidgwick, Henry, Death of, 668.

  Smith on the Teaching of Elementary Mathematics, 550.

  SMITH, L. W., Poetry and Science, 546.

  Solar Eclipse, 224, 560, FRANK H. BIGELOW, 1;
    of May 28, 1900, S. P. LANGLEY, 302.

  Solidification of Hydrogen, 220.

  Sound Waves, Photography of, R. W. WOOD, 354.

  Spencer and Gillen on the Native Tribes of Central Australia, 218.

  Sperber’s Inorganic Chemistry, 213.

  Stark, on Birds of South Africa, 215.

  Stars, Chapters on the, SIMON NEWCOMB, 227, 376, 500, 638.

  State Support and Individual Gifts, 334.

  STEARNS, ROBERT E. C., Antiquity of the Chewing Gum Habit, 549.

  Stokes, Sir George, Memoirs Presented to, 327.

  Suess’s Das Antlitz der Erde, 551.

  Summer Schools, University, 447, 556.

  Sun, Total Eclipse of the, FRANK H. BIGELOW, 1.

  Sun’s Destination, HAROLD JACOBY, 191.

  SWAIN, G. F., Technical Education in the Massachusetts Institute of
        Technology, 257.


  Taka-Diastase, 102.

  Tait’s Scientific Papers, 327.

  Tamalpais, Mount, Marsden Manson, 69.

  Thoughts for the Times, 99.

  TROWBRIDGE, M. E. D., Meetings of the American Association, 660.

  Tropics, Conquest of the, GEORGE G. GROFF, 540.

  Tunnels, Ventilation of, 101.

  TURNER, SIR WILLIAM, Address of the President before the British
        Association, 561.


  Universities, American, Endowment of, 333.

  University Summer Schools, 447.


  Variation, the Quantitative Study of, 445.

  Ventilation of Tunnels, 101.

  VICKERY, JAMES HARRIS, International Law and the Peace Conference, 76.


  WALCOTT, CHARLES D., Washington as Explorer and Surveyor, 323.

  Walker’s Introduction to Physical Chemistry, 213.

  War, Civil, The Negro since the, N. S. SHALER, 29.

  Warfare, Some Scientific Principles of, WILLIAM J. ROE, 605.

  Washington as Explorer and Surveyor, CHARLES D. WALCOTT, 323.

  Whipple on the Microscopy of Drinking Water, 554.

  Wilson on the Cell, 330.

  Winking, 103.

  WOOD, R. W., Photography of Sound Waves, 354.

  Wood’s Holl Marine Biological Laboratory, 555.

  WOODWARD, R. S., Portrait of, 338;
    Work of, 442.

  Working Classes, Expenditure of the, HENRY HIGGS, 527.

  WYNKOOP, HUBERT S., Gas and Gas Meters, 179.


  Zeppelin’s Air Ship, 559.

  Zoölogy, 214, 440.




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.

Text uses both “angakok” and “angakut”; both retained.

Page 561: Footnote ‘A’ was not referenced in the text; Transcriber
attributed it to the title of the article.

Page 564: Transcriber’s transliteration of Greek text shown in {curly
braces}.

Page 575: “milkrosomen” was printed that way.

Page 577: Text uses both “Quan-si” and “Quansi”; both retained.

Page 580: “grewsome” was printed that way.

Page 588: “where in 1861” was printed that way, but likely is a
misprint, perhaps for “1681”, as the next paragraph says that the
plague disappeared from Europe in the eighteenth century.

Pages 601, 602: use both “Vallee” and “Vallée”; both retained.

Page 645: “Moreever” was printed that way.

Pages 669, 672: “Wood’s Holl” was spelled that way when this issue of
the magazine was published.

Page 672: Missing page reference “76” added to “Vickery” entry, based
on examination of the May, 1900 issue.

The other five issues of Volume 57 also are available at Project
Gutenberg. The eBook numbers are 47219, 47227, 47238, 47261, and 47281.