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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, October 1899
       Vol. LV, May to October, 1899

Author: Various

Editor: William Jay Youmans

Release Date: August 28, 2014 [EBook #46710]

Language: English

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  Established by Edward L. Youmans

              APPLETONS'
           POPULAR SCIENCE
               MONTHLY

              EDITED BY
         WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

              VOL. LV

        MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899

              NEW YORK
       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                1899




          COPYRIGHT, 1899,
     BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.




[Illustration: WILLIAM PEPPER.]




APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1899.




THE HELP THAT HARMS.

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND HENRY C. POTTER.


The analogies between the life of an individual and that other
organism which we call civilized society are as interesting as for any
other reason because of their inexhaustible and ever-fresh variety.
The wants, the blunders, the growth, the perils of the individual are
matched at every step by those other wants and dangers and
developments which rise in complexity and in variety as the individual
and the social organism rise in intelligence, in numbers, and in
wealth. It ought to interest us, if it never has, to consider from how
much that is mischievous and dangerous we should be delivered if we
could revert from the civilized to the savage state; and it is
undoubtedly true that serious minds have sometimes been tempted to
question whether civilization is quite worth all that it has cost us
in its manifold departures from a simple and more primitive condition.

Such a question may, at any rate, not unnaturally arise when we ask
ourselves the question, What, on the whole, is the influence upon
manhood--by which I mean, here and for my present purpose, the
qualities that make courage, self-reliance, self-respect, industry,
initiative--in fact, those independent and aggressive characteristics
by which great races, like great men, have climbed up out of earlier
obscurity and inferiority into power, leadership, and distinction;
what is the influence upon these of conditions which tend, apparently
by an inevitable law, to beget or to encourage indolence, inertia,
parasitic dependence?

One can not but be moved to such a question by either of two papers
which have recently appeared in these pages: I mean that entitled
Abuse of Public Charity, by Comptroller Bird S. Coler; and that by
Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia University, on Public Charity
and Private Vigilance. The community whose capable and efficient
servant he is has reason to be thankful that, in the person of a
public official intrusted with such large responsibilities, it has a
thoughtful and far-seeing student of problems whose grave importance
he has so opportunely pointed out. It needs the courage and the
knowledge of such a one to affirm that "it is easier for an
industrious and shrewd professional beggar to live in luxury in New
York than to exist in any other city in the world," which, if any
social reformer or minister of religion or mere critic of the social
order had said it, would probably have been denounced as an
atrabilious and unwarranted exaggeration.

Concerning the comptroller's indictments of certain charitable
societies and organizations as expensive mechanisms for the
consumption of appropriations or contributions largely spent upon
their salaried officials, I am quite willing to recognize the force of
Professor Giddings's demurrer to the effect that a so-called
charitable society may now and then rightly exist, and expend its
income largely, if not wholly, upon the persons whom it employs as its
agents, since these agents are the vigilant committees whose office it
is to detect, discourage, and expose unworthy objects, whether of
public or private charity. But that, besides such agencies, there are
constantly called into being wholly spurious organizations, which
profess to exist for the relief of certain classes of sufferers or of
needy people; that these succeed, sooner or later, in fastening
themselves upon the treasury of the city and of the State; and that
they are, in a great many cases, monuments of the most impudent and
unscrupulous fraud, there can be no smallest doubt.

Well, it may be asked, What are you going to do about it? Will you
accept the inevitable evils that march in the rear of all public or
private charity, or will you sweep all the various agencies, which
have relieved such manifold varieties of human want and alleviated to
such an incalculable degree human misery, out of existence? Will you
care to contemplate what a great city like New York or London would be
if to-morrow you closed the doors of all the hospitals, _crèches_,
homes of the aged, asylums for the crippled, the blind, the insane,
and the like, and turned their inmates one and all into the street?

That is certainly a very dramatic alternative to present; but suppose
that we look at it a little more closely. And, in order that we may, I
shall ask my reader to go back with me, not to that primitive or
barbaric era to which I began by referring, but only to a somewhat
earlier stage in our own social history, with which many persons now
living are abundantly familiar. One of the interesting and startling
contrasts which might be presented to one anxious to impress a
stranger with our American progress would be to take only our present
century, and group together, out of its statistics, the growth and
development, in its manifold varieties, during that period in any
city, great or small, of institutional charity. But if such a one were
just he would have, first of all, to put upon his canvas some
delineation of that situation which, under so many varying conditions
and amid such widely dissimilar degrees of privilege or of
opportunity, preceded it. I listened the other day to the story of a
charming woman, of marked culture and refinement, as she depicted,
with unconscious grace and art, the life of a gentlewoman of her own
age and class--she was young and fair and keenly sympathetic--on a
Southern plantation before the civil war. One got such a new
impression of those whom, under other skies and in large ignorance of
their personal ministries or sacrifices, we had been wont to picture
as indolent, exclusive, indifferent to the sorrow and disease and
ignorance that, on a great rice or cotton or sugar plantation in the
old days, were all about them; and one learned, with a new sense of
reverence for all that is best in womanhood, how, in days that are now
gone forever, there were under such conditions the most skillful
beneficence and the most untiring sympathies.

But, in the times of which I speak, the service on the plantation for
the sick slave (which, an ungracious criticism might have suggested,
since a slave was ordinarily a valuable piece of property, had
something of a sordid element in it) was matched in communities and
under conditions where no such suspicion was possible. No one who
knows anything of life in our smaller communities at the beginning of
the century can be ignorant of what I mean. There was no village or
smallest aggregation of families that had not its Abigail, its "Aunt
Hannah," its "Uncle Ben," who, when there was sickness or want or
sorrow in a neighbor's house, was always on hand to sympathize and to
succor. I do not forget that it is said that, even under our greatly
changed conditions, in modern cities this is still true of the very
poor and of their kindness and mutual help to one another; and I thank
God that I have abundant reason, from personal observation, to know
that it is. But, happily, neither great cities nor small are largely
made up of the very poor, and the considerations that I am aiming to
present to those who will follow me through these pages are not
concerned with these. What I am now aiming to get before my readers is
that there was a time, and that it was not so very long ago, when that
vast institutional charity which exists among us to-day, and which I
believe to be in so many aspects of it so grave a menace to our
highest welfare, did not exist, because it had no need to exist. The
ordinary American community, East or West, had, as distinguishing it,
however small its numbers and narrow its means, two characteristics
which our modern systems of institutional charity are widely
conspiring to extinguish and destroy. One of these was that resolute
endurance of straitness and poverty of which there is so fine and true
a portraiture in Miss Wilkins's remarkable story Jerome. I venture to
say that the charm of that rare book, to a great many of the most
intelligent and appreciative of its readers, lay in the fact that they
could match it, or something like it, in their own experience; that
they had known silent and proud women, and brave and proud boys, to
whom, whatever the hard pinch of want that they knew, to accept a dole
was like accepting a blow, and who covered their poverty alike from
the eye of inquisitive stranger or kin with a robe of secrecy that was
at once impenetrable and all-concealing. Life to them was a battle,
and they could lose it, as heroes have lost it on the tented field,
without a murmur; but to sue for bread to some other, even if that
other were of the same blood, would have smitten them as with the
stain of personal dishonor.

And over against such, in the days and among the communities of which
I speak, were those whose gift and ministry it was--without an
intrusive curiosity, without a vulgar ostentation, without a word or
look that implied that they guessed the sore need to which they
reached out--yet somehow to discover it, to succor it, and then to
help, finest and rarest of all, to hide it.

Now, then, behind such a condition of things there was a sure and wise
discernment, even if it was only instinctive, of a profound moral
truth, which was this: that you can not help me, nor I you, without
risk. For the most sacred thing in either of us is our manhood or
womanhood--that thing which differentiates us from any mere mechanism,
that thing in us which says, _I can, I ought, I will_. Take that out
of human nature and what is left is not worth considering, save as one
might consider any other clever mechanism. But the power to choose,
the power to act, and the consciousness that choice and action are to
be dominated by something that answers to the instinct of loyalty to
God, to self-respect, to the ideals of honor and righteousness--that
is what makes life worth living, and any conceivable thing worth
seeking or doing. Now, the moment that the question of our mutual
relations enters we have to be concerned with the way in which they
will act on this power, quality, characteristic--call it what you
will--that makes manhood. It is not enough, for example, that my
impulse to give you a pint of gin is a benevolent impulse, if certain
tendencies in you make it antecedently probable that a pint of gin
will presently convert you from the condition of a rational being into
that of a beast. And so of any impulse of mine in the direction of
beneficence which, in its gratification, threatens manhood--that is,
self-reliance, self-respect, independence, the right and faithful use
of powers in me.

And here we come to the problem which lies at the basis of the whole
question of charitable relief, for whatever class and in whatever
form. The wholesome elements in that earlier situation, to which I
have just referred, were threefold, and in our modern situation each
one of them is sorely attenuated, if not wholly absent:

1. In the first place, there was a relative uniformity of condition.
In other words, at the beginning of the present century in almost all
communities, whether industrial or agricultural, the disparities of
estate were inconsiderable. There was perhaps the rich man of the
village or town, or two or three or half a dozen of them; but they
were rich only relatively, and they were marked exceptions. The great
majority of the people were of comparatively similar employments and
circumstances. Among these there were indeed considerable varieties of
task work, but work and wage were not far apart; and, what was of most
consequence, a certain large identity of condition brought into it a
certain breadth of sympathy and mutual help, out of which came the
outstretched hand and the open door for the man who was out of work
and was looking for it.

2. Yes, _who was looking for it_. For here again was a distinguishing
note of those earlier days of which I am speaking. Idleness was a
distinct discredit, if not dishonor. In communities where everybody
had to work, an idler or a loafer was an intolerable impertinence, and
was usually made to feel it.

3. And yet, again, there was the vast difference in those days from
ours that the industries of the world had not taken on their immensely
organized and _mechanized_ characteristics. A mechanic--e. g., out of
a job--then could turn his hand to anything that ordinary tools and
muscle and intelligence could do. But an ordinary mechanic now must be
a skilled mechanician in a highly specialized department, and when he
is out of a job there, he is ordinarily out of it all along the line.

I might, as my reader will have anticipated me in recognizing, go on
almost indefinitely in this direction; but I have said enough, I
trust, to prepare him for the point which I want to make in connection
with our modern charities and their mischief. Our modern social order,
in a word, has become more complex, more segregated, more
specialized. A whole class of people in cities--those, I mean, of
considerable wealth--with a few noble exceptions (which, however, in
our greater cities, thank God, are becoming daily less rare), live in
profound ignorance of the condition of their fellow-citizens. Now and
then, by some sharp reverse in the financial world or some national
recurrence of "bad times," they are made aware that large numbers of
their neighbors are out of work and starving. And, at all times, they
are no less reminded that there is a considerable class--how
appallingly large it is growing to be in New York Mr. Coler has told
us--who need help, or think they do, and who, at any rate, more or
less noisily demand it in the street, at the door, by begging letter,
or in a dozen other ways that make the rich man understand why the
prayer of Agur was, "Give me neither poverty nor riches."[1]

     [Footnote 1: Proverbs xxx, 8.]

Well, something must be done, they agree. What shall it be? Shall the
State do it, or the Church, or the individual? If only they could, as
to that, agree! But it has been one of the most pathetic notes of our
heedless and superficial treatment of a great problem that, here,
there has not been from the beginning even the smallest pretense of a
common purpose or any moderately rational course of action.
Undoubtedly it is true that there is no imaginable mechanism that
could relieve any one of these agencies from responsibility in the
matter of relief to the unfortunate, nor is it desirable that there
should be. Sometimes it has been the Church that has undertaken the
relief of the poor and sick, sometimes it has been largely left to the
individual, and sometimes it has been as largely left to the State.
But, in any case, the result has been almost as often as otherwise
mischievous, or corrupt and corrupting. For, in fact, the ideal mode
of dealing with the problems of sickness, destitution, and disablement
should be one in which the common endeavor of the State, the Church,
and the individual should be somehow unified and co-ordinated. But,
incredible as it ought to be, the history of the best endeavors toward
such co-ordination has been a history of large inadequacy and of
meager results. As an illustration of this it is enough to point to
the history of the Charity Organization Society in New York, which, I
presume, is not greatly different from that of similar societies
elsewhere. Antecedently it would have seemed probable that such a
society, which aims simply to discourage fraud, to relieve genuine
want, and to protect the community from being preyed upon by the idle
and the vicious, would have the sympathy of that great institution,
some of whose teachings are, "If any man will not work, neither shall
he eat"; "Stand upright on thy feet"; "Provide things honest in the
sight of all men"; "Not slothful in business"; and the like. But, as a
matter of fact, such societies have had no more bitter antagonists
than the churches, and no more vehement opponents than ministers of
religion. In a meeting composed of such persons I have heard one of
their number denounce with the most impassioned oratory any agency
which undertook, by any mechanism, to intrude into the question of the
circumstances, resources, or worthiness of those who were the objects
of ecclesiastical almsgiving. Who, he demanded, could know so well as
the clergy all the facts needed to enable them wisely and judiciously
to assist those worthy and needy brethren who were of their own
household of faith? Nothing could sound more plausible or probable;
but in a little while it happened that a woman who had for years been
a beneficiary of this very pastor died, leaving behind her, among her
effects, sundry savings-bank books which showed her to be possessed of
some thousands of dollars, which she bequeathed to relatives in a
distant land. Still more recently a case of a similar character has
occurred in which a still larger amount having been paid over in small
sums through a long series of years by a church, the whole, with
interest, has been found to have been hoarded, the recipient having
been a person entirely capable of self-support, and, as a matter of
fact, during the whole period self-supporting, and the large
accumulations are at present the subject of a suit in which the church
is endeavoring to recover what it not unnaturally regards as its own
misappropriated money.

And yet, as any one knows who knows anything of the delicacy,
vigilancy, and thoroughness with which a well-organized society
conducts its work, any such grotesque and deplorable result would,
with a little wise co-operation between the Church and such a society,
have been rendered impossible. I know how impatient many good people
are of the services of any such association, and we have all heard _ad
nauseam_ of their protests against a "spy system which invades the
sacred privacy of decent poverty," and the rest; but, in fact, such
persons never seem to realize that, in one aspect of it, the Church
stands, or, as a matter of common honesty, as the administrator of
trust funds, ought to stand, on the same equitable basis, at least, as
a life-insurance company. Now, when I seek the benefits of a
life-insurance company I am asked certain questions which affect not
only my physical resources but my diseases, my ancestry and their
diseases, my personal habits, infirmities, and the like. If the
company has the right, in the just interests of its other clients, to
ask these questions, as administering a large trust, has not the
Church, which is also the administrator of a trust no less in the
interest of other clients?

But, indeed, this is the lowest aspect of such a question, and I
freely admit it. The title of this paper points to that gravest aspect
of it, with which I am now concerned. The largest mischief of
indiscriminate almsgiving is not its wanton waste--it is its
inevitable and invariable degradation of its objects. I have spoken of
the grave antagonism of the Church to wisely organized charity, but it
is but the echo of the hostility of the individual, and often of the
best and wisest men and women. Elsewhere (but not, I think, in print)
I have related an incident in this connection of which one is almost
tempted to say _ex uno disce omnes_. Approaching one day, when I was a
pastor in a great city, the door of one of my clerical brethren, I
observed a woman leaving it who, though she hastily turned her back
upon me, I recognized as a member of my own congregation. On entering
my friend's study I said to him:

"I beg your pardon, but was not that Mrs. ---- whom I saw leaving your
door a moment ago?"

"Yes."

"What was she after, may I ask?"

My friend--now, alas! no longer living--was a man distinguished by
singular delicacy and chivalry of character and bearing, and he turned
upon me with some surprise and _hauteur_ and said:

"Well, yes, you may ask; but I do not know that, in the matter of the
sad and painful circumstances of one of my own parishioners, I am
called upon to answer."

"Precisely," I replied; "but, as it happens, she isn't your
parishioner."

"What do you mean, sir?" he exclaimed, with some heat. "Do you suppose
that I don't know the members of my own flock?"

"On the contrary," I said, "I have no doubt that you know not only
them but the members of a great many other flocks, as in the instance
of the person who has just left your door, who, as it happens, has
been a member of the church of which I am rector for some fifteen
years."

The remark and the abundant evidence with which I was able to
re-enforce it at last persuaded my friend to institute further
inquiries, which resulted in the discovery that the subject of those
inquiries maintained similar relations with some seven parishes, from
every one of which she was receiving, as a poor widow, a monthly
allowance! And yet my reverend brother was one of the most strenuous
opponents of any system or society, any challenge or interrogation
which, as he said, came between him and _his_ poor. Alas! though in
one sense they were his poor, in another they were as remote from him
as if they and he had been living in different hemispheres. With every
sympathy for their distresses, he had not come to recognize that,
under those complex conditions of our modern life, to which I have
already referred, a real knowledge of the classes upon whom need and
misfortune and the temptations to vice and idleness press most heavily
has become almost a science, in which training, experience, most
surely a large faith, but no less surely a large wisdom, are
indispensable.

In this work there is undoubtedly a place for institutional charity,
and also for that other which is individual. The former affords a
sphere for a wise economy, for prompt and immediate treatment or
relief, and for the utilization of that higher scientific knowledge
and those better scientific methods which the home, and especially the
tenement house, can not command. But over against these advantages we
are bound always to recognize those inevitable dangers which they
bring with them. The existence of an institution, whether hospital,
almshouse, or orphanage, to the care of which one may easily dismiss a
sick member of the household, or to which one may turn for gratuitous
care and treatment, must inevitably act as strong temptations to those
who are willing to evade personal obligations that honestly belong to
them. In connection with an institution for the treatment of the eye
and ear, with which I happen to be officially connected, it was found,
not long ago, that the number of patients who sought it for gratuitous
treatment was considerably increased by persons who came to the
hospital in their own carriages, which they prudently left around the
corner, and whose circumstances abundantly justified the belief that
they were quite able to pay for the treatment, which, nevertheless,
their self-respect did not prevent them from accepting as a dole. Such
incidents are symptomatic of a tendency which must inevitably degrade
those who yield to it, and which is at once vicious and deteriorating.
How widespread it is must be evident to any one who has had the
smallest knowledge of the unblushing readiness with which
institutional beneficence is utilized in every direction. A young
married man in the West, I have been told, wrote to his kindred in the
East: "We have had here a glorious revival of religion. Mary and I
have been hopefully converted. Father has got very old and helpless,
and so we have sent him to the county house." One finds himself
speculating with some curiosity _what_ religion it was to which this
filial scion was converted. Certainly it could not have been that
which is commonly called Christian!

And at the other end of the social scale the situation is often little
better. In our greater cities homes have been provided for the aged,
and especially for that most deserving class of gentlewomen who,
having been reared in affluence, come to old age, after having
struggled to maintain themselves by teaching, needlework, and the
like, with broken powers and empty purses. But it has, I am informed,
been often impossible to find places for them in institutions
especially created for their care, because its lady managers have
filled their places with their own worn-out servants, who, having
spent their years and strength in their employer's service, are turned
over in their old age, with a shrewd frugality which one can not but
admire, to be maintained at the cost of other people. It is impossible
to confront such instances, and they might be multiplied indefinitely,
without recognizing how enormous are the possibilities of mischief
even in connection with the most useful institutional charity.

And yet these are not so great as those which no less surely follow,
as it is oftenest administered, in the train of individual
beneficence. In an unwritten address, not long ago, I mentioned an
illustration of this which I have been asked to repeat here. While a
rector in a large city parish, I was called upon by a stranger who
asked for money, and who, as evidence of his claims upon my
consideration, produced a letter from my father, written some
twenty-five years before, when he was Bishop of Pennsylvania. The
writer had, when this letter was placed in my hands, been dead for
some twenty years, but, in a community in which he had been greatly
loved and respected, his words had not, even in that lapse of time,
lost their power. The letter was a general letter, addressed to no
one, and therein lay its mischief. When read, it had in each instance
been returned to its bearer, and he soon discovered that he had in it
a talisman that would open almost any pocket. He was originally a
mechanic who had been temporarily disabled by a fit of sickness; when
I saw him, however, he was obviously, and doubtless for years had
been, in robust health. But he had discovered that if he were willing
to beg he need not work, and he had long before made his choice on the
side of ease and indolence. After reading the letter which he
produced, and looking at its date and soiled condition, both revealing
the long service that it had performed, I said to him, "No, I will not
give you anything, but I will pay you ten dollars if you will let me
have that letter." It would not be easy to describe the leer of
cunning and contempt with which he promptly took it out of my hand,
folded it, placed it in his pocketbook, and left the room. He was not
so innocent as to surrender his whole capital in trade!

Now, here was a man to whom a well-meaning but inconsiderate act of
kindness had been the cause of permanent degradation. The highest
qualities in such a one--manhood, self-respect, frugal and industrious
independence--had been practically destroyed, and an act of charity
had made of one who was doubtless originally an honest and
hard-working young man, a mendicant, a loafer, and a fraud.

And yet for a sincere and self-sacrificing purpose to help our less
fortunate fellow-men there were never so many inspiring and
encouraging opportunities. Along with the undeniably increasing
complexity of our modern life there have arisen those attractive
instrumentalities for a genuine beneficence which find their most
impressive illustrations in the improvements of the homes of the poor
in college settlements, in young men's and young girls' clubs in
connection with our mission churches, in the kindergartens and in the
cooking schools founded by these and other beneficent agencies, in
juvenile societies for teaching handicrafts and encouraging savings,
and, best of all, in that resolute purpose to know how the other half
live, of which the noble service of Edward Denison in England; of
college graduates in England and in America, who have made the college
and university settlements their post-graduate courses; of such women
here and in Chicago as Miss Jane Addams, and the charming group of
gentlewomen living in the House in Henry Street, New York, maintained
with such modest munificence by Mr. Jacob Schiff; of such laborious
and discerning scrutiny and sympathy as have been shown in the studies
and writings of my friend Mr. Jacob Riis--are such noble and
enkindling examples.

These and such as these are indicating to us the lines along which our
best work for the relief of ignorance and suffering and want may
to-day be done, and the more closely they are studied, and the more
intimately the classes with which they are concerned are known, the
more abundantly they will vindicate themselves. For these latter have
in them, far more commonly than we are wont to recognize, those higher
instincts of self-respect and of manly and womanly independence that,
in serving our fellow-men, we must mainly count upon. There are
doubtless instinctive idlers and mendicants among the poor, as, let us
not forget, there are chronic idlers, borrowers, "sponges," among the
classes at the other end of the social scale. But the same divine
image is in our brother man everywhere, and the better, more truly,
more closely we know him, the more profoundly we shall realize it.
During some six weeks spent, a few years ago, in the most crowded ward
in the world, among thousands of people who lived in the narrowest
quarter and upon the most scanty wage, I gave six hours every day to
receiving anybody and everybody who came to me. During that time I
had visits from dilapidated gentlemen from Albany and Jersey City and
Philadelphia and the like, who supposed that I was a credulous fool
whose money and himself would be soon parted, and who gave me what
they considered many excellent reasons for presenting them with five
dollars apiece. But, during that whole period, not one of the many
thousands who lived in the crowded tenements all around me, and to
hundreds of whom I preached three times a week, asked me for a penny.
Not one! They came to me by day and by night, men and women, boys and
girls, for counsel, courage, sympathy, admonition, reproof, guidance,
and such light as I could give them--but never, one of them, for
money. They are my friends to-day, and they know that I am theirs;
and, little as that last may mean to the weakest and the worst of
them, I believe that, in the case of any man or woman who tries to
understand and hearten his fellow, it counts for a thousandfold more
than doles, or bread, or institutional relief.




THE HOPI INDIANS OF ARIZONA.

BY GEORGE A. DORSEY.


As one approaches the center of Arizona, along the line of the Santa
Fé Railroad, whether he come from the east or from the west, his
attention is sure to be arrested by several tall, spire-like hills
which are silhouetted against the sky to the far north. These peaks
are the Moki Buttes, and to the north of them lies the province of
Tusayan, the land of the Mokis, or the Hopis, as they prefer to be
called. That country to-day contains more of interest to the student
of the history of mankind than any other similar-sized area on the
American continent. But very few of the great throng that roll by on
the Santa Fé trains every year in quest of pleasure, of recreation, of
new scenes and strange, stop off at Holbrook or Winslow to take the
journey to the Hopis, and very few even know of the existence of these
curiously quaint pueblos of this community, which to-day lives pretty
much as it did before Columbus set out on his long voyage to the
unknown West.

The term _pueblo_, a Spanish word meaning town, is by long and
continued use now almost confined to the clusters of stone and adobe
houses which to-day shelter the sedentary Indians of New Mexico and
Arizona. Not only are these Indian towns called "pueblos," but we
speak of the Indians themselves as the Pueblo Indians, and of the
culture of the people--for they all have much in common--as the pueblo
culture. This similarity of culture is not due to unity of race or
of language, but is the resultant of a peculiar environment. In recent
times, the limits of the pueblo-culture area have contracted to meet
the demands of the white man; we know also that before the advent of
the Spaniard many once populous districts had been abandoned, and as a
result there came to be fewer but larger villages. We know also, both
from tradition and from archæological evidence, that in former days
the pueblo people inhabited many of the villages of southern Colorado
and Utah, and that the Hopis and their kin were numerous in many parts
of Arizona. The silent houses of the cliffs, the ruins of central
Arizona, and the great crumbling masses of adobe of the Salt and Gila
River valleys and in northern Chihuahua are all former habitations of
the Pueblo Indian. To-day there are no representatives of these people
in Utah or Colorado, while the seven Hopi towns of Tusayan alone
remain in Arizona. But there are still many pueblos scattered along
the Rio Grande, Jemez, and San Juan Rivers in New Mexico. Alike in
culture, we may divide the existing pueblos into four linguistic
groups--namely, the Hopis of Arizona, the Zuñis of New Mexico, the
Tehuas east of the Rio Grande, and the Queres to the west of the Rio
Grande. Of the earlier home of the last three stocks we know but
little. The ancestors of the Hopis we know came from different
directions--some from the cliff dwellings of the north, others from
central Arizona. To-day, however, they form a congeries of clans
united and welded into a unit by similarity of purpose and by the more
powerful influence of a peculiar environment.

The opinion was held until within a very few years that the Hopis
represented a small branch of the Shoshonean division of the
Uto-Aztecan stock, but Dr. Fewkes, our greatest authority on the Hopi,
has questioned the accuracy of this classification, and it can be
stated that the true affinities of the Hopi have not yet been
discovered.

The province of Tusayan, or the Moqui Reservation, as it is officially
known to-day, contains about four thousand square miles and about two
thousand Indians. It is in the northeastern part of Arizona, and its
towns are about eighty miles by trail from the railroad. The present
inhabitants are grouped in seven pueblos, located on three parallel
_mesas_, or table-lands, which extend southward like stony fingers
toward the valley of the Little Colorado River. The first or east mesa
contains the pueblos of Walpi, Sitcomovi, and Hano; on the second or
middle mesa are Miconinovi, Cipaulovi, and Cuñopavi; and on the third
or west mesa stands Oraibi, largest and most ancient of all Hopi
pueblos, and in many respects the best preserved and most interesting
community in the world. A community without a church, separated by a
broad, deep valley from its nearest neighbor, with but a single white
man within twenty miles, removed nearly thirty-five miles from a
trading post, isolated, proud, spurning the advances of the
Government, Oraibi could maintain its independence if every other
community on the earth were blotted out of existence.

The journey from Winslow to Oraibi is not without great interest. The
beautiful snow-capped peaks of the San Francisco Mountain are always
in sight far away to the west, and when the eye tires of the rigid and
immovable desert their graceful outlines check the often rising
feeling of utter helplessness. Then there is a sweep and barrenness of
the plain which is impressive and often awe-inspiring, and which at
times produces a feeling similar to that created by the sea. Save for
the stunted cottonwoods along the Little Colorado River, there is
scant vegetation to relieve the bright reds, yellows, and blues of the
painted desert over which the sun's heat quivers and dances, revealing
here and there mirages of lakes and forests of wonderfully deceptive
vividness. Arising out of the plain here and there are brief expanses
of table-lands, with the soft under strata crumbled away and the
higher strata having fallen down the sides, producing often the
appearance of a ruined castle. At the foot of the mesas are clumps of
sagebrush and grease wood, while the plain is dotted here and there
with patches of cactus and bright-colored flowers. Foxes and wolves
are common enough, and we are rarely out of sight or sound of the
coyote, bands of which make night hideous with their shrill, weird
cry.

Although the Navajo country proper is to the north and east of
Tusayan, their _hogans_, or thatched-roofed dugouts, are met with here
and there along the valley of the river. The Navajos are the Bedouins
of America. We often see the women in front of the hogans weaving, or
the men along the trail tending their flocks of sheep and goats, for
they are great herders and produce large quantities of wool, part of
which they exchange to the traders; the remainder the women weave into
blankets, which are in general use throughout the Southwest and which
find their way through the trade to all parts of the relic-loving
world. They raise, in addition, great quantities of beans, which they
also send out to the railroad. They are better supplied with ponies
than the Hopi, and with them make long journeys, for the Navajos do
not live a communal life as do the pueblo people, but are scattered
over an extensive territory, each family living alone and being
independent of its neighbors.

After a long and tiresome journey of four days we arrive at the foot
of the mesa and begin the long, upward climb, for Oraibi is eight
hundred feet above the surrounding plain and seven thousand feet above
the level of the sea. Just before the crest is reached the trail for
fifty or more feet is simply a path along and up the base of a rocky
precipice, its steps worn deep by the never-ending line of Indians
passing to and fro. Once upon the summit we have an unobstructed view
over the dry, arid, sun-parched valleys for many miles--a view which,
in spite of its desolation, is extremely fascinating.

[Illustration: STREET SCENE, ORAIBI.]

We often speak of this or of that town as the oldest on the continent.
But here we are in the streets of a town which antedates all other
cities of the United States--a pueblo which occupied this very spot
when, in 1540, Coronado halted in Cibola and sent Don Pedro de Tobar
on to the west to explore the then unknown desert. Imagine seven
rather irregularly parallel streets about two hundred yards long, with
here and there a more open spot or plaza, lined on each side with
mud-plastered, rough-laid stone houses, and you have Oraibi. The
houses rise in the form of terraces to a height of two or three
stories. As a rule there is no opening to the ground-floor dwellings
save through a small, square hatch in the roof. Leading up to this
roof are rude ladders, which in a few rare instances are simply steps
cut in a solid log, differing in nowise from those found leading into
the chambers of the old cliff ruins of southern Colorado. The roof of
the first row or terrace of houses forms a kind of balcony or porch
for the second terrace, and so the roof of the second-story houses
serves a similar useful purpose for the third-story houses.

[Illustration: TERRACE SCENE, STREETS OF ORAIBI.]

Two things impress one on entering a Hopi home for the first time--the
small size of the rooms, with their low ceilings, and the cleanness of
the floors. Both floors and walls are kept fresh and bright by
oft-renewed coats of thin plaster, which is always done by the woman,
for she owns the house and all within it; she builds it and keeps it
in repair. The ceiling is of thatch held up by poles, which in turn
rest on larger rafters. Apart from the mealing bins and the _piki_
stones, to be described later, there is no furniture--no table, no
chairs, no stools, simply a shelf or two with trays of meal or bread,
and near the wall a long pole for clothing, suspended by buckskin
thongs from the rafters. Their bed is a sheepskin rug and one or two
Navajo blankets spread on the floor wherever there may be a vacant
space. In one corner may be a pile of corn stacked up like cordwood,
and in another corner melons or squashes and a few sacks of dried
peaches or beans. Between the thatch and rafters you will find bows
and arrows, spindles, hairpins, digging-sticks, and boomerangs, and
from the wall may hang a doll or two, children's playthings. Such is
an Oraibi home; but it always seems a happy home, and the traveler is
always welcome.

[Illustration: STREET SCENE, ORAIBI.]

A prominent feature of almost every pueblo plaza is a squarish,
boxlike elevation which extends about two feet above the level of the
earth and measures about six feet in length, with a two-foot hole in
the center, from which projects to a considerable height the posts of
a ladder. If you descend this ladder you will find yourself in a
subterranean chamber, rectangular in shape, and measuring about
twenty-five feet in length by about fifteen feet in breadth, with a
height from the floor to the ceiling of about ten feet. This
underground room is the _kiva_, or the _estufa_ of the Spaniards. Here
are held all the secret rites of religious ceremonies, and here the
men resort to smoke, to gossip, to spin, and weave. The floor, to an
extent of two thirds of the entire length, except for a foot-wide
space extending around this portion, is excavated still farther to a
depth of a foot and a half. The remaining elevated portion is for the
spectators, while the banquette around the excavation is used by the
less active participants in the ceremonies. Just under the hatchway
and in front of the spectators' floor is a depression which is used as
a fire hearth. The walls are neatly coated with plaster, and the
entire floor is paved with irregularly shaped flat stones fitted
together in a rough manner. There is sometimes inserted in the floor,
at the end removed from the spectators, a plank with a circular hole
about an inch and a half in diameter; this hole is called the
_sipapu_, and symbolizes the opening in the earth through which the
ancestors of the Hopi made their entrance into this world. The roof of
the kiva is supported by great, heavy beams, which are brought from
the San Francisco Mountain with infinite trouble and labor. In Oraibi
there are thirteen kivas, each probably in the possession of some
society, one of which belongs to women, who there erect their altar in
the _mamzrouti_ ceremony. Oraibi has the largest number of kivas of
any of the Hopi pueblos; in a single plaza there are no less than four
kivas. This plaza is on the west side of the village, and one of the
kivas is of special interest, for in it are held the secret rites of
the weird snake ceremony. A little to the west of this plaza is a
small bit of the mesa, standing apart and separated from the main mesa
by a depression. This is known as "Oraibi rock," whence the pueblo
takes its name. The etymology of this name "Oraibi" is lost in a misty
past, but the rock is still held in great veneration. On it stands a
rude shrine, where one may always find sacrificial offerings of
prayer-sticks, pipes, sacred meal, cakes, etc.

[Illustration: ORAIBI ROCK, UPON WHICH STANDS KATCIN KIKU, THE
PRINCIPAL ORAIBI SHRINE.]

The roof of a Hopi house is always of interest. Here we may see corn
drying in the sun or loads of fagots ready for use, women dressing
their hair or fondling their babies, or groups of children playing or
roasting melon seeds in an old broken earthenware vessel which rests
on stones over a fire. From the projecting rafters are ears of corn
hung up to dry, or pieces of meat placed there to be out of reach of
the dogs, or bunches of yarn just out of the dye pot. When a ceremony
is being performed in some one of the plazas the roofs near by present
a scene which is animated in the extreme, every square foot of space
being occupied by a merry, good-natured throng of young and old. As
one looks from one group to another it is impossible not to notice the
stunted and dwarfed appearance of the women, which is in marked
contrast to that of the men, who are beautifully formed, of medium
height, and of well-knit frames. There is not, however, the same
powerful ruggedness or splendid development among these pueblo
dwellers which we find among the plains Indians, for the days of the
Hopi women are spent in carrying water and grinding corn, while the
men in summer till their fields and in winter spin and weave.

In considering the routine life of the Hopi it is hard to draw a sharp
line between what we may call his regular daily occupations and his
religious life, for they are closely interwoven. He is by nature a
religionist, and he never forgets his allegiance and obligations to
the unseen forces which control and command him.

[Illustration: AN ORAIBI MOTHER AND CHILDREN.]

In nothing is the primitiveness or the absence from contamination of
the Hopi better revealed than in the children, for here, as elsewhere,
is it shown that they are the best conservators of the habits and
customs of ancestral life. What utter savages the little fellows are!
Stark naked generally, whether it be summer or winter, dirty from head
to foot, their long black hair disheveled and tangled and standing out
in every direction, their head often resembling a thick matted bunch
of sagebrush. They are never idle; now back of the village behind tiny
stone ramparts eagerly watching their horsehair bird snares, or
engaged in a sham battle with slings and corncobs, or grouped in
threes or fours about a watermelon, eagerly and with much noise
gorging themselves to absolute fullness, or down on the side of the
mesa playing in the clay pits. A not uncommon sight is that of two or
three little fellows trudging off in pursuit of imaginary game, armed
with miniature bows and arrows or with boomerangs and digging-sticks.
In their disposition toward white visitors they are extremely shy and
reticent, but they are also very inquisitive and curious, and,
furthermore, they have a sweet tooth, and one only need display a
stick of candy to have half the infantile population of the pueblo at
his heels for an hour at a time. If perchance one of the little
fellows should die, he is not buried in the common cemetery at the
foot of the mesa, but he is laid away among the rocks in some one of
the innumerable crevices which are to be found on all sides near the
top of the mesa, for the Hopis, in common with many other native
tribes of America, believe that the souls of departed children do not
journey to the spirit land, but are born again.

[Illustration: GRAVE OF CHILD IN ROCK CREVICE.]

As the girls reach the age of ten or twelve they distinguish
themselves by dressing their hair in a manner which is both striking
and absolutely unique on the face of the earth. The hair is gathered
into two rolls on each side of the head, and then, at a distance of
from one to two inches, is wound over a large U-shaped piece of wood
into two semicircles, both uniting in appearance to form a single
large disk, the diameter of which is sometimes as much as eight
inches. After marriage the hair is parted in the middle over the
entire head, and is gathered into two queues, one on each side, which
are then wound innumerable times by a long hair string beginning a few
inches from the head and extending about four inches. The ends of the
queues are loose. Hopi maidens are, as a rule, possessed of fine,
regular features, slender, lithe, and graceful bodies, and are often
beautiful. But with the early marriage comes a daily round of
drudgery, which prevents full development and stunts and dwarfs the
body. But to old age she is generally patient, cheerful, nor does she
often complain. Lines produced by toil and labor may show in her face,
but rarely those of worry or discontent. Even long before marriage she
has not only learned to help her mother in the care of her younger
brothers and sisters, but she has already trained her back to meet
the requirements of the low-placed corn mills. From her tenth year to
her last it has been estimated that every Hopi woman spends on an
average three hours out of every twenty-four on her knees stooping
over a _metate_, or corn-grinder, for corn forms about ninety per cent
of the vegetable food of the Hopis.

In every house you will find, in a corner, a row of two, three, or
four square boxlike compartments or bins of thin slabs of sandstone
set on edge. Each bin contains a metate set at an angle with its lower
edge slightly below the level of the floor. There is a clear space
around each stone to permit of a better disposition of the corn and
meal. The texture of the metates is graduated from the first to the
last, the final one being capable of grinding the finest meal.
Accompanying the metate is a crushing or grinding stone about a foot
in length and from three to four inches wide. Its under surface is
flat, while its upper surface is convex to a slight extent, so as to
permit of its being grasped firmly by the thumb and fingers of both
hands. The corn is ground between these two stones, the upper one
being worked up and down the metate by a motion of the operator not
unlike that of a woman washing clothes on a washboard. The favorite
position assumed by the woman while working is to sit on her knees,
her toes resting against the wall of the house behind her. Of the many
colors of corn used by the Hopis, blue is the most common, and corn of
this color is ordinarily employed in the making of bread; other
colors, however, are used for the piki consumed in ceremonial feasts.

The stone used by the Oraibians for making piki is from a sandstone
quarry near Burro Springs. It is about twenty inches long by fourteen
broad, and is three inches thick. The upper surface is first dressed
by means of stone picks, and is polished by a hard rubbing-stone, and
then finally treated with pitch and other ingredients until its
surface is as smooth as glass. It is mounted on its two long edges by
upright slabs, so that it stands about ten inches from the level of
the floor, the floor itself being usually excavated to a depth of two
or three inches beneath the stone. At a height of about four feet
above this primitive griddle is a large rectangular hood which is
extended above the roof in the form of a chimney made of bottomless
pots, one resting on the other. Kneeling in front of the stone and
supporting her body with her left arm, the woman coats the stone with
the thin batter of corn and water with the fingers of her right hand.
After a few seconds' time she lifts the waferlike sheet from the stone
and transfers it to a mat which is made for this special purpose. For
some time the piki remains soft and pliable, and while in this
condition she rolls or folds the sheets according to her custom--some
folding, others rolling it. It is a curious sight on the feast days of
certain ceremonies to see women gathering from all quarters of the
village at an appointed house, each carrying a tray heaped high with
rolls of this paper bread.

[Illustration: WOMAN OF ORAIBI MAKING COILED POTTERY.]

The Hopis are among the foremost potters in North America, when we
take into consideration the fineness of the clays used and the
character of the decoration. But in many respects, especially in form,
their ware is much inferior to that of the ancient Mexicans and
Peruvians. They make pottery to-day as they did hundreds of years ago,
but the quality of the work has greatly deteriorated and the
earthenware now produced is not to be compared with that found in
near-by Hopi ruins. It should be kept in mind, however, that the
specimens found in the ancient graves are to a certain extent
ceremonial, and consequently better made and more ornate in their
decoration than those which were made simply for household purposes.
Still, there are a fineness of texture and a delicacy of coloring in
the ancient ware which can not now be produced. It is to be noted,
also, that the Hopi woman of to-day can not decipher the designs on
the earlier pottery, although she often copies them. The demand for
earthenware vessels, however, is nearly as great at present as it was
in prehistoric days, for you may search the homes of Oraibi for a long
time without finding a tin pan or an iron pot. Thus it is that every
Hopi woman must be a worker in clay, and one of the occasional sights
is that of a woman on her "front porch" surrounded by vessels of all
sizes and in varying degrees of completeness. The process of
pottery-making is somewhat as follows: After the clay has been worked
into a plastic mass she draws out from it a round strip the size of
one's finger and about five inches in length. This is coiled flat in
the bottom of the tray, and forms the base of the vessel. Other clay
strips are kneaded out of the mass, and these are coiled in a
gradually increasing spiral, the desired shape and proportion being
acquired at the same time, until the vessel has reached its proper
height. The sides of the vessel are then thinned down, and both inside
and outside are made smooth by means of small bits of gourds and
polishing-stones. The vessel is then ready for a coat of wash, after
which it is painted and fired. This method of making pottery is not
peculiar to the pueblos, but is found among some of the tribes of
South America.

The art of basketry was never brought to a high state among the Hopis,
for they confine themselves chiefly to the manufacture of large
shallow trays and rough baskets made of the long, pliable leaves of
the yucca or of some other fiber. These answer all ordinary domestic
requirements. From the reddish-brown branches of a willowlike bush
which grows near, the Hopi mother interweaves a cradle board for her
children. This cradle is peculiar in its shape, and especially so in
its construction, and differs greatly from that in use among the
plains Indians. Another singular point to be noted is the fact that
this cradle board is not often strapped to the back, but is usually in
the arms, or, more often still, is placed on the floor by the side of
the mother as she works. The Oraibi mesa, like other table-lands of
Tusayan, is destitute of water. The nearest spring is in the valley at
the foot of the mesa nearly a mile away. From before sunrise to ten
o'clock of every day there is an almost unbroken line of water
carriers going and coming from the spring, bending under the weight
of a large jar which they carry on their back by means of a blanket,
the ends of which are tied in a knot on their forehead. No wonder
these women grow prematurely old. Winter for them, however, has its
advantages, for they have an ingenious way of utilizing the snow to
save them from the necessity of going down the mesa for water. One of
the most extraordinary sights I saw was that of a Hopi woman and her
little girl trudging along, each bent almost to the ground under the
weight of an immense snowball. These they were carrying home on their
backs, enveloped in a blanket. About half a mile from the pueblo, back
on the mesa, reservoirs have been scooped out in the soft sandstone,
which are often partially filled by the spring rains, but the water
soon becomes brackish and is not potable, but is used for washing
clothes.

The costume of the woman consists ordinarily of four pieces--a
blanket, dress, belt, and moccasins. The blanket is of wool, and is
about four feet square. It is blue in color, with a black border on
two sides. These two edges are usually bound with a heavy green or
yellow woolen thread. To make the dress, this blanket is once folded
and is sewn together with red yarn at the long side, except for a
space sufficiently large to accommodate one arm. The folded upper
border is also sewn for a short space, which rests on one of the
shoulders. The other shoulder and both arms are bare, except as they
may be partially covered by the blanket. The belt or sash is of black
and green stripes, with a red center, ornamented with geometric
designs in black; it is about four inches wide, and is long enough to
permit of being wound around the waist two or three times. The
moccasins are of unpainted buckskin, one side of the top of which
terminates in a long, broad strip, which is wound round the leg
several times and extends up to the knee, thus forming a thick
legging. More than half the time the Hopi woman is barefooted. The
girls wear silver earrings, or suspend from the lobe of the ear small
rectangular bits of wood, one side of which is covered with a mosaic
of turquoise. This custom is of some antiquity, as ear pendants
exactly similar to these have been found in the Hopi ruins of
Homolobi, on the Little Colorado River.

In addition to this regulation costume, worn on all ordinary
occasions, each Hopi woman is supposed to own a bridal costume and two
special blankets, which are worn only in ceremonies, and hence need
not here be described. The bridal costume consists of a pair of
moccasins, two pure white cotton blankets, one large and the other
small, both having large tassels of yellow and the black yarn at each
corner, and a long, broad, white sash, each end of which terminates in
a fringe of balls and long thread. All three garments, before being
used, are covered with a thick coat of kaolin, so that they are quite
stiff. With these garments belongs a reed mat sufficiently large to
envelop the small blanket and the sash.

So far as I am able to learn, the three pieces of this remarkable
costume are never worn except on a single occasion, and at only one
other time does the bride formally appear in any of them. About a
month after the marriage ceremony has been performed, during which
time she has been living with the family of her husband, she completes
the marriage ceremony by returning to the house of her mother. This is
termed "going home," and this will be her place of abode until she and
her husband own a dwelling of their own. For this ceremony she puts on
the larger of the two blankets, which reaches almost to the ground and
comes up high on the back of the head, covering her ears. The smaller
blanket and the sash are rolled up in the mat, and with this in front
of her on her two arms she begins her journey "home." This white
cotton costume is probably a survival from times which antedate the
introduction of wool into the Southwest.

Who makes all these garments, blankets, etc.? Not the women, as you
might expect, but the men. A Hopi woman doesn't even make her own
moccasins. If you will descend into one of the kivas on almost any
day of the year, except when the secret rites of ceremonies are being
held, you will behold an industrious and an interesting scene. You
will find a group of men, naked except for a loin cloth, all busy
either with the carding combs, the spindle, or the loom; and to me the
most interesting of these three operations is that of the spinning of
wool. The spindle itself is long and heavy, and the whorl, in the
older examples, is a large disk cut from a mountain goat's horn. There
is no attempt at decoration, nor do the spindles compare with those
found in Peru and other parts of America for neatness and beauty. An
unusual feature of the method employed by the Hopi spinner is the
manner in which the spindle is held under one foot while he
straightens out the thread preparatory to winding it.

For weaving, two kinds of looms are used. One is a frame holding in
place a fifteen-inch row of parallel reeds, each about six inches long
and perforated in the center. This apparatus is used solely for making
belts, sashes, and hair and knee bands. These are not commonly woven
in the kiva, but in the open air on the terrace, one end of the warp
being fastened to some projecting rafter. The other loom is much
larger, and is used for blankets, dresses, and all large garments. It
differs in no essential particular from other well-known looms in use
by the majority of the aborigines of this continent. The method of
suspending the loom is perhaps worth a moment's notice, as in nearly
every house and in all kivas special provision is made for its
erection. From the wall near the ceiling project two wooden beams, on
which, parallel to the floor, is a long wooden pole, and to this is
fastened, by buckskin thongs, the upper part of the loom. Immediately
under this pole is a plank, flush with the floor, in which at short
intervals are partially covered U-shaped cavities in the wood, through
which are passed buckskin thongs which are fastened to the lower pole
of the loom. The sets of thongs are long enough to permit of the loom
being lowered or raised to a convenient height. While at work the
weaver generally squats on the floor in front of his loom, or he
occasionally sits on a low, boxlike stool. It is no uncommon sight to
see, at certain times of the year, as many as six or eight looms in
operation at one time in a single kiva. The men also do all the sewing
and embroidering. Practically all the yarn consumed by the Hopis is
home-dyed, but the colors now used are almost entirely from aniline
dyes and indigo. Cotton is no longer used except in the manufacture of
certain ceremonial garments, all others being made of wool. They own
their own sheep, which find a scant living in the valleys; for the
better protection of the sheep from wolves they also keep large
numbers of goats.

Although the men do all the weaving, they do but little of it for
themselves. For the greater part of the year their only garment is the
loin cloth--a bit of store calico. In addition, they all own a shirt
of cheap black or colored calico, which is generally more or less in
rags, and a pair of loose, shapeless pantaloons, made often from some
old flour sack or bit of white cotton sheeting. It is a rather
incongruous sight to see some old Hopi, his thin legs incased in a
dirty, ragged pair of flour-sack trousers, on which can still be
traced "XXX Flour, Purest and Best."

Neither sex scarifies, tattoos, or paints any part of the body except
in ceremonies, when colored paints are used as each ceremony requires.
The men often wear large silver earrings, and suspend from their neck
as many strands of shell and turquoise beads as their wealth will
allow. Some of the younger men wear, in addition, a belt of large
silver disks and a shirt and pantaloons of velvet. Most of their
silver ornaments, it should be noted, however, have been secured in
trade from the Navajos, who are the most expert silversmiths of the
Southwest.

When the Hopi isn't spinning or weaving, he is in his kiva praying for
rain, or he is in the field keeping the crows from his corn. I was
once asked if the Hopis plow with oxen or horses. They use neither;
they do not plow. When they plant corn they dig a deep hole in the
earth with a long, sharp stick until they reach the moist soil. When
the corn is sprouted and has reached a height of a few inches there
is always the possibility of its being blown flat by the wind or
overwhelmed in a sand storm. To provide against this the Hopi incloses
the exposed parts of his little field with wind-breakers, made by
planting in the earth thick rows of stout branches of brush. These
hedges even are often overwhelmed by the sand and completely covered
up.

And the crows, and the stray horses, and the cattle! Surely the poor
Indian must fight very hard for his corn. For nearly two months he
never leaves it unguarded, and that he may be comfortable he makes a
shelter behind which he can escape the burning rays of the July and
August sun. The shelters are occasionally rather pretentious affairs,
at times consisting of a thick brush roof, supported by stout rafters
which rest on upright posts. More often, however, they simply consist
of a row of cottonwood poles, five or six feet high, set upright at a
slight angle in the earth.

Although corn is by far the most important vegetable food, the rich
though sun-parched soil yields large crops of beans and melons of all
kinds.

[Illustration: VALLEY SCENE; FIELDS AND PEACH TREES. ORAIBI ON MESA TO
THE RIGHT.]

Peach orchards also thrive in the sheltered valleys near the mesa, and
in the fall great patches of peaches may be seen spread out to dry on
the rocks of the mesa to the north of the village. Of both beans and
peaches the Hopis generally have large quantities for the outside
market, which they take over to the railroad on the backs of burros or
ponies.

Before leaving the subject of the daily life of the male portion of
Oraibi I have still to mention a curious weapon of which they make
occasional use. This is the throwing-stick, or so-called boomerang,
which differs only slightly from that used by the aborigines of
Australia; the Hopi stick, however is better made, and is ornamented
by short red and black lines. This is the weapon of the young men, and
with it they work havoc with the rabbits which infest the valleys. But
although they have good control over it, as can often be seen on their
return from a hunt, they are not able to cause its return as can the
Australians. At first thought it seems rather strange that the
boomerang should have been evolved by two groups of mankind dwelling
in parts of the world so remote, but we must look for the explanation
of this phenomenon in the fact that the natural conditions of the two
countries have much in common--a generally level, sandy country, with
here and there patches of brush, a peculiar condition which would
readily yield itself to the development of an equally peculiar and
specialized weapon.

[Illustration: ORAIBI MAN TRANSPORTING FIREWOOD WITH BURROS.]

For fire the Hopi depends almost entirely on the rank growth of brush
which is found along the ravines. This suffices to supply heat to the
piki stone and the boiling pot, and enough to keep a fire on the
hearth in the kiva. But now and then he must make a distant journey to
that part of the mesa where the supply of stunted and scrubby pines
and piñons has not already been exhausted; for by custom four kinds of
fuel are prescribed for the kivas, and to keep the hearth replenished
with these often necessitates long journeys. As the woman bends under
her water jar, so the man staggers along under his load of fagots,
often carried from a distance of several miles.




REFORM OF PUBLIC CHARITY.

BY BIRD S. COLER,

COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.


Abuse of municipal charity in New York city has reached a stage where
immediate and radical reform is necessary in order to prevent the
application of public funds to the payment of subsidies to societies
and institutions where professional pauperism is indirectly encouraged
and sustained. More than fifty years ago the city began to pay money
to private institutions for the support of public charges. The system
has grown without check until to-day New York contributes more than
three times as much public money to private or semiprivate charities
as all the other large cities in the United States combined. The
amounts so appropriated in 1898 by some of the chief cities were:
Chicago, $2,796; Philadelphia, $151,020; St. Louis, $22,579; Boston,
nothing; Baltimore, $227,350; Cincinnati, nothing; New Orleans,
$30,110; Pittsburg, nothing; Washington, $194,500; Detroit, $8,081;
Milwaukee, nothing; New York city, $3,131,580.51.

No serious attempt has heretofore been made to reform this system of
using public funds for the subsidizing of private charities. One
reason for this has doubtless been the fact that until recently the
local authorities were powerless to avoid or modify the effects of
mandatory legislation which has disposed of city moneys without regard
to the opinions entertained by the representatives of the local
taxpayers. It has always been easier to pass a bill at Albany than to
persuade the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the propriety of
bestowing public funds on private charities, and the managers of
private charities seeking public assistance have therefore generally
proceeded along the line of least resistance. The effect of this
system was to make beneficiaries the judges of their own deserts, for
the bills presented by them to the Legislature were usually passed
without amendment or modification, and gross inequalities in
disbursing public funds have arisen, different institutions receiving
different rates of payment for the same class of work.

In 1890 the city paid for the support of prisoners and paupers in city
institutions the sum of $1,949,100, and for paupers in private
institutions the sum of $1,845,872. In 1898 these figures had
increased to $2,334,456 for prisoners and public paupers, and
$3,131,580 for paupers in private institutions. Private charity, so
called, has prospered at the expense of the city until in some cases
it has become a matter of business for profit rather than relief of
the needy. The returns made by institutions receiving appropriations
in bulk from the city treasury show that many of them are using the
public funds for purposes not authorized by the Constitution. The
Constitution authorizes payments to be made for "care, support, and
maintenance." The reports of a large number of institutions show the
money annually obtained from the city carried forward wholly or in
part as a surplus. Different uses are made of this surplus, none of
them, however, authorized by law or warranted by a proper regard for
the interests of the taxpayers. In some cases this surplus is used to
pay off mortgage indebtedness, in others for permanent additions to
buildings, or for increase of investments and endowment. In one case
the manager of an institution frankly explained a remarkable falling
off in disbursements (so great that its charitable activities were
almost suspended) by stating that it was proposed, by exercising great
economy for a number of years, to let the city's annual appropriations
accumulate into a respectable building fund. The flagrant nature of
this abuse is so apparent that comment is unnecessary.

Appropriations for dependent children have reached enormous
proportions. Out of a total of $3,249,623.81 appropriated for private
charities in 1899, no less than $2,216,773, or sixty-nine per cent, is
for the care and support of children. In no city in the United States
will the number of children supported at the public expense compare,
in proportion to the population, with the number so cared for in the
city of New York. This may be partly accounted for by the extremes of
poverty to be met with in the metropolis, especially among the
foreign-born population, where the struggle for existence is so severe
as to weaken the family ties; partly by the rivalry and competition
which have existed between the several institutions devoted to this
kind of work; partly by reason of the fact that the rate paid by the
city for the care of these children is such as to enable the larger
institutions, in all probability, to make a small profit; but, to a
considerable extent, also from an insufficient inspection by public
officers for the purpose of ascertaining whether children are the
proper subjects of commitment and detention. In the city of New York
50,638 children in private institutions are cared for at the public
expense. This is one to every sixty-eight of the estimated population
of the city.

So much for the abuse and extent of public charity. Now for the
reforming of the system that was fast approaching the condition of a
grave scandal. The last Legislature passed a bill placing in the hands
of the local Board of Estimate absolute power over all appropriations
for charitable purposes, and for the first time in many years reform
is possible. The discretion conferred by this act upon the Board of
Estimate and Apportionment carries with it a large responsibility. If
hereafter the city, in its relation to private charitable
institutions, should either, on the one hand, be wasteful of public
funds, or, on the other hand, should fail to perform the duties owed
by the community to the dependent classes, the blame can not be
shifted to the Legislature, but will rest squarely upon the shoulders
of the local authorities.

In treating a condition which has been allowed to exist for many years
almost without challenge from the local authorities, and which has
grown upon the passive or indifferent attitude of the public, sweeping
and immediate reforms can be instituted only at the cost of serious
temporary injury to certain charitable work of a necessary character.
I believe that the best results will be obtained if the city
authorities first decide clearly the relations to be established
between the city treasury and private charitable institutions, and
then move toward that end by gradually conforming the appropriations
in the budget to that idea, in such a manner that progress shall be
made as rapidly as may be consistent with the desire to avoid
crippling excellent charities which have been led to depend for many
years upon public assistance. By this, of course, I do not mean to
suggest that we should approach the subject with excessive timidity,
for the evils that exist have assumed such proportions that a more or
less severe use of the pruning knife must be made in dealing with
appropriations, else the effect will be scarcely perceptible. I am
convinced that ultimately the cause of charity will benefit rather
than suffer from this course, for it is a serious objection to the
whole subsidy system that it tends to dry up the sources of private
benevolence.

In making up the budget for 1900 I shall urge my associates in the
Board of Estimate to agree with me to limit the appropriations for
charity to actual relief work accomplished. The giving of public money
in lump sums to private societies and institutions for miscellaneous
charitable work, of which there is no public or official inspection,
should be discontinued at once. It has been the practice for some
years past, both in Brooklyn and New York, to donate annually lump
sums of money to such organizations. In New York these amounts have
been for the most part comparatively small, and principally derived
from the Theatrical and Concert-License Fund. In Brooklyn the amounts
have been larger, and were obtained originally from the Excise Fund,
and later directly from the budget. This practice should be wholly
discontinued. The charter itself contains stringent prohibitions
against the distribution of outdoor relief by the Department of Public
Charities, and the spirit of these provisions would certainly seem to
disfavor accomplishing the same result in an indirect manner. Many of
these recipients of public funds devote themselves exclusively to
outdoor relief, and an examination of the purposes of some of these
organizations shows that, however proper these may be as the result of
private benevolence, they are extremely improper objects of the public
bounty. The immediate and permanent discontinuance of appropriations
to all such societies and institutions will correct one of the gravest
abuses of the present system. If the persons conducting these
miscellaneous charities are really sincere, and believe that they are
doing good, they can readily obtain from private sources the funds
necessary to carry on the work.

I shall urge that all appropriations to institutions of every kind not
controlled by the city be limited to per-capita payment for the
support of public charges, and that a system of thorough inspection be
at once established to ascertain if present and future inmates are
really persons entitled to maintenance at public expense. In addition
to this precaution, the comptroller should have full power to withhold
payments to any institution after an appropriation has been made if in
his judgment, after examination, the money has not been earned. The
payment of city money to dispensaries should be discontinued, except
in special cases where the work done is clearly a proper charge
against the public treasury. No money should be paid for the treatment
of dependent persons in any private hospital while there is unoccupied
room in the city hospitals.

The city maintains its own hospitals, while at the same time
subsidizing private institutions which compete with them. During the
last few years great improvements have been made in the city
hospitals, but their condition is still capable of considerable
further improvement. While sometimes overcrowded, it frequently
happens that the city hospitals are not filled to the limits of their
capacity, and it would seem as though the city should not deal with
private hospitals except as subsidiary aids or adjuncts to the public
institutions. It stands to reason that so long as there are vacant
beds in the city hospitals and the city is at the same time
subsidizing private hospitals at a cost greater than the expense of
caring for patients in its own institutions, a wrong is being done to
the taxpayers. If private hospitals are to receive public assistance
at all, payments should be made only at some uniform rate,
approximately the same as the cost per capita of maintenance in the
public institutions.

The gravest problem of public charity is the support and training of
dependent children, because that has to do with the making of future
citizens of the republic as well as the relief of immediate suffering.
This work is entirely in the hands of private societies and
institutions. The rearing of large numbers of children in either
private or public institutions is in itself an evil--a necessary
evil--and likely to continue as long as there is extreme poverty, but
still an evil, and not to be fostered by subventions of public money
in unnecessary cases, when parents are really able to provide for
their support.

To build, equip, and maintain public buildings for the care of
dependent children seems to me entirely impracticable. Regardless of
the matter of expense, which would be enormous, all the disadvantages
of the "institutional system" would continue, and it is not likely
that public employees could be obtained who would rear children as
economically, as efficaciously, or with the same devotion and
self-denial as is the case with the religious orders and associations
now performing this work--in many respects so successfully. The care
of these children by direct governmental agencies being therefore
practically impossible, in the city of New York at least, and it being
recognized that the present system is likely to continue for many
years, if not permanently, the most should be made of it. With the
religious training of children the city has nothing to do. Their moral
training may also be left safely to those now responsible therefor. On
the other hand, the State is vitally concerned with their mental and
physical development, and visitation and control for the purpose of
maintaining a proper standard in these respects is essential. This
form of public charity, like many others, has been abused, and many
children are now supported in institutions who probably should not be
there. For the rearing of a child into a possible useful man or woman
a poor home is better than a good institution, and it is the duty of
the city authorities to extend the work of inspection and
investigation of such cases until they make it impossible for fraud in
the commitment and retention of children to escape detection.

The reduction and regulation of appropriations as outlined can not be
classed as a radical reform, and will work no hardship upon any
dependent person who is a proper charge upon the city. The saving to
the taxpayers, if the plan I have suggested is adopted, will
approximate one million dollars in 1900, and a steady reduction of
expenditures for charitable work should continue for several years to
come.




CHRISTIAN SCIENCE FROM A PHYSICIAN'S POINT OF VIEW.

BY JOHN B. HUBER, A. M., M. D.


Christian science is stated to be a religious system which was
"discovered," in 1866, by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, a lady now living
in the vicinity of Boston, Mass., who has passed her eightieth year,
and who is called by her followers the "Mother of the Christian
Science Church," or "Mother Mary." Mrs. Eddy has formulated Christian
Science in a book entitled Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, in which book are to be found the principles upon which
this system rests. We are told that to him who studies this book
reverently and conscientiously there will be revealed "the Truth," for
which man has been searching without avail since the beginning of his
existence; that the faithful student will find in Christian Science an
infallible guide for the conduct of life in all its phases; and that
the Christian Scientist has the power to heal without any therapeutic
means, other than that of the influence of mind upon mind, all
imaginable ills, surgical or medical, which afflict mankind and the
lower animals. Mrs. Eddy tells us that she and her followers have had
this power transmitted to them from Jesus Christ, and that they are
able to heal the sick and to perform miracles as He is said to have
done. In Science and Health all religious systems other than
"Christian Science" are held to have been erroneous and pernicious in
their influence upon mankind, and the practice of medicine, as it is
taught in the medical colleges, is considered to be hurtful rather
than helpful to humanity, and to have increased disease rather than
ameliorated human suffering.

It is said that in 1898 there were in the Greater City of New York
three thousand Christian Scientists and seven Christian Science
churches. The whole number of Christian Scientists is declared to be
one million, of whom one hundred thousand, it is said, are engaged in
the business of "healing," and are called "healers." The movement has
been and is spreading day by day.

In religious matters Christian Science has divided many homes, and has
destroyed not a few through the mischief produced by its propaganda.
It is claimed that Christian Science has cured many who have not been
benefited by the efforts of regular practitioners of medicine. On the
other hand, many have died during the exclusive ministrations of
Christian Scientists. Moreover, Christian Science considers itself
entitled to disregard such sanitary laws, including those concerning
infectious diseases, as have been found effectual to preserve intact
the general health of communities and peoples.

Christian Science, then, is a cult unusually powerful and far reaching
in its influence, and it is therefore entitled to and should invite
correspondingly careful investigation of all its various aspects.

I have been interested in Christian Science from the view-point of the
medical man, and I have felt quite unaffected, for the reason which I
shall presently give, by Mrs. Eddy's stricture that "a person's
ignorance of Christian Science is a sufficient reason for his silence
on the subject." The system of medicine, as it is taught in the great
medical colleges of to-day, is an epitome of the accumulated study and
experience of mankind from the time human beings first became ill up
to the present day. All systems of cure, or of alleged cure, have been
examined by men who have made it the work of their lives to treat the
sick. Whatever has been found curative has been retained, and
unsubstantiated claims to cure have been discarded; so that the
regular degree of doctor of medicine states that its recipient has
acquired a knowledge of the system of treating disease which is a
crystallization of the world's best medical thought, study, and
experience.

As the possessor of such a degree, I have been engaged during several
months in an investigation of the cures which Christian-Science
healers are said to have accomplished.

Before beginning this work I reflected that mental suggestion, or the
influence of the mind of the physician upon that of the patient, is a
potent factor in the treatment of such diseases as are not
characterized by permanent pathological changes in the tissues, and I
remembered that when judiciously influenced by the physician's mind,
the mind of the patient can affect his body favorably both in
functional disorders and in disorders which may result from nervous
aberration--such as hysteria in all its protean forms, the purely
subjective, as headache and hyperæsthesia, and also those exhibiting
objective manifestations, as hysterical dislocations and paralyses.

I knew that medical men, in their own unadvertised work, employ
mental suggestion as a therapeutic means, rely upon it as a part of
their armamentarium, and use it in appropriate cases, either alone or
combined with other means of cure, as electricity, hydrotherapy, and
drugs--which last, despite Mrs. Eddy's foolish denunciation, are quite
as much entitled to be considered divinely appointed therapeutic
agents as is mental suggestion.

What I did want especially to discover was whether the Christian
Scientist could cure such diseases as are considered by the medical
man to be incurable--as cancer, locomotor ataxia, or advanced
phthisis--and also what were the results of their treatment of typhoid
fever, pneumonia, diphtheria, malaria, etc. And I wanted also to
investigate the claims of Christian Science concerning the alleged
cure of surgical conditions, such as necrosis or hæmorrhage from
severed arteries, by no other means than the sole exercise of thought.
If the Christian Scientist could have healed in such cases, I for my
part would have declared him a worker of miracles. Therefore I
searched diligently for such cases.

In the beginning I had the honor to meet Mrs. Stetson, the "pastor,"
or the "first reader," of the "First Church of Christ, Scientist," at
143 West Forty-eighth Street, New York city. I had prepared a number
of questions concerning Christian Science which I wished to ask Mrs.
Stetson. She preferred, however, not to answer them herself, but told
me that she would be pleased to forward them to Mrs. Eddy. I then
wrote out these questions and put them, together with a letter to Mrs.
Eddy, very respectfully requesting her consideration of them, in Mrs.
Stetson's hands. Mrs. Stetson then very kindly forwarded them to Mrs.
Eddy. Among the questions which I asked were the following:

Is the treatment of the sick a part of Christian Science?

Upon what principles is the Christian Scientist's method of treatment
founded?

How do you define health?

How do you define disease?

When a patient presents himself to you, do you inquire concerning the
causes of his illness?

Do you investigate symptoms? (Symptoms, I stated, are the signs of
disease.)

Do you make diagnoses? (A diagnosis, I stated, is a consideration of
symptoms by which one disease is distinguished from another or
others.)

In what does your treatment consist?

In treating a patient, do you administer any material substance, and
require that it be taken into the body as one would food?

Do you consider cleanliness, good order, and the attainment of
æsthetic effects in a patient's environment a part of treatment?

Do you take any steps to isolate the patient sick of an infectious
disease, or to protect those about the patient from the disease?

Do you treat structural diseases, as cancer or locomotor ataxia? Do
you consider you have cured such diseases? If so, how do you know you
were treating a structural disease, such as cancer or locomotor
ataxia?

Would you treat cases of fracture of bones or violent injury? If so,
what would you do in such cases?

Will you give me the names of patients whom you have treated, with
permission to inquire concerning their illnesses, your treatment of
them, and the effects of your treatment upon them--upon the distinct
understanding that their names are not to be published?

Do you deny the existence of matter? In Science and Health it is
stated that "all is mind, there is no matter." How is it possible, in
treating disease, for you to separate mind from matter?

Animals sometimes become sick; could they be cured by
Christian-Science methods?

From Mrs. Eddy I received no answer nor any communication whatever.
But, some time afterward, Mrs. Stetson informed me that the matter had
been turned over to Judge Septimus J. Hanna, Mrs. Eddy's "counsel."
Just here I reflected how Jesus Christ, whose representative Mrs. Eddy
declares herself to be, would have acted under those circumstances,
and I wondered how he would have appeared in this odd atmosphere
hedged about by "counsel" and other legal paraphernalia. Presently
thereafter I had the honor to receive a note from Mrs. Stetson,
appointing a time for me to call. When I did this, Mrs. Stetson gave
me a letter which had been sent her by Judge Hanna, and which she
permitted me to use as I should see fit. This is the letter:


                                  "BOSTON, MASS., _November 18, 1898._

  "_Editorial Office of The Christian Science Journal, Mrs. A. E.
  Stetson, New York City_:

     "DEAR SISTER: Mr. Metcalf handed me the questions submitted by
     Dr. Huber. I have also received and carefully read your letters.
     As I think Mr. Metcalf has informed you, this matter was referred
     to me from Concord. I have been so very busy that I have not had
     time to give this matter the thorough attention it needs until
     now.

     "I have carefully read and considered the entire paper. My
     conclusion is that it will be wholly impractical--indeed, I may
     say impossible--to answer these questions in such a manner as to
     make an entire paper fit for publication in a medical journal,
     or in any other magazine or periodical. The questions submitted
     touch the entire subject of Christian Science, both in its
     theology and therapeutics. These questions can be answered only
     in one way so that they can be understood, and that is by just
     such study of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the
     Scriptures as the earnest, sincere Christian Scientists are
     giving them every day of their lives, and have been for years.
     When we think of the helps provided by our leader, the Rev. Mary
     Baker Eddy, for her own students in arriving at a correct
     interpretation and putting in practice the teachings of these
     text-books, such as the publications established by her, the
     Bible Lessons made up of selections from the Bible and our
     text-book, constituting the sermons for our service in all the
     Christian-Science churches; the many auxiliaries she has
     published and is publishing in further illucidation of the
     text-books--when we stop to consider that even those of her
     students who may be considered the most advanced are as yet
     infants in the understanding and ability to demonstrate the truth
     contained in these text-books, can we not easily see, and will
     not your friend the doctor at a glance see, the utter futility of
     attempting to answer his questions so as to make the answers
     intelligible to the medical profession and their readers? I
     admire greatly the kindly spirit manifested by the doctor and
     those for whom he is acting,[2] and the entire fairness, from
     their standpoint, of the questions submitted, but this does not
     relieve the difficulty of the situation. I therefore return the
     doctor's questions, with many thanks in behalf of our leader and
     the cause for the impartial spirit manifested.

                                              "Yours in Truth,
                                                      "S. J. HANNA."

     [Footnote 2: I had arranged with the editor of the New York
     Medical News for the publication in that journal of a paper on
     Christian Science, and had so informed Mrs. Stetson.]

I wrote Judge Hanna a note of thanks, and in reply received a letter
in which he stated: "I should have been very glad if I could have seen
my way clear to answer your questions in such a way as could have been
intelligible and satisfactory. But it was impossible for me to do so."

Now, all this seems to me much worse than preposterous. I fail utterly
to see why he who asks the question, "Do you isolate a patient
suffering from an infectious disease?" would have to spend months or
years in Nirvana-like abstraction before he would be able to
appreciate an answer to it. No doubt Judge Hanna, who is evidently a
lawyer, could, if he chose, tell the reason why.

To all who had been "healed in Christian Science" whom I met I stated
plainly my object--to investigate how they had been "healed." I stated
that my findings would be published, but that no names would be
printed. The cases were to be numbered. I stated that I did not wish
to examine nervous manifestations of a hysterical sort or purely
functional disorders. I wished to see cases of disease in which the
structure of the organs was likely to be or to have been involved,
such as Bright's disease or cancer. Having, to begin with, explained
this fully, I took the subject's history and ascertained whenever
possible the name of any physician who may have treated the patient
before he or she went "into Christian Science." Almost all these
physicians who live in New York I visited; to the others residing in
New York and to those living out of town I wrote, the form of the
letter being generally as follows:

     "DEAR DOCTOR: I am investigating Christian Science from the
     physician's view-point, and am examining a number of people, in
     the hope of presenting some twenty histories. These histories
     would, I think, be valuable only in so far as they are
     scientifically accurate. Therefore, whenever possible, I request
     a medical account from any physician who may formerly have been
     in attendance. I have now under observation the case of Mr.
     X----, who believes himself to have been cured 'in Christian
     Science.' I would thank you very kindly if you would send me
     whatever medical information you can concerning this case, with
     records of examinations if possible. The cases will be numbered,
     not named."

In each case, having set down the subject's statements and the
physician's statement, I recorded my own observations of the subject's
condition.

I examined in succession _and without exception_ the case of every
willing Christian Scientist up to the number of twenty.[3] All these
cases were of their own choosing; no doubt, then, they would be
considered to be among their "good" cases. Their "failures" I had no
opportunity to examine. There were many others who refused to testify,
no doubt justifiably. Others refused for reasons not easily
comprehended, considering the fact that these people hold weekly
"experience meetings," in which they "rejoice to testify to the power
of Christian Science." It is difficult to see, therefore, why such
cases should not invite scientific investigation.

     [Footnote 3: These medical histories are a part of my serial
     paper in the New York Medical News of January 28, 1899, _et
     seq._]

I could find in all these twenty cases no "cure" that would have
occasioned the medical man the slightest surprise. What did surprise
me was the vast disproportion between the results they exhibited and
the claims made by Christian-Science healers. One of these cases may
be cited as an example of the loose generalization upon which many of
the claims of these healers rest. A lady stated that she had had
pneumonia. I asked how she knew she had had pneumonia. She declared
she knew, because her nurse "could tell at a glance she had
pneumonia." No medical examination had been made. I asked what
symptoms she had had--how she had suffered. She told me she had
purposely forgotten--she had tried to dismiss from her mind all
recollection of this distressing illness. Well, this is no doubt
commendable enough; but how do we know, then, if she really had
pneumonia, or anything more than an ordinary cold?

I heard during my investigation of cases of yellow fever, phthisis,
cancer, and locomotor ataxia which had been "healed in Christian
Science." But truth compels the statement that my efforts to examine
these cases were defeated by the cheapest sort of subterfuge and
elusion. To be explicit: On November 2, 1898, a man arose in an
"experience meeting" which I attended and stated that he had been one
of a party of twelve who, while in Central America, contracted yellow
fever, he having suffered with the rest. All took medicine but
himself; instead, he read Science and Health. Among his companions
seven died; he recovered completely. Several days later I called at
the church and asked for the name and address of this gentleman, and
twice, on this and a subsequent visit, the clerk promised to send me
his address. Not having received it, I called a third time, on
November 21st. The clerk told me he could not find this eel-like
specimen, and could not get his address. This man was, however, a
member of that church, and had, on the evening I was present, a number
of acquaintances in the congregation.

Again, I had been told that a young lady living out of town had been
"healed" of consumption. I wrote her mother, who sent me a kind note,
inviting me to call several evenings later, and inclosing a
time-table. She stated, "I shall be happy to give you any information
in my power, as Christian Science has been a great blessing in my
family." Before the appointed evening I received a note, breaking the
engagement. Again, at an "experience meeting" a man arose and declared
he had cured a case of locomotor ataxia, "so that the patient's two
former physicians had been lost in amazement at the change." I learned
also that his wife, another "healer," had cured a case of cancer of
the tongue. I wrote this gentleman, and he sent me an answer, kindly
inviting me to call at his house. He lived out of town. I went to his
house, and spent the greater part of an evening trying to prevail upon
these two people to show me or to introduce me to these subjects of
locomotor ataxia and cancer of the tongue. They utterly refused to do
so. Their line of argument was quite of the same sort as that
contained in the letter of their better-known "brother in the church,"
which appears earlier in this paper. I was not investigating in the
right way. What I ought to do was to study Science and Health and the
other elucidatory works--above all with an obedient spirit, and "the
truth" would come to me in time. Or it may be this pair of "healers"
had in mind this reasoning, not new in my observation of this odd
cult: In the mind of the Christian Scientist the locomotor-ataxia
patient was healed, but he was withheld from inspection by the
deceptive senses of those outside the Christian-Science pale, to which
senses the patient might appear to stagger about and be as ill or more
ill than ever before. Following is this "healer's" letter to me:

     "MY DEAR DR. HUBER: I received your letter with Joy, and name
     next Monday eveng as a time to give you for your enquiry into the
     workings of Truth as it has come under my notice. Our field is a
     broad one coverig several towns, and we have not lately had an
     eveng free for discussin the subject coverig this sublime and
     stately Science That leads into all Truth even to the solving of
     the problem of Being. The healing of the sick is only the primary
     steps this step however is an important one as its demonstration
     with proof attests its divine origen even God--Good, its
     principle source and ultimates in Eternal Life. For the Life is
     in his Son and Divine Science reveals this son Even our own
     Christ our spiritual Individuality God being our Father and
     mother,

                                                   "Yrs. in Truth
                                                             "----."

The writer of this letter is the leader of that Christian-Science
church in New Jersey a member of which was a woman who died, in June
of this year, of consumption,[4] and this woman's "healer" was the
writer's wife. The woman who died left the Episcopalian Church and
became a Christian Scientist in January, 1899. In April she contracted
a heavy cold, to which she gave no attention. Her husband remonstrated
with her, and wished her to consult a physician, but she would not do
so. She declared she could not be ill, but that she was well and
happy. The services of her "healer" were the only ministrations she
received. In the beginning of June her condition was so bad that her
husband prevailed upon her to see a physician, who examined her and
found her hopelessly ill with consumption. Another physician examined
her and reached the same conclusion. She then turned "longingly and
earnestly to the religion in which she had been brought up." Two weeks
after, she died, "asking the prayers of her co-religionists in behalf
of herself, her husband, and her children."

     [Footnote 4: New York Times, June 24, 1899.]

Mrs. Eddy declares that she "healed consumption in its last stages,
the lungs being mostly consumed"; that she "healed carious bones which
could be dented with the finger"; and that she "healed in one visit a
cancer that had so eaten the flesh of the neck as to expose the
jugular vein so that it stood out like a cord." Judge Hanna has
published statements to the effect that "cancer, malignant tumors,
consumption, broken bones, and broken tissues have been healed in
Christian Science, without the assistance of any material means
whatever." Mr. Carol Norton, a Christian-Science lecturer, has
publicly announced that Christian Science has healed "locomotor
ataxia, softening of the brain, paresis, tumor, Bright's disease,
cancer," etc. And many other Christian Scientists have made like
claims. Very well, then. Who are these people that have thus been
cured? What are their names? Where do they live? How can they be
found? Will Mrs. Eddy and her followers submit these cases for
scientific examination? I and other investigators are asking, and have
for years been asking, these questions, and we are all of us still
waiting for answers.

The importance of all this is no doubt manifest. The healing of
disease is, we are told, the outward and visible evidence upon which
Christian Science expects to be judged and accepted. Therefore the
cult must stand or fall upon the results of an investigation of the
healer's claims. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

There are Christian Scientists who will say that these statements of
Mrs. Eddy and her associates must be taken upon faith and as _ipse
dixit_ utterances. This is in the last degree silly. With such
statements faith has absolutely nothing to do. They are solely matters
for scientific inquiry.

Every Christian Scientist may be a healer. A little child may be a
healer in Christian Science. The treatment is said to consist in
thinking, speaking, and writing. It is declared that no material
substances are used. The following oddity in mental processes is here
to be noted: A healer told her patient to take a certain drug during
her illness, and that she would then demonstrate the power of
Christian Science _over this drug_.

The healer does not need to see his patient. He may, if he will, treat
"absently," by a species of thought transference. He would consider
his treatment effectual if he were in New York and his patient were in
Hong Kong.

I have rheumatism, let us say, and at midnight my swollen and inflamed
joint gives me pain. I send for a Christian-Science healer. In all
probability my messenger will call upon a person who has had no
preliminary medical education whatever. He is likely to find some one
who is quite illiterate, as witness the letter last presented. He may,
as I have, come upon some one who has been engaged in the occupation
of amusing the _habitués_ of beer saloons by playing upon the zither
before he took up the more remunerative business of Christian-Science
healing. Or he may, as I have, come upon some one who is engaged
simultaneously both in the business of selling drugs and in the
practice of healing by mental therapeutics alone.

Having been found, the healer, first requiring a fee from my
messenger, treats me "absently," while lying abed in his own home. His
treatment consists in sending me word that I only imagine I am ill,
that my joint is really not swollen, that it is really not inflamed,
and that it really does not pain me, but that, on the contrary, I am
really very well and very happy indeed.

Some diseases are in Christian Science considered to take longer to
heal than others; I have not understood why. If "all is mind, and
there is no matter,"[5] as the Christian Scientist holds, and if,
therefore, the varying densities of tissues need not be considered,
why should not cancer or locomotor ataxia be healed as easily and as
rapidly as a headache or a hysterical manifestation? Christian Science
despises bodily cleanliness, the use of baths, and the most ordinary
sanitary regulations. "To bow down to a flesh-brush, bath, diet,
exercise, and air is a form of idolatry."[6] We learn, finally, that
"the heart, the lungs, the brain, have nothing to do with life."[7]

     [Footnote 5: Science and Health.]

     [Footnote 6: Ibid.]

     [Footnote 7: Ibid.]

Christian Science has stood by the bedside of an infant sick with
diphtheria, has prevented interference with its incantations, and has
seen this infant choke, grow livid, gasp, and expire, without so much
as putting a drop of water to its lips.

Most Christian Scientists are well to do. Their tenet is that "no one
has any business to be poor." In New York their churches are in the
neighborhood of the wealthy, and there are no missions by means of
which the professed blessings of Christian Science may be disseminated
among the poor. Christian Science is demonstrably a powerful
organization for the accumulation of wealth, and by easy calculation
one may see that her propaganda has made Mrs. Eddy, who is said to
have been at one time very poor, conspicuously rich even in these
days of enormous fortunes. When we consider that this woman claims to
be actuated by the spirit of the poor Nazarene, has hypocrisy ever
gone to greater length?

Mrs. Eddy despises all metaphysical systems, yet her writings display
her inability to think logically through half a dozen consecutive
lines.

Mrs. Eddy declares that "no human being or agency taught me the truths
of Christian Science, and no human agency can overthrow it."[8] But
there are published statements,[9] of the truth of which the writer
offers to give legal proof, in which it is shown, by means of the
"deadly parallel," that the essential ideas underlying her system are
all plagiarized from the writings of an irregular practitioner to
whom, many years ago, she went for treatment. Published accounts of
her illness at that time present a picture of hysteria pure and
simple.

     [Footnote 8: Science and Health.]

     [Footnote 9: The Arena, May, 1898.]

Mrs. Eddy claims to possess healing powers nothing short of
miraculous, yet the writer just mentioned declares that she has
probably not been a well woman these forty years past. Certain it is
she almost never appears in public, and only a few of her followers
have ever seen her face except in copyrighted photographs.

The medical profession is most stupidly reprobated by Mrs. Eddy and
her associates, especially for its "mercenary motives." A specific
statement may here be not malapropos. In the year 1895 there were
1,800,000 inhabitants in the lesser city of New York, and on the rolls
of its hospitals and dispensaries were more than 793,000 names of
people for the treatment of whom New York's medical men received
practically no pecuniary reward whatever.

It is declared that Christian Science is a religious system, that the
treatment of the sick is a part of this system, and that, as the
Constitution forbids interference by the States with religion, no laws
can be enacted which could compel the healer to desist from his work.
But there is a sharp distinction between religious liberty and license
to commit, in the name of religion, unlawful acts. A man would not be
justified in killing his child in obedience to a fanatical belief, as
Abraham was about to do; but Christian Science has sacrificed the
lives of little children upon the altar of its pseudo-religion. Had
not these children rights which ought to have been safeguarded? If the
Christian Scientist's position be admitted, a thug might, upon the
same principles, be justified in committing murder, on the ground that
murder is a practice required by his religion; and a Mormon might, on
the same basis, practice polygamy. When a healer treats for hire a
sufferer from typhoid fever, is he acting in a religious capacity?

The observer will find in Christian Science much charlatanry (by which
many honest fanatics are deceived), much to surprise reason and common
sense, to offend good taste and the proprieties, to outrage justice
and the law, and to mortify the pious.

And in the last degree reprehensible will appear this cult's ghastly
masquerade in the garb of Him that prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane,
"the pale, staggering Jew, with the crown of thorns upon his bleeding
head," the tenderest, the divinest, the most mankind-loving
personality the world has ever known.




THE WHEAT LANDS OF CANADA.

BY SYDNEY C. D. ROPER.


When Sir W. Crookes, in his inaugural address as President of the
British Association, startled a large number of people by stating
that, unless some radical change was made in the present system of
wheat cultivation, there would be a bread famine in 1931, because the
world's supply of land capable of producing wheat would have been
exhausted, there was undoubtedly a considerable feeling of uneasiness
engendered, and more attention was paid to the address than is usual
even to so valuable a contribution as the inaugural address of the
President of that Association must always be. It was, therefore, with
a feeling of relief that we found one person after another, well
qualified to speak, coming, as it were, to the rescue, and pointing
out that Sir W. Crookes's conclusions were not warranted; and in the
minds of the majority, no doubt, the last feeling of uneasiness was
dispelled by the able letter in The Times, in December last, in which
Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert, who are _facile principes_ as
scientific agriculturists, and whose opinions carry greater weight
than even those of the President of the British Association, gave most
satisfactory reasons for being unable to believe in Sir W. Crookes's
predictions.

It is true that, in a subsequent letter, Sir W. Crookes stated that
his remarks were intended more as a serious warning than as a
prophecy; but, seeing that his conclusions were based on definite
statements of definite facts and figures, it is difficult to treat
them as other than prophetic.

In order, however, to establish the probability of a wheat famine in
the near future it became necessary for Sir W. Crookes to seriously
misrepresent and underestimate the wheat resources of some of the
principal countries most interested in producing that cereal, and it
is to a large extent by exposing the magnitude of these
misrepresentations that the validity of his conclusions is called in
question and disproved. The two countries which, with perhaps the
exception of Russia, are most concerned in the wheat production of the
future, and therefore in the correction of these misstatements, are
Canada and the United States.

Mr. Atkinson, the well-known writer on economic subjects, took up the
cudgels for the United States, and their case could hardly have been
in better hands; but so far no champion has appeared on behalf of
Canada; and while Sir W. Crookes may not have been alone in his views
about the possible exhaustion of the wheat area in the United States,
he certainly stood quite alone when he committed himself to the
remarkable statements that are to be found in the address, in order to
decry the capabilities of the Canadian wheat fields. I did not
immediately reply to them myself, thinking that some one better
qualified would do so, but this has not been done, and as I feel that
they can not be allowed any longer to remain unanswered, I propose to
deal with them in the present article.

Mr. Atkinson's defense has been criticised, in the March number of The
Forum, by Mr. C. Wood Davis, who naturally upholds Sir W. Crookes's
views, seeing that they appear to have been largely induced by his own
figures and agree with his own ideas, but his argument in that article
is more one of fault finding with the statements of others than an
attempt to justify his own position. As a specimen of his style of
criticism, Mr. Davis takes Mr. Atkinson to task for saying that "the
present necessities of the world are computed by Sir W. Crookes at
2,324,000,000 bushels," and says that in no part of his address was an
estimate of the whole world's requirements so much as mentioned; and
yet, on turning to the address, we find that Sir W. Crookes said: "The
bread eaters of the whole world share the perilous prospect.... The
bread eaters of the world at the present time number 516,500,000....
To supply 516,500,000 bread eaters will require a total of
2,324,000,000 bushels for seed and food." The requirements of the
whole world are distinctly stated here, for bread is required only for
the bread-eating population, and therefore the requirements of that
population are, as far as bread is concerned, the requirements of the
whole world. Mr. Atkinson, however, is well able to take care of
himself, and he and Mr. Davis can fight out for themselves the
question as to when, or if ever, the United States will cease to
export wheat; but it is amusing to find Mr. Atkinson charged by Mr.
Davis, of all men, with dealing in "purely speculative computations,"
for if there is any one who has freely indulged in these same purely
speculative computations it is Mr. Davis himself, as we shall
presently see.

The value of the various calculations that statisticians indulge in is
largely discounted by the fact that allowance is rarely made for
changing conditions. Such has been the ratio, such is the ratio, and
therefore in so many years' time such will be the ratio, is the burden
of their calculations, so that while their figures for the past and
present may be both correct and instructive, their calculations for
the future are frequently of little practical utility; and it is this
failure to allow for any variation in conditions that renders Mr.
Davis's figures of so little value, and Sir W. Crookes's conclusions,
which are based on them, of no greater importance.

It is surprising to find how much value Sir W. Crookes attaches to Mr.
Davis's figures, and it leads one to the conclusion that he has either
not examined them very closely, or shares with Mr. Davis a fondness
for "purely speculative computations"; and while it is not seemly to
accuse, as has been done, a man of Sir W. Crookes's standing and
reputation of resorting to "bucket-shop" methods to support his
conclusions, it is difficult to avoid thinking that the anxiety to
establish those conclusions has not only led him to accept Mr. Davis's
calculations without proper examination, but has also influenced the
preparation of some of his antecedent data and led him to subordinate
facts as a means to a required end. Since Sir W. Crookes thinks so
highly of Mr. Davis's figures and upon them has based some of the most
important conclusions of his address, and as Mr. Davis himself is so
ready to find fault with the calculations of others, it might be well
just here to see how some of Mr. Davis's own calculations have been
verified and what amount of dependence should be placed upon his
figures or on deductions from them.

In An Epitome of the Agricultural Situation, published by Mr. Davis in
1890, he predicted an annually increasing deficit in the world's wheat
supply and the almost immediate inability of the United States to do
more than grow enough wheat for home consumption, and, as a
consequence, that "After 1895 we (United States) must either import
breadstuffs, cease to export cotton, or lower the standard of living,"
this latter prophecy being emphasized by being printed in capital
letters. These predictions were made ten years ago--ample time,
surely, for at least some evidence of their fulfillment to be
apparent. But what are the facts? The Chief of the Bureau of
Statistics, in his report on the foreign commerce of the United States
for 1898, says: "The total exportation of meats and dairy products
amounted in the last fiscal year (1898) to $167,340,960, against
$145,270,643 in the highest year prior to that date (1894), while the
value of animals exported in 1898 was greater than that of any
preceding year; of wheat the exports of the year were the largest in
value, save the exceptional years of 1880, 1881, and 1892. Of cotton
the exports of the year were the largest in quantity in the history of
the country.... Thus, in the great agricultural products--breadstuffs,
provisions, and cotton--the exports have been phenomenally large,
while the total of products of agriculture exceed by $54,000,000 the
exports of agricultural produce in any preceding year of our history."
So much for exports; now for the imports of breadstuffs. The total
value of breadstuffs, both dutiable and free, entered for consumption
in 1898 was $957,455, of which $628,775 were for imports of macaroni,
vermicelli, etc., articles not in any case manufactured in the
country. I have not seen any explanation by Mr. Davis of the failure
of his predictions, but it is probable that he had them in mind when
he wrote in The Forum (March, 1899), "Had not the herds of hay- and
maize-eating animals shrunk greatly since 1892, thus rendering vast
areas of hay and maize lands available for wheat production, we should
probably have reduced the wheat area, instead of adding ten million
acres to it since 1895." This, however, is a purely arbitrary
assumption, unsupported by anything more substantial than Mr. Davis's
personal opinion. In the same article he says: "But herds being
insufficient for present needs must be added to in the measure of the
existing deficit, as well as in that of the animal products and
services required by all future additions to the population. This will
necessitate and force a restoration to other staples of acres recently
diverted to wheat." But, in the face of the figures quoted above, the
evidence is clear that herds are not only ample for present needs, but
afford a larger margin than ever of exportable surplus. If herds were
insufficient, there would have been a curtailment of exports and an
increase in the consumption of breadstuffs, but neither have happened;
neither has there been any reduction in the standard of living. Is not
the inference irresistible that the country was carrying a larger
number of animals than conditions absolutely required, since farm
animals have declined from 169,000,000 in 1892 to 138,000,000 in 1898,
without in any way disturbing the conditions of food supply or
reducing the exports of provisions? In 1890, Mr. Davis assumed that
44,800,000 acres of hay would be required in 1895 and 49,200,000 acres
in 1900, yet in 1898, 42,800,000 acres were found to be ample for the
needs of the country.

Do not the foregoing figures clearly indicate that it is not safe to
assume that the area employed in the cultivation of certain staples
at any given time, or the average of that area for any given period,
must necessarily be the proportion always to be required for the
cultivation of those articles, and that any calculations or
predictions made on that assumption are liable to be completely upset
by events unforeseen and unprovided for? Does it not seem probable
that if Sir W. Crookes had examined Mr. Davis's figures more closely
than apparently he did, he would have found that "average acre yields
for long periods" are not "essential factors"; that "unit requirements
for each of the primary food staples of the temperate zones" can not
be so easily determined; that "the ratio existing during recent
periods between the consuming element and acres employed in the
production of each of such primary food staples" are not necessarily
indicative of the ratio that will require to exist in the years to
come; and that Mr. Davis's "scientific method" does not "enable him to
ascertain the acreage requirements of the separate national
populations and of the bread-eating world as a whole"?

In order to insure a famine in 1931 it was necessary for Sir W.
Crookes to assume a given increase of population during the
intervening period and no change in the existing conditions of wheat
cultivation and consumption, and also to limit by hard-and-fast lines
the sources of supply. It is to the manner in which Sir W. Crookes has
limited and underestimated the wheat resources of Canada that we now
propose to take exception; and it is difficult to understand how, with
ample means of information available, he could have committed himself
to the statements he has made. What does he say about Manitoba? "In
the year 1897 there were 2,371,441 acres under cultivation in
Manitoba, out of a total of 13,051,375 acres. The total area includes
water courses, lakes, forests, towns and farms, land unsuitable for
wheat growing, and land required for other crops." Now, the facts are
that the total area of Manitoba is 73,956 square miles, and if from
that area 9,890 square miles of water surface are deducted there
remain 64,066 square miles, or 41,002,240 acres of land, so that even
after making due allowance for forests, towns, etc., there are nearly
three times the number of acres available than are given by Sir W.
Crookes. Attempts have been made in vain to find out whence these
figures were obtained, but there is apparently no clew; and while it
is not to be supposed for a moment that the figures were purposely
misstated, surely the important conclusions drawn from them deserved
that some attempt at least should have been made to ascertain their
accuracy. Sir W. Crookes claims to be indebted to the official
publications of the Government of Canada, but it is certain that none
of them ever contained the figures used by him.

"The most trustworthy estimates," says Sir W. Crookes, "give Canada a
wheat area of not more than six millions of acres in the next twelve
years, increasing to a maximum of twelve millions of acres in
twenty-five years." Who prepared these estimates, and upon what are
they based? Were they prepared by the same authority that supplied Sir
W. Crookes with the figures of the area of Manitoba? If so, we may
well dismiss them at once; but supposing that these estimates are, as
far as the rate of increase is concerned, perfectly correct, and that
the wheat area of Canada will be only twelve million acres in
twenty-five years, there would still remain at least twelve million
acres in Manitoba alone available for wheat. It is no exaggerated
estimate to say that from sixty to seventy per cent of the land
available for cultivation in Manitoba is well adapted for the
production of wheat. Sir W. Crookes says that his area of Manitoba of
13,051,375 acres includes water courses, lakes, forests, towns, etc.
Now, the water area alone of Manitoba is 6,329,600 acres, so that
after deducting this area and the 1,630,000 acres already under wheat
and making due allowance for the other conditions mentioned, he would
have us believe that wheat-growing in Manitoba has already nearly
reached its limit, which all who know anything about the province will
unite in saying is absurd.

Now let us turn to the Northwest Territories, where, according to Sir
W. Crookes, there is practically no amount of land of any consequence
available for wheat, and let us remember that the same authority
limits the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million acres.
The area of the three provisional districts, with which alone we will
deal, is as follows, viz.: Assiniboia, 57,177,600 acres; Saskatchewan,
69,120,000 acres; and Alberta, 63,523,200 acres (these figures being
exclusive of water surface), making a total of 189,820,000 acres. Some
of this large area is possibly not particularly well adapted for
agricultural purposes, but a careful examination of all available data
on the subject justifies one in saying that fully one half is suitable
for successful wheat cultivation, while in eastern and southern
Assiniboia there are some 20,000,000 acres, in the valley of the
Saskatchewan 14,000,000 acres, and in northern Alberta 15,000,000
acres that are especially adapted for the production of wheat as a
staple crop. The area is so large and settlement at present so sparse,
that it is impossible to do more than give its capabilities in general
terms, founded on the opinions of experienced men who have traveled
over it. Professor Saunders, Director of the Experimental Farm at
Ottawa, than whom there is no better authority on the subject in the
Dominion, told me that, from what he saw of the country in driving
over it, he became more and more impressed every year with the vast
area of good land in the Northwest, and no practical man has ever
traveled through those regions but has been amazed at the prospect of
their capabilities.

But we have not yet reckoned with the rich and fertile province of
Ontario. This province has a land area of 140,576,000 acres, of which
11,888,853 acres were under cultivation in 1898, and of this latter
quantity 1,437,387 acres, or twelve per cent, were in wheat, being an
increase of 163,860 acres over the wheat area of 1897, and of 62,573
acres over the average of 1882-'98. According to the census of 1881
there were nearly 2,000,000 acres in wheat in 1880, but, under the
influence of an unremunerative market, the area declined year by year
until in 1895 there were but 967,156 acres so employed; since then,
however, stimulated by a more profitable price, the area has increased
by 470,471 acres, and an increase of twenty per cent upward is
reported in the area for 1899. Fall wheat in this province is a very
successful crop, having averaged in the last two years twenty-five
bushels and twenty-four bushels per acre respectively, while the
average for the period 1882-'98 has been 20.5 bushels per acre, so
that nothing but a continuance of good prices is needed to largely
increase the production of wheat in Ontario. In no part of the
province, where agriculture is possible, has wheat failed to grow, but
the area is so large that it would be unwise to put into figures the
extent available for wheat cultivation, it being sufficient to show
that a very large portion, if not indeed the whole, of the twelve
million acres to which Sir W. Crookes has limited Canada could, other
conditions being favorable, be supplied by Ontario alone.

The "trustworthy estimates" quoted by Sir W. Crookes limit, as has
been stated, the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million
acres under cultivation in twenty-five years; whence the estimates
were derived or on what grounds they are entitled to be considered
trustworthy there is no information; but is it of any consequence? Let
them come from whatever source they may, are they not perfectly
useless? The progress of wheat cultivation during the next twenty-five
years does not depend upon any mathematical ratio of progression, but
on the course of certain events absolutely unknown at the present
time. The point is that Sir W. Crookes adopts these estimates and
gives out to the world a statement, on the strength of them, that, in
addition to the 3,500,000 acres at present in use, there are not more
than 8,500,000 acres in Canada available for wheat cultivation--a
statement calculated, if believed, to seriously damage Canada's
prospects of settlement, and a statement that is as much at variance
with the actual facts as it is possible for such things to be. Is it
fair to the country for a man of such high standing and reputation to
make such unfounded assertions? Five minutes' real consideration of
the question would have convinced him that there are more than that
number of acres in the province of Manitoba alone. The figures already
given, which have been prepared from the most reliable available
information, go to show that there are upward of seventy-five million
acres of land in Canada especially adapted for the production of
wheat, and this estimate is confined to those portions of the country
which may be considered as essentially wheat-producing areas; and no
account has been taken of the vast extent of land, not only in the
provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and in the Northwest Territories,
but also in the otherwise unnoticed provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, that is not
only suitable for the production of wheat, but on which a large
quantity of wheat will undoubtedly be grown, which, entering into home
consumption, will increase the exportable surplus.

I am well aware that there are a number of people who will say that my
figures underestimate the resources of the country, but I would rather
that it were so than indulge in figures that seem too extravagant to
be realized; and if, in the future, it appears that the wheat area is
larger than I have stated, then so much the better for Canada. I do
not mind how much evidence can be brought to increase my figures, as
long as I am satisfied that they can not be truthfully reduced.

It is not intended to accuse Sir W. Crookes of deliberately
misrepresenting Canada, but rather of almost criminal carelessness in
the preparation of his case; but it is intended to accuse Mr. C. Wood
Davis of the former offense and of intentionally garbling extracts
from an official handbook issued by the Canadian Minister of the
Interior in order to decry that country's wheat-bearing capabilities.
By taking a line here and there which seems to serve his ends, and by
leaving out everything that would have a contrary tendency, Mr. Davis,
in his article in The Forum, makes it to appear that, according to the
Minister of the Interior, the greater part of the Canadian Northwest
is not only incapable of producing wheat, but is actually unfit for
settlement, and summarizes his extracts by saying, "Available data do
not show that any part of the Canadian districts named, except
southern Manitoba and the eastern half of Assiniboia, is adapted to
wheat culture, while they do show that over the greater part of these
vast regions neither summer heats nor rainfalls are sufficient." This
statement is false in every particular. The official handbook from
which Mr. Davis professes to quote says of Manitoba that there are
thirty-seven million acres available for active farm cultivation,
giving therefore no warrant for the limiting of the wheat area to the
southern part of the province. Mr. Davis quotes a line here and there
about southern Alberta in order to convey the impression that that
part of the country is good for nothing, whereas, while it is
essentially a ranching and dairying country, producing a most
luxurious and nutritious growth of native grasses, with a bountiful
supply of water for irrigation purposes, by which means most
satisfactory crops of grain and fodder are produced, it has never been
contended that it is particularly well adapted for wheat-growing; but,
on the other hand, Mr. Davis carefully omits all mention of northern
Alberta, and has no room for the following remarks about it which
appear on the same page of the handbook: "Northern Alberta is
essentially an agricultural district; ... the principal advantages of
the district will insure settlement by immigrants who desire to engage
in grain farming.... The rainfall in northern Alberta during the
summer months is sufficient to insure good crops." Concerning the
district of Saskatchewan, Mr. Davis quotes a remark about some of the
wooded portion being unsuited to the immediate requirements of
settlement, as if it applied to the whole district, and deliberately
omits the following: "The southern half of the district"
(Saskatchewan) "is traversed from east to west by the Saskatchewan
River, and the valley of this important stream, with the country
immediately adjacent thereto, has long been famed as a desirable field
for immigration." With reference to precipitation, Mr. Davis has so
garbled his extracts as to convey the impression that the handbook
states that over the greater part of the Northwest the rainfall is not
sufficient for the pursuit of agriculture, whereas what the book
really says is, "So far as the Canadian Northwest is concerned, out of
about two hundred million acres of land between the Red River of the
North to the Rocky Mountains, available for agricultural and pastoral
purposes, not more than about one fourth, or fifty million acres in
all, require the artificial application of water."

Mr. Davis's attempts to prejudice the interests of the Northwest by
remarks on the severity of the climate do not need serious attention;
the experience of the inhabitants and the annual production of the
country speak for themselves, and it is well understood that mere
thermometer readings afford little indication in themselves of the
nature of a climate, and that temperatures unendurable in some
countries are enjoyable, salubrious, and advantageous in others. It
seems difficult to believe that Mr. Davis ever wrote the following
sentence, but having written it, it would be well if he would take it
to heart: "Truly 'honesty is the best policy' in the employment of
statistics, whether by scientists, by plain people, or by
professional statisticians; while the ability to eschew bucket-shop
methods, to read correctly, to state facts and to state them clearly,
and to criticise with intelligence and entire fairness, is especially
desirable."

Sir W. Crookes is not content with reducing Canada's wheat resources
to an insignificant minimum, but he must also retard as much as
possible the development even of the small area that he admits to
exist, for he says: "The development of this promising area
necessarily must be slow, since prairie land can not be laid under
wheat in advance of a population sufficient to supply the needful
labor at seed time and harvest. As population increases so do home
demands for wheat." To say that prairie land can not be laid under
wheat in advance of population, and that as population increases so do
home demands for wheat, are mere truisms, but it is incorrect to say
that therefore the development must be slow. The rate of development
depends entirely upon the rate of increase of population, and that
increase depends upon the price of wheat, and the area of production
will increase concurrently with the demand. According to Mr.
Davis--and we will assume that his figures are in this case
correct--the population in the United States in fourteen years from
1871 increased forty-four per cent and the cultivated area one hundred
and twelve per cent, and, if that was the case, no estimates, however
trustworthy, could have provided for such results.

It has been perfectly true, as Sir W. Crookes says, that as the wheat
area of Manitoba and the Northwest increased, the wheat area of
Ontario and the eastern provinces decreased, but this was in
consequence of the continued low price of wheat, which led the farmers
of Ontario to turn their attention more and more to dairy and mixed
farming, substituting hay and root crops for wheat and barley, until
the province became a dairying rather than a cereal-producing country;
but that this was a movement to suit the times, and that the area
available for wheat is no less in consequence, is evidenced by the
rapid increase in the wheat acreage in the last two years. The farmer
produces what pays him best, and it is certain that before Sir W.
Crookes's failure of the wheat supply comes to pass prices will have
been such that every acre of land suitable for wheat and that can be
spared from other uses will have been taken advantage of; and if this
is not the case, then some other staple for food will have been
substituted, which will necessarily change the whole economic
situation as viewed at present.

It is also true that "thus far performance has lagged behind promise,"
but the reasons for this are the same, and in the low values we find
a ready explanation of the apparent lack of progress. What inducement
has the immigrant had of late years to take up land for, or the farmer
to grow, wheat that he could hardly sell for the actual cost of
production? And yet Sir W. Crookes would argue that because the land
has not been utilized for this particular purpose the land can not be
there, and that land upon which wheat once was grown, but which is now
employed for other purposes, can never again be included in the
wheat-bearing area.

Progress may appear to have been slow, but it has kept pace with the
demand, and in any case has been considerably more rapid than Sir W.
Crookes allows. He says, "The wheat-bearing area of all Canada has
increased less than 500,000 acres since 1884," whereas the actual
increase since 1880 has been over 1,100,000 acres, and since 1890
upward of 760,000 acres. The area under wheat in Canada in 1898 was
3,508,540 acres, so that Sir W. Crookes only allows for an increase of
2,500,000 acres in the next twelve years. Perhaps it will not be as
much, but if it is not, it will only be putting the predicted day of
famine still farther away, and will prove nothing more than the fact
that the state of the market has not warranted any more extended
cultivation.

The statements made by Sir W. Crookes about the wheat acreage in the
States are as incorrect as those about Canada, for he says, in his
letter to The Times of December 8, 1898, that "the whole wheat acreage
in the United States is less than it was fifteen years ago," whereas
the official figures for 1897 and 1898, which were before him at the
time, told him that the wheat acreage in 1897 was 3,000,000 acres in
excess of the average of the preceding fifteen years, and in 1898 was
in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 acres in excess of any year in the
history of that country. Do not the fluctuations in the wheat acreage
of the United States in recent years prove conclusively that they were
solely the result of the movement of prices, and had no bearing
whatever on the question of exhaustion of land? Under the depressing
influence of an unprofitable market, the wheat area fell from
39,900,000 acres in 1891 to 34,000,000 acres in 1895, but, under the
stimulus of a substantial appreciation, increased again, in three
years, to 44,000,000 acres. If, in spite of a rising and remunerative
market, the area had remained stationary or shown signs of decrease,
it would have been in order to call attention to the fact as
indicating exhaustion; but when, in immediate response to a rising
market, the area increases by leaps and bounds, the question of
exhaustion becomes less and less one of actual probability, and more
and more one of theoretical possibility. A precisely similar line of
reasoning is applicable to the fluctuations in the province of
Ontario, and goes to show just as clearly that the decrease in area
has had absolutely no bearing on the wheat-producing capabilities of
the province.

"A permanently high price for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that ere
long must be faced," says Sir W. Crookes; but, with due deference to
so great an authority, I believe that the day of a permanent high
price for wheat is yet far distant. There will be appreciations
undoubtedly, but the sources of supply as yet undrawn upon are so
great that it will be long before those appreciations are of any
prolonged duration; but in the meantime they mean periods of great
prosperity to the farmer and therefore to the world. Is a higher price
for wheat such an unmixed calamity, after all? Has the average
consumer of wheat benefited by the low price of wheat of late years in
proportion to the hardships endured by the producer? I think not. Let
those who are qualified by literary and scientific knowledge point out
if they will the possibility, or even perhaps the probability, of at
some period in the future the time coming when there may be, if
present conditions continue to exist, a scarcity in the wheat supply,
and urge as strongly as they like the advisability of taking steps in
good time to prevent such a calamity; but nothing is to be gained by
frightening the world with predictions of evil based only on a series
of unfounded assertions, mathematical calculations, and "purely
speculative computations." When, if ever, the day of scarcity will
come is unknown. That it is yet far off appears to be tolerably
certain; but it is sufficient for the purposes of this article that it
should be understood that Sir W. Crookes's statements concerning the
wheat area of Canada are absolutely unreliable and incorrect, and that
there are millions of acres of good wheat land waiting for occupation
by the surplus population of the world, which, when under cultivation,
will assist in deferring for many years the threatened day of famine.

       *       *       *       *       *

     Dr. Sven Hedin, in his account of travel through Asia, mentions
     as the most remarkable feature in the central region of internal
     drainage (in which the rivers drain into inland lakes) "the
     process of leveling which goes on unceasingly. The detritus which
     results from the disintegrating action of the weather, and the
     more or less mechanical agency of the wind and water and gravity,
     is constantly being carried down from the mountains all round its
     borders toward the lower parts of its depressions, and being
     deposited there. In this way the natural inequalities in the
     configuration of the ground are being gradually smoothed away."
     Mr. Curzon refers to the same phenomenon in the central districts
     of the Pamirs--the process being the exact reverse to that where
     the streams hew out deep ravines in their course to the sea-going
     river.




BEST METHODS OF TAXATION.

BY THE LATE HON. DAVID A. WELLS.

PART III (_concluded_).


The universal and admitted failure of the general property tax to
attain good results and the great difficulty, indeed the
impossibility, of reducing it to a form in which it can operate with
efficiency and an approach to justice, must lead to its abolition and
the gradual substitution of other and more simple taxes. However well
adapted to a community in which the taxable property was in evidence
and easily assessed for purposes of taxation, it becomes antiquated,
unequal, and inquisitorial in a people where credit and credit
investments have been highly developed, and where the greater social
activities, whether in commerce or industry, transportation or
production, are conducted by corporations issuing various kinds of
securities, none of which can easily be reached by a taxing authority
away from the center of incorporation. To undertake to include these
securities, evidences of debt, or obligations in a general property
tax is to invite evasion, put a heavy inducement on concealment, and,
whenever effective, to give rise to shocking inequalities of burden.
The widow and orphan, whose property is in the hands of a trustee, pay
the full tax; in any other direction the holder of stocks or bonds,
money or notes, escapes according to the elasticity of his conscience.
The very exemptions recognized by law give an opportunity for new
evasions, based upon analogy or upon some technicality under which the
business is conducted. Bonds of the United States, the legal-tender
notes, or money are beyond the reach of State authorities for the
purpose of taxation. In the same category come also all imported goods
in original packages, in the possession of the importers, and all
property in transit. These exemptions alone amount to thousands of
millions of dollars, and the tendency has been to increase the number
of items exempted. But every such exception under the law adds to the
burdens of the honest taxpayer, and every evasion of taxation also
renders his charge the greater. Here is not distributive justice, but
concentrated injustice.

Another large proportion of the personal property owned by the
citizens of the State is of the most intangible character, and in
great part invisible and incorporeal, such, for instance, as
negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, State,
municipal, and corporate bonds, and, if actually situated in other
States, exempt from taxation where they are held; acknowledgments of
individual indebtedness, and a number of similar matters. All property
of this character is, through a great variety of circumstances,
constantly fluctuating in value; is offset by indebtedness which may
never be the same one hour with another; is easy to transfer, and by
simple delivery is, in fact, transferred continually from one locality
to another, and from the protection and laws of one State to the
sovereignty and jurisdiction of some other. It is not to be wondered,
therefore, that all attempts to value and assess this description of
property have proved exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that nearly every
civilized community, with the exception of the States of the Federal
Union, have long ago abandoned the project as something wholly
inexpedient and impracticable.

The differences among the States in the interpretation of residence,
of the _situs_ of the property taxed, are also an objection to this
system and an obstacle to its application. The want of uniformity can
not be abolished by enactments of law, because absolute uniformity of
laws would not insure as uniform interpretation of their provisions.
The rules for assessment are uniform for the officers of a State, but
the returns made involve such differences in the application of the
rules that one is forced to the conclusion that a misunderstanding of
the spirit of the law exists, coloring differently the view of each
returning officer. Discrimination against the county or municipality
and discrimination against the individual are to be met at every turn.
No wording of the law can eliminate this personal judgment of each
assessing authority, and the supervision of the returns by State
boards of equalization has introduced an even greater departure from
justice, as a majority, based upon selfish interests, may be had, and
its decision may readily be defended as based upon good and sufficient
reasons. An appeal to the last resort, the higher courts, may produce
redress against unjust assessments, but each case must be decided upon
its merits, and only under very exceptional circumstances--as in the
recent case at Tarrytown, New York, where striking and general, even
personal, spite had been shown in the tax levy--can a number of
taxpayers find it their interest to combine and carry the question
into the courts for adjudication.

Imperfect in theory, the machinery of the general property tax is
imperfect. With at present fully two thirds of the personal property
of the State exempted from taxation by law or by circumstances growing
out of its condition, or the natural depravity and selfishness of the
average taxpayer, and with a large part of the other third exempted by
competing nations or neighboring States, what becomes of the theory so
generally accepted in the United States that in order to tax equitably
it is necessary to tax everything? A very slight examination leads to
the conclusion that it is the most imperfect system of taxation that
ever existed; that, with the exception of moneyed corporations, it is
a mere voluntary assessment, which may be diminished at any time by an
offset of indebtedness which the law invites the taxpayers to increase
_ad infinitum_, borrowing on pledge of corporate stocks, United States
bonds, legal-tender notes, etc., all exempt from taxation; that its
administration in respect to justice and equity is a farce and more
uncertain and hazardous than the chances of the gaming table; and that
its continuance is more provocative of immorality and more obstructive
of material development than any one agency that can possibly be
mentioned. A stringent enforcement only leads to greater perversions
and a wider evasion. A lax enforcement does not reduce its
inequalities and general want of application to actual conditions.[10]

     [Footnote 10: The commissioners "have no confidence in any system
     of inquisition or system which requires assessors to be
     clairvoyants; to ascertain things impossible to be ascertained by
     the agencies provided in the law; to ascertain the indebtedness
     of the taxpayer; to ascertain or know who is the owner of
     property at a given time that can be and is transferred hourly
     from owner to owner by telegraph or lightning, and that may be
     transported into or out of the jurisdiction of the assessor with
     the rapidity of steam, or that requires assessors or taxpayers to
     make assessments on evidence not admissible in any court, civil
     or criminal, in any civilized country where witches are not tried
     and condemned by caprice or malice on village or neighborhood
     gossip."]

The problem, then, is what taxes to introduce in place of this
confessed failure of the general property tax.

There can be little doubt that the desire for greater simplicity in
taxation is generally felt, and in part put into practice. The mass of
various kinds of imposts, added without any system or real connection
or relation one to another, has often resulted in so large a number of
charges on Government account as to defeat itself. The French taxes at
the end of the last century, with their added fault of inequality and
injustice in distribution, led naturally to the theory of a single
tax--the _impôt unique_ of the physiocrats--which did not become a
fact, yet registered the protest against the multiplicity and crying
oppressiveness of the remains of feudal dues and fiscal experiments
undertaken under the stress of an empty treasury. So it has been noted
at the present time that where an opportunity has offered there is a
tendency in European countries to simplify their taxes, and, as in the
case of Switzerland, prepare the way for income and property taxes. It
is a greater dependence on such direct taxes in place of indirect
taxes that has distinguished the great fiscal changes in recent years.
Germany may have wished to establish a brandy monopoly, and Russia may
resort to a monopoly of the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits.
But England increases her death duties, France and the United States
seek to frame acceptable taxes on income, and Switzerland succeeds in
modifying her system in the line of direct taxes.

There is an earnest movement in favor of a single tax on the value of
land, exclusive of other real property connected with it. As involving
a question of abstract justice the proposition has much in its favor,
but it can not be denied that practical obstacles oppose its adoption.
The recent commission on taxation in Massachusetts thus treats of it:
"It proposes virtually a radical change in the ownership of land, and
therefore a revolution in the entire social body. In this form of
taxation all revenue from land alone is to be appropriated--that is,
the beneficial ownership of land is to cease. Whether or not this
system, if it had been adopted at the outset and had since been
maintained, would have been to the public advantage may be an open
question, but it would certainly seem to be too late now to turn to it
in the manner proposed. In any event, it involves properly not
questions of taxation, but questions as to the advantage or
disadvantage of private property in land."[11]

     [Footnote 11: Report of the Massachusetts Commission, 1897, p.
     74.]

If securities are to be taxed, the methods adopted should avoid a
double taxation, and an attempt to reach capital outside of the State.
It is evident that a State, like Massachusetts, which taxes the
foreign holder of shares in its corporations as well as the shares of
foreign corporations held by its own citizens, is inviting a dangerous
reprisal from other States. "Wherever the owner may be, if the
corporation is chartered within the State the Commonwealth collects
the tax on the shares. Wherever the corporation may be, if the owner
is within the State the Commonwealth also collects the tax (in theory
of law at least)." If this be the best possible system, and it is
supposed Massachusetts assumes it to be, general double taxation would
follow its adoption by the other States. The effort to carry this rule
into practice proves its injustice as well as futility. The most
searching and inquisitorial methods of seeking such property will not
avail to reach a good part of it, and this results in adding
inequality of burden to its other difficulties. Evasion is too simple
a process to be unused, and the heavier the rate of tax the greater
will be the resort to evasion and even to perjury, express or implied.
The fundamental cause of the failure lies in this, "the endeavor to
tax securities, which are no more than evidences of ownership or
interest in property, and which offer the easiest means of concealment
and evasion, by the same methods and at the same rate as tangible
property situated on the spot."

This inherent difficulty can be cured only by abandoning the attempt
to tax directly securities or evidences of debt, representing
ownership or interest in property beyond the limits of the taxing
authority. In the case of the securities of home companies they may be
readily taxed at the source, but in the case of foreign corporations
it is only by methods almost revolting in their injustice and
treatment of the taxpayer that even a partial success can be secured.
The dependence upon the sworn statement or declaration of the taxpayer
is known to be extremely faulty and to offer a premium on
untruthfulness. So long as this dependence is retained in whole or in
part in a system for taxing personal property, the results must be
unsatisfactory. The most judicious, even if it seems the most radical,
remedy is to abandon the taxation of securities. Certainly it would be
well to put an end to the Massachusetts plan of taxing securities
representing property outside of the State, for that involves double
taxation wherever it has been possible to impose the tax. What can be
reached only by methods at all times trying and difficult, and
sometimes very demoralizing, should not be permitted to remain a
permanent feature of the revenue system of a State.

The New York commission of 1870 proposed to limit the State taxes to a
very few number of objects. That they be "levied on a comparatively
broad basis--like real estate--with certainty, proportionality, and
uniformity on a few items of property, like the franchises of all
moneyed corporations enjoying the same privileges within the State,
and on fixed and unvarying signs of property, like rental values of
buildings"--such was the scheme proposed. The leading object to be
attained was equality of burdens, and a second object of quite as
great importance, was simplicity in assessment and collection.
Granting that real estate, lands, and buildings were taxed on a full
and fair market valuation, and that corporations contributed their
share toward the expenses of the State, it remained to devise a tax
that should reach all other forms of property that could be
properly and easily assessed. This tax was to be known as the
"building-occupancy" tax, and was to be levied on an additional
assessment of a sum equal to three times the annual rent or rental
value of all the buildings on the land.[12] Nearly thirty years later
the Massachusetts commission proposed a modified form of this tax. An
annual rental value of four hundred dollars was to be exempt from
taxation, but ten per cent was to be levied on all rental values in
excess of that amount.

     [Footnote 12: The New York commission of 1870 submitted two
     propositions on this point:

     1. Tax the house or building as real estate separately, at the
     same rate of valuation as the land--that is, fifty per cent--and
     then assuming that the value of the house or building,
     irrespective of its contents, be such contents furniture,
     machinery, or any other chattels whatsoever, is the sign or index
     which the owner or occupier puts out of his personal property,
     tax the house or building on a valuation of fifty per cent
     additional to its real estate valuation, as the representative
     value of such personal property; or, in other words, tax the land
     separately on fifty per cent of its fair marketable valuation,
     and tax the building apart from the land, as representing the
     owner's personal property, on a _full_ valuation, as indicated by
     the rent actually paid for it or its estimated rental value. Or--

     2. Tax buildings conjointly with land as real estate at a uniform
     valuation; and then as the equivalent for all taxation on
     personal property, tax the occupier, be he owner or tenant of any
     building or portion of any building used as a dwelling, or for
     any other purpose, on a valuation of three times the rental or
     rental value of the premises occupied. Tenement houses occupied
     by more than one family, or tenement houses having a rental value
     not in excess of a fixed sum, to be taxed to the owner as
     occupier.--_Report_, p. 107.]

"The advantages of a tax on house rentals," said the commission, "can
be easily stated. It is clear, almost impossible of evasion, easy of
administration, well fitted to yield a revenue for local uses, and
certain to yield such a revenue. It is clear, because the rental value
of a house is comparatively easy to ascertain. The tax is based on a
part of a man's affairs which he publishes to all the world. It
requires no inquisition and no inquiry into private matters; it uses
simply the evidence of a man's means which he already offers."[13] If
this tax were to be given it would be possible to wipe out all the tax
on incomes from "profession, trade, or employment," to abolish the
existing assessments on personal property. The effects would be
far-reaching. If loans of money are free from taxation, the purchasing
power of money in the same degree must diminish, which simply means
that the purchasing power of farms and products of farms for money
must to the same extent increase; hence, the borrower on bond and
mortgage will not be subject to double taxation--first, in the form of
increased rate of interest, and then in taxation of his real
estate--and hence the farmer or landowner who is not in the habit of
either lending or borrowing money will find his ability to meet
additional taxation on his land increased in additional value of land
and products of land in proportion as the tax is removed from money at
interest. Also, the exemption of the products of farms and things
consumed on farms from taxation will give a corresponding increased
value to compensate for the "building-occupancy" tax. Tenants
controlled by all-pervading natural laws can and will give increased
rents, if their personal property is exempt primarily from taxation.
The average profits of money at interest or of dealings in visible
personal property free from taxation can not exceed, for any
considerable length of time, the average profits of real estate, risk
of investment and skill in management taken into consideration; and
therefore the real pressure of taxation under the proposed system will
finally be, like atmospheric pressure or pressure of water, on all
sides, and by a natural uniform law executed upon all property in
every form used and consumed in the State. Persons must occupy
buildings and business must be done in buildings, and through these
visible instrumentalities capital can be reached by a rule of
fractional uniformity, and by a simple, plain, and economical method
of assessment and collection.

     [Footnote 13: Massachusetts Report, p. 106.]

This building-occupancy tax, or tax on rental value, does not preclude
a supplementary tax on corporations.

Much has been said of the onerous burdens of taxation endured by
individuals compared with those of corporations, and especially
corporations enjoying certain rights or franchises in public streets
and highways or corporations of a more or less public character. The
phenomenal growth of municipalities has been one of the notable social
movements of the last twenty-five years. The drift of population from
the country districts to cities has increased with each year, and
finds an explanation in many causes. The opportunities offered in a
city for advancement are greater and more numerous; the monotony of
the farm life does not keep the young at home, but drives them for
excitement and profit to the great centers of population. The economic
changes of a half century also have their influence. The competition
of new regions, better adapted for certain cultures on a commercial
scale, has reduced the profitableness of older and more settled
localities, where comparatively costly methods must be resorted to if
the fertility of the land is to be maintained. The wheat fields of the
West narrowed the margin of profit in New England farming, while the
sheep and cattle ranges of the West made it impossible for the same
quality of live stock to be raised for profit in the East. Farms were
abandoned, and the younger blood went West to grow up with the
country, or into the cities to struggle for a living. Further, the
advances in agriculture, the application of more productive methods,
and the introduction of machinery have reduced the demand for labor in
the rural districts, and this has led to a migration to the cities.

The result of this has been an immense development of city life, and
with it an ever-increasing field for investment in corporate
activities. The supply of water is usually in the city's control, but
the manufacture and sale of gas, the production and distribution of
electricity, the street railways, telegraph, and telephone interests
are private corporations formed for profit and using more or less the
public highways in the conduct of their various enterprises. A grant
of a street or highway for a railway or electric-wire subway generally
involves a monopoly of that use, and the privilege or franchise may
become more valuable with the mere growth in the population of the
cities. Assured against an immediate competition, there is a steady
increment in the value of the franchise, and in the case of a true
monopoly there seems to be no limits to its possible growth.

An instance of this nature is so striking in its relations and so
pertinent to the present discussion that attention is asked to it. In
the reign of James I water was supplied by two or three conduits in
the principal streets of London, and the river and suburban springs
were the sources of supply. Large buildings were furnished with water
by tapping these conduits with leaden pipes, but other buildings and
houses were supplied by "tankard bearers," who brought water daily. A
jeweler of the city, Hugh Myddleton by name, believed something better
could be done, and he proposed to bring water from Hertfordshire by a
"new river." He embarked in the undertaking, sank his fortune in its
conduct, and appealed to the king for assistance. James granted this
aid, taking one half of the shares of the company--thirty-six out of
the seventy-two shares into which it was divided. The shares that
remained received the name of "adventurer's moiety." The work was
completed in 1613, and water was then let into the city.

So little was the measure appreciated that its first years were
troublous ones for the shareholders. The squires objected to the
river, believing it would overflow their lands or reduce them to
swamps and destroy the roads. The city residents adopted the use of
the water slowly. The shares were nominally worth £100 apiece, but for
nearly twenty years the income was only 12_s._, or $3, per share. In
1736 a share was valued at £115 10_s._, and by 1800 it had risen to
£431 8_s._ With the first years of this century the company prospered,
and its benefits were widely applied, reflecting this change in the
value of its capital. In 1820 a share was worth £11,500 and in 1878
the fraction of a share was sold at a rate which made a full share
worth £91,000. In 1888 the dividend distributed to each share was
£2,610. Eleven years later, in July, 1889, a single share was sold for
£122,800, or nearly $600,000. The nominal capital of the company in
1884 was £3,369,000, and besides its water franchise it holds large
estates and valuable properties. While the actual real estate
controlled by the corporation accounts for some of this remarkable
rise in the value of the shares, a greater and more lasting cause was
the possession of an almost exclusive privilege or franchise which
assured a handsome and ever-increasing return on the investment. Had
all the other property been deducted from the statement of the
company's assets, there would have remained this intangible and
immeasurable right created and conceded by its charter and long
usance.

A definition of a franchise has been given by the Supreme Court in
terms of sufficient general accuracy to be adopted: "A franchise is a
right, privilege, or power of public concern which ought not to be
exercised by private individuals at their mere will and pleasure, but
which should be reserved for public control and administration, either
by the Government directly or by public agents acting under such
conditions and regulations as the Government may impose in the public
interest and for the public security."[14] A necessary condition,
then, is a public interest in the occupation or privileges to be
followed. The good will of a person or individual trader is not a
franchise in this sense, though a franchise may be enjoyed by an
individual as well as by a corporation, and good will may rest upon
the privilege implied in the franchise.

     [Footnote 14: California vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, 127 U.
     S., 40.]

The recognition of franchises, a species of property "as invisible and
intangible as the soul in a man's body," as a proper object for
taxation is now beyond any dispute. It is peculiarly appropriate as a
source of revenue for the exclusive use of the State, inasmuch as the
grant of franchises emanates from the State in its sovereign capacity.
In the case of Morgan _vs._ the State of Louisiana, Justice Field, of
the Supreme Court of the United States, said: "The franchises of a
railroad corporation are rights or privileges which are essential to
the operation of the corporation and without which its roads and works
would be of little value, such as the franchise to run cars, to take
tolls, to appropriate earth and gravel for the bed of its road, or
water for its engines, and the like. They are positive rights or
privileges, without the possession of which the road or company could
not be successfully worked. Immunity from taxation is not one of
them."[15] Further, the extent to which this taxation of franchises
may be carried rests entirely in the discretion of the taxing power,
subject only to constitutional restrictions.

     [Footnote 15: 93 U. S. Reports, pp. 217, 224.]

The great difficulty in applying such a tax lies in the methods of
reaching an understanding on the value of the franchise. How can this
indefinite something be made visible on the tax books? In many
instances the franchise may be regarded as inseparable from the real
property of the corporation. The rails of a tramway, the poles and
wires of a telegraph company, the pipes and conduits of a gas company,
are real and tangible things, necessary to a proper conduct to the
respective functions of the corporations. But the right to lay tracks
in the public streets, to sink pipes under the streets, or to string
wires overhead is as necessary a possession and as essential to the
performance of what the corporation was created to accomplish. Whether
this permits the franchise to be regarded as "real estate" and so
offers it for taxation is a question of some theoretical interest, but
of little practical importance.[16] Unless the franchise is regarded
in this way, as belonging to real estate, or as forming a taxable
entity apart from other property, it would be simpler to reach it
through a corporation tax in one of the many ways open for applying
that tax.

     [Footnote 16: A recent law of New York is very full on this
     point:

     "The terms 'land,' 'real estate,' and 'real property,' as used in
     this chapter, include the land itself above and under the water,
     all buildings and other articles and structures, substructures,
     and superstructures, erected upon, under, or above, or affixed to
     the same; all wharves and piers, including the value of the right
     to collect wharfage, cranage, or dockage thereon; all bridges,
     all telegraph lines, wires, poles, and appurtenances; all
     supports and inclosures for electrical conductors and other
     appurtenances upon, above, and underground; all surface,
     underground, or elevated railroads, including the value of all
     franchises, rights or permission to construct, maintain, or
     operate the same in, under, above, on, or through streets,
     highways, or public places; all railroad structures,
     substructures, and superstructures, tracks, and the iron thereon,
     branches, switches, and other fixtures permitted or authorized to
     be made, laid, or placed on, upon, above, or under any public or
     private road, street, or grounds; all mains, pipes, and tanks
     laid or placed in, upon, above, or under any public or private
     street or place for conducting steam, heat, water, oil,
     electricity, or any property, substance, or product capable of
     transportation or conveyance therein, or that is protected
     thereby, including the value of all franchises, rights,
     authority, or permission to construct, maintain, or operate in,
     under, above, upon, or through any streets, highways, or public
     places, any mains, pipes, tanks, conduits, or wires, with their
     appurtenances, for conducting water, steam, heat, light, power,
     gas, oil, or other substance, or electricity for telegraphic,
     telephonic, or other purposes; all trees and underwood growing
     upon land, and all mines, minerals, quarries, and fossils in and
     under the same, except mines belonging to the State. A franchise,
     right, authority, or permission, specified in this subdivision,
     shall for the purposes of taxation be known as a 'special
     franchise.' A special franchise shall be deemed to include the
     value of the tangible property of a person, copartnership,
     association, or corporation, situated in, upon, under, or above
     any street, highway, public place, or public waters, in
     connection with the special franchise. The tangible property so
     included shall be taxed as a part of the special franchise." The
     reason for classing franchises as real estate was that under the
     existing laws of New York a franchise could not be assessed as
     personal property, as the bonded debt could then be deducted,
     leaving little or nothing to be taxed.]

Enough has been said to demonstrate the extremely faulty condition of
tax methods in the United States. Uniformity is highly desirable, but
equality of burden is even more to be desired. The advances in this
direction have been few, and accomplished only partially in a few
States. The machinery for making assessments is only a part of the
problem, as the intention of the law, the spirit of the act, is of
even higher importance in securing justice and moderation. If these
essays, incomplete as they must of necessity be, have led to a better
comprehension of the chaotic condition existing now and of the
difficulties to be overcome, their object will have been attained. The
remedy may be left for time to effect.

       *       *       *       *       *

     In connection with the celebration of the centenary of the death
     of the naturalist Lazaro Spallanzani, at Reggio, Italy, in
     February last, a booklet has been published containing articles
     on various aspects of the life and work of Spallanzani and
     matters associated with him. Among the authors represented are
     Mantegazza, Ferrari, and others well known in Italian science.




BACON'S IDOLS: A COMMENTARY.

BY WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON,

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR
UNIVERSITY.


In the first book of the _Novum Organon_ the great leader of the new
philosophy undertook to set forth the dangers and difficulties which
stand always in the way of clear and fruitful thought. Conscious that
he was breaking entirely with the schools of the past, and ambitious
of laying the firm foundations on which all future inquirers would
have to build, it was natural that Bacon should pause on the threshold
of his vast enterprise to take stock of the mental weaknesses which
had rendered futile the labors of earlier thinkers, and which, if not
carefully guarded against, would jeopardize the efforts of times to
come. That the understanding may direct itself effectively to the
search for truth it is necessary, he insisted, that it should have a
full apprehension of the lapses to which it is ever liable, the
obstacles with which it will constantly have to contend. A vague sense
of peril is not enough. As a first condition of healthy intellectual
activity we must learn to know our frailties for what they really are,
estimate their consequences, and probe the secrets of their power.

Bacon's statement of the sources of error and vain philosophizing is
regarded by him as merely the _pars destruens_ or negative portion of
his work--as it were, "the clearing of the threshing floor." But his
aphorisms are packed close with solid and substantial thought, and
well deserve the attention of all who would seriously devote
themselves to the intellectual life. "True philosophy," as he
conceived it, "is that which is the faithful echo of the voice of the
world, which is written in some sort under the direction of things,
which adds nothing of itself, which is only the rebound, the
reflection of reality." To reach for ourselves, as nearly as we may, a
philosophy which shall meet the terms of this exigent definition is,
or should be, one chief purpose of our study and our thought. We may
very well ask, then, what help so great and suggestive a thinker may
give us on our way.

With his characteristic fondness for fanciful phraseology, Bacon
describes the causes which distort our mental vision as _Idola_--idols
or phantoms of the mind.[17] Of such he distinguishes four classes,
which he calls, respectively: Idols of the Tribe (_Idola Tribus_);
Idols of the Cave (_Idola Specus_); Idols of the Market Place (_Idola
Fori_); and Idols of the Theater (_Idola Theatri_). It is not to be
claimed for Bacon's analysis that it is exhaustive or always
scientifically exact. In many places, too, it opens up difficult
philosophic questions, which for the present must be disregarded. But,
as Professor Fowler has said, there is something about his diction,
"his quaintness of expression, and his power of illustration which
lays hold of the mind and lodges itself in the memory in a way which
we can hardly find paralleled in any other writer, except it be
Shakespeare."[18] Moreover, though he often deals with matters of
merely technical and temporary interest, his leading thoughts are of
permanent and universal applicability. Let us see, then, what
suggestions we can gather from a brief consideration of his Idols, one
by one.

     [Footnote 17: _Idola_ ([Greek: eidôla]), though commonly rendered
     idols, would here undoubtedly be more correctly translated
     phantoms or specters. With this explanation, however, I shall
     usually employ the more familiar word.]

     [Footnote 18: Novum Organon, edited by Thomas Fowler,
     introduction, p. 132.]

Idols of the Tribe are so called because they "have their foundation
in human nature itself"; in other words, they are the prepossessions
and proclivities which belong to men as men, and as such are common to
the whole race or tribe. "Let men please themselves as they will,"
says Bacon, "in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is
certain: that as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects
according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives
impressions of objects through the sense, can not be trusted to report
them truly, but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with
the nature of things." In many lines of thought there is no more
pregnant source of fallacy and confusion than the tendency, innate in
all and seldom properly checked, to accept man as the measure of all
things, and to translate the entire universe into terms of our own
lives. Theology, though it is slowly outgrowing its cruder
anthropomorphism, still talks about the "will" of God, an
"intelligent" First Cause, the "moral governor," and "lawgiver"; and
outside theology we have ample evidence of the persistency with which
we humanize and personify Nature by endowing it with attributes
belonging to ourselves. Darwin confessed that he found it difficult to
avoid this tendency.[19] It is a pitfall into which men constantly
stumble in their attempts to interpret the processes at work about
them.

     [Footnote 19: Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i, p.
     6.]

One important result of our habit of thus forcing the universe to
become "the bond-slave of human thought" is to be found, as Bacon
notes, in our proneness to "suppose the existence of more order and
regularity in the world" than is actually to be discovered there.
While we read design and purpose into the phenomena of Nature because
we are conscious of design and purpose in our own activities, thus
allowing ourselves to drift into the metaphysical doctrine of Final
Causes, we also do our best to bring Nature's multitudinous
operations into such definite formulas as will satisfy our love of
plan and symmetry. We are not content till we can systematize and
digest, whence our continual recourse to loose analogies and fanciful
resemblances. We start from an imagined necessity of order, or from
some conception of things attractive because of its apparent
simplicity, and then reason out from this into the facts of Nature.
Mill furnishes some telling examples. "As late as the Copernican
controversy it was urged, as an argument in favor of the true theory
of the solar system, that it placed the fire, the noblest element, in
the center of the universe. This was a remnant of the notion that the
order of the universe must be perfect, and that perfection consisted
in conformity to rules of procedure, either real or conventional.
Again, reverting to numbers, certain numbers were _perfect_, therefore
these numbers must obtain in the great phenomena of Nature. Six was a
perfect number--that is, equal to the sum of all its factors--an
additional reason why there must be exactly six planets. The
Pythagoreans, on the other hand, attributed perfection to the number
ten, but agreed in thinking that the perfect numbers must be somehow
realized in the heavens; and knowing only of nine heavenly bodies to
make up the enumeration, they asserted 'that there was an
_antichthon_, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun,
invisible to us.' Even Huygens was persuaded that when the number of
heavenly bodies had reached twelve it could not admit of any further
increase. Creative power could not go beyond that sacred number."[20]
Do these concrete illustrations of perverse reasoning strike us as
ludicrous? It is because they are taken from an order of ideas long
since outgrown. The tendencies they exemplify have not been outgrown.
We have only to keep a vigilant eye on our own mental conduct to be
convinced that we are very apt to begin with some general notion of
"the fitness of things," or what "ought to be," and to argue thence to
conclusions not a whit less absurd essentially than those just
referred to.

     [Footnote 20: Logic, ninth edition, Book V, chapter v, § 6.]

While these universal mental habits are conspicuous enough in the
higher regions of thought and begin to play tricks with us the moment
we undertake on our own accounts any serious speculation, there are
other Idols of the Tribe whose influence is perhaps more commonly
fatal. We all jump at conclusions, the mind feigning and supposing
"all other things to be somehow, though it can not see how, similar to
those few things by which it is surrounded"; we all allow ourselves to
be unduly "moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind
simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination." Hasty
judgments are thus daily and hourly passed on men and things, and rash
generalizations permitted to circulate untested. Even more
disastrous, perhaps, in the long run, is the power of prepossessions.
When once, says Bacon, the human understanding has "adopted an opinion
(either as being the received opinion, or as being agreeable to
itself)" it straightway "draws all things else to support and agree
with it." Illustrations may be found in every direction. Note, for
instance, the vitality, even in the teeth of positive disproof, of
many long-accepted and often-challenged ideas--belief in dreams,
omens, prophecies, in providential visitations and interpositions, in
the significance of coincidences, in popular saws about natural
phenomena, in quacks and quackery, in old wives' tales, vulgar and
pseudo-scientific. The story of witchcraft is only another example of
the same kind, though written large in the chronicles of the world in
letters of fire and blood; the human understanding had "adopted" a
belief in witches, and drew "all things else to support and agree with
it." In all such cases of prepossession the mind obstinately dwells on
every detail that favors its accepted conclusions, while disregarding
or depreciating everything that tells against them; it is always, in
Bacon's phrase, "more moved and excited by affirmatives than by
negatives." Thus, we hear much of the one dream that is fulfilled, and
of the ninety and nine that are unfulfilled--nothing. Bacon
illustrates this perversity by the well-known anecdote of the ancient
cynic, which may be left to convey its own moral: "And therefore it
was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him
hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as
having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not
now acknowledge the power of the gods--'Ay,' asked he again, 'but
where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?'"

Finally, among these Idols of the Tribe we must include the
disturbance caused by the play of feeling upon the mind. "The human
understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will
and affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences
as one would.'" We all know, to our cost, how passion will warp
judgment; how difficult it is to see clearly when the emotions are
thoroughly aroused; how tenaciously men cling to opinions they are
familiar with, or would fain have to be true; how fiercely they
contest ideas that are unfamiliar or repugnant. Had it been contrary
to the interest of authority, observed shrewd old Hobbes, that the
three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,
the fact would have been, if not disputed, yet suppressed.[21]
Similarly, if the passions of men had been called into play over the
most clearly demonstrable of abstract mathematical truths, we may be
sure that furious controversy would have attended the issue, and some
way found to overthrow the demonstration. That two and two make four
would have been denied had any strong emotion been excited against the
proposition. "Men," said Whateley, "are much more anxious to have
truth on their side than to be on the side of truth." And the danger
is greater because we are frequently not aware of the bias given by
feeling. There are cases in plenty where men more or less consciously
and deliberately espouse "sciences as one would," but there are many
others in which the emotional interference is insidious and obscure.
"Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in
which the feelings color and infect the understanding."

     [Footnote 21: Leviathan, Part I, chapter xi.]

These Idols of the Tribe are of course inherent in our intellectual
constitution, and are ineradicable. The simple consideration that all
knowledge is relative--that by no effort and under no circumstances
can we escape beyond the conditions and limitations of our own
minds--suffices to show that intelligence must ever mix up its own
nature with the nature of things, though this fact need not make us
doubt the validity of knowledge as is sometimes hastily inferred. For
the rest, clear recognition of these common obstacles to thought
should put us in the way of anticipating and withstanding their more
serious effects. In practice it must be our object to maintain
watchfulness and a careful skepticism; to test evidence and check
passion; to cultivate candor, flexibility, and alertness of mind; to
avoid loose generalizations; and to be ever ready to accept, revise,
reject. Above all must we steadily resist the seductions of what is
called common sense, and overcome that mental inertness which too
often leads us to drift unthinking along the current of popular
opinion.[22]

     [Footnote 22: It is well to remember that if common sense had
     said the last word about the matter, the Ptolemaic theory of the
     universe would still stand unshaken.]

But, in addition to errors arising from the common intellectual nature
of men, there are others, the sources of which are to be found in the
idiosyncrasies of the individual mind. These Bacon calls Idols of the
Cave;[23] for every one, he says, "has a cave or den of his own, which
refracts and discolors the light of Nature, owing either to his own
proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with
others; or to his reading of books, and the authority of those whom he
esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly
as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed, or in a mind
indifferent and settled; and the like." This summary is comprehensive
enough to indicate the character and point to some of the causes of
individual aberrations of judgment; that it does no more than this is
due to the simple fact that the personal bias is as varied as humanity
itself, and that the deflecting impulses in any given case are to be
referred to a complex of factors almost eluding analysis. To follow
this part of the subject into detail would, therefore, manifestly be
impossible. But certain of the larger and more widely influential of
these disturbing forces may be roughly marked out by way of
illustration.

     [Footnote 23: The metaphor is taken from the opening of the
     seventh book of Plato's Republic.]

In the first place, there is what we may call the professional bias.
Exclusive devotion to separate lines of activity, study, or thought
inevitably gives the mind a particular set or twist. Bacon complains
that Aristotle, primarily a logician, made his natural philosophy the
slave of his logic. Few specialists can escape the insulation
consequent upon living too continuously in a confined area of problems
and ideas. Their intellectual outlook is necessarily circumscribed,
facts are seen by them out of proper perspective, and one-sidedness of
training and discipline renders their judgment of things partial and
incomplete. The lawyer carries his legal, the theologian his
theological, the scientist his scientific bent of mind into every
inquiry; with what grotesque results is only too frequently apparent.
Accustomed to move in a single narrow groove, and wholly absorbed in
the contemplation of certain isolated classes of phenomena, they
unconsciously allow their particular interests to dominate their
thought, and impose disastrous restrictions upon their view of
whatever lies outside their own chosen field.

Secondly, we have the bias of nation, rank, party, sect. Here the
mental disturbances are too numerous to permit and too obvious to
require special exemplification. Intellectual provincialism of any
kind is fatal to large and fertile thought, alike by limiting the
range of our knowledge and sympathies and by inducing mental habits
and implanting prejudices which prevent us from seeing things in wide
relations and under a clear light. So long as our point of view is
simply that of our country, our class, our party, or our church, so
long, it is evident, our minds will lack the breadth and flexibility
necessary for free inquiry, fruitful comparisons, sane and balanced
judgments.[24]

     [Footnote 24: _Cf._ Spencer's Introduction to the Study of
     Sociology, chapters viii-xii.]

Finally, among the Idols of the Cave "which have most effect in
disturbing the clearness of the understanding," mention must be made
of the temperamental bias. Every man, it has been said, is born
Platonist or Aristotelian; it is certain that the great divisions in
thought--religious, philosophical, political--answer roughly to
fundamental differences in human nature, and that every one not
checked or turned aside by extraneous influences will spontaneously
gravitate in one or another direction. Bacon is only recording a fact
of the commonest experience when he says that "there are found some
minds given to an extreme admiration of antiquity, others to an
extreme love and appetite for novelty, but few so duly tempered that
they can hold the mean, neither carping at what has been well laid
down by the ancients nor despising what is well introduced by the
moderns." Many instinctively brace themselves against authority and
tradition; by others again, whatever is handed down to us by authority
and tradition is for this reason alone treated with contempt. That the
crowd believes a thing is enough to convince this man of its truth,
and that of its falsehood.

      "The vulgar thus through imitation err;
      As oft the learned by being singular."

These and similar congenital differences in men's intellectual
constitutions might be illustrated indefinitely if it were necessary.
A further remark of Bacon's must, however, be quoted, for it goes
deeper in mental analysis and touches a less obvious point. "There is
one principal and, as it were, radical distinction between different
minds in respect of philosophy and the sciences, which is this: that
some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things,
others to mark their resemblances. The steady and acute mind can fix
its contemplations and dwell and fasten on the subtlest distinctions;
the lofty and discursive mind recognizes and puts together the finest
and most general resemblances." Men belonging to the former class we
should call logical and critical; those belonging to the latter,
imaginative and constructive. Each class tends to the excesses of its
own predominant powers, and in each case excess interferes with calm
reasoning and sound judgment.

To correct the personal equation it is imperative that we should study
ourselves conscientiously, consider dispassionately the natural
tendencies of our birth, early surroundings, education, associations,
and interests, and do our utmost to conquer, or at least to make
allowance for, every individual peculiarity, temperamental or
acquired, likely to turn the mind aside from the straight line of
thought. Such self-discipline every one must strenuously undertake on
his own account if he would wish to see things as they really are.
Stated in more general terms, our aim must be to rise above all kinds
of provincialism and personal prejudice, and to overcome our natural
proneness to rest content in our own particular point of view. Bacon
quotes with approval the words of Heraclitus: "Men look for sciences
in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world."
We must strive to escape from our own lesser world, and to make
ourselves citizens of the greater, common world. For this we need the
widest and most generous culture--the culture that is to be found in
books, in travel, in intercourse with men of all classes and every
shade of opinion. Left to ourselves we only too sedulously cultivate
our own insularity; we mingle simply with the people who agree with
us, belong to our own caste, and share our own prejudices; we read
only the papers of our own party, the literature of our own sect; we
allow our own special interests in life to absorb our energies, color
all our thoughts, and narrow our horizon. In this way the Phantoms of
the Cave secure daily and yearly more despotic sway over our minds.
Self-detachment, disinterestedness, the power of provisional sympathy
with alien modes of thought and feeling, must be our ideal. "Let every
student of Nature," says Bacon, "take this as a rule, that whatever
his mind seizes and dwells on with particular satisfaction is to be
held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in
dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear."
A hard saying, truly, yet one that must be laid well to heart.

While the Idols of the Tribe, then, are common human frailties in
thought, and the Idols of the Cave the perturbations resulting from
individual idiosyncrasies, there are other Idols "formed by the
intercourse and association of men with each other," which Bacon calls
"Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of
men there." By reason of its manifold and necessary imperfections--its
looseness, variability, ambiguity, and inadequacy--the language we are
forced to employ for the embodiment and interchange of ideas plays
ceaseless havoc with our thought, not only introducing confusion and
misconception into discussion, but often, "like the arrows from a
Tartar bow," reacting seriously upon our minds. A large part of the
vocabulary to which we must perforce have recourse, even when dealing
with the most abstruse and delicate subjects, is made up of words
taken over from vulgar usage and pressed into higher service; they
carry with them long trains of vague connotations and suggestions; the
superstitions of the past are often imbedded in them; no one can ever
be absolutely certain of their intellectual values. While, therefore,
they may do well enough for the rough needs of daily life, they prove
sadly defective when required for careful and exact reasoning. And
even with that small and comparatively insignificant portion of our
language which is not inherited from popular use, but fabricated by
philosophers themselves, the case is not much better. Every word, no
matter how cautiously employed, inevitably takes something of the tone
and color of the particular mind through which it passes, and when put
into circulation fluctuates in significance, meaning now a little
more and now a little less.[25] What wonder, then, that "the high and
formal discussions of learned men" have so often begun and ended in
pure logomachy, and that in discussions which are neither high nor
formal and in which the disputants talk hotly and carelessly the
random bandying of words is so apt to terminate in nothing beyond the
darkening of counsel and the confusion of thought?

     [Footnote 25: The need of a language of rigid mathematical
     precision for the purposes of philosophic thought and discussion
     has long been the subject of remark. Hence Bishop Wilkins's Essay
     toward a real character and a philosophic language (1668), and
     the earlier Ars Signorum of George Dalgarno--boldly presented by
     its inventor as a "remedy for the confusion of tongues, as far as
     this evil is reparable by art." We may give these ingenious
     authors full credit for the excellent intentions with which they
     set out on impossible undertakings. A philosophic language may
     perhaps be attained in the millennium, but then probably it will
     be no longer needed. Meanwhile readers interested in the history
     of the mad scheme called Volapük may find some curious matter in
     these rare works.]

Bacon notes two ways particularly in which words impose on the
understanding--they are employed sometimes "for fantastic suppositions
... to which nothing in reality corresponds," and sometimes for actual
entities, which, however, they do not sharply, correctly, and
completely describe. The eighteenth century speculated at length on a
state of Nature and the social contract, unaware that it was deluding
itself with unrealities, and we have not yet done with such
abstractions as the Rights of Man, Nature (personified), Laws of
Nature (conceived as analogous to human laws), and the Vital
Principle. The more common and serious danger of language, however,
lies in the employment of words not clearly or firmly grasped by the
speaker or writer--words which, in all probability, he has often heard
and used, and which he therefore imagines to represent ideas to him,
but which, closely analyzed, will be found to cover paucity of
knowledge or ambiguity of thought. Cause, effect, matter, mind, force,
essence, creation, occur at once as examples. Few among those who so
glibly rattle them off the tongue have ever taken the trouble to
inquire what they actually mean to them, or whether, indeed, they can
translate them into thought at all.

Among the Idols of the Market Place we must also class the evils
arising from the tendency of words to acquire, through usage and
association, a reach and emotional value not inherent in their
original meanings. This is what Oliver Wendell Holmes happily
described as the process of polarization. "When a given symbol which
represents a thought," said the Professor at the Breakfast Table, "has
lain for a certain length of time in the mind it undergoes a change
like that which rest in a certain position gives to iron. It becomes
magnetic in its relations--it is traversed by strange forces which
did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it
represents, is _polarized_." The larger part of our religious and no
small portion of our political vocabulary consist of such polarized
words--words which, on account of their acquired magnetism, unduly
attract and influence the mind. We can never hope to think calmly and
clearly while the very symbols of our thoughts thus possess a kind of
thaumaturgic power over us, which in turn readily transfers itself to
our ideas.

If, then, "words plainly force and overrule the understanding and
throw all into confusion and lead men away into numberless empty
controversies and idle fancies," it behooves us to watch closely the
interrelations of language and thought. To put it in the vernacular,
we must at all times make sure that we know what we are talking about
and say what we mean. To this end the study of language itself is
useful, but the habits of precise thought and expression will never be
acquired by linguistic exercise alone. To use no word without a
distinct idea of what it means to us as we speak or write it; to
check, when necessary, the process of thought by constant redefinition
of terms; to depolarize all language that has become, or threatens to
become, magnetic, thus translating familiar ideas into "new, clean,
unmagnetic" phraseology, these may be set down as first among the
rules to which we should tolerate no exception.

We now come to the last group of Idols--those "which have immigrated
into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also
from wrong laws of demonstration." These Bacon calls Idols of the
Theater, "because in my judgment all the received systems are but so
many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an
unreal and scenic fashion." And perhaps this conceit carries further
than Bacon himself intended, for it not only suggests the
unsubstantial character of philosophic speculations, but also reminds
us how, in the world's history, these airy fabrics have succeeded each
other as on a stage, some to be hissed and some applauded, but all
sooner or later to drop out of popular favor and be forgotten.

Dealing with these Idols of the Theater, or of Systems (of which there
are many, "and perhaps will be yet many more"), Bacon takes the
opportunity of criticising, briefly but incisively, the methods and
results of ancient and mediæval philosophers. His classification of
false systems is threefold: The sophistical, in which words and the
finespun subtilties of logic are substituted for "the inner truth of
things"; the empirical, in which elaborate dogmas are built up out of
a few hasty observations and ill-conducted experiments; and the
superstitious, in which philosophy is corrupted by myth and
tradition. Under the first head, Bacon again instances Aristotle, whom
he accuses of "fashioning the world out of categories"; under the
second he glances especially at the alchemists; and under the third he
refers to Pythagoras and Plato. To follow Bacon into these historic
issues does not belong to our present purpose. Suffice it to notice
the continued vitality of these three classes of speculative error.
Bacon's judgment of Aristotle--that "he did not consult experience as
he should have done, in order to the framing of his decisions and
axioms; but, having first determined the question according to his
will, he then resorts to experience, and, bending her into conformity
with his placets, leads her about like a captive in a procession"--is
at least equally applicable to thinkers like Hegel and his followers.
Empiricism has by no means been eliminated from the scientific or
would-be scientific world. And as for the philosophy which is
corrupted by myth and tradition, the countless attempts that are still
made to "reconcile" the facts of science with the data and
prepossessions of theology are enough to prove that, _mutato nomine_,
the methods of Pythagoras and Plato and of those who in Bacon's day
sought "to found a system of natural philosophy on the first chapter
of Genesis, on the book of Job, and other parts of the sacred
writings," are as yet far from obsolete.

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the fact that there is a
close similarity between systematic empiricism and some of the dangers
brought out in connection with the Idols of the Tribe, for in each
case stress must be laid on the tendency to generalize hastily, depend
on scattered and inadequate data, and seek for light in the
"narrowness and darkness" of insufficient knowledge. This matter is
important only as showing how a common weakness may be caught up and
dignified in a philosophic system and rendered more dangerous by the
adventitious weight and influence which it gains thereby. Another
point, not distinctly dealt with by Bacon, calls, however, for special
remark. While the various Idols of the Theater, or of Systems,
exercise their own peculiar and characteristic influences for evil,
they all tend to the debasement of thought by reason of the authority
which they gradually acquire. Associated with great names, promulgated
by schools, officially expounded by disciples and commentators, they
finally settle into a creed which is regarded as having oracular and
dogmatic supremacy. The formula "Thus saith the Master" closes
discussion. Not the fact itself, but what this or that teacher has
said about the fact, comes at last to be the all-important question.
In the condition of mind thus engendered there is no chance for
intellectual freedom, self-reliance, growth. Lewes related an anecdote
of a mediæval student "who, having detected spots in the sun,
communicated his discovery to a worthy priest. 'My son,' replied the
priest, 'I have read Aristotle many times, and I assure you that there
is nothing of the kind mentioned by him. Go rest in peace, and be
certain that the spots which you have seen are in your eyes, and not
in the sun.'"[26] Such an incident forms an admirable commentary on
the saying of the witty Fontenelle that Aristotle had never made a
true philosopher, but he had spoiled a great many. The position
assumed is simple enough: Aristotle _must_ be right, therefore
whatever does not agree with the doctrines of the Stagirite must be
wrong. Are your facts against him, then revise your facts. Come what
may of it, you must quadrate knowledge with accepted system. Here is
the theological method in a nutshell. And the theological method has
only too often been the method also of the established philosophic
schools.

     [Footnote 26: History of Philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 95, 96.]

In our own relations with these Idols of the Theater the first and
last thing to remember is that all systems are necessarily partial and
provisional. "They have their day and cease to be," and at the best
they only mark a gradual progress toward the truth. There can be no
finality, no closing word authoritatively uttered. Our attitude toward
the systems of the past and the present, toward long-accepted
traditions, and dogmatically enunciated conclusions, must be an
attitude of firm and steady--of respectful, it may be, but still firm
and steady--independence. We must resist the tendency to passive
acquiescence, and endeavor to combine with generous hospitality to all
ideas the habit of not accepting anything merely because it is stated
_ex cathedra_, or is backed by an influential name, or can "plead a
course of long observance for its use." Perhaps to wean ourselves from
this particular form of idolatry there is nothing so helpful as a wide
and constant study of the history of thought. The pathway of
intellectual development is strewn with outgrown dogmas and exploded
systems. How fatuous, then, to accept, whole and untested, the
doctrine of any master, new or old, believing that his word will give
us complete and undiluted truth!

       *       *       *       *       *

So much, then, we may say with Bacon "concerning the several classes
of Idols and their equipage, all of which must be renounced and put
away with a fixed and solemn determination, and the understanding
thoroughly freed and cleansed; the entrance into the kingdom of man,
founded on the sciences, being not much other than the kingdom of
heaven, whereinto none may enter except as a little child." It may
perhaps be urged that the result of such a survey as we have taken of
the obstacles to clear thought is to leave the mind dazed and
discouraged, partly because the suggestions made for the conquest of
these obstacles, though easily formulated in theory are difficult and
sometimes impossible in practice, and partly because the general if
not expressed tendency of our analysis is (it may be said) in the
direction of that Pyrrhonic skepticism which "doomed men to perpetual
darkness." To the former objection I have only to reply that it is one
to which all discussions of the principles and problems of conduct are
necessarily open. "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes'
palaces."[27] None the less, to state as lucidly as we can what were
good to do under certain circumstances is properly regarded as part of
the business of ethics. The other point is touched upon by Bacon
himself in words which it would be impertinent to seek to better: "It
will also be thought that by forbidding men to pronounce and set down
principles as established until they have duly arrived through the
intermediate steps at the highest generalities, I maintain a sort of
suspension of the judgment, and bring it to what the Greeks call
_acatalepsia_--a denial of the capacity of the mind to comprehend
truth. But in reality that which I meditate and propound is not
_acatalepsia_, but _eucatalepsia_; not denial of the capacity to
understand, but provision for understanding truly; for I do not take
away authority from the senses, but supply them with helps; I do not
slight the understanding, but govern it. And better surely it is that
we should know all that we need to know, and yet think our knowledge
imperfect, than that we should think our knowledge perfect, and yet
not know anything we need to know."

     [Footnote 27: This quotation is _not_ from Bacon.]




MATHEMATICS FOR CHILDREN.

BY M. LAISANT.


Except with persons having specially favorable surroundings, I believe
that the vast majority of parents have a feeling of dread at the
thought of putting their children to the study of mathematics. They
know that the child must learn something about it in order to pass his
examinations; but with this knowledge goes an apprehension of loading
his mind with those ideas which are so complicated and hard to
acquire, and we put off the dreaded moment of setting him to work as
late as possible.

While I believe it is wise to spare the child all useless overwork, I
am persuaded also that the best way of sparing him is not to shrink
from initiating him into hard work, if that can be done in a rational
way.

I regard all the sciences as, at least to a certain extent,
experimental, and, notwithstanding the views of those who would regard
the mathematical sciences as a series of operations in pure logic,
resting upon strictly ideal conceptions, I believe that we may affirm
that there does not exist a mathematical idea that can enter our brain
without the previous contemplation of the outer world and the facts it
offers to our observation. This affirmation, the discussion of which
now would carry us too far, may help to a clear idea of the way we
should try to convey the first mathematical ideas to the mind of the
child.

The outer world is the first thing the child should be taught to
regard and concerning which he should be given as much information as
possible--information which he will have no trouble in storing, we may
well believe, and from this outer world the first mathematical notions
should be borrowed; to these should succeed later an abstraction,
which is less complicated than it seems.

Our primary teaching of arithmetic now follows in the tracks of that
of grammar, as we might as well say that the teaching of grammar
follows in the tracks of that of arithmetic. That is, in either case
we teach the child a number of abstract and confusing definitions
which he can not comprehend, imposing on him a series of rules to
follow under the pretext of giving him a good practical direction, and
we force him to learn and memorize these rules whether they are good
for anything or not.

When the child has grown older he is given two or three short lessons
a week in science, nine tenths of which, with his fleeting memory, he
forgets before the next week's lessons come on. He can not relish
anything that is taught him in that way, and it would be vastly better
to give him no scientific ideas at all than to scatter them around in
such a way, for all teachers agree that a fresh pupil is more easily
dealt with and can be taught more satisfactorily and thoroughly than
one who has been mistaught.

When the student has passed through it all and has established himself
in life he is apt to look back upon his experiences under such
teachings in no very amiable mood, and to regard such matters in the
light of barriers that were set up to prevent his getting his diploma
with too little work; and even if his profession is one that calls for
applications of mathematics he prepares himself with sets of formulas
that enable him to dispense with the imperfect instruction he has
received.

When we think of giving a child a mathematical education we are apt to
ask whether he has special aptitudes fitting him to receive it. Do we
ask any such questions when we talk of teaching him to read and write?
Oh, no! we all acknowledge that reading and writing are useful,
practical, and indispensable arts, which every human being not infirm
or defective should learn. Now, elementary mathematics, which
represents a tolerably extended equipment, is no less useful and
indispensable than the knowledge of reading and writing, and I assert
further, what may seem paradoxical to many, that it can be assimilated
with much less fatigue than the earliest knowledge of reading and
writing, provided always that instead of proceeding in the usual way
and giving lessons bristling with formulas and rules, appealing to the
memory, imposing fatigue, and producing nothing but disgust, we adopt
the philosophical method of conveying ideas to the child by means of
objects within reach of his senses. The teaching should be wholly
concrete and applied only to the contemplation of external objects and
their interpretation, and the instruction should be given continually,
especially during the primary period, under the form of play. Nothing
is easier than this, then, in arithmetic; for instance, to use dice,
beans, balls, sticks, etc., and by their aid give the child ideas of
numbers.

Do we do anything of this kind? When I was taught to read and write I
knew how to write the figure 2 before I had any idea of the number
two. Nothing is more radically contrary to the normal working of the
brain than this. The notion of numbers--up to 10, for example--should
be given to the child before accustoming him to trace a single
character. That is the only way of impressing the idea of number
independently of the symbol or the formula which is only too ready to
take the place in the mind of the object represented by it.

When a child has learned to count through the use of such objects as I
have mentioned he may be taught what is called the addition table.
This table can be learned by heart easily enough, but when we reach
the multiplication table we come upon one of the tortures of
childhood. Would it not be simpler and easier to make the children
construct these tables, instead of making them learn them?

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

Let us first take the addition table, and suppose that we trace ten
columns on suitably ruled paper, at the top of which we write the
first ten numbers, for example, and then write them again at the
beginning of a certain number of horizontal lines (Fig. 1). Let us
suppose, too, that we have a box divided into compartments arranged
like the squares in our table, into which we put heaps of balls,
beans, or dice corresponding to the numbers indicated in the table.
The child will take, for example, two balls from one compartment and
three from another, will put them together and place his five balls in
the case corresponding with the point where the lines of two and three
will meet, and will thus gradually accustom himself to the idea that
two added to three are equal to five, four and two to six, etc.,
before he knows how to write the corresponding figures. As soon as he
has learned how to write them he can himself make the table with
figures (Fig. 2), showing that one and one make two, one and three
four, etc.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

This will be all the easier for him because he will only have to write
the figures in their order in the lines and the columns. This
furnishes an excellent writing exercise after the children have begun
to write figures, and affords besides a certain method of teaching
them the addition table up to nineteen at least. I insist that all
this can be done even before the child knows how to write the figures
by means of an arrangement like a printer's case, and that it will be
as a play, rather than a study, to the child. Hardly anything more
will be required than to bring the toy to the child's notice and leave
him to himself after he has been started with it, and he will get
along the faster the less he is bothered.

A similar process may be adopted with the multiplication table. With a
case like the other, it is only necessary to tell the child that if he
wants to know how much are three times four he has only to make heaps
of four things each, take three of them and put them in the box at the
intersection of the line three and the column four. If he can write
the figures he will write 12, instead of gathering up the twelve
objects that represent the product. When he has played at this for
some time he may become acquainted with all the products up to ten
times ten or beyond without having to make any abnormal effort of
memory.

The idea of numeration, which is usually put off till a later period,
should also be given at the beginning. Children soon understand the
decimal numeration and learn to write 10 for ten, and other numbers
composed of one of the nine ciphers and zero. But the fact which,
however, though quite essential to know, receives very little
attention is that there is nothing particular about this number ten,
and that systems of numeration can be devised resting on any basis
that may be taken; that the principle of every system of numeration
consists in taking a certain number of units and grouping them. Take,
for example, a system having five as its basis. All the numbers of
such a system can be represented with the figures 1, 2, 3, and 4, the
symbol 10 standing in this case for five. To construct a number we
have only to group the units by fives and observe the result.

To learn decimal numeration by this process we put tens of objects
into little boxes, tens of little boxes into larger ones, and so on.
The child can in this way acquire an exact idea of the units of
successive order in any system that may be desired.

This method of teaching was developed in a remarkable way about
thirty years ago by Jean Macé in a little book entitled
_L'Arithmétique du Grand-Papa_--Grandpa's Arithmetic--which made some
impression when it appeared, but has been substantially forgotten.

In this method I attach much importance to giving these exercises a
form of play. I believe that nothing in primary instruction should
savor of obligation and fatigue. It would, on the other hand, be
better to try to induce the child to desire himself to go on, and it
would always be well to try to give him the illusion, in all stages of
instruction, that he is the discoverer of the facts we wish to impress
upon his mind.

We need not stop with arithmetic, but may go on and give the child a
little geometry. To accomplish this we should give him the idea of
geometrical objects, and to some extent their nomenclature, and this
can be done without causing fatigue. To accomplish this he should be
taught to draw, however rudely. He can begin with straight lines, of
which he soon learns the properties; then, when he has drawn several
lines side by side, he will learn that they are parallels and will
never meet. He will learn, too, after he has drawn three intersecting
lines, that the figure within them is called a triangle, that the
figure formed by two parallel lines meeting two other parallels is a
parallelogram, and he can go on to make and learn about polygons, etc
(Fig. 3). All this nomenclature will get into his head without giving
abstract definitions, but in such a way that when he sees a
geometrical object of definite form he will recognize it at once and
give it the name that belongs to it.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

In the practical matter of the measurement of areas we convey
immediate comprehension as to many figures without special effort,
provided we do not present the demonstration in professional style,
limiting ourselves to making the pupil comprehend or feel things so
clearly and definitely that it shall be equivalent, as to the
satisfaction of his mind, to an absolutely rigorous demonstration. At
any rate, he will be better provided for the future than by rigorous
demonstrations that he does not understand. Taking the parallelogram,
for example, let us suppose a figure made like Fig. 4, and we saw
through it along the lines _A A'_ and _B C_. It does not need a very
great effort of attention to recognize, experimentally if need be,
that the two triangles _A A' D_ and _B B' C_ may be placed one upon
the other and are identical. If, from the figure thus formed, we take
away the right-hand triangle the parallelogram will remain; if we take
away the other triangle a rectangle will be left, or a peculiar
parallelogram, of which also we give the idea to the child as a figure
in which the angles are formed by straight lines perpendicular to one
another. Here, then, the child gains the notion of the equivalence of
a parallelogram and a rectangle of the same base and height; and this
notion, obtained by cutting up a piece of board or pasteboard, he will
carry so seriously and firmly in his head that he will never lose it.
By cutting the same parallelogram in two, along a diagonal _A C_, it
may be easily shown that the two triangles can be placed exactly one
upon the other, and that, consequently, they have equal areas. These
lessons constitute a series of classical theorems in geometry which
the child can try with his fingers and learn without even giving them
the form of theorems. I might show the same as to the area of the
trapeze and with many other theorems, but my purpose is only to
present as many examples as will make my idea understood, without
going into details.

[Illustration: FIG. 4]

Yet I can not leave this subject without showing how we can make a
very child understand some of the geometrical theorems that have
acquired a bad reputation in the world of candidates for degrees,
including even such as the _pons asinorum_ of Pythagoras; the
demonstration, that is, that if we construct the triangles _B_ and _C_
on the sides of a right-angled triangle, their sum will be equal to
the square _A_ constructed on the hypotenuse. The usual demonstration
of this theorem is not very complicated, but there is something
tiresome, artificial, and hard in it. The demonstration I propose is
almost intuitive, and the reasoning of it is both simple and rigorous.

Suppose we take two equal squares, and, making equal lengths on the
four sides of one of them, join the points so obtained as indicated in
the first of the two figures (Figs. 5 and 6) so as to form four
right-angled triangles, and then place four other squares in the
corners of the original square. These right-angled triangles are of
such sort that the sum of their sides is equal to the side of the
square. This can be demonstrated, but it strikes the eyes without
that. We see, too, that the interior figure is a square, and that it
is constructed on the hypotenuse of the triangles in question.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

[Illustration: FIG. 6.]

It is easy to see in the other figure, which is formed after the same
measures as its alternate, that the triangles 1, 2, 3, 4 can be
arranged so as to occupy the positions 1', 2', 3', 4' in such way as
to leave in the main square two smaller squares constructed on the
sides of one of the right-angled triangles. It follows that the square
A is equivalent to the sum of the squares _B_ and _C_. The theorem
thus becomes a kind of intuition, a thing evidently indisputable.

It is a curious fact that the origin of this demonstration is lost in
the obscurity of the past; it probably goes back to thirty or forty
centuries, at least, before the Christian era, and apparently to
India. Bhascara, in his _Bija Ganita_, after tracing a figure, a
simple combination of these two, says, "There you see it." I remark
that such a demonstration, even if dressed with geometrical terms,
assuming a character that conforms to existing ways of teaching, would
be vastly superior, even in secondary schools, to the demonstrations
of Legendre and others, which are much harder. The return to what was
done very long ago in this case constitutes a great advance upon what
we are doing now.

Having given our little one an initiation into the mysteries of
arithmetic and geometry, we introduce him to algebra, a branch which
passes in the majority of families as the hardest, most complicated,
and most abstruse that can be imagined. I do not pretend that
algebraic theories enter easily into the child's delicate brain;
rather the contrary; but I declare that some ideas in algebra can be
made comprehensible to children without fatigue. We can, for instance,
make them understand, in the way of amusement and without great
difficulty, the formula that gives the sum of the first numbers. We
take a sheet of paper ruled in squares and shade the first square of
the first line, then the first two squares of the second line, the
first three of the third, etc. (Fig. 7). The whole number of squares
shaded in this manner represents visibly the sum of the first whole
numbers up to any one we may choose--to 7 in the figure. If we give
this paper to the child and ask him to return it, he will very easily
perceive that the figures formed by the white and the black squares
are alike. The number sought for will therefore be equal to half the
sum of the squares--that is, in the present example

      1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = (7 X 8) : 2 = 28,

we can prove by reasoning that if n be taken to represent the last
number we shall have for the sum

          n (n + 1)
      S = ----------
              2

[Illustration: FIG. 7.]

I introduce this formula to define my thought better, but one can make
the child perceive the numbers that are wanted without writing down a
single character.

Somewhat similar is the method of finding the sum of the odd numbers.
For this it will be enough to take our square-ruled sheet of paper and
shade the first square on the left, then the three squares around it,
which will form with it a square (1 + 3 = 4); continuing thus we
obtain, as the figure readily shows (Fig. 8), a square formed of a
series of shaded zones, representing the series of odd numbers, the
examination of which will illustrate the property to the child.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.]

In another direction it is possible to give the child algebraic ideas
much beyond anything we would imagine. Suppose, for example, we want
to give him a conception of addition. He easily realizes that
objects--material bars, for example--can be selected so as to
represent numbers by their length. He can be readily made to
understand that if he has one bar three and another five inches long
he can obtain the sum of these lengths, in what we might call a
material way, by placing them lengthwise, one at the end of the
other--an essentially practical notion and easily carried into effect.
If we take a line and mark a starting point on it, calling it zero,
then measure off segments on it representing the bars we have been
talking about one after another, we can get the sum represented by the
length of the two segments. If, instead of measuring three plus five
inches I measure three plus two I reach another point. If, instead of
adding two and three, I wish to take one of the bars or numbers away
(3-2), or subtract, the operation will be easily performed by
measuring the two in the opposite direction. The difference will be
represented by the length that is left. If we try to form the quantity
3-5 in arithmetic we can not do it; but in proceeding in this method
and measuring back on the bar we get to a point back of the original
starting point which represents this difference--say two inches behind
where we began. Here we have in the germ the whole theory of negative
quantities, concerning which thousands and thousands of pages have
been written. Yet we find that by carefully graduating our lines we
can make it intuitive and accessible to a child who has learned that
the common operations of addition and subtraction can be represented
with material objects. The generation of negative and positive
quantities follows quite naturally.

These examples, I think, are sufficient to show that we might
considerably enlarge the field of the investigations within reach of
the child. For this purpose a small amount of very simple material,
which we can vary as we please, is needful. The first element of this
material is paper ruled in squares, a wonderful instrument, which
everybody dealing with mathematics or with science generally should
have. It is of special pedagogic use in giving children their first
ideas of form, size, and position, without which their early
instruction is only a delusion. Add to this paper dice, buttons,
beans, and match-sticks--things always easy to get--and we have all
the material we need.

There is no amusement, however puerile it may appear, not even a play
of words, that can not be utilized in teaching of this sort. For
instance, when your child has learned his addition table, if you put
him to a demonstration, assuming to prove to his comrades that six and
three make eight, his curiosity will be excited, and you may be very
sure that, once his attention has been given to this amusement, he
will never forget that six and three make nine and not eight. To make
the demonstration, we have only to group the nine match-sticks as in
the figure (Fig. 9) below. We might demonstrate in a like way that
half of twelve is seven by cutting the Roman numeral XII in two,
leaving the upper part visible. Such pleasantries have a pedagogical
value, because the paradox is precisely of a kind to attract the
attention of the child, and he will always afterward be sure not to
fall into the trap.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.]

The side of this kind of instruction on which I insist most is that,
given under the form of play, it is free from every sort of dogmatic
character. No truth should be imposed on the child; on the contrary,
he should be allowed to discover it as a fruit of his own activity. He
will be thoroughly impressed with the truths which he has thus found
out himself. They had better be few at first; the important thing is
for him to know them completely.

The instruction should also be essentially objective and free from all
abstraction. The absence of abstraction should, however, be rather
apparent than real. Abstraction is indeed one of the elements that
contribute most to give mathematical science a fearful air to
outsiders, and yet it is most usually a simplification of
matters--quite the contrary of what is generally supposed. It is, in
fact, such a simplification and so necessary that we all make it as if
by instinct, and the child makes it, not in mathematics only, but in
all the considerations of life.

Thus, when I want to give the child his first idea of the number two I
put two beans in his hand and let him contemplate them. He gets a
perfect notion of the collection two. Yet, if you look at them a
little closer and he himself looks at them closer he will find that
the two beans, whatever else they may be, are not identical, for there
exist no two objects in Nature that are not different. So when the
child introduces this idea of collection into his mind in a wholly
instinctive way, by identifying the things he sees, he begins to
perform abstraction. This abstraction delivers him from all the
complications and all the annoyances that come to him from the
contemplation of real objects. By the philosophic process of
abstraction it has been possible to construct all the sciences, and
especially the science of magnitudes.

The ideas I have been setting forth in outline are not mine, and are,
unfortunately, not recent. They may be found in somewhat different
form, but substantially the same in principle, in _l'Essai d'education
nationale_, published by Le Chalotais in 1763. The paper furnishes a
programme of studies and education which, if put into execution,
would, I believe, constitute a long advance over the present
conditions. At a later period Condorcet was occupied with the subject.
At the close of the nineteenth century the name of Jean Macé, which I
have already cited, should be held among those of men who have tried
to infuse sound and just views concerning the pedagogy of mathematics.
Another man, from whom I have borrowed a considerable part of the
examples I have cited, is Edouard Lucas, who, in his _Récréations
mathématiques_, of which one volume was published during his lifetime
and two others after his death, and in his lectures before the
Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, strove to develop views concerning
the primary mathematical education of childhood--views which
did not differ, except in form, from those which I have
presented.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue
Scientifique._




PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIOLOGY.

BY F. SPENCER BALDWIN.


The present condition of sociological thought is confused, if not
chaotic. It needs only a brief examination of the writings of
professed sociologists to discover the want of agreement among them.
There is no consensus of opinion regarding either the scope and method
of the new science, so called, or its fundamental laws and principles.
The name sociology stands for no definite body of systematic
knowledge. It is applied to an inchoate mass of speculation, often
vague and conflicting, which represents the thought of various
thinkers about social phenomena.

A few years ago a student of sociology in Chicago wrote to "all the
teachers of sociology in the United States, and to others known to be
deeply interested in the subject and entitled to express an opinion,"
asking them to answer a number of pertinent questions regarding the
nature and function of the "science."[28] About forty replied; of
these, three discreetly pleaded knowledge insufficient to entitle them
to an opinion. Comparison of the views expressed in the remaining
twenty-seven replies led the investigator to conclude that the science
is in a more or less undefined and tentative position. So little
progress toward unanimity of opinion has been made by sociologists
since the date of this census that its results may be taken as typical
of present conditions. Among the questions asked were these: "Do you
think the study is entitled to be called a science?" "In what
department does it belong?" "What is its relation to political
economy, history, political science, ethics?"

     [Footnote 28: Present Condition of Sociology in the United
     States. Ira W. Howarth. Annals of the American Academy,
     September, 1894.]

The question whether sociology is entitled to be called a science is
answered by "fully three fourths" of the correspondents in the
affirmative. Some hedge, by affirming that it is "becoming a science."
Prof. John Bascom, of Williams College, appears to have entered into
the humor of the situation; he writes, "It will do no harm to call it
a science if we do not abate our effort to make it one."

The opinions regarding the department in which sociology belongs are
entertainingly diverse. Prof. John Dewey, of the University of
Chicago, is frank enough to admit that he doesn't "feel at all sure"
where it belongs. "It would seem well," he adds, "to have it a
separate branch, in order to make sure that it received proper
attention." This feeling of uneasiness lest the claims of sociology be
slightingly treated appears to be general among the representatives of
the new study. Most of the teachers of sociology are of the opinion
that it ought to form a department by itself. Some would place it in
the department of the social sciences, along with politics, economics,
jurisprudence, and the like. Others would change the order, making all
the social sciences divisions of sociology. On the other hand,
Professor Giddings, of Columbia University, says: "General sociology
can not be divided into special social sciences, such as economics,
law, and politics, without losing its distinctive character. It should
be looked on as the foundation or groundwork of these sciences, rather
than as their sum or as their collective name." Scattering replies
place it under psychology, moral and political science, political
economy, and anthropology. One teacher thinks it belongs under the
"humanities"; while two say it has no natural boundaries, and is
therefore not included in any one department. Altogether the
impression left by the replies to this question is that the teachers
of sociology are quite at a loss to know where to put the study in the
university curriculum. They appear to realize confusedly that they
have on their hands a pedagogical white elephant, which defies
classification.

The opinions concerning the relation of sociology to political
economy, history, political science, and ethics are almost delphic in
their vagueness. Says one, "History is its material, ethics its guide,
political economy its interpreter, and a rational system of political
science its proposed end." Says another, "Sociology is political
economy in practice, history in the making, political science as an
art, and ethics applied." After worrying over these oracular epigrams
it is refreshing to be told by another teacher that "the relation of
sociology to political economy, history, etc., is _close_."

It would be superfluous to cite further illustrations of the unsettled
state of sociological thought. The quotations that have been made show
conclusively that the accredited representatives of the new "science"
are at loggerheads upon fundamental questions. This fact the
sociologists themselves readily admit. The author of a recent treatise
on sociology speaks of the "confusion and perplexity among its
teachers, and declares that its forms are as yet varied, and perhaps
would suggest a series of pseudo-sciences instead if one genuine
science."[29] Even Professor Giddings confesses in the preface of his
Principles of Sociology that "much sociology is as yet nothing more
than careful and suggestive guesswork." Professor Small, of the
University of Chicago, in his Introduction to the Study of Society,
speaks of sociology as an "inchoate science," and remarks that "only
ignoramuses, incompetent to employ the method of any science, could
claim for sociology the merit of a completed system."

     [Footnote 29: Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology, p. 1.]

Sociologists themselves, then, confess that differences of opinion
exist among them. Let us look more carefully at the nature of these
differences. They relate to the scope, the method, the object, and the
ground-principles of the "science."

The province of sociology is defined by some very broadly, to include
the whole range of the phenomena of human association. By others the
scope of the study is limited to a narrower range of social phenomena.
Among the latter, again, there are some who would identify sociology
with the study of social origins, or the genesis of social
institutions. Others would restrict sociology to a study of the
history and function of the family. Still others understand by
sociology merely the pathology of society, devoting themselves to the
diagnosis of social diseases, as crime and pauperism.

Professor Giddings has called attention to the natural tendency on the
part of each social philosopher to create a sociology in the image of
his professional specialty. "To the economist," he says, "sociology is
a penumbral political economy--a scientific outer darkness--for
inconvenient problems and obstinate facts that will not live peaceably
with well-bred formulas. To the alienist and the criminal
anthropologist it is a social pathology. To the ethnologist it is that
subdivision of his own science which supplements the account of racial
traits by a description of social organization. To the comparative
mythologist and the student of folklore it is an account of the
evolution of culture."

The narrower conceptions of sociology, however, have been discarded
by the best-known sociologists of the present time. There is a general
tendency to adopt a broad definition of the province of sociology, to
include in the field of investigation all the phenomena of social
structure and growth.

But what is the relation of this general social science to the special
social sciences--that is, the sciences dealing with special groups of
social phenomena, as economics, politics, and jurisprudence? Is
sociology anything more than a convenient collective name for the sum
of all these? Touching this point opinions differ.[30]

     [Footnote 30: See for the following: H. H. Powers. Terminology
     and the Sociological Conference, in Annals of the American
     Academy, March, 1895.]

At least three different conceptions of the relation of sociology to
the various special social sciences may be distinguished. Sociology
has been defined as (1) the "inclusive," as (2) the "co-ordinating,"
and as (3) the "fundamental" science of society. 1. The first
conception is that of Spencer and De Greef. Spencer defines sociology
as "the science of society," and defends his adoption of the term on
the ground that "no other name sufficiently comprehensive existed."
This implies that he conceives of sociology as an inclusive science.
De Greef, the Belgian sociologist, makes the science all
comprehensive; his scheme of classification "includes everything, from
the husbanding of corn and wine to electioneering contests in the
Institute of France."[31] 2. The second conception is that of
Professor Small, of Chicago. He defines sociology as "the synthesis of
all the particular social sciences." It does not include, it
coordinates these sciences. It concerns itself with the relations
which the various special groups of social phenomena hold to each
other and to society as a whole, leaving to special social sciences
the study of each group in minute detail. The conclusions won by these
special sciences are taken by sociology and worked over into a body of
correlated social principles. Sociology is, therefore, subsequent to
the particular social sciences and dependent upon them. 3. The third
conception is that of Professor Giddings, of Columbia University. He
defines sociology as "the science of social elements and first
principles." It is "not merely the sum of the social sciences; it is
rather their common basis." It undertakes to analyze the general
characteristics of social phenomena and to formulate the laws of
social organization and evolution. Sociology furnishes a body of
fundamental principles which make a common basis for the special
social sciences. The latter rest on sociology, which is the antecedent
and fundamental social science.

     [Footnote 31: See Giddings. Principles of Sociology, p. 29.]

Now a little reflection will show that these three conceptions of
sociology do not conflict, but harmonize. There is no real opposition
between them, rightly understood. Each emphasizes correctly one phase
of the relation between sociology and the special social sciences.
Sociology is both an inclusive, a co-ordinating, and a fundamental
science. In the first place, sociology is a general science, having as
its subject-matter social phenomena of all kinds. Therefore it
comprehends all the sciences dealing with special kinds of social
phenomena. These particular sciences are, in the nature of things,
closely related to each other. They must possess in common certain
laws and principles. These it is the task of sociology to formulate;
for as the inclusive social science it should exhibit the mutual
relations of the included social sciences. Thus sociology becomes a
co-ordinating as well as an inclusive science. Furthermore, the laws
and principles of the special social sciences, which sociology, as the
co-ordinating science, undertakes to formulate, are necessarily
fundamental. And in this respect sociology may be regarded as the
fundamental social science. The three rival conceptions of sociology
must be combined in the correct view. As Mr. Arthur Fairbanks remarks
in his admirable Introduction to Sociology: "Sociology may embrace all
the sciences dealing with society, but it does not destroy the partial
independence of any of these branches. It includes economics,
politics, and the like, but, instead of supplanting them, its sphere
is to lay the foundation of these particular social sciences."

It appears, then, that the disagreement among the leaders of
sociological thought regarding the scope of their "science" is more
apparent than real. The same may be said regarding the contention
about method. The debate here is over the question whether deduction
or induction is the proper method of investigation in the social
sciences. One party holds that the only legitimate method is the
abstract-deductive, the investigator arriving at his conclusions by
reasoning _a priori_ from certain fundamental assumptions regarding
the nature of man in general. What these thinkers aim at is a
subjective interpretation of social phenomena in terms of human
motives, principles, and ideals. Another party maintains that the only
fruitful method is the concrete-inductive, the investigator reaching
his conclusions by observing the facts of social life and reasoning
from them to general laws and principles. The aim here is to give an
objective interpretation of society in terms of race, environment, and
historical conditions. The controversy has been especially violent
among the economists. The English classical school of political
economy made exclusive use of the deductive method; economic laws were
deduced from the fundamental postulate of human selfishness. The
German historical school employed the inductive method; economic laws
were inferred from a study of the concrete facts of industrial life.

This academic discussion over method is tiresome and futile. Neither
method will ever drive the other from the field. The exclusive
employment of either deduction or induction will yield only half
results in the social sciences. The two methods effectually supplement
each other and should be used together. They are not rivals, but
allies. Induction without deduction is blind; deduction without
induction untrustworthy. This fact is recognized by recent writers on
sociology. So Professor Giddings remarks that "history without
deductive illumination is chaos. Deduction without verification is
undoubtedly the very light that never was on sea or land!"

The principal method in the social sciences must undoubtedly be the
inductive. The nature of the subject-matter determines this. The
social sciences deal with the facts of social structure and growth.
The task of the investigator is the explanation of these facts. He has
first, then, to observe and compare the facts. But his observation
must be guided and his conclusions verified by deduction.

Concerning the purpose of sociology, as touching its method, there are
two conflicting opinions. But here again the seeming disagreement is
not absolutely irreconcilable. It is held by some that the purpose of
the sociologist should be merely the acquisition of knowledge, without
further thought of the practical use to which the results of his
researches might be put. He should aim to discover and formulate the
laws of social forces, not to propose ideals of social reform.
Sociology is a pure science and has no utilitarian end. By others it
is held that the purpose of the sociologist should be the regulation
of social forces in the interest of human progress. The object of
sociology is the betterment of society, the acceleration of social
evolution. It is an applied science and has a practical end.

Both these views are tenable. In fact, sociology, like all sciences,
has a double purpose. The primary purpose is to acquire knowledge; the
secondary purpose is to apply that knowledge to the attainment of
practical ends. This duality of purpose is clearly set forth by Mr.
Lester F. Ward in a recent essay.[32] "Sociology," he says, "has both
a pure and an applied stage." It "should be studied first for the sake
of information relating to the laws of human association and
co-operative action, and finally for the purpose of determining in
what ways and to what extent social phenomena may, with a knowledge of
their laws, be modified and directed toward social ideals."

     [Footnote 32: Lester F. Ward. Purpose of Sociology. American
     Journal of Sociology, November, 1896.]

Modern society is a complex of difficult problems. And this fact
furnishes a background of motive for the studies of the sociologist.
Not even the veriest stickler for pure science can deny the imperative
need of established knowledge of the laws of social activity. The
people perish for lack of wisdom. To enlighten the public mind on
vital social questions and thus to promote an intelligent direction of
social conduct toward rational ends is the high function of sociology.
This practical purpose, however, should be kept always secondary to
the pursuit of knowledge. "The knowledge is the important thing. The
action will then take care of itself."[33] The discussion of the
what-ought-to-be must wait on the investigation of the what-is. The
neglect of this caution has been responsible for much false doctrine
and foolish counsel. Sociologists have allowed their enthusiasm for
ideals to blind the eye and bias the judgment. Panacea hawkers of all
sorts have attempted to prescribe for social diseases, without making
any study of social structure and function. Communistic quackery has
masqueraded as sociological wisdom. The wild-cat sociology of the
present day is a result of the over-addiction to social reform which
besets students of society. It can not be too strongly emphasized that
the primary object of the sociologist is the impartial investigation
of facts. The man who forgets this becomes dangerous. He is liable to
run amuck.

     [Footnote 33: Ward. Ibidem.]

The differences of opinion as to the scope, method, and purpose of
sociology have been found upon examination to be less serious than
they at first sight appeared. But in regard to the fundamental
principles of sociology, the confusion is hopeless. The student will
search in vain in the systematic treatises on sociology for any
definite body of established doctrine which he can accept as the
ground-principles of the science. He finds only an unmanageable mass
of conflicting theories and opinions. Each treatise contains an
exposition of what the author is pleased to label the Principles of
Sociology. But the "principles" are not the same in any two treatises;
and by no process of analysis and synthesis can they be brought into
harmony. They are fundamentally contradictory. It is impossible, I
believe, to discover a single alleged ground-principle of sociology
that has commanded general assent.

Some of the recent writers on sociology have devoted themselves
particularly to the task of establishing one basal principle which may
be applied to the interpretation of all social phenomena. At least
half a dozen claims to the discovery of such a principle have been put
forward. Prof. Ludwig Gumplowicz finds the elementary social fact to
be conflict; Prof. Guillaume De Greef finds it to be contract; M.
Gabriel Tarde contends that the fundamental principle of society is
imitation; Prof. Emile Durkheim argues that it is "the coercion of the
individual mind by modes of action, thought, and feeling external to
itself." Professor Giddings criticises all these explanations of
society, as either too special or too general, and undertakes to
prove that "the original and elementary fact in society is the
consciousness of kind." This is the determining principle to which all
social phenomena are to be referred.[34] But Professor Giddings's
sociological postulate has been promptly rejected by his American
colleagues, Prof. Albion W. Small and Mr. Lester F. Ward. The former
speaks contemptuously of the consciousness of kind as a remote
metaphysical category, and declares that the whole system of sociology
based on the principle is "an impossible combination of
contradictions."[35] This opinion is approved by Ward, who riddles
Giddings's book with criticism, and complains of the author's
inability to handle principles correctly.[36]

     [Footnote 34: See Giddings. Principles of Sociology, chap. i.]

     [Footnote 35: In American Journal of Sociology, September, 1896.]

     [Footnote 36: In Annals of the American Academy, July, 1896.]

It is hardly necessary to penetrate further into this debate over
first principles. The most exhaustive examination of the writings of
the leaders in sociological thought would fail to discover any
fundamental unity of opinion. The so-called principles of the science
are multiform. They represent merely the unsupported conclusions of
individual thinkers. If we except the barest commonplaces, no truths
have been established; no scientific laws have been agreed upon. The
content of the science of sociology, as expounded in treatises bearing
this name, varies with the particular bias of the writer. In fine,
there are systems of sociology galore, but there is hardly a
sociology.

Of the various systems of sociology that have been developed since the
new "science" was first outlined by Auguste Comte, that of Herbert
Spencer is undoubtedly the most coherent and self-consistent. But even
the genius of Mr. Spencer has been unequal to the task of working out
a body of firmly grounded principles which should furnish a basis for
the convergence of opinion on social questions. He has not succeeded
in giving permanent form and content to sociology. His work is
disparagingly criticised by other living sociologists. Small declares
that "Spencer's sociology ends precisely where sociology proper should
begin," and quotes approvingly De Greef's assertion that "Mr. Spencer
not only fails to show that there is a place for sociology, but his
own reasoning proves more than anything else that there is no social
science superior to biology."[37] Ward, while commending the logical
consistency of Mr. Spencer's work, pronounces him "unsystematic,
nonconstructive, and nonprogressive."[38]

     [Footnote 37: See Giddings. Principles of Sociology, chap. i.]

     [Footnote 38: Small and Vincent. Introduction to the Study of
     Society, p. 46].

There is much justice in these criticisms of Mr. Spencer's system. His
sociology is almost entirely descriptive; and his description of
social phenomena has taken the form of an elaborate analogy between
society and the animal organism. The utility of this biological
analogy has rightly been called in question. The particular
resemblances traced by Mr. Spencer between a society and a living body
are these: both grow and increase in size; while they increase in size
they increase in structure; increase in structure is accompanied by
progressive differentiation of functions; and differentiation of
functions leads to mutual interdependence of the parts. Furthermore,
in the case both of a society and of a living body the lives of the
units continue for some time if the life of the aggregate is suddenly
arrested; while if the aggregate is not suddenly destroyed by violence
its life greatly exceeds in duration the lives of its units. Since,
therefore, the permanent relations among the parts of a society are
analogous to the permanent relations among the parts of an organism,
society is to be regarded as an organism.

Now the trouble with this clever analogy is that it breaks down
completely when the comparison is carried beyond a certain point. Mr.
Spencer himself notices some differences between the social body and
the animal body, but declares that they are not of such fundamental
character as to weaken the force of his analogy. One of these
differences, however, can not be so lightly dismissed. If we compare a
high type of animal organism with a high type of society, this
striking unlikeness is discovered. In the former there is but one
center of consciousness; in the latter there are many. "In the one,"
to quote Mr. Spencer's own words, "consciousness is concentrated in a
small part of the aggregate. In the other it is diffused throughout
the aggregate." The animal body has one brain, one center of thought,
feeling, and life; the social body has numberless such centers.

When we go back and compare the course of development in the two cases
the difference noted comes into even greater prominence. The evolution
of animal life is characterized by progressive centralization, the
evolution of social life by progressive decentralization. In the
lowest form of animal, the amoeba, there is no single center of life.
The life is in all the parts; reproduction takes place simply by
division. But with each successive advance above this lowest form
there is developed more and more definitely a single center of
consciousness. One part becomes distinctly differentiated as the sole
seat of life. If that part is destroyed, the organism dies. Thus,
"animal development has meant a concentration of the more important
nervous elements and a merging of their separate activity in the
common activity of a single consciousness."[39]

     [Footnote 39: Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology, p. 44.]

The law of progress is quite the reverse in social development. At a
primitive stage there is a marked subjection of the individual
elements of society to a central authority, whether that of the
patriarch, the tribal head, or the tribal assembly. The individual has
no economic, legal, or moral independence. But as society develops,
the control which the whole exerts over the parts through authority
and custom is gradually diminished. The individuality of the members
of the social body becomes more and more marked. Individual freedom
and responsibility are definitely recognized. Thus, the development of
society has meant "the development of individuality in each of its
members." It is a development of persons; the "social consciousness
exists only in the discrete social elements which have become
individual."[40]

     [Footnote 40: Fairbanks. Ibidem.]

In a word, social evolution is accompanied by a growing
individualization of the component elements of society, whereas animal
development leads to ever-stronger concentration of the life of the
organism in a single part.

This difference between the physical organism and society is
fundamental and essential. It is far more striking than the
superficial likenesses ingeniously adduced by Mr. Spencer. His analogy
tends to obscure the real nature of social relations. Unless used with
cautious qualifications it "suggests false and one-sided views" and
thus hinders the progress of sociology. The biological analogy has, it
may be conceded, a certain value as a convenient way of describing
some of the aspects of social structure and growth. It may aid the
student to comprehend certain facts, but, if followed blindly, it will
lead him to overlook other facts of even greater importance.

The biological analogy has been carried to absurd lengths by some
writers. There is wearisome enumeration of social aggregates and
organs, and exhaustive description of the social nervous system. We
learn that the individual may be either a communicating cell or a
terminal cell, otherwise known as an end organ. The girl in the
central telephone office acts as a communicating cell when she
telephones to Mr. Smith a message from Mr. Brown. "But when, Mr. Smith
having asked her the exact time by the chronometer in the exchange,
she looks at the dial and reports her observation to him, she is
primarily a terminal cell or end organ."[41] The lookout man at sea,
on the other hand, is invariably an end organ. This is far-fetched and
fanciful. To clothe mere commonplaces in the borrowed rags and tags of
biological terminology is not social science, nor does it aid one to
get a correct conception of social reality.

     [Footnote 41: Small and Vincent. Introduction to the Study of
     Society, p. 218.]

The unsettled state of sociological thought which has been here set
forth is a natural result of the peculiar difficulties that stand in
the way of the social sciences. These have been described by Mr.
Spencer with great fullness of illustration.[42] They arise from three
sources--namely, (1) from the intrinsic nature of the facts dealt
with; (2) from the natures of the observers of these facts; and (3)
from the peculiar relation in which the observers stand toward the
facts observed.

     [Footnote 42: Herbert Spencer. Study of Sociology, chaps. iv to
     xii.]

1. In the first place the peculiar nature of social phenomena is such
as to render scientific observation difficult. They are not of a
directly perceptible kind like the phenomena which form the
subject-matter of the natural sciences. Quantitative measurement and
experiment are not possible. Social facts "have to be established by
putting together many details, no one of which is simple, and which
are dispersed, both in space and time, in ways that make them
difficult of access."

2. Again, to these objective difficulties are added the subjective
difficulties resulting from the intellectual and the emotional
limitations of the investigators. There is, very generally, a lack of
intellectual faculty sufficiently complex and plastic to comprehend
the involved and changing phenomena of society. The scientific
judgment is disturbed by a variety of emotional prejudices, which Mr.
Spencer classifies as the educational bias, the bias of patriotism,
the class bias, the political bias, and the theological bias.

3. And, finally, the peculiar position which the sociological observer
occupies with reference to the phenomena puts further obstacles in the
way of trustworthy observation. The sociologist has to study an
aggregate in which he is himself included. He is a member of society
and can not wholly free himself from the beliefs and sentiments
generated by this connection.

These peculiar difficulties which beset sociology have naturally
impeded the development of the department compared with other branches
of knowledge. They furnish adequate explanation of the unsettled
condition of sociological thought which has been described in this
paper.

In conclusion, it is hardly necessary to state that in the writer's
opinion sociology is not, at present, entitled to be called a science.
In order to establish the right of a body of knowledge to the title of
science, the claimants must be able to show that they have a
definitely bounded field of investigation, that they employ recognized
scientific methods, and that they have established certain truths of
unquestioned value. Sociology in its present state fails to meet these
conditions. Its province is not yet agreed upon, its methods have been
often unscientific, and its first principles are yet to be formulated.
It is not, therefore, a science.

"Sociology," says one of its critics, "no more demonstrates its claim
to existence as a science than astronomy would if we found some
astronomers insisting that the sun went around the earth and others
contending that the earth went around the sun."[43]

     [Footnote 43: The Nation, vol. lx, p. 351. Review of Small and
     Vincent's Introduction to the Study of Society.]

After all, the question whether sociology deserves to be called a
science or not is one of merely academic interest. It has received far
more attention than it really deserves. Nor will any amount of
discussion upon this point help to make sociology a science. "It is
safe to say," remarks the critic from whom we have just quoted, "that
no great scientific work was ever done by a man who was fretting over
the question whether he was a scientist or not. The work is the thing
and not what it is called. On the other hand, no name can dignify a
work which is petty and futile."

It is not by talking about it, but by working over it, that a body of
knowledge is developed into a science. And sociologists would do well
to heed the advice of Tarde, the French writer: "Instead of
discoursing upon the merits of this infant--sociology--which men have
had the art to baptize before its birth, let us succeed, if possible,
in bringing it forth."[44]

     [Footnote 44: Quoted by Vincent in American Journal of Sociology,
     January, 1896, p. 487.]




A FEATHERED PARASITE.

BY LEANDER S. KEYSER.


Nothing could more clearly prove that a common law runs through the
whole domain of Nature than the fact that in every division of her
realm there seems to be a class of parasites. In the vegetable world,
as is well known, there are various plants that depend wholly upon
other plants for the supply of their vital forces. And in the human
sphere there are parasites in a very real and literal sense--men and
women who rely upon the toil and thrift of others to sustain them in
worthless idleness.

In view of the almost universal character of this law it would be
strange if these peculiar forms of dependence did not appear in the
avian community. We do find such developments in that department of
creation. Across the waters there is one bird which has won an
unenviable reputation as a parasite, and that is the European cuckoo,
which relies almost wholly on the efforts of its more thrifty
neighbors to hatch and rear its young, and thereby perpetuate the
species. Strangely enough, our American cuckoos are not given to such
slovenly habits, but build their own nests and faithfully perform the
duties of nidification, as all respectable feathered folk should.
However, this parasitical habit breaks out, quite unexpectedly it must
be conceded, in another American family of birds which is entirely
distinct from the cuckoo group.

In America the cowbird, often called the cow bunting, is the only
member of the avian household that spirits its eggs into the nests of
other birds. The theory of evolution can do little toward accounting
for the anomaly, and even if it should venture upon some suggestions
it would still be just as difficult to explain the cause of the
evolution in this special group, while all other avian groups follow
the law of thrift and self-reliance.

The cowbird belongs to the family of birds scientifically known as
_Icteridæ_, which includes such familiar species as the bobolinks,
orioles, meadow larks, and the various kinds of blackbirds, none of
which, I am glad to say, are parasites. The name _Molothrus_ has been
given to the genus that includes the cowbirds. They are confined to
the American continent, having no analogues in the lands across the
seas. The same may be said, indeed, of the whole _Icteridæ_ family. It
may be a matter of surprise to many persons that there are twelve
species and subspecies of cowbirds in North and South America, for
most of us are familiar only with the common cowbird (_Molothrus
ater_) of our temperate regions. Of these twelve species only three
are to be found within the limits of the United States, one is a
resident of western Mexico and certain parts of Central America, while
the rest find habitat exclusively in South America. A fresh field of
investigation is open to some enterprising and ambitious naturalist
who wishes to study several of these species, as comparatively little
is known of their habits, and indeed much still remains to be learned
of the whole genus, familiar as one or two of the species are. Their
sly, surreptitious manners render them exceedingly difficult to study
at close range and with anything like detail.

Are all of them parasites? It is probable they are--at least to a
greater or less degree--except one, the bay-winged cowbird of South
America, which I shall reserve for notice later on in this article. We
might assert that our common cowbird is the parasite _par excellence_
of the family, for, so far as I can learn from reading and
observation, they never build their own nests or rear their own young,
but shift all the duties of maternity, save the laying of the eggs,
upon the shoulders of other innocent birds.

These avian "spongers" have a wide geographical range, inhabiting the
greater part of the United States and southern Canada, except the
extensive forest regions and some portions of the Southern States. The
center of their abundance is the States bordering on the upper
Mississippi River and its numerous tributaries. They occur only as
stragglers on the Pacific coast west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada
Mountains. The most northern point at which they have been known to
breed is the neighborhood of Little Slave Lake in southern Athabasca.
In the autumn the majority of these birds migrate to southern Mexico,
although a considerable number remain in our Southern States, and a
few occasionally tarry for the winter even as far north as New England
and southern Michigan.

The male cowbird looks like a well-dressed gentleman--and may have
even a slightly clerical air--in his closely fitting suit of glossy
black, with its greenish and purplish iridescence, and his cloak of
rich metallic brown covering his head, neck, and chest. He makes a
poor shift as a musician, but his failure is not due to lack of
effort, for during courtship days he does his level best to sing a
variety of tunes, expanding and distorting his throat, fluffing up his
feathers, spreading out his wings and tail, his purpose evidently
being to make himself as fascinating as possible in the eyes of his
lady love. One of his calls sounds like the word "spreele," piped in
so piercing a key that it seems almost to perforate your brain.

One observer maintains that the cowbirds are not only parasitical in
their habits, but are also absolutely devoid of conjugal affection,
practicing polyandry, and seldom even mating. This is a serious
charge, but it is doubtless true, for even during the season of
courtship and breeding these birds live in flocks of six to twelve,
the males almost always outnumbering the females. However, if their
sexual relations are somewhat irregular, no one can accuse them of
engaging in family brawls, as so many other birds do, for both males
and females seem to be on the most cordial terms with one another, and
are, to all appearances, entirely free from jealousy. Who has ever
seen two cowbirds fighting a duel like the orioles, meadow larks, and
robins? Their domestic relations seem to be readily adjusted, perhaps
all the more so on account of their lax standards of sexual virtue.

In obtruding her eggs into the nests of other birds Madame Cowbird is
sly and stealthy. She does not drive the rightful owners from their
nests, but simply watches her opportunity to drop her eggs into them
when they are unguarded. No doubt she has been on the alert while her
industrious neighbors have been constructing their domiciles, and
knows where every nest in the vicinity is hidden. Says Major Charles
Bendire: "In rare instances only will a fresh cowbird's egg be found
among incubated ones of the rightful owners. I have observed this only
on a single occasion." From one to seven eggs of the parasite are
found in the nests of the dupes. In most cases the number is two, but
in the case of ground builders the cowbird seems to have little fear
of overdoing her imposition. Major Bendire says that he once found the
nest of an ovenbird which contained seven cowbird's eggs and only one
of the little owner's.

If parasitism were the only crime of the cowbird one would not feel so
much disposed to put her into the avian Newgate Calendar; but she not
only inflicts her own eggs upon her innocent victims, but often
actually tosses their eggs out of the nests in order to make room for
her own. Nor is that all; she will sometimes puncture the eggs of the
owners to prevent their hatching, and thus increase the chances of her
own offspring. Whether this is done with her beak or her claws is
still an open question, Major Bendire inclining to the belief that it
is done with the claws.

Her finesse is still further to be seen in the fact that she usually
selects some bird for a victim that is smaller than herself, so that
when her young hopefuls begin to grow they will be able to crowd or
starve out the true heirs of the family. In this way it is thought
that many a brood comes to an untimely end, the foster parents having
no means of replacing their own little ones when they have been
ejected from the nest. However, I am disposed to think that the
cowbird's impositions are not usually so destructive as some observers
are inclined to believe. I once found a bush sparrow's nest containing
one cowbird and four little sparrows, all of which were in a thriving
condition. The sparrows were so well fed and active that as soon as I
touched the nest they sprang, with loud chirping, over the rim of
their cottage and scuttled away through the grass. They were certainly
strong and healthy, in spite of the presence of their big foster
brother. Before they flitted away I had time to notice how the little
family were disposed. The cowbird was squatted in the center of the
nest, while his little brothers and sisters were ranged around him,
partly covering him and no doubt keeping him snug and warm. They were
further advanced than he, for while they scrambled from the nest, he
could do nothing but snuggle close to the bottom of the cup, where he
was at my mercy.

A wood thrush's nest that I found contained two young thrushes and two
buntings. All of them were about half fledged. Being of nearly the
same size, the queerly assorted bantlings lived in apparent peace in
their narrow quarters. I watched them at frequent intervals, but saw
no attempts on the part of the foundlings to crowd out their
fellow-nestlings. The cowbirds were the first to leave the roof-tree.
Thus it appears that the intrusion of the cowbird's eggs does not
always mean disaster to the real offspring of the brooding family, but
of course it always prevents the laying of the full complement of eggs
by the builders themselves.

Even after the youngsters have left the nest the mother cowbird does
not assume the care of them, but still leaves them in charge of the
foster parents. It is laughable, almost pathetic, to see a tiny
ovenbird or redstart feeding a strapping young cowbird which is
several times as large as herself. She looks like a pygmy feeding a
giant. In order to thrust a tidbit into his mouth she must often stand
on her tiptoes. Why the diminutive caterer does not see through the
fraud I can not say. She really seems to be attached to the hulking
youngster. By and by, however, when he grows large enough to shift for
himself, he deserts his little parents and nurses and seeks
companionship among his own blood kindred, who will doubtless bring
him up in the way all cowbirds should walk.

It is surprising how many species are imposed on successfully by the
cowbird. The number, so far as has been observed, is ninety, with
probably more to be added. Among the birds most frequently victimized
are the phoebes, the song sparrows, the indigo birds, the bush
sparrows, and the yellow-breasted chats. Even the nests of the
red-headed woodpecker and the rock wrens are not exempt. Some species,
notably the summer warblers, detect the imposture and set about
defeating the purposes of the interloper. This they do by building
another story to their little cottage, leaving the obtruded eggs in
the cellar, where they do not receive enough warmth to develop the
embryo.

While it is surprising that acute birds should allow themselves to be
imposed on in this way, perhaps, after all, they look upon the cowbird
as a kind of blessing in disguise; at least, he may not be an unmixed
evil. They may act on the principle of reciprocity--that "one good
turn deserves another." What I mean is this: In my rambles I have
often found the cowbirds the first to give warning of the approach of
a supposed danger. Having no domestic duties of their own, they can
well secrete themselves in a tall tree overlooking the entire
premises, and thus play the useful rôle of sentinel. This, I am
disposed to believe, is one of the compensating uses of this parasite,
and may furnish the reason for his being tolerated in birdland. And he
_is_ tolerated. Has any one ever seen other birds driving the cowbird
away from their breeding precincts, or charging him with desperate
courage as they do the blue jays, the hawks, the owls, and other
predatory species? He evidently subserves some useful purpose in the
avian community, or he would not be treated with so much
consideration.

A young cowbird that I purloined from the nest and reared by hand did
not prove a very pleasant pet. He was placed in a large cage with
several other kinds of young birds. At first he was quite docile,
taking his food from my hand and even allowing some of his feathered
companions to feed him; but in a few weeks he grew so wild and
manifested such a fierce desire for the outdoor world that I was glad
to carry him out to the woods and give him his freedom. A young
red-winged blackbird and a pair of meadow larks developed a different
disposition.

The dwarf cowbird (_Molothrus ater obscurus_) is similar to his
relative just described, except that he is smaller and his
geographical range is more restricted. He is a resident of Mexico,
southern Texas, southwestern Arizona, and southern California. His
habits resemble those of the common cowbird. Another bunting, having
almost the same range, although a little more southerly, is the
red-eyed cowbird, which is larger and darker than our common cowbird
and has the same parasitical habits.

In South America three species have been studied by Mr. W. H. Hudson,
who, in collaboration with Mr. P. L. Sclater, has published a most
valuable work on Argentine ornithology. One of these is called the
Argentine cowbird (_Molothrus bonariensis_). It is a _bona fide_,
blue-blooded parasite, and has been seen striking its beak into the
eggs of other birds and flying away with them. The males, it is said,
show little discrimination in pecking the eggs, for they are just as
likely to puncture the cowbird eggs as those of other birds. Every egg
in a nest is frequently perforated in this way. These buntings lay a
large number of eggs, often dropping them on the ground, laying them
in abandoned nests, or depositing them in nests in which incubation
has already begun, in which cases all of them are lost. However, in
spite of this wastefulness the birds thrive, thousands of them being
seen in flocks during the season of migration.

And, by the way, a description of their habits by Mr. Hudson has
thrown an interesting light on the subject of migration in the
southern hemisphere. South of the equator the recurrence of the
seasons is the exact reverse of their recurrence north of the equator,
and therefore the breeding season of the birds is in the autumn
instead of the spring; the flight from winter cold occurs in the
spring instead of in the autumn, and is toward the north instead of
toward the south. Thus, in February and March the Argentine cowbirds
are seen flying in vast battalions in the direction of the equatorial
regions--that is, northward--in whose salubrious clime they spend the
winter. As our northern autumn draws near and the southern summer
approaches these winged migrants take the air line for their breeding
haunts in the Argentine Republic and Patagonia. At the same time the
migrants of the northern hemisphere are pressing southward before the
blustering mien of old Boreas. It all seems wonderful and solemn, this
world-wide processional of the seasons and the birds.

Naturally, one would expect to find some other eccentricities in this
aberrant family besides that of parasitism, and in this expectation
one is not disappointed. There are two other species of cowbirds in
the Argentine country--the screaming cowbird (_Molothrus
rufoaxillaris_) and the bay-winged cowbird (_Molothrus badius_). The
latter is only partly a trencher on the rights of other birds--that
is, it is only half a parasite. Indeed, it sometimes builds its own
nest, which is quite a respectable affair; but, as if to prove that it
still has some remnants of cowbird depravity in its nature, it
frequently drives other birds from their rightful possessions,
appropriates the quarters thus acquired, lays its eggs into them, and
proceeds to the performance of its domestic duties like its
respectable neighbors. Its virtue is that it never imposes the work of
incubation and brood rearing on any of its feathered associates, even
though it does sometimes eject them from their premises.

But what is to be said of the screaming cowbird? Instead of inflicting
its eggs on its more distant avian relatives it watches its chance and
slyly drops them into the domicile of its bay-winged cousins, and
actually makes them hatch and rear its offspring! This seems to be
carrying imposture to the extreme of refinement, or possibly
developing it into a fine art, and reminds one of those human
good-for-naughts who "sponge" off their relatives rather than go among
strangers. One can scarcely refrain from wondering whether grave
questions of pauperism and shiftlessness ever enter into the
discussion of "the social problem" in the bird community.




THE COLUMBUS MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.

BY PROF. D. S. MARTIN.


The Columbus meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science was looked forward to with considerable interest as the
first in the new half century of that body. Would the impression and
stimulus of the great semicentennial gathering at Boston last year be
found to continue, or be followed by a reaction? The meetings west of
the Alleghanies are always smaller than the eastern ones, and the
brilliancy of the Boston meeting could not be looked for in any
interior city. The general expectation was for an "off-year"
gathering.

But only in point of attendance was this impression verified. The
register of those present showed three hundred and fifty-three
names--a good number for an interior meeting, very few of the Western
gatherings having exceeded it. In all other respects the general
feeling of the members indicates that the meeting was notably
successful and enjoyable, and the remarks made by the writer a year
ago as to the real value of the smaller and less conspicuous meetings
he feels to have been well exemplified. It was a scientific working
meeting, with enough of social intercourse and attentions to be
delightful, but not distracting. In these aspects the "golden mean"
was markedly preserved.

The arrangements of the local committee for the convenience of the
members and the success of the meeting in general were remarkable in
their completeness. Nothing seems to have been overlooked, and some
advances were made upon any previous year. The daily programmes were
well printed and on hand early every morning--a most important point,
not always heretofore attained. A complete telephone service between
the section rooms and the central hall was a feature of special
advantage, each section reporting to headquarters every paper as it
was taken up. This was then posted on a bulletin, so that any one
could know at any time what was going on in each section. A great
amount of delay and disappointment, that has often been felt by
members anxious to hear certain papers in different sections, was thus
entirely obviated. Columbus has set an example in this feature that
must be followed in the arrangements for all future meetings. The
entire service on these telephones was rendered not by professional
operators, but by young lady students of the university, and it was
well and gracefully done.

It is fitting also that recognition should be given to some who have
been less prominent in the local arrangements, but have had a large
share in their preparation. While the public resolutions of thanks
have made well-deserved mention of the local committee and its
officers, especially Prof. B. F. Thomas, the indefatigable secretary,
it is known in Columbus that much of the planning and arranging was
the work of Prof. Edward Orton, Jr., the son of the president of the
meeting, and that very much is owing to his laborious activity in the
perfection of the local adjustments.

The place of meeting was eminently pleasant and suitable--the wide
campus and fine buildings of the Ohio State University. To members
from the East it was a matter of great interest to see this noble
institution, one of the best examples of the great educational
enterprises of the central States. In his address of welcome at the
opening of the association the president of the university, Dr.
William O. Thompson, outlined the history of public education in the
West as dating back to provisions in the "Ordinance of 1787," looking
to educational advantages for the great "Northwest Territory." The
State University of Ohio is one of the youngest of its kind, but now
one of the most important, among the States formed from that great
region, although Ohio was the first to be organized into Statehood.

Among the numerous fine structures scattered over the broad area of
the campus, one of the most interesting is Orton Hall, containing the
collections in geology and archæology, which are very extensive, as
well as the laboratories, workrooms, and classrooms of the geological
department, and at present the University Library. Here the meetings
of Section E (Geology and Geography) were held. In the adjacent
Botanical Hall, with its greenhouses, etc., Section G held its
meetings. But most of the sections met in Townshend Hall, where the
telephone service above described connected all the rooms.

The Ohio State University not only welcomed and accommodated the
association, but had a strong representation among the officers of the
meeting. The venerable president, Dr. Orton, has long been professor
of geology in the university, and his collections are displayed in the
hall that so appropriately bears his name. Section C (Chemistry) and
Section G (Botany) both had secretaries from the university
faculty--Professors Weber and Kellerman, respectively--while the
arrangements for the meeting have been already spoken of as largely
due to Professor Thomas and Professor Orton, Jr.

The ladies' reception committee did everything for the comfort and
convenience of the visiting ladies. Their musicale and garden party in
the grounds were described as extremely enjoyable, and the provision
of private carriages to convey ladies and aged members across the
broad spaces of the campus to and from the entrances was a very
delicate and highly esteemed convenience, especially on warm days. The
association was favored in the weather, which, though somewhat hot out
of doors, was not severe, and the rooms were pleasant and airy.

The excursions given to the members were all of them scientific; they
were not merely pleasure trips. This point was a marked feature of the
Columbus meeting, and one well worthy of future imitation as far as
may be. Not every place, however, has such marked facilities in this
respect. On Saturday, August 26th, three free excursions were provided
to points of geological or archæological interest. They were about
equally shared by the members, together with representatives of the
local committee. One party left on Friday evening, passing the night
at Sandusky, and going by boat thence to the celebrated islands of
Lake Erie, there to see the wonderful glacial furrows in the
corniferous limestone on Kelley's Island and the recently opened
strontia cave on Put-in-Bay Island. These islands are also favorite
pleasure resorts for the whole neighborhood, and the trip was one of
great interest and enjoyment. Another party, on Saturday morning, went
to points of special importance in the coal region of the Hocking
Valley, under the direction of Mr. R. M. Haseltine, chief mine
inspector of Ohio. At Corning the party went down into Mine No. 8,
owned by the Sunday Creek Coal Company, which has recently been
equipped with electric power generated by utilizing the waste gas from
neighboring gas-wells. This is said to be the first mine in Ohio to
improve this natural source of power. At a depth of sixty-five feet
the visiting party were taken by mine cars to a point where a
remarkably fine exposure has been made of a carboniferous "forest,"
with upright trunks of _Sigillaria_ and associated forms of coal
vegetation finely displayed. At a point somewhat nearer the entrance,
but at a lower level, lunch was served by the company, in a chamber
lighted by electricity, two hundred feet underground and a mile from
daylight! Another mine was visited later, and the machinery and
appliances examined; this was No. 16, at Hollister, owned by the
Courtright Coal Company.

The third party went to Fort Ancient to examine the great aboriginal
earthworks at that place, owned by the State, and in charge of the
Ohio Archæological Society. Here, on a hill widely overlooking the
Little Miami Valley, are some of the most extensive prehistoric works
in the country. The State has purchased two hundred and eighty-seven
acres, and of these about one hundred acres are included within the
walls. These ramparts, overgrown with large trees, follow closely the
contour of the hills, and show that, whatever their age, there has
been no change and little erosion since they were built. Their form is
very irregular, consisting of two main areas--a northern one, called
the "new fort," rudely square, and a southern one, called the "old
fort," rudely triangular--connected by a narrow portion, called the
"isthmus," with crescent-shaped transverse walls crossing it, and high
conical mounds at the entrance to the "old fort." From the main
gateway of the "new fort," starting from two mounds, two parallel
walls can be traced, exactly eastward, for half a mile or more.
Irregular as these works are, from the contour of the hills and the
course of the ravines that bound them, yet there is also seen at times
in their shaping a singular exactness of orientation that is striking
and suggestive. Their use is problematical, but they must have been
defensive, although an enormous force would be required to hold them,
as their entire circumference is three miles and a half. At one point
within the "old fort," in front of the gateway to the "isthmus," was
found a burial place where a number of skeletons lay as though thrown
together, not carefully and separately buried. The suggestion is
strongly made that this spot marks an unsuccessful attack by enemies,
who were roughly buried where they fell. At other points graves have
been found, some containing copper implements and overlaid with plates
of mica. Great regret was felt that Mr. W. K. Moorehead, who has
explored so extensively here and in the vicinity and has published
such interesting accounts of Fort Ancient and similar remains, was
unable to be at the meeting on account of severe illness.

The public spirit that has secured this spot for the State, and the
work of the Ohio Archæological Society in caring for it properly, are
matters for pride and congratulation, and evidences of the highest
type of civilization. The society is clearing away the dense
undergrowth so as to display the works and the trees upon them; is
guarding and repairing the walls at points where injury has occurred
by "washing"; has sunk a well in the "old fort," with fine water; and
built a pavilion for visitors. Here lunch was served to the party, and
addresses given by archæologists present and officers of the
Archæological Society.

On Thursday a large number of the geologists spent most of the day in
examining moraines and glacial phenomena near Lancaster, and in the
evening nearly the entire association was taken by special train to
see the gas-wells in the same neighborhood, at Sugar Grove, which were
lighted and "blown off" for their benefit. The city of Columbus itself
is to a considerable extent supplied with natural gas.

Turning to the proceedings of the meeting, there may be noted in the
character of the papers certain tendencies which are independent of
the association and belong to the general line of thought of the
present, and doubtless yet more of the future. The papers presented
may be roughly grouped into two classes: those relating to technical
details, and those involving or seeking practical results and
applications. Of course, there is no conflict between these two lines
of thought and work--the latter, to be really attained being dependent
upon the former--but there is this tendency distinctly shown, to
consider scientific questions in their bearing on the welfare or the
needs of humanity. Naturally, this aspect appeared more clearly in
some of the sections than in others, but no one who looks over the
titles in the daily programmes can fail to note it. The whole work of
Section I (Social and Economic Science) is of this character, and it
is marked in Sections G (Botany), D (Mechanics and Engineering), and
H (Anthropology). It would be impossible to mention all the papers
bearing upon such relations; a very few only can here be noted, even
of those that were important. In Section I no more suggestive title
has ever been presented to such a body than that of Miss Cora A.
Benneson, of Cambridge, Mass., on Federal Guarantees for Maintaining
Republican Government in the States. Miss Benneson is a graduate in
law, and has already achieved distinction in her profession in
subjects relating to questions of government. In Section G, Prof. H.
A. Weber, the secretary, read a paper on Testing Soils for the
Application of Commercial Fertilizers--the outcome of twelve years'
intercourse with farmers' institutes and many more years of
experimentation--aiming to avoid unwise and unprofitable use of
fertilizers on soils to which they are not adapted, and to provide
ready and accurate methods of determination as to the needs and the
capacities of soils. Sections D and I united to hear a paper before
the former, by Principal Morrison, of the Manual Training High School,
of Kansas City, Mo., on Thermal Determinations in Heating and
Ventilating Buildings, with special reference to schools. These are
merely given as instances. Agriculture, electrical appliances,
educational methods, and social conditions, all received important
attention.

Another paper of great practical moment was read before Section C by
Prof. H. W. Wiley, chemist to the United States Department of
Agriculture, and Mr. H. W. Krug, on New Products from Maize Stalks.
Careful analyses of the pith and stalks of corn, and important
suggestions as to their great utility in various ways, were presented.
Some of these were very surprising, not only pointing out the value of
these substances as fodder, when properly prepared and used, but in
the realm of war as well as in peace, for protecting the sides of
naval vessels as a light and most effective armor, and in the
manufacture of smokeless powder of a superior quality. Professor Wiley
claimed that from these hitherto almost waste products of American
farms immense results may be obtained.

Very naturally, the recent war and questions connected with it called
forth some striking contributions. Prof. William S. Aldrich, of the
University of Illinois, addressed Section D and a large proportion of
members from other sections on Engineering Experiences with Spanish
Wrecks, and the story of the Maria Teresa. Professor Aldrich was
connected with the United States repair-ship Vulcan, and described the
remarkable character of that vessel--an entire novelty in naval
warfare--with her complete outfit of engineering tools and machinery,
even to brass and iron furnaces of large capacity. Never before, he
said, had such castings been made on board ship, or a foundry operated
on the ocean. The effects of the American rapid-fire guns on Admiral
Cervera's ships were fully described and illustrated, and the paper
closed with a vivid and detailed account of the floating of the Maria
Teresa, her repairing by the crew of the Vulcan through five weeks of
most difficult work, and the unsuccessful attempt to bring her to
Norfolk, ending in her abandonment and loss. The public lecture of
Wednesday evening was by Prof. C. E. Monroe, of Washington, D. C., on
the Application of Modern Explosives, very fully illustrated. Detailed
accounts were given of the manufacture of gun cotton and various
recent forms of high explosives and smokeless powders. In regard to
the use of the latter, Professor Monroe emphasized the fact that
France and Germany had adopted smokeless powders in 1887, and Italy
and England a year or two later, and characterized as "unpardonable"
the fact that our own service was unprovided with any such material
when we began the war with Spain. He further discussed recent and very
important experiments in the matter of throwing from ordinary guns
shells charged with high explosives, especially that known as Joveite,
with which tremendous effects have been produced in penetrating the
heaviest plating.

Very different in character was the interesting and pleasing programme
carried out by the Section of Botany in memory of two eminent workers
in bryology who were long identified with Columbus--Dr. William S.
Sullivant and his colaborer, Prof. Leo Lesquereaux, who was eminent
also in fossil botany. Wednesday was set apart as "Sullivant day," and
was marked by an extensive display of portraits, books, and specimens,
and a series of memorial addresses, with notes on the progress of
bryology. Twelve North American species of mosses have been named for
Dr. Sullivant, and specimens of all these, with drawings made by him,
were loaned for this occasion from his collection, now at the museum
of Harvard University. Sets of duplicates of these species, from the
herbarium of Columbia University, were prepared and presented as
souvenirs to the botanists in attendance. Some members of Dr.
Sullivant's family were present, and naturally felt a very deep sense
of gratification at such a tribute to his name and fame.

The address of the retiring president, Prof. F. W. Putnam, had a
special interest in that it was the last official appearance of one
who has been for so many years closely and prominently identified with
the association as its permanent secretary, and whose presence and
personality have seemed an essential element in every meeting.
Professor Putnam, in opening, paid an especial tribute to the late Dr.
D. G. Brinton, of Philadelphia, a former president and leading member
of the association, devoted to the same branch of research with
himself--North American ethnology--although holding different theories
therein. Professor Putnam dealt with the prehistoric peoples of this
continent, and argued for distinct racial types as expressed in the
remains that they have left, and for resemblances as due to
intercourse and mingling of tribes, and not to autochthonous
development of arts and customs as the result of corresponding stages
of evolution without contact or outside influence--the view maintained
by Dr. Brinton.

There is not space here to dwell further upon many valuable papers and
discussions. The Section of Geology had a full and interesting
session, in which glacial phenomena, especially as displayed in Ohio,
bore a considerable part. One of the papers had a very wide and
painful interest for all Americans--that of Mr. E. H. Barbour, on the
Rapid Decline of Geyser Activity in the Yellowstone Basin. Careful and
extended comparison of the present state of the geysers and hot
springs with that to be seen a few years ago shows that these
wonderful and impressive phenomena have greatly decreased in both the
amount and the frequency of their manifestations, and Mr. Barbour
warned all who desire to witness anything of their grandeur to visit
the region without delay, as the indications point to their speedy
cessation as probable if not inevitable.

In reference to the future of the association, it is gratifying to
observe that the various special societies, whose relations to the
association were considered in the article by the present writer a
year ago, have not only continued to hold their summer sessions in
connection with that of the association, but have shown a very cordial
spirit of co-operation, and that some others are proposing to
affiliate in a similar way. This is as it should be; but there is in
it also the suggestion of a broader and more definite relationship of
all these special societies to each other through the medium of the
association. The tendency is apparently toward affiliation and
co-operation among them, and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science could have no more fitting or useful function
than as a sort of federative or representative body for all the
others.

The next meeting is to be held in New York, two months earlier than
usual--at the end of June. Both the place and the time were determined
by the Paris Exposition. It was thought best to arrange the meeting so
that it might easily be attended by the large number of scientists
from all over the country who will be going abroad next summer. This
plan is doubtless wise, although it is much to be regretted that the
time--the last week in June--will cut off from attendance almost all
the members who are teachers in public schools, who will be just then
in the pressure of their closing days and examinations. The peculiar
circumstances of the year, however, justify what would otherwise be a
most unfortunate time. New York will do her best, and give the
association a welcome worthy of the great metropolis of America.




SKETCH OF DR. WILLIAM PEPPER.

BY LEWIS R. HARLEY.


Philadelphia has long been regarded as the home of medical science in
America. Here was founded the first medical school in the United
States, among whose alumni are numbered some of the most brilliant
names in the profession. The spirit of scientific research has always
been most active in Philadelphia. Here Franklin made his experiments
in electricity, and Rittenhouse observed the transit of Venus; while
Rush, Morgan, Williamson, and Physick gave the city a name abroad as a
great medical center. Each generation has contributed something to her
fame as the abode of scientific culture.

In recent times no name has been so closely associated with the
intellectual progress of the city as that of the subject of this
sketch. Dr. William Pepper was reared in a scientific atmosphere. His
father, William Pepper, the elder, was born in Philadelphia, January
21, 1810. He graduated with first honors at Princeton in 1829. He
afterward studied medicine for a time with Dr. Thomas T. Hewson, and
in 1832 graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He
then spent two years in study in Paris, and in 1834 he entered upon
his profession in Philadelphia, where he rose rapidly in reputation.
He was physician to the Pennsylvania Hospital for twenty-six years. In
1860 he was elected Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine
in the University of Pennsylvania. He held this position until the
time of his death, October 15, 1864. Dr. Pepper had two sons, who
became distinguished in the medical profession. The eldest son,
George, was born April 1, 1841, and died September 14, 1872. He
graduated from the college department of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1862, and completed the course in the Medical School
in 1865. He served with distinction in the civil war, and died at the
beginning of a successful professional career. Another son, Dr.
WILLIAM PEPPER, the subject of this sketch, was born in Philadelphia,
August 21, 1843.

Dr. Pepper received his educational training solely in the city of his
birth, having graduated from the college department of the University
of Pennsylvania in 1862, in the same class with Provost Charles C.
Harrison, Thomas McKean, Dr. Persifor Fraser, and many other men
prominent in university circles. He graduated from the Medical School
in 1864, and at once began the practice of medicine. His connection
with the University of Pennsylvania began in 1868, when he was
appointed lecturer on morbid anatomy. From 1870 to 1876 he was
lecturer on clinical medicine. In 1876 Dr. Pepper was given a full
professorship of clinical medicine, in which he continued until 1887,
when he succeeded Dr. Alfred Stillé in the chair of the Theory and
Practice of Medicine.

During this early period of his career Dr. Pepper labored with
untiring zeal in the practice of his profession, and he also became
eminently successful as a teacher. In 1877 he set forth his views on
higher medical education in an address at the opening of the one
hundred and twelfth course of lectures in the University Medical
School.[45] At that time a very low standard existed in the medical
schools of our country, and Dr. Pepper, in his address, urged the
following reforms:

1. The establishment of a preparatory examination.

2. The lengthening of the course to at least three full years.

3. The careful grading of the course.

4. The introduction of ample practical instruction of each student
both at the bedside and in laboratories.

5. The establishment of fixed salaries for the professors, so that
they may no longer have any pecuniary interest in the size of their
classes.

     [Footnote 45: Higher Medical Education. The True Interest of the
     Public and of the Profession. By William Pepper, M. D., LL. D.
     Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1894.]

It was a source of gratification to Dr. Pepper that he lived to see
all these reforms in medical education adopted. On the extension of
the medical course to four years he subscribed $50,000 toward a
permanent endowment of $250,000. As early as 1871 he began to urge the
establishment of a university hospital, the subject being first
discussed in a conversation with Dr. H. C. Wood and Dr. William F.
Norris. An appeal was made to the public, and Dr. Pepper was made
chairman of a finance committee. By May, 1872, a splendid site and
$350,000 for building and endowment had been secured. Dr. Pepper was
selected as chairman of the building committee, and work on the
hospital was pushed so rapidly that it was ready for patients on July
15, 1874.

When Dr. Charles J. Stillé resigned the provostship of the university
in 1881, Dr. Pepper was elected as his successor. The executive
abilities which he had displayed in connection with the founding of
the new hospital made him the natural choice of the trustees. Although
his private practice had increased to immense proportions, besides
being occupied with his duties as a clinical professor, Dr. Pepper
accepted the provostship. To the duties of this office he devoted the
best years of his life. The extent of his practice and the demands
made upon his time by the university would have appalled an ordinary
man, but his capacity for labor appeared to be without limit, his
working day often exceeding eighteen hours. His administration was
characterized by the unification of the various schools of the
university, besides the founding and equipment of several new
departments. In one of his annual reports Dr. Pepper defined the broad
policy of the university in the following appropriate language: "The
university is truly the voluntary association of all persons and of
all agencies who wish to unite in work for the elevation of society by
the pursuit and diffusion of truth."[46] In other words, Dr. Pepper
regarded the functions of the university as not simply an institution
of instruction, but also of research. To this end every effort was
made to open up new fields of investigation and to widen the scope of
the university. During his provostship thirteen new buildings were
erected, and the following departments, or schools, were organized:

  1. The Department of Finance and Economy.
  2. The Department of Philosophy.
  3. The Department of Veterinary Medicine.
  4. The Department of Biology.
  5. The Department of Physical Education.
  6. The Department of Archæology and Paleontology.
  7. The Department of Hygiene.
  8. The Graduate Department for Women.
  9. The School of Architecture.
  10. The School for Nurses in the University Hospital.
  11. The Veterinary Hospital.
  12. The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.

     [Footnote 46: Report of the Provost of the University of
     Pennsylvania, from October, 1892, to June, 1894. Philadelphia,
     1894.]

Dr. Pepper took particular interest in the Department of Archæology
and Paleontology connected with the university. For a number of years
he was president of its board of trustees, while it was largely
through his efforts that the Babylonian Exploration Fund was
formed.[47] It was Dr. Pepper's ambition to have at the university
well-equipped laboratories that would offer an opportunity for
original investigation in medical science. The establishment of the
Laboratory of Hygiene, in 1892, was the first step in this direction,
soon to be followed by Dr. Pepper's gift of the Laboratory of Clinical
Medicine. This laboratory was founded in memory of his father, the
late Dr. William Pepper. The gift is unique in that it is made for the
purpose of promoting and stimulating original research, and improving
the methods of diagnosing and treating the diseases of human beings.
Another field of work in the laboratory is that of giving advanced and
special instruction to men who have already obtained the degree of
Doctor of Medicine. At the opening of the laboratory in 1895 Dr.
William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, said, "To the small
number of existing clinical laboratories the William Pepper Laboratory
of Clinical Medicine is a most notable addition, being the first
laboratory of the kind in this country, and it is not surpassed by any
in foreign countries."[48]

     [Footnote 47: See the article on Science at the University of
     Pennsylvania, in Popular Science Monthly for August, 1896.]

     [Footnote 48: Proceedings at the Opening of the William Pepper
     Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, December 4, 1895. Philadelphia,
     1895.]

Dr. Pepper realized more and more every year that the vast extent of
the university interests demanded the undivided activity of its head.
In 1894 he resigned the office of provost, stating at the time that,
as it became necessary for him to choose between administration work
and medical science, his devotion to the latter determined his choice.
His administration was an eventful one, during which the university
evolved from a group of disconnected schools to a great academic body.
In 1881 its property in land amounted to fifteen acres, while in 1894
it controlled fifty-two acres in a continuous tract. In 1881 the
university property was valued at $1,600,000; in 1894 it exceeded
$5,000,000. The teaching force in 1881 numbered 88 and the students in
all departments 981; in 1894 the former were 268, and the attendance
had reached 2,180, representing every State in the Union, as well as
thirty-eight foreign countries.

Dr. Pepper became well known as an author on medical subjects. He
founded the Philadelphia Medical Times, and was its editor for two
years. In 1885 he edited a System of Medicine by American Authors, a
work that has been considered a leading authority on medical subjects.
He also edited a book of medical practice by American authors, and,
with Dr. J. F. Meigs, issued a work on Diseases of Children. He was
Medical Director of the Centennial Exposition in 1876, and for his
services he received from the King of Sweden the decoration of Knight
Commander of the Order of St. Olaf.

Dr. Pepper showed an unbounded interest in behalf of any movement that
would benefit the community in general. He was one of the first to
realize the advantage that would accrue to Philadelphia should she
become a museum center. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum was
established in October, 1893, with Dr. Pepper as president of the
board of trustees. The old offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company were leased, and exhibits were secured from the Latin-American
countries, Africa, Australia, Japan, and India, forming the largest
permanent collection of raw products in existence. Referring to the
great value of the museum, Dr. Pepper spoke as follows in his address
of welcome at the first annual meeting of the advisory board:

"It would seem clear, however, that no method of studying industries
and commerce can be scientific and complete which does not include the
museum idea as now comprehended. The museum aims to teach by object
lesson the story of the world, past and present. The Biological Museum
presents the objects of human and comparative anatomy, arranged
scientifically and labeled so fully as to constitute the best
text-book for the study of those subjects. The Museum of Natural
History does the same in its field. The Museum of Archæology shows the
progress of the race from the most archaic times, the different types
of human beings, their mode of living, their forms of worship, their
games, their weapons, their implements, the natural products which
they used for subsistence, in their industries, and in their arts, the
objects of manufacture or of art which they produced, and the manner
in which they disposed of their dead.

"The natural products and manufactured articles, which constitute the
material of commerce, come necessarily into such a scheme, and the
long-looked-for opportunity of establishing a commercial museum upon a
truly scientific basis presented itself when, at the close of the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago, it was possible, through the
enlightened liberality of the municipal authorities of Philadelphia
and the invaluable services of Prof. W. P. Wilson, to secure vast
collections of commercial material, which was so liberally donated to
the Philadelphia museums by nearly all the foreign countries of the
globe."

It was Dr. Pepper's idea to have the University Museum and the
Commercial Museum situated near each other, on the plan of the South
Kensington Museum. To this end the City Councils, in 1896, passed an
ordinance giving over to the trustees of the Commercial Museum sixteen
acres of land for the erection of suitable buildings. When all the
plans are carried out the city will have unrivaled facilities for the
study of civilization, past and present.

One of the most enduring monuments to Dr. Pepper's zeal and generosity
is the Free Library of Philadelphia. In 1889 his uncle, George S.
Pepper, bequeathed the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
"to the trustees of such Free Library which may be established in the
city of Philadelphia." From the beginning Dr. Pepper took a warm
interest in the Free Library movement. It was under his leadership
that the library was organized, and he was made the first president of
its board of trustees. Speaking of his activity in this direction, the
librarian, Mr. John Thomson, said: "No detail was too small for his
personal attention. No plan for its future growth was too large for
his ambitious hope of both public and private support. The remarkable
and rapid increase in the circulation of the Free Library, the
multiplication of its branches, the organization of all its
departments on a broad and generous plan, his success in enlisting a
large number of able fellow-workers, his clear, plain statements to
Councils and the city authorities, his activity in securing needed
legislation at Harrisburg, were some of the results of that
intelligent energy which enabled him to do so much and to do it so
well." The bequest of the Pepper family has been supplemented by ample
appropriations by the City Councils, and the Free Library is now one
of the most important institutions in Philadelphia. The library at
present has twelve flourishing branches, while the combined
circulation of the system for the year 1898 was 1,738,950 volumes.

Dr. Pepper was also connected with many scientific bodies. He was
Vice-President of the American Philosophical Society, and President of
the first Pan-American Medical Congress in 1893. He was a Fellow of
the College of Physicians; President of the Philadelphia Pathological
Society from 1873 to 1876; Director of the Biological Section, Academy
of Natural Sciences; President, in 1886, of the American
Climatological Association; President of the Foulke and Long Institute
for Orphan Girls; President of the First Sanitary Convention of
Pennsylvania; and in 1882 he was a member of the Assay Commission of
the United States Mint. He received the degree of LL. D. from
Lafayette College in 1881, and from the University of Pennsylvania in
1893.

In 1873 Dr. Pepper married Miss Frances Sargeant Perry, a lineal
descendant of Benjamin Franklin, and a granddaughter of Commodore
Oliver Hazard Perry. Four sons were born, of whom three survive--Dr.
William Pepper, Jr., Benjamin Franklin Pepper, and Oliver Hazard Perry
Pepper. Failing in health, Dr. Pepper went to California early in the
summer of 1898, where he died of heart disease on July 28th of that
year. His body reached Philadelphia on August 6th. Funeral services
were held in St. James's Protestant Episcopal Church, after which the
body was cremated, and the ashes interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery. The
American Anthropometric Society received, by the conditions of his
will, Dr. Pepper's brain. Among the members of this society were Dr.
Joseph Leidy, Phillips Brooks, and Prof. E. D. Cope. The articles of
membership of the Anthropometric Society require that each member
contribute his brain in the interests of science.

Dr. Pepper's death was followed by many expressions of sorrow from
learned societies in various parts of the world. One of the most
beautiful tributes was the memorial meeting held in the city of Mexico
on September 12th. The leading medical and scientific societies of
Mexico assembled in the hall of Congress to do honor to the work and
character of Dr. Pepper. President Diaz occupied the chair, and about
him were gathered the leading citizens, officials, and scientists of
Mexico. Representatives of the National Medical School and the Board
of Health eulogized Dr. Pepper, while Hon. Matias Romero spoke of him
not as a physician, but as an "altruist who had consecrated himself to
doing good for his fellow-men."

In Philadelphia, steps have been taken to erect a substantial memorial
to Dr. Pepper. At a memorial meeting, held on March 6th last, a
proposition was made to place a statue of the deceased scientist on
the City Hall plaza, after the style of the Girard Monument. A
committee was appointed with power to raise funds for the proposed
statue, the cost not to exceed ten thousand dollars.

       *       *       *       *       *

     One of the letters of William Pengelly, geologist, of Torquay,
     England, printed in the memoir published by his daughter, gives
     this sketch of Babbage, the mathematician and inventor of the
     calculating machine: "I then called on Babbage, and could not get
     away until after one. He is a splendid talker. He seemed much
     pleased to see me, and complimented me very much on my lecture
     (at the Royal Institution), in which he was evidently much
     interested. He is the most marvelous worker I ever met with. I
     never saw anything like the evidence of multifarious and vast
     labor which his 'workshop' presents; he sticks at nothing. One
     drawer full of riddles, another of epigrams, one of squared
     words, etc.... It is appalling! And then the downright fun of the
     fellow; it is almost intoxicating to be with him!"




Correspondence.


"DO ANIMALS REASON?"

DR. EDWARD THORNDIKE'S interesting account, in our August number, of
his investigations touching the reasoning power of animals has brought
us a large number of letters questioning some of the main conclusions
set forth in the article, and criticising the method of the inquiry.
Not having room for all these communications, we print one of them,
and add extracts from two others. These represent the principal
objections urged by the various writers against the conclusions drawn
by the author of the article from his experiments.

  _Editor Popular Science Monthly:_

SIR: The first reading of Dr. Thorndike's article Do Animals Reason?
in the August Popular Science Monthly, gave the impression, which has
been deepened by subsequent perusal, that his experiments were not
only inadequate to solve the question, but unfairly chosen.

A dog or a cat, utterly hungry, is placed in a box, from which it can
escape "by performing some simple (?) action, such as pulling a wire
loop, stepping on a platform or lever, clawing down a string, or
turning a wooden button."

In the first place, what tends to destroy the reasoning power more
than utter hunger? This intense physical craving begets frenzy rather
than reason. The more intense this primeval desire, the greater the
demand upon primitive instinct for its satisfaction. In the open the
cat will jump at a bird, the dog at a bone. If the bird be up a tree,
the cat will climb; if the bone be buried, the dog will burrow.
Climbing and burrowing are deep-rooted developments of the feline and
the canine nature.

Put a dog or a cat, utterly hungry, in a box and hang a piece of meat
outside. Instinct prompts a jump through the bars of the box at the
meat, and the greater the number of unsuccessful attempts the less the
likelihood of the animal with a gnawing stomach sitting down to
scrutinize the mechanical construction of the box to the point of
perceiving that by stepping on a lever it will open a door. How many
millions of years did it take two-legged man to arrive at the
perception of the use of the lever? Did the shaggy biped arrive at
that perception by sitting down when utterly hungry and looking at a
lever; or did he, through countless generations, by some such chance
as lifting a stone with a stick, come to the knowledge of weight and
fulcrum?

Put an anthropoid ape, some several degrees nearer man in intelligence
than a cat, in a modern office elevator that moves by the push of an
electric button, suspend the elevator between two stories, and what do
you suppose that anthropoid ape will do?

Put a schoolgirl fresh from belles-lettres and matinées in the cab of
a locomotive and tell her to run it to the next station. She can not
but know that steam will make the wheels go round, but what will she
do in the maze of throttles, handles, disks, and rods that confronts
her? What will she do if utterly hungry?

Take a laborer from his pick and shovel on the railway embankment and
put him at the desk of the general manager. He can read and write. Let
the messenger boys and clerks shower him with the letters and
telegrams that bombard that desk every day, and let him try to settle
the questions to which they give rise.

Now, why can not the schoolgirl run the locomotive, the laborer the
railroad? Because the relations of things necessary to the tasks have
never been imprinted upon their registering cells; because, in the
latter case at least, of the lack of power of co-ordination--that is,
the lack of the power of abstract reasoning that the task involves.

Why can not anybody do anything as well as anybody else? Because
certain relations have been more deeply impressed upon certain brains
than upon others; because of the greater power of certain brains to
co-ordinate certain relations, their greater ability to give concrete
manifestation of the result of such co-ordination through the efferent
nerves. Otherwise any one of us could design a bridge, compose a
symphony, or organize a trust.

The oftener relations are impressed upon the registering cells, the
more readily are those relations co-ordinated, provided the brain
structure be of the requisite caliber. Reiterated impression through
the ages of the relations between their needs and surrounding things,
together with the development of structural capacity, has led the
beaver to build his dam, the bee the honeycomb, the ant its village,
the bird its nest. In each case the registered impressions have led to
action made possible by long-continued contact between structure and
environment; the actions are the result of development that has
proceeded mite by mite through unknown time. The brain of neither bird
nor beast nor man will immediately co-ordinate radically new
impressions received in a radically new environment into coherent
action that leads to definite result.

Here is an example within the writer's immediate knowledge: At the age
of seventeen a boy entered the service of one of the large railway
systems as a clerk in the passenger department. Through eleven years
of enthusiastic and concentrated endeavor to master the details of the
service he rose to the head of the clerical force--that is, the
reiterated impression upon his brain cells of the functions of the
passenger service led to that co-ordination which resulted in
efficient action. Then he became employed in the office of a large
coal-mining company. For several days it was with the utmost
difficulty that he could bring his attention to bear upon the new
tasks. While seated at the desk in the coal office the old railway
problems would chase through his mind; when he began to write the
initials of the Pittsburg Consolidated Coal Company, he would find
that he had written the initials of the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago
and St. Louis Railway Company; instead of the initials of the
Pittsburg, Fairport and Northwestern Dock Company, the initials of the
Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway Company. The latter initials
in each case would appear upon the paper before he knew it, actually
without his knowing that he had written them. The entirely unfamiliar
routine entailed by the custody of bank accounts, coal leases, deeds
and contracts, reports of coal shipments, and the handling of
vouchers, became adjusted in his brain bit by bit through many weeks,
and it was months before he could co-ordinate the new impressions into
broad and well-defined reasoning. If he had been utterly hungry
through all the period of the new service, it might have taken years.

Now, what can be expected of a dog or a cat, whose mental processes
have been adjusted by inheritance and experience to life in the fields
and jungles, when placed in a box, utterly hungry, to study mechanical
contrivances? It is manifest that if the brain of a dog or a cat would
become adjusted to the radically unfamiliar steps necessary to release
it from such a radically unfamiliar environment, that adjustment could
only come by extremely slow degrees. Voluntary perception is almost
beyond the limits of expectation, and the leading of the animal
through the necessary steps would have to be repeated time after time
before the impressions upon its brain would reach any degree of
permanence, especially as its brain would be lacking in attention, and
the repeated handling be an annoyance to it. But that by such tutelage
the animals, or a proportion of them, arrived at a knowledge of the
means necessary to escape from the box is shown by Dr. Thorndike
himself. "If one repeats the process, keeps putting the cat back into
the box after each success, the amount of useless action gradually
decreases, the right movement is made sooner and sooner, until finally
it is done as soon as the cat is put in." But he says: "This sort of a
history is not the history of a reasoning animal. It is the history of
an animal who meets a certain situation with a lot of instinctive
acts.... Little by little the one act becomes more and more likely to
be done in that situation, while the others slowly vanish. This
history represents the wearing smooth of a path in the brain, not the
decisions of a rational consciousness."

Wherein, however, does this differ from the manner in which hundreds
of clerks in offices finally learn routine work and mechanically go
through the motions necessary to its performance? Do not the actions
of thousands of laborers in field and factory seem to proceed from a
wearing smooth of a path in the brain, rather than from rational
consciousness? Yet they can not be said to be devoid of reason. Is not
a great proportion of the daily actions of any one of us gone through
from force of habit, almost by instinct?

The word reason does not apply alone to the mental processes of a
Helmholtz, but to the co-ordination, however slight, of relations that
result in definite action even of a humble organism. Herbert Spencer
has clearly shown that instinct and reason differ in degree and not in
kind.

Dr. Thorndike lays stress upon the fact that a "cat which, when first
put in, took sixty seconds to get out, in the second trial eighty, in
the third fifty, in the fourth sixty, in the fifth fifty, in the
sixth forty," etc., and remarks: "Suppose the cat had, after the third
accidental success, been able to reason? She would then have, the next
time and all succeeding times, performed the act as soon as put in."
Not long ago the writer and a man whose high intelligence can not be
questioned, in moments of relaxation were trying to do one of the
familiar ring puzzles--endeavoring to separate a ring from two others
of peculiar shape and then to join the three. After repeated trials,
one would loosen it, but could not replace it; the other finally
succeeded in replacing it, but could not loosen it. Then the one could
replace it, but not loosen it; the other loosen, but not replace it,
and each was closely watching the other all the time. It was half an
hour or more before either could both loosen and replace the ring,
occasional successful attempts not being repeated until after several
succeeding failures. Contrast the relation of the brain of the dazed
and indifferent and peculiarly bedeviled cat to the puzzle presented
to it by the inside of the box with the earnest effort of the two men
to solve the ring puzzle. Who has not found a task more difficult the
fifth or sixth time than the second or third, and has only performed
it with ease after repeated attempts of varying degrees of success and
failure?

In conclusion, the writer begs leave to relate an incident, which has
not before appeared in print, that profoundly impressed him with the
belief that at least in one instance one particular animal displayed
reason. One Sunday morning, a dozen years or more ago, he was standing
on the bank of the Ohio River at the Sewickley Ferry. A family group,
accompanied by a large Newfoundland dog, hailed the ferryman and got
in his boat, leaving the dog, which persuasively barked and wagged his
tail, on the bank. As the boat pulled out into the stream the dog
whined, and then made ready to leap in after it. Then he stopped at
the water's edge, and, with head down, gazed intently at the river for
several seconds--it seemed a minute or more. Then he ran up the bank
more than a hundred feet, stopped, looked at the receding boat,
plunged into the stream, and swam vigorously. The current, bearing him
down, made his course diagonal to the bank. A boy standing by my side
said: "Isn't that a smart dog? If he'd been a crazy dog he'd have
jumped in where he was, but he ran up the bank so the current wouldn't
wash him down away from the boat."

But the dog, swimming with all his vigor, was borne past the boat when
within twenty feet or so of it; he endeavored to straighten his course
without success, and then, in a long semicircle, swam around to the
near bank, landing two or three hundred feet below the place whence
the ferryboat had started.

What this dog would have done if placed, utterly hungry, in a box from
which he could only liberate himself by stepping on a platform or
turning a wooden button, I do not know.

                                                 LOGAN G. MCPHERSON.
  PITTSBURGH, _August 3, 1899._


MR. FREDERIC D. BOND, of 413 South Forty-fourth Street, Philadelphia,
writes: Of the accuracy of Dr. Thorndike's experiments I have no
doubt, but certain facts connected with them seem to deprive the
observations of much of their relevance.

Dr. Thorndike states that he arranged his experiments to give
reasoning every chance to display itself, if it existed, and to
observe those in which the acts required and the thinking involved
were not far removed from the acts and feelings of ordinary animal
life. Of these experiments one of the chief was to determine whether
and in what way a cat would escape from a box opening by turning a
button. Now, I submit that in this and the succeeding experiments the
conditions Dr. Thorndike fancied to exist by no means did so. Simple
as the release of a door by a button seems to us, the apparent
simplicity arises merely from our empirical knowledge of what does
happen in such a situation. Actually to think out the rationale of the
matter, as an animal having no experience either personally or from
heredity would have to do, involves very complex mental processes. The
environment of a human being is vastly different from an animal's,
though of this fact we constantly lose sight in reasoning; of
mechanical appliances and principles, for example, an animal knows
nothing, and yet we are too apt to suppose it regarding the world with
a store of ancestral and individual experiences utterly foreign to it;
and then, on its failing to do what, in the light of such experience,
seems to us easy, we proceed to call into question its possession of
reason....

That the cats did finally learn to escape shows, according to Dr.
Thorndike, "the wearing smooth of a path in the brain, not the
decisions of a rational consciousness." May I ask Dr. Thorndike what
possible reason could a cat have to suppose that what happened once
must needs happen again? Does Dr. Thorndike fancy his own knowledge of
a million like matters was acquired by reason, and not empirically
elaborated by processes of exactly the same sort as the cats went
through? Let this experiment be tried on a healthy infant of two
years, and I am of the opinion that the results would be the same as
with the cat; yet the infant undoubtedly carries on "thinking
processes similar, at least in kind, to our own," which Dr. Thorndike
implicitly denies to his cats.

The chief cause of the inability of students to reach concordant
results in this matter of animal intelligence appears to lie in a
certain uncritical assumption often made. That all consciousnesses
have a certain field of presentations, that to this field they attain,
that because of it they feel and will, are fundamental facts; but the
belief that attention or feeling or will differs per se in different
consciousnesses, other than as the field to which they are at the
moment related, differs--this is an utterly unwarranted assumption.
According to the action of its environment, each conscious being must
know the world just so far as is needed to conform its existence
thereto, or else it must perish; but whether such knowledge, which is
acquired by experience only, be quite small, as with animals, or
somewhat larger, as with man, there is no reason to suppose that the
attention, feeling, or will of the animal differs in itself from the
same psychological state in man.


MR. ANDREW VAN BIBBER, of Cincinnati, Ohio, says: Animals, and
especially wild ones, have no bank account or reserve, and have to
face new conditions daily, and yet they make a living where man would
starve.

When I was out in Colorado and Utah, years ago, I used to know of
animals removing the bait nicely from dangerous traps without
springing the trap. I knew of a dog who went over a mile to call his
owner to the aid of a boy who had broken his leg, and who would not be
refused till understood. This is brutish "instinct," is it?--something
that Dr. Thorndike can't define. Will "instinct" teach a tired,
half-starved horse to eat oats if you set them before him? Dr.
Thorndike would say "Yes," but Dr. Thorndike would be wrong unless
that horse knew from personal past experience what oats were. What
animals learn (like the human animal) they learn chiefly by
experience. They accumulate facts in their minds and use them.

I served in the cavalry of the Armies of the Tennessee and the
Cumberland, and I know that instinct will not cause a hungry horse to
touch oats unless he knows from his own experience what oats are. We
used to capture horses in Mississippi which had never seen oats. It is
all corn down there. We would bring them into camp tired out and
hungry, and would pour out our oats for them. Not one of them would
touch the oats. You could leave the hungry horses hitched for
twenty-four hours before oats, and not one grain would they touch.
They would stand there and starve. We had to throw up their heads and
fill their mouths full of oats. If we stopped there, they would spit
them out. We had to grab their jaws and work them sideways until they
had a good taste. Then they understood, and ate oats right along.
Plenty of such horses in Mississippi to-day....

If Dr. Thorndike tried his intelligent "Experiment No. 11" with a
two-year-old cat, why didn't he try it with a two-year-old human? I
guess he would have found an equal amount of ignorance of the
mechanism of door fastenings, which comes only with teaching, and
would have produced only struggles and screaming.


THE TREND OF POPULATION IN MAINE.

  _Editor Popular Science Monthly:_

SIR: In the article contributed to your magazine for the month of
August on Recent Legislation against the Drink Evil, I notice what
appears to me to be a misstatement of fact. The writer speaks of the
results of prohibition in the State of Maine, and says, "In
sixty-three years Maine has seen her commerce disappear and her
population dwindle."

I have not investigated the matter of Maine's commerce, but I find
that her population has not dwindled in any possible sense of the term
during the period indicated above.

It is, perhaps, a common impression that Maine has had such an exodus
of her people to other States of the Union that she has suffered a
loss in population. What are the real facts of the case? The census
taken by the Government in 1840 gave the State 501,000 people, and
that taken in 1890, 661,000, which shows, during the interval between
1840 and 1890, an increase of 160,000. The increase in population
even during the decade 1880-'90 was 13,000. Whether there has been a
decrease since 1890 nobody at present knows, and will not know until
the decennial census is taken next year.

In view of these facts, I feel justified in challenging the
correctness of the gentleman's statement, quoted above.

There can be no room for doubt that Maine has sustained considerable
losses in population from farm desertion, but no statistics can be
presented to show that the State has, during the time stated above,
been dwindling in the number of people living within her borders.

                                                     J. EARLE BROWN.
  WOONSOCKET, R. I., _August 17, 1899._




Editor's Table.


_EDUCATION AND CHARACTER-BUILDING._

It is many years ago now since Mr. Spencer, in his Study of Sociology,
remarked upon the exaggerated hopes commonly built upon education.
With the courage that is characteristic of him, he went counter to a
current of opinion which was then running with perhaps its maximum
force. He said that the belief in the efficacy of education to remold
society had taken so strong a hold of the modern world that nothing
but disappointment would avail to modify it. This was in the year
1872; since then the disappointment has in a measure come, and many
are prepared to accept his views to-day, who, twenty-seven years ago,
thought they proceeded from a mind fundamentally out of sympathy with
modern progress. Facts indeed are accumulating from year to year to
prove the soundness of the philosopher's contention that "cognition
does not produce action," and that a great variety of knowledge may be
introduced into the mind without in the least inclining the individual
to higher modes of conduct.

We are reminded of Mr. Spencer's line of argument by an article lately
published in the London Spectator, entitled Influence on the Young.
The writer sees clearly that enthusiastic educationists undertake far
more than they can perform. "The character forms itself," he says,
"assimilating nutriment or detriment, as it were, from the air, which
the parents or teachers, for all their pains, can in no way change."
There seems indeed to be in the young, he remarks, a distinct tendency
to resist influence. Father and son will be opposed in politics; very
pious people too often find, to their sorrow, their children growing
up far otherwise than they could wish. The man who is very settled in
his habits is as like as not to have a boy who can not be persuaded to
take a serious view of life. The most unexceptionable home lessons
seem to be of no avail against the attractive power of light
companions. Evidently, Nature is at work in ways that men can not
control. If there is a law of "recoil," as the writer in the Spectator
hints, we may be pretty sure it serves some good purpose. It
introduces, we can see at once, a diversity which makes for the
progress, and perhaps also for the stability, of society. Two
practical questions, however, suggest themselves: (1) What can we
reasonably hope from education? and (2) What can we do to make a
wholesome _milieu_ for the rising generation?

With regard to education, it is evident that we can not know the best
it can do until it has been reduced to a science--until, that is to
say, as a result of the joint labors of practical educators and
psychologists, we can claim to possess a reasonable degree of
certainty as to the best arrangement and sequence of studies and the
best methods of stimulating the mind and imparting knowledge. Upon
these important questions there is still considerable diversity of
opinion. Some educators think we should be very sparing of
abstractions in the instruction of younger pupils. Others are of a
contrary opinion. Professor Baldwin, for example, in his little work
on The Mind, says that "grammar is one of the very best of
primary-school subjects." He also recommends mathematics. These are
questions which, it seems to us, admit of being finally settled.
Allowance must of course be made for the varying capacities of
individual children, but this need not stand in the way of the
establishment of some general doctrine as to the law of development of
the human mind. We shall then further require a true theory of method
in education, so that we may know by what means the best results in
the imparting of knowledge and the development of the capacities of
the individual mind may be obtained. Assuming that these vantage
points have been gained, education should be for every mind an
eminently healthful and invigorating process, which is more than can
be said for the forms of education that have prevailed in the past.
These, while developing certain faculties, have, to a great extent,
stunted others--have indeed, in too many cases, fatally impaired the
natural powers of the mind. A notable paper, which appeared in the
first number of this magazine, was one by the late Dr. Carpenter on
The Artificial Cultivation of Stupidity in Schools. Professor Baldwin,
in the work already cited, seems to be of the opinion that the process
of cultivating stupidity, or at least mental shiftlessness, is in full
blast to-day in many of our secondary schools owing to the prominence
given to language studies. The science of education must at least put
an end to this, and insure that the youths who are committed to the
public schools shall not be subjected to any mind-destroying
exercises. We can hope, however, that it will do much more. The mind,
like the body, grows by what it feeds upon; and it is hard to conceive
that suitable kinds of knowledge could be imparted in a natural
manner, so as to awaken interest and develop the perceptive and
reasoning powers, without at least preparing the mind for the
reception of right sentiments.

So much the science of education, when it is fairly established, may
reasonably be expected to do. It will deal with the mind upon true
hygienic principles. There remains the more serious question how such
a moral atmosphere can be created as will incline the young to take a
right view of knowledge and its uses. Knowledge, it is hardly
necessary to say, is power, just as money is power; and it is quite as
needful that the idea of social service should be associated with the
one as with the other. The best social service which, perhaps,
any man can render is to give to the world the example of high
disinterestedness and general nobility of character; and knowledge
should be valued not as conferring individual distinction, but
according as it expands and liberalizes the mind. The poet Coleridge
has said with some truth that

                   "Fancy is the power
      That first unsensualizes the dark mind,
      Giving it new delights; and bids it swell
      With wild activity; and peopling air,
      By obscure fears of beings invisible,
      Emancipates it from the grosser thrall
      Of the present impulse, teaching self-control,
      Till Superstition with unconscious hand
      Seat Reason on her throne."

The mind having been "unsensualized," the next step is to moralize
and humanize it, otherwise Reason on her throne may act not much more
wisely than other monarchs have done. The classic example of the
worship of reason is not reassuring as to the infallibility of the
goddess. The question, then, as to how intellectual education and the
education of the moral sentiments may go hand in hand is one that
comes home to every member of the community. We all help to make the
moral atmosphere and create the moral ideals of our time; and there is
no use in looking for high standards in our colleges and other
institutions of learning if we have low standards in our homes. The
youth who hears nothing talked of at home but money is not likely to
take much interest in instruction that does not bear directly on the
question of making money. The youth who hears money spoken of in the
home circle simply as a means of personal enjoyment and glorification
will need something more than a few lectures on political or social
economy to make him take a different view of it. We may employ
excellent men and women as teachers, but their success from a moral
point of view will always be limited by the general tone of the
community.

It is evident, then, that no very special directions can be given for
solving the problem with which we are concerned. Still, the posing of
the problem and the indication of the conditions on which its solution
depends may awaken in a few minds a new sense of their responsibility
in the matter, and it is a gain for even one to go over to the right
side. It would be quite as easy for _the whole_ of society to live on
a somewhat higher plane as it is for it to live on its present plane.
It would simply mean that the average man would treat the average man
a little better than he does now: whatever one gave he would thus get
in return, and the burdens which are always associated with mutual
distrust would be proportionately lightened.

The philosopher whom we began by quoting has indicated ways in which
the craze for legislative shortcuts is working against the moral
improvement of society. He holds that parental responsibility has been
seriously impaired by legislative encroachments in the matter of
education and otherwise. Book learning has become to the modern world
a kind of fetich; and minds that ought to be in contact with the facts
of life are stupefied, and so far prevented from getting their normal
moral growth by being drilled in studies that bring no real profit. We
can not bear the idea that one of our human brethren should not be
able to read and write; but, provided he possesses these
accomplishments, we ask no questions as to what use he makes of them.
We have before us a police description of a criminal who graduated at
one of the most celebrated universities on the Continent, who studied
afterward for the Church, who was for several years an elder, and who
possesses--so we are distinctly informed--fine literary tastes. The
gentleman with all these advantages is a fugitive from justice. With
all his knowledge and accomplishments he got no hold of the principles
of right conduct, and--there are not a few like him. We need not only
a science of education, but a science of government, the most valuable
part of which will probably be that which shows us with demonstrative
force what things government ought to leave alone. It is quite
possible we should find the moral atmosphere materially improving if
only the natural reactions between the individual and his environment
were not interfered with. The course of Nature, we may feel assured,
provides not less for moral than for mental growth, and if either
process is defectively carried on we may safely attribute it to some
ill-advised attempt we are making to improve on natural institutions.
Science has done much for the world in the past, but it has yet to do
much more. It will yet give us a light to our feet in matters
educational and political, and will liberate us from many of the yokes
and trammels we have foolishly imposed upon ourselves. Mankind will
then look into the face of Nature and see in it a new beneficence and
brighter promises for the future of the race.


_THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION AT COLUMBUS._

A fairly good attendance, with an unusually large proportion of men
prominent in science, and most cordial welcome and painstaking care of
the members by the Ohio State University and the citizens of Columbus,
combined to make the forty-eighth annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science a most enjoyable and
instructive one. The two features of the meeting which seem to deserve
the most attention are: First, the tendency which was shown in every
section to direct the papers and discussions to practical subjects, so
that all could participate in the proceedings and each member feel
justified in having a word to say in them; and, secondly, the perfect
cordiality with which the association was received and the assiduous
attention with which it was taken care of by the local committee. The
smaller and apparently less important details, but at the same time
those which so largely determine one's comfort in a strange community,
were thoughtfully arranged, and to this alone much of the success of
the meeting was due. The numerous excursions were not only exceedingly
enjoyable, but were arranged in every case primarily for their
instructive and scientific features, and an Easterner, at any rate,
could not take any of them without learning something. Another feature
of the meeting that was especially satisfactory was the possibility it
afforded for the younger workers in science to meet their elders, who
had hitherto led the way--who were present, as we have already said,
in larger proportion than usual. The importance of this feature, as
President Orton pointed out in these pages a few months ago, can not
be overestimated. The instruction and encouragement which a new worker
in the scientific field gains from a personal acquaintance with the
older men who have already achieved success and reputation in his
branch of science are obvious enough. With the increasing
specialization which modern research is making absolutely unavoidable,
the social feature of the annual gathering of such a company of
scientists is coming to be its most important function. A slight
extension of it might very readily lead to the adoption of a specific
policy by the several sections of devoting at least a part of their
time to such a general statement of what has been accomplished in
their department or to some especially important work of general
interest that some of the members have been engaged in as would be
most instructive to the members of the other sections. In the earlier
meetings of the association the sectional chairmen often made such
presentations in their stated addresses, but as times and men have
changed, the idea has been departed from and this feature has become
an exceptional one. If it could be restored, in a modified if not an
identical form, and made a regular part of the programme of at least
one of the sections at each meeting, the interest would be greatly
enhanced, and in this way the chemist, the geologist, the botanist,
and the others could be given regularly an authoritative account of
what is being done in the other branches of science, and an important
step would be taken toward doing away with the unfortunate narrowing
influence which special scientific work is too apt to exercise.

The fixing of the last week in June as the time for holding the next
meeting of the association, which is to be in New York, is a departure
from recent practice as to date, but, aside from the special reason
for it in this particular case--the probability that many of the
members will be at the Paris Exposition during the following
August--the experiment seems a desirable one because of the almost
invariably excessive heat to which August meetings are exposed.




Scientific Literature.


SPECIAL BOOKS.

Evidences are apparent in many quarters of a reaction against the
headlong rush toward aggression and territorial aggrandizement in
which the American people have allowed themselves to be carried away.
For a time the lovers of the Constitution of the United States as the
fathers of the republic left it and Lincoln glorified it were
bewildered, stunned by the revolution suddenly precipitated upon us
from Washington, while the people at large seemed to be wild with
enthusiasm for they knew not what, and men suffered themselves to be
led--they knew not whither. Very slowly the true patriots recovered
their voices, and signs appear that the people are at last getting
into a mood to listen to reason. President _David Starr Jordan's
Imperial Democracy_[49] comes very opportunely, therefore, to call to
the minds of those who can be induced to think some of the forgotten
principles of American policy, and to depict, in the terse, incisive
style of which the author is master, the true nature and bearing of
those iniquitous proceedings to which the American people, betrayed by
treacherous leaders, have allowed themselves to become a party.
President Jordan was one of the first who dared, in this matter, to
make a public protest against this scheme of aggression. His first
address on the subject--Lest we Forget--delivered to the graduating
class of Leland Stanford University, May 25, 1898, was separated only
a few days in time from Prof. Charles Eliot Norton's exposure of the
reversal of all our most cherished traditions and habits which the
precipitation of the war with Spain had brought about. The two men
must share the honor of leadership in the awakening movement. In this
address President Jordan gives a true definition of patriotism as "the
will to serve one's country; to make one's country better worth
saving"--not the shrilling of the mob, or trampling on the Spanish
flag, or twisting the lion's tail. Even so early he foresaw the
darkness of the future we were bringing upon ourselves, and said: "The
crisis comes when the war is over. What then? Our question is not what
we shall do with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It is what
these prizes will do to us." This, with the wickedness of the whole
business, is the burden of most of the other papers in the volume. In
the paper on Imperial Expansion we are told of three "world crises"
in our history when we were confronted with momentous questions. The
first was after the Revolution. The second came through the growth of
slavery. The third is upon us now. "It is not the conquest of Spain,
not the disposition of the spoils of victory which first concerns us.
It is the spirit that lies behind it. Shall our armies go where our
institutions can not? Shall territorial expansion take the place of
democratic freedom? Shall our invasion of the Orient be merely an
incident, an accident of a war of knight-errantry, temporary and
exceptional? Or is it to mark a new policy--the reversion from America
to Europe, from democracy to imperialism?" President Jordan has an
answer to the question, What are we to do in the shape affairs have
assumed? The right thing would be "to recognize the independence of
the Philippines, under American protection, and to lend them our army
and navy and our wisest counselors; not our politicians, but our
jurists, our teachers, with foresters, electricians, manufacturers,
mining engineers, and experts in the various industries.... The only
sensible thing to do would be to pull out some dark night and escape
from the great problem of the Orient as suddenly and as dramatically
as we got into it." Yet President Jordan recognizes that some great
changes in our system are inevitable, and belong to the course of
natural progress. They must not be shirked, but should be met
manfully, soberly, with open eyes. A paper on Colonial Lessons of
Alaska presents as an object lesson the muss we have made with
colonial government in that Territory.

     [Footnote 49: Imperial Democracy. A Study of the Relation of
     Government by the People, Equality before the Law, and other
     Tenets of Democracy, to the Demands of a Vigorous Foreign Policy,
     and other Demands of Imperial Dominion. By David Starr Jordan.
     New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 293. Price, $1.50.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. _A. H. Keane's Man Past and Present_[50] is a part fulfillment of
a promise held out in his Ethnology, the first volume of the Cambridge
Geographical Series, that it might be followed by another dealing more
systematically with the primary divisions of mankind. In it the "four
varietal divisions" of man over the globe are treated more in detail,
with the primary view of establishing their independent specialization
in their several geographical zones, and of elucidating the difficult
questions associated with the origins and interrelations of the chief
subgroups. The work consequently deals to a large extent with the
prehistoric period, when the peoples had already been fully
constituted in their primeval homes and had begun their subsequent
developments and migratory movements. The author has further sought to
elucidate those general principles which are concerned with the
psychic unity, the social institutions, and religious ideas of
primitive and later peoples. The two principles, already insisted upon
in the Ethnology, of the specific unity of all existing varieties of
the human family and the dispersion of their generalized precursors
over the whole world in Pleistocene times are borne in view
throughout. Subsequent to this dispersion, the four primary divisions
of man have each had its Pleistocene ancestor, from whom each has
sprung independently and divergently by continuous adaptation to their
several environments. Great light is believed to have been thrown on
the character of the earliest men by the discovery of the
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, and this is supplemented as to the earliest
acquirements by Dr. Noetling's discovery, in 1894, of the works of
Pliocene man in upper Burmah. The deductions made from these
discoveries strengthen the view Mr. Keane has always advocated, that
man began to spread over the globe after he had acquired the erect
posture, but while in other physical and in mental respects he still
did not greatly differ from his nearest of kin. As to the age when
this development was taking place, agreement is expressed with Major
Powell's remark that the natural history of early man becomes more and
more a geological and not merely an anthropological problem. The human
varieties are shown to be, like other species, the outcome of their
environments, and all sudden changes of those environments are
disastrous. In both hemispheres the isocultural bands follow the
isothermal lines in all their deflections--temperate regions being
favorable, and tropical and severe ones unfavorable, to development.
Of the metal ages, the existence of a true copper age has been placed
beyond reasonable doubt. The passage from one metal to another was
slow and progressive. In art the earliest drawings were natural and
vital. The apparent inferiority of the drawings of the metal period to
those of the cave dwellers and of the present Bushmen is due to the
later art having been reduced to conventions. The development of
alphabetical writing from pictographs is briefly sketched. Thus light
is sought from all quarters in dealing with the questions of the book,
and due weight is given to all available data--physical and mental
characters, usages, religion, speech, cultural features, history, and
geographical range. The general discussion of these leading principles
is brief but clear and comprehensive. The bulk of the volume,
following them, is occupied with the detailed and minute studies of
the four main groups of mankind--the Negro, Mongol, American Indian,
and Caucasic--and their subgroups, the discussion of each being
preceded by a conspectus showing its Primeval Home, Present Range,
Physical Characters, Mental Characters (Temperament, Speech, Religion,
and Culture), and Main Divisions. The text is full, clear, good
reading, instructive and suggestive, and in it the author has sought
to make the volume a trustworthy book of reference on the multifarious
subjects dealt with.

     [Footnote 50: Man Past and Present. By A. H. Keane, F. R. G. S.
     (Cambridge Geographical Series). Cambridge, England: At the
     University Press. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 584.
     Price, $3.]


GENERAL NOTICES.

The fact that Mr. _Charles A. Dana_ stood in close personal relations
with Secretary Stanton and was officially associated with him during a
considerable period of the war for the Union, and was also
incidentally brought near Mr. Lincoln, gives whatever he may relate
concerning the events of that period somewhat the air of a revelation
from the inside. Accordingly, we naturally expect to find things
narrated in his _Recollections of the Civil War_[51] that could not be
told as well by any one else. The account given in the book relates to
events in which the author was personally concerned. Mr. Dana had been
associated with Horace Greeley in the editorial management of the New
York Tribune for fifteen years, when, in April, 1862, Mr. Greeley
invited him to resign. No reason was given or asked for the
separation, and no explicit statement of a reason was needed. Mr.
Greeley, having expressed in the beginning his willingness to let the
secessionist "wayward-sister" States go in peace, was in favor of
peace; Mr. Dana was for vigorous war. A correspondence was opened
between him and Mr. Stanton in reference to public matters shortly
after Mr. Stanton went into the War Department. Then Mr. Dana was
intrusted with special commissions that carried him to the front and
brought him in contact with the leaders of the army; and finally, in
1863, was appointed Assistant Secretary of War, an office he filled
till the end of the contest. His narrative deals as the story of one
having knowledge with questions of policy, with the critical phases of
the hard conflict, with the perplexities and anxieties of the men
charged with responsibilities, with stirring scenes in the councils
at the Capitol and in battle at the front, and with personal incidents
of the men whose names the nation loves and delights to honor. All is
related in the straightforward, fluent style, touching only the facts,
of a writer who has a story to tell and makes it his business to tell
it. The result of the reading of the book is to arouse a new
appreciation of the abilities and virtues of those great men in their
various walks of civil, political, and military life, who took our
country through its supreme trial.

     [Footnote 51: Recollections of the Civil War. With the Leaders at
     Washington and in the Field in the Sixties. By Charles A. Dana.
     New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 296. Price, $2.]

Mrs. _Arabella B. Buckley's Fairy-Land of Science_ has stood the test
of about thirty years' publication as one of the simplest, clearest,
and best popular introductions to physical science. Originating in a
course of lectures delivered to children and their friends, the
thought of publishing the book was suggested by the interest taken in
the lectures by all the hearers. It was a happy thought, and the
carrying of it out is fully justified by the result. But thirty years
is a long time in so rapidly advancing a pursuit as the study of
science, and makes changes necessary in all books treating of it. The
publishers of this work,[52] therefore, with the assistance of the
author, have considerably extended the original volume, adding to it
notices of the latest scientific discoveries in the departments
treated, and amplifying with fuller detail such parts as have grown in
importance and interest. A few changes have been made in the interest
of American readers, such as the substitution, where it seemed proper,
of words familiar here for terms almost exclusively used in England,
and the introduction of American instead of English examples to
illustrate great scientific truths. The book has also been largely
reillustrated.

     [Footnote 52: The Fairy-Land of Science. New York: D. Appleton
     and Company. Pp. 252.]

Some of the essays in Miss _Badenoch's True Tales of the Insects_[53]
have already appeared in serials--two of them in the Popular Science
Monthly. The essays are not intended to present a view of entomology
or of any department of it, but to describe, in an attractive and at
the same time an accurate manner, a few special features of insect
life and some of what we might call its remarkable curiosities. The
author is well qualified for her undertaking, for, while being an
entomologist of recognized position, she has those qualities of
enthusiasm in her pursuit and literary training that enable her to
present her subject in its most attractive aspect. From the great
variety of insect forms she has selected only a few for this special
presentation, including some of eccentric shape and some of genuine
universal interest. She begins with the strange-looking creatures of
the family of the _Mantidæ_, or praying insects, or, as the Brazilians
call the _Mantis_, more fitly, the author thinks, the devil's riding
horse, which is characterized as "the tiger, not the saint, of the
insect world." The walking-stick and walking-leaf insects, of equally
strange appearance, but peaceful, naturally follow these. Then come
the locusts, and grasshoppers, which are more familiar, and the
butterflies and moths, which attract the most attention and present
such remarkable forms as the case-moths and the hawk and death's-head
moths. The insects made subjects of treatment are described with
fullness of detail, and the record of their life histories. The book
is published in an attractive outer style, on thick paper, with
thirty-four illustrations by Margaret J. D. Badenoch.

     [Footnote 53: True Tales of the Insects. By L. N. Badenoch.
     London: Chapman & Hall. Pp. 253.]

Prof. _Charles C. James_, now Deputy Minister of Agriculture for
Ontario, defines the purpose of his book, _Practical Agriculture_[54]
to be to aid the reader and student in acquiring a knowledge of the
science as distinguished from the art of agriculture--"that is, a
knowledge of the 'why,' rather than a knowledge of the 'how.'" The
author believes, from his experience of several years' teaching at the
Ontario Agricultural College, that the rational teaching of
agriculture in public and high schools is possible and would be
exceedingly profitable, and that an intelligent knowledge of the
science underlying the art would add much interest to the work and
greatly increase the pleasure in it. The science of agriculture is
understood by him to consist of a mingling of chemistry, geology,
botany, entomology, physiology, bacteriology, and other sciences in so
far as they have any bearing upon agriculture. He has aimed in this
book to include only the first principles of these various sciences,
and to show their application to the art of agriculture. The subject
is treated as it relates, consecutively, to the plant, the soil, the
crops of the field; the garden, orchard, and vineyard; live stock and
dairying; and, under the heading of "other subjects," bees and birds,
forestry, roads, and the rural home. The appendix contains lists of
trees and of weeds, and an article on spraying mixtures. Questions to
be answered by the reader are attached to most of the chapters. The
illustrations are well chosen and good.

     [Footnote 54: Practical Agriculture. By Charles C. James.
     American edition edited by John Craig. New York: D. Appleton and
     Company. Pp. 203. Price, 80 cents.]

Considerable information about the Philippine Islands and their
inhabitants is given by Dr. _D. G. Brinton_ in a pamphlet entitled
_The Peoples of the Philippines_. Dr. Brinton's point of view is the
anthropologist's, and accordingly, after a few paragraphs about the
geography, geology, and history of the islands, he takes up their
ethnology and describes their various peoples as they have been
studied by the masters of the science and by travelers. Much valuable
as well as interesting information is given respecting their manners
and customs, languages, and literature, for the Tagals have had a
written language from the earliest known times, and though their old
literature does not amount to much they are to-day exceedingly facile
versifiers.

The Open Court Publishing Company (Chicago) publishes _The Lectures on
Elementary Mathematics_ (_Leçons élémentaires sur les mathématiques_)
of _Joseph Louis Lagrange_, "the greatest of modern analysts," in a
translation from the new edition of the author's collected works by
Thomas J. McCormack. These lectures, which were delivered in 1765 at
the École Normale, have never before been published in separate form,
except in the first printing in the Journal of the Polytechnic School
and in the German. "The originality, elegance, and symmetrical
character of these lectures have been pointed out by De Morgan, and
notably by Dühring, who places them in the front rank of elementary
expositions as an example of their kind. They possess, we might say, a
unique character as a reading book in mathematics, and are interwoven
with helpful historical and philosophical remarks." They present with
great clearness the subjects of arithmetic and its operations,
algebra, equations of the third and fourth degrees, the evolution of
numerical equations, and the employment of curves in the solution of
problems. The translator has prefixed a short biographical sketch of
Lapouge, and an excellent portrait is given.

A book of _Observation Blanks for Beginners in Mineralogy_ has been
prepared by _Herbert E. Austin_, as an aid to the laboratory course,
and is published by D. C. Heath & Co. (Boston, 30 cents). The
laboratory course is intended to make the pupil familiar with the
characteristics of minerals and the terms used in describing them by
directing him to observe typical specimens and describe what he sees,
and to develop his faculties of observation, conception, reasoning,
judgment, comparison, and memory. A description is given of apparatus
that may be home-made. The blanks follow, containing spaces for the
insertion of notes under the heads of Experiment, Observation,
Statement, and Conclusion.

In Volume No. XXX of the International Education Series--Pedagogics of
the Kindergarten--a number of Froebel's essays relating more
especially to the plays and games were printed from the collection
made by Wichard Lange. A new volume of the series, _Friedrich
Froebel's Education by Development_, includes another selection from
Lange's publication, in which the gifts are more thoroughly discussed.
"Again and again, in the various essays," the editor of the series
says, "Froebel goes over his theory of the meaning of the ball, the
sphere, the cube, and its various subdivisions. The student of Froebel
has great advantage, therefore, in reading this volume, inasmuch as
Froebel has cast new light on his thought in each separate exposition
that he has made.... The essays on the training school for
kindergartners and the method of introducing children's gardens into
the kindergarten are very suggestive and useful. In fact, there is no
other kindergarten literature that is quite equal in value to the
contents of this volume." The few essays in Lange's volume that still
remain untranslated are characterized as being mostly of an ephemeral
character. With the publication of the present volume, of which, as of
the Pedagogics, Miss Josephine Jarvis is the translator, a complete
list of the original works of Froebel in English translations has been
provided in the International Education Series of Messrs. D. Appleton
and Company.

A useful manual for students in chemistry is the _Chemical
Experiments_ of Prof. _John F. Woodhull_ and _M. B. Van Arsdale_
(Henry Holt & Co., New York). It embraces directions for making
seventy-five experiments with different substances and chemical
properties, including oxygen and the air, hydrogen and water, chlorine
and the chlorine family, acids, bases, salts, sulphur, nitrogen,
carbon, carbon dioxide and the carbonates, fermentation, potash, and
problems to illustrate the law of definite proportions. A title is
given to each experiment, suggesting what is to be proved by it; the
details of the process are given, and the pupil is left to do the
rest, entering his particular observations and conclusions on the
blank page opposite the text. Questions are appended, of a nature
further to develop the thinking powers of the pupils, and tables or
lists are added of the elements concerned in the experiments, weights
and measures, apparatus, and chemicals.

The book _Defective Eyesight: the Principles of its Relief by
Glasses_, of Dr. _D. B. St. John Roosa_, is the result of an attempt
to revise The Determination of the Necessity for Wearing Glasses,
published by the same author in 1888. It was found, on undertaking the
work of revision, that the advance in our knowledge of the proper
prescription of glasses, especially in the matter of simplicity in
method, had been so great as to require a complete rewriting. In doing
this the book has been very much enlarged, and illustrations have been
introduced. The author hopes his manual may prove a reliable guide to
the student and practitioner in ophthalmology, and may also be of
interest to persons who wish to know the principles on which the
prescription of glasses is based. The special subjects treated
of are the measurement of visual power, presbyopia, myopia or
short-sightedness, hypermetropia, corneal astigmatism, asthenopia, and
the qualities of lenses. (Published by the Macmillan Company. Price,
$1.)


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. North
Carolina State Agricultural Society: Second Annual Report (1896) of
the Experimental Farm at Southern Pines. Pp. 90.--Ohio: Press Bulletin
No. 195. Stomach Worms in Sheep. Pp. 2; No. 196. Comparison of
Varieties of Wheat. Pp. 2; No. 197. Successful Treatment of Stomach
Worms in Sheep. Pp. 2; No. 198. Varieties of Wheat and Home-mixed
Fertilizers. Pp. 2.--United States Department of Agriculture: Monthly
List of Publications (July, 1899). Pp. 4; Report on North American
Fauna. No. 14. Natural History of the Tres Marias Islands, Mexico. Pp.
96; No. 15. Revision of the Jumping Mice of the Genus _Zaphus_. By
Edward A. Preble. Pp. 34, with one plate; Report of the Puerto Rico
Section of the Weather and Crop Service of the Weather Bureau, for
May, 1899. Pp. 8.

Baker, M. N. Potable Water and Methods of Detecting Impurities. New
York: The Van Nostrand Company. (Van Nostrand Science Series.) Pp. 97.
50 cents.

Beman, W. W., and Smith, D. E. New Plane and Solid Geometry. Boston:
Ginn & Co. Pp. 382.

Bulletins, Proceedings, Reports, etc. Boston Society of Natural
History: Vol. XXIX. No. 2. Variation and Sexual Selection in Man. By
E. T. Brewster. Pp. 16; No. 3. Notes on the Reptiles and Amphibians of
Intervale, New Hampshire. By Glover M. Allen. Pp. 16; No. 4. Studies
in Diptera Cyclorhapha. By G. & N. Hough. Pp. 8; No. 5. Contributions
from the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. New Series: No. 17. By
B. L. Robinson and J. M. Greenman. Pp. 12.--Dominion of Canada:
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and Colonization.
Improvements In Crop Growing. By Prof. James W. Robertson. Pp.
39.--International Correspondence Schools, Scranton, Pa.: General
Circular. Pp. 32.--Liberal University, Silverton, Oregon:
Announcements. Pp. 18.--Society of American Authors: Bulletin for
July, 1899. Pp. 22.--University of Michigan, Department of Medicine
and Surgery: Annual Announcement for 1899-1900. Pp. 91.--United States
Artillery Journal: Index to Vol. X, 1898. Pp. 12.

Carpenter, George H. Insects, their Structure and Life. A Primer of
Entomology. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 404. $1.75.

Daniels, Winthrop Moore. The Elements of Public Finance, including the
Monetary System of the United States. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp.
383. $1.50.

Grotius, Hugo. Proceedings at the Laying of a wreath on the Tomb of,
July 4, 1899, by the Commission of the United States to the
International Peace Conference. Pp. 48.

Howard, John R., editor. Educational Nuggets. New York: Ford, Howard &
Hulbert. Pp. 215. 50 cents.

McIlvaine, Charles, and Macadam, R. K. Toadstools, Mushrooms, and
Fungi, Edible and Poisonous. (Specimen pages.) Indianapolis. Ind.: The
Bowen-Merrill Company. (Author's Edition.) $10.

Massee, George. A Text-Book of Plant Diseases caused by Cryptogamic
Parasites. New York. The Macmillan Company. Pp. 458. $1.60.

Mellen, George E. New Pointers for Amateurs (Photography). Published
by the author. Times Building, Chicago. Pp. 46, with blanks. 15 cents.

Miller, Prof. Kelly. The Primary Needs of the Negro Race. Washington:
Howard University. Pp. 18.

Oregon Short Line Railroad. Where Gush the Geysers. (Guide to
Yellowstone National Park.)

Pelley, W. H., Knoxville, Ill. Christian Government. Pp. 44. 10 cents.

Pfungst, Dr. Arthur. Ein Deutscher Buddhist. (A German Buddhist.)
Theodor Schultze. Stuttgart. Pp. 51.

Rector, L. E., Translator and Editor. Montaigne on the Education of
Children. New York: D. Appleton and Company. (International Education
Series.) Pp. 191.

Reprints: Billings, S. A., and Englehardt, H. A. Observations on a New
Coal-Tar Product. Pp. 7.--Goldmann, J. A. Prophylactic Treatment of
the Uric-acid Diathesis. Pp. 8.--Kingsley, Carl. Methods of
Determining the Frequency of Alternating Currents. Pp. 11.--Kunz,
George F. The Production of Precious Stones in 1897. Pp. 22.--Shimer,
P. W. Carbon Combustions in a Platinum Crucible. Pp. 12.

Sumner, William G. The Conquest of the United States by Spain. Boston:
Dana, Estes & Co.

Smithsonian Institution: Doan, Martha. Index to the Literature of
Thallium. Pp. 26; Proceedings of the United States National Museum.
Index to Vol. XXI.

United States Commission of Labor: Thirteenth Annual Report. Hand and
Machine Labor. Two volumes. Pp. 1604.

United States Geological Survey: Nineteenth Annual Report. Part I.
Director's Report, including Triangulations and Spirit Levelings. Pp.
422, with map; Part IV. Hydrography. Pp. 814; Part VI. Mineral
Resources of the United States. By David T. Day. Two volumes. Pp. 651
and 706.--Monographs: Vol. XXIX. Geology of Old Hampshire County,
Massachusetts. By B. K. Emerson. Pp. 790, with maps; Vol. XXXI.
Geology of the Aspen Mining District, Colorado. By J. E. Spurr. Pp.
260, with an Atlas of thirty sheets; Vol. XXXV. The Later Extinct
Floras of North America. By J. S. Newberry. A posthumous work, edited
by Arthur Hollick. Pp. 295, with 68 plates.--Maps and Descriptions of
Routes of Exploration in Alaska in 1898. Pp. 138, with envelope
containing ten maps.

Young Men's Christian Association, Educational Department: Annual
Report for 1899. Pp. 70; Prospectus for 1899 (July 1, 1899 to July 1,
1900). Pp. 112; Fourth International and other Exhibits. Awards of
Merit. Pp. 24; The Present Status of Our Educational Work. By Frederic
B. Pratt. Pp. 5.




Fragments of Science.


=Officers of the American Association for 1900.=--The American
Association, at Columbus, Ohio, elected as president for the next
meeting, which is to be held in New York city, June 25 to
30, 1900, Prof. R. S. Woodward, of Columbia University. The
vice-presidents-elect are: Section A (Mathematics and Astronomy),
Asaph Hall, Jr., of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Section B (Physics), Ernest
Merritt, of Ithaca, N. Y.; Section C (Chemistry), James Lewis Howe, of
Lexington, Va.; Section D (Mechanical Science and Engineering), J. A.
Brashear, of Pittsburg, Pa.; Section E (Geology and Geography), J. F.
Kemp, of New York city; Section F (Zoölogy), C. B. Davenport, of
Cambridge, Mass.; Section G (Botany), William Trelease, of St. Louis,
Mo.; Section H (Anthropology), A. W. Butler, of Indianapolis, Ind.;
Section I (Economic Science and Statistics), C. M. Woodward, of St.
Louis. The permanent secretary is L. O. Howard, United States
Entomologist, Washington, D. C.; General Secretary, Charles
Baskerville, of Chapel Hill, N. C.; Secretary of the Council, William
H. Hallock, of New York city. The sectional secretaries are: Section
A, W. M. Strong, of New Haven, Conn.; Section B, R. A. Fessenden, of
Allegheny, Pa.; Section C, A. A. Noyes, of Boston, Mass.; Section D,
W. T. Magruder, of Columbus, Ohio; Section E, J. A. Holmes, of Chapel
Hill, N. C.; Section F, C. H. Eigenmann, of Bloomington, Ind.; Section
G, D. T. McDougal, of New York Botanical Garden; Section H, Frank
Russell, of Cambridge, Mass.; Section I, H. T. Newcombe, of
Washington, D. C. Treasurer, R. S. Woodward, of New York city.

=Graphite.=--An interesting account of the history and manufacture of
graphite is given by E. G. Acheson in the June issue of the Journal
of the Franklin Institute. In the year 1779 Karl Wilhelm Scheele, a
young apothecary in the town of Köping, Sweden, discovered that
graphite was an individual compound. It had up to this time been
confounded with molybdenum sulphide. In 1800 Mackenzie definitely
added graphite to the carbon group by showing that, on burning, it
yielded the same amount of carbon dioxide as an equal amount of
charcoal and diamond. Graphite in a more or less pure state is quite
freely distributed over the earth, but only in a few places is it
found under conditions of purity, quantity, ease of mining, refining,
and transportation to market that permit of a profitable business
being made of it. Statistics for the last six years (1890-'95) show an
average yearly production of 56,994 short tons. The countries
contributing to the supply were Austria, Ceylon, Germany, Italy,
United States, Canada, Japan, India, Russia, Great Britain, and Spain.
Great differences exist in the structure and purity of the graphites
furnished from the various mines. There are two general forms--the
crystalline and the amorphous. The product of the Ceylon mines is
crystalline of great purity, analyzing in some cases over ninety-nine
per cent carbon, while that of the Barrowdale mines is amorphous and
also very pure. The chief impurity in graphite is iron. It is probable
that the first use made of graphite was as a writing substance. The
first account we have of its employment for this purpose is contained
in the writings of Conrad Gessner on Fossils, published in 1565. Its
present uses include the manufacture of pencils, crucibles,
stove-polish, foundry-facing, paint, motor and dynamo brushes,
anti-friction compounds, electrodes for electro-metallurgical work,
conducting surfaces in electrotyping, and covering the surfaces of
powder grains. For most of these purposes it is used in the natural
impure state. The mining and manufacture of graphite into articles of
commerce give employment to thousands of people. The mines of Ceylon
alone, when working to their full capacity, employ about twenty-four
thousand men, women, and children. The rapid increase in the use of
graphite has led to considerable discussion in recent years regarding
the possibility of its commercial manufacture. It has been made in a
number of different ways in the laboratory, all, however, depending on
the same fundamental principle--viz., the liberation of the carbon
from some one of its chemical compounds, under conditions which
prevent its reassociation with the same or other elements. Mr.
Acheson, who has been working for several years in an endeavor to
devise a commercially successful process of manufacture, found,
somewhere back in 1893, that graphite was formed in the carborundum
(electric) furnaces of the Carborundum Company of Niagara Falls. Since
then he has been following up this clew, and now believes that "the
only commercial way to make graphite is by breaking up a carbide by
the action of heat." A building for its manufacture in this way, by
the use of the electric furnace, is now in course of erection at
Niagara Falls.

=Commercial Education in England.=[55]--It is only of comparatively
late years that the Government has had anything to do with the
education of the people. For some centuries back all English education
was practically controlled by our two ancient universities--Oxford and
Cambridge. They decided what subjects were to be taught, and how they
were to be taught. The control they exercised over our English schools
was an indirect one, but it was none the less effectual. The schools
themselves were, like the universities, independent of Government, or,
indeed, of any control. The principal of these are known as "public
schools," though the term "public" has of late years also been applied
to the public elementary schools. These are nearly all developments of
ancient foundations. Winchester, founded in the fourteenth century,
and Westminster, in the sixteenth, grew up under the shadows of great
religious houses; Eton was established in the fifteenth century by the
monarch, close to his own palace at Windsor; Harrow, which dates from
the sixteenth century, is the most important example of the most
numerous class of all privately founded local schools--grammar
schools, as they were generally entitled--which have developed beyond
their original founders' intention, and have eventually come to
attract boys from all parts of the kingdom. The best boys from all of
them went to the universities, and the course of study which was most
successful at the university was naturally the course of study which
was preferred at the school. The _literæ humaniores_, which were the
sum total of university education, included only Greek and Latin
language and literature, mathematics, and logic. Science--I have now
in my mind the education of but a single generation back--was ignored.
The teaching of modern languages was perfunctory in the extreme; the
same may be said of history and geography, while even English language
and literature were almost entirely neglected. Now an education
modeled on these lines was not ill suited for professional men--men
who went from the university into law, the Church, or medicine. But it
was by no means suited, especially when cut short in its early stages,
for boys whose future destination was the counting-house or the shop.
We are not met to consider the training of scholars, but the sort of
education best adapted to the requirements of the ordinary man of
business, and given under the limitations inevitable in the conditions
of the case--that is to say, in a very limited period and during the
early years of life--intended also not only to train the mind but to
provide a means of earning a living. Commercial education must in fact
be a compromise between real education and business training. The more
it inclines to the former the better. With the growth of modern
industry and commerce the necessity for a training better suited for
the requirements of modern life became more and more evident, and the
place was supplied, or partially supplied, by private-adventure
schools, which undertook to provide the essentials of a commercial
education. Of late years also some important middle-class schools have
been founded by institutions like the Boys' Public Day Schools
Company, and the Girls' Public Day Schools Company, the teaching in
which is of a modern if not of a commercial character. The growth also
of science had its natural and obvious effects on educational methods.
Scientific teaching was introduced at the universities--it had been
practically ignored at Oxford, and recognized at Cambridge only as a
department of mathematics. The more important of our public schools
introduced what was known as a "modern side," that is to say, an
alternative course which a boy might take, and in which science,
modern languages, and mathematics took the place, to a greater or less
extent, of the classical languages. Other schools modified their whole
curriculum in a like direction; others again almost abandoned the
ancient knowledge in favor of the modern. Such, in briefest and
baldest summary, is the condition at which our system of secondary
education has now arrived. In the meantime, elementary education in
England had been organized and systematized. At the beginning of the
century elementary education was imparted to the children of the
peasants and agricultural laborers in village schools, most of which
were sadly inefficient. In the towns there were various charitable
institutions for educating the children of those who were unable to
provide education for themselves, and there were also what were known
as ragged and parochial schools, which were more or less of the same
character as the elementary schools of to-day. Early in the century
several important societies were established--they were mostly of a
religious character--for the improvement of elementary education. By
their assistance schools were founded throughout the country. These
were maintained by voluntary effort, and so gained their name of
voluntary schools, though they received aid from the Government, an
annual grant being allotted for the purpose. In 1839 a committee of
the Privy Council was created to regulate the administration of
Government grants for education, and this committee still remains the
governing body of our education department. The Elementary Education
Act of 1870, with later acts of 1876 and 1880, laid down the principle
that sufficient elementary education should be provided for all
children of school age, and established a system of school boards,
which boards were to be and were formed in all districts where such
sufficient provision for education did not exist. By a later act of
1891 education was made gratuitous as well as compulsory. We have,
therefore, now two great classes of elementary schools--school-board
schools, in which education is free, and voluntary schools, in which a
fee may be charged. Both alike receive Government aid under certain
conditions. As a rule the voluntary schools are connected with the
Church of England or with one or other of the nonconformist bodies.
The boards which control the board schools are elected bodies, and the
teaching is undenominational.

     [Footnote 55: From a paper read by Sir H. T. Wood, at the
     International Congress, on Technical Education, at Venice, May,
     1899.]

=Genius and Habit.=--W. L. Bryan and N. Harter are the authors of an
interesting monograph in the Psychological Review for July, from which
the following paragraphs are taken: "There is scarcely any difference
between one man and another of greater practical importance than that
of effective speed. In war, business, scientific work, manual labor,
and what not, we have at the one extreme the man who defeats all
ordinary calculations by the vast quantity of work he gets done, and
at the other extreme the man who no less defeats ordinary calculations
by the little all his busyness achieves. The former is always arriving
with an unexpected victory, the latter with an unanswerable excuse for
failure. It has seemed to many psychologists strongly probable that
the swift man should be distinguishable from the slow by reaction time
tests. For (_a_), granting that the performances demanded in practical
affairs are far more complicated than those required in the laboratory
tests, it seems likely that one who is tuned for a rapid rate in the
latter will be tuned for a rapid rate in the former, when he has
mastered them. Moreover (_b_), a rapid rate in elementary processes is
favorable to their fusion into higher unitary processes, each
including several of the lower. Finally (_c_), a rapid rate in
elementary processes is favorable to prompt voluntary combinations in
presence of new emergencies. In face of these _a priori_
probabilities, eleven years' experience in this laboratory (the first
three being spent mainly on reaction times) has brought the conviction
that no reaction time test will surely show whether a given individual
has or has not effective speed in his work. Very slow rates,
especially in complicated reactions, are strongly indicative of a mind
slow and ineffective at all things. But experience proves that rapid
rates by no means show that the subject has effective speed in the
ordinary, let alone extraordinary, tasks of life. How is this to be
explained? The following answer is proposed: The rate at which one
makes practical headway depends partly upon the rate of the mental and
nervous processes involved; but far more upon how much is included in
each process. If A, B, and C add the same columns of figures, one
using readily the method of the lightning adder, another the ordinary
addition table, while the third makes each addition by counting on his
fingers, the three are presently out of sight of one another, whatever
the rates at which the processes involved are performed. The lightning
adder may proceed more leisurely than either of the others. He steps a
league while they are bustling over furlongs or inches. Now, the
ability to take league steps in receiving telegraphic messages, in
reading, in addition, in mathematical reasoning, and in many other
fields, plainly depends upon the acquisition of league-stepping
habits. No possible proficiency and rapidity in elementary processes
will serve. The learner must come to do with one stroke of attention
what now requires half a dozen, and presently, in one still more
inclusive stroke, what now requires thirty-six. He must systematize
the work to be done, and must acquire a system of automatic habits
corresponding to the system of tasks. When he has done this he is
master of the situation in his field. He can, if he chooses, deal
accurately with minute details. He can swiftly overlook great areas
with an accurate sense of what the details involved amount to--indeed,
with far greater justice to details than is possible for one who knows
nothing else. Finally, his whole array of habits is swiftly obedient
to serve in the solution of new problems. Automatism is not genius,
but it is the hands and feet of genius."

"=A vague Impression of Beauty.="--The following sentences occur in an
article on The Real purpose of Universities in a recent issue of the
London Spectator. They give so strange a picture of the ideals of the
two leading English universities as to seem worthy of reproduction:
"However, Dr. Hill made one statement for which we owe him a sincere
gratitude. 'The excellence of the classics,' said he, 'lay chiefly in
their complete uselessness.' ... In this simple statement is expressed
the true value of our old universities. They should be practically
useless. They should not teach you to be a good carpenter or a
skillful diplomatist. You can not march out of Oxford or Cambridge
into any career which will return you an immediate and efficient
income.... The other universities of Europe are prepared to cut you to
a certain measure, or to render you technically competent. But our
English universities have hitherto declined to discharge this humble
function, save in rare lapses, from a noble ideal. They at least
profess to accomplish a far greater task. There is a strange period
dividing the man from the boy, which clamors aloud for intelligent
discipline, and this discipline Oxford and Cambridge are anxious to
supply. The undergraduate is too young to specialize, and not too old
to receive instruction. When his period of training is finished he is
asked to assume the heavy burdens of life, to discharge tasks which
may be dull, and which are rarely concerned with what were once called
the humanities. As he passes through the university he may not have
the time nor the wit to become a sound scholar nor a profound
mathematician. But he may, if he understand his privilege aright,
linger for a while in the groves of 'practically useless' knowledge.
He may learn what literature meant in an age when it was concerned
only with the essentials of simplicity; he may read the lessons of
history when history was still separate from political intrigue. And
though he forgets his Greek grammar, though in middle life he can not
construe a page of Virgil, yet he carries away from this irrational
interlude a vague impression of beauty which no other course of
education will ever give him." Even for the schoolmen "a vague
impression of beauty," whatever that may mean, seems rather
unpractical as an educational _ultima Thule_.

=The Purple of Cassius.=--There are few substances in the field of
inorganic chemistry on which so much speculation and actual work has
been expended as the so-called purple of Cassius. A recent article by
Mr. C. L. Reese, in the Chemical News, contains some interesting
information regarding this curious compound. Up to the present time
there have, it seems, been two views held as to its chemical
nature--one that it is a mixture of stannic acid and metallic gold;
the other, that of Berzelius, that it is substantially a chemical
compound of purple gold oxide with the oxides of tin possibly mixed
with an excess of stannic acid. It has seemed very likely that the
substance is a chemical compound of acid character, and that the
solubility in ammonia is due to the formation of a salt, but it has
been found that by oxidation of stannous chloride and by allowing very
dilute solutions of stannic chloride to stand, the "hydrogel" of
stannic acid separated out, which, on the addition of a few drops of
ammonia, liquefied and so became soluble in water, just as the purple
of Cassius does. There can therefore be no salt formation here. Some
comparatively recent work by Richard Zsigmondy, however, seems to have
finally cleared up the chemical nature of this curious substance. Its
formation is explained by assuming that when stannous chloride is
added to a sufficiently dilute solution of gold chloride the latter is
immediately reduced to metallic gold while stannic chloride is formed.
Generally after a few seconds the liquid becomes red, but the purple
is not precipitated for several days, unless it is heated. The gold is
not precipitated as a black powder because the stannic chloride formed
is immediately hydrolized into hydrochloric acid and the hydrate of
stannic acid. The latter prevents the aggregation of the gold
particles, and the stannic acid remains in solution as a colloid,
which on standing gradually changes under the influence of the dilute
hydrochloric acid to an insoluble form, the "hydrogel" of stannic
acid. By heating, this change takes place immediately. The properties
of the purple of Cassius depend on the properties and character of the
stannic acid present, and the great variety in the properties of the
stannic acids, the ortho, the meta, and the colloidal mixtures of the
two explain the many contradictions in the literature with reference
to the properties of the purple of Cassius. Zsigmondy says, "I look
upon the knowledge that a mixture of colloid bodies can behave, under
some conditions, as a chemical compound, and that the properties of
one body in such mixtures can be hidden by those in another as the
most important conclusion to be drawn from this work."

=The Abuse of Unskilled Labor.=--The number of diseases directly or
indirectly due to continued long standing is especially numerous among
women. The London Lancet, which nearly twenty years ago attempted to
improve matters in this respect in the case of shopgirls, has again
taken up the subject, and recently published an editorial urging
customers of the shops to boycott those establishments where no
sitting accommodations are provided for the clerks. It says: "We, as
medical men, maintain that sitting accommodations are absolutely
necessary for shopgirls. The only argument having even the semblance
of legitimacy which we have heard put forward in defense of the
nonprovision of seats is that sitting is conducive to idleness, but in
this connection such a premise can not be permitted, for an employee
would be bound to come forward when an intending purchaser entered the
shop.... The very fact that in many shops she is not allowed to sit
down is conducive to idleness--idleness of the worst kind, the
idleness of pretending to do something while in reality nothing is
being done. Can nothing be done to stop this--as we once called it
without the least exaggeration or sensationalism--'cruelty to women'?
To the true woman--the woman with feelings for her sisters, the woman
of love and sympathy, the true woman in every sense of the word--we
appeal for help in this matter. If such women would abstain from
purchasing at shops where they see that the employees are compelled to
work from morning till night without permission to rest from their
labors even when opportunity occurs, we should soon see the end of a
practice which ruins the health and shortens the lives of many of our
shopgirls." That there is a certain amount of danger for women from
long-continued standing, to the point of exhaustion, there is no
doubt, and much can be done toward improving the present conditions in
this respect and in other hygienic ways in the shops. The large influx
of women during recent years into the counting-room and the salesroom
gives such questions an increasing importance, especially in the less
skilled positions where labor combinations for mutual protection are
not possible. There has already been considerable agitation of the
question in this country, and there still remains much to be done.
But, as Lord Salisbury pointed out in causing the rejection of a bill
for remedying present shop conditions in England, it is a question not
suitable for legislation, and can only be settled through the indirect
action of public opinion on the shopkeeper himself.

=The Occurrence of Gold Ores.=--The following paragraphs are from an
article by H. M. Chance in the Engineering Magazine for July, entitled
The Increasing Production of Gold: "Another reason for anticipating
further increase in the production of gold is found in our better
knowledge of gold ores, and of the conditions under which gold occurs
in Nature. Until the discovery of the Cripple Creek district the
occurrence of gold as tellurid in deposits of large extent and value
was practically unknown. Gold was, of course, known to occur,
sparingly in some ores, partially as a tellurid associated with other
minerals; but such a mineralized belt as that at Cripple Creek was
entirely unknown, and such deposits were not looked for by the
prospector. Similarly, we now know of another class of gold ores in
which the gold occurs apparently in some form chemically combined in a
siliceous matrix, often approaching a true jasper or hornstone, and
showing by analysis possibly ninety-five per cent of silica. Such ores
show no trace of 'free' or metallic gold, and the presence of gold can
be determined only by assay or analysis. A few such discoveries have
recently been made, accidentally, by inexperienced persons, who had
rock assayed from curiosity. Similarly again, in the last few years
gold has been found in most unpromising-looking porphyry dikes--the
very rocks prospectors the world over have regarded as necessarily
barren because they almost invariably fail to show any 'free' or
metallic gold by the miner's quick 'horn' or 'pan' test. But mining
engineers and prospectors are learning that in a mineralized region
gold may occur in any rock, and hundreds of prospectors are assaying
all sorts of most unpromising-looking rock, satisfied that by assay
alone can they determine whether a certain rock is gold-bearing or
not. This persistent and more or less systematic work now going on in
every mining district must result in the discovery of many valuable
deposits in unexpected localities, and ultimately promises to add
largely to the annual output of gold."


MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The investigations of F. E. L. Beal of the Food of Cuckoos and S. D.
Judd of the Food of Shrikes in their relation to agriculture are
published in a single bulletin by the Department of Agriculture. Mr.
Beal finds that the food of cuckoos consists almost wholly of insects,
of which he has found sixty-five species in their stomachs, and
concludes that from an economical point of view they rank among our
most useful birds; and, in view of the caterpillars they eat, it seems
hardly possible to overestimate the value of their work. Mr. Judd
finds, from a very extensive examination, that the food of butcher
birds and loggerhead shrikes consists of invertebrates (mainly
grasshoppers), birds, and mice. During the colder half of the year the
butcher bird eats birds and mice to the extent of sixty per cent, and
ekes out the rest of its food with insects. In the loggerhead's food,
birds and mice amount to only twenty-four per cent. Its beneficial
qualities "outweigh four to one its injurious ones. Instead of being
persecuted, it should receive protection."

The Engineering Magazine is authority for the following: "The wrecking
of the steamship Paris on the coast of Cornwall and the difficulties
encountered in attempting to save her while a number of her
compartments forward are filled with water, lead Mr. Richards, in the
American Machinist, to suggest the applicability of compressed air.
'There is a means of expelling the water from the filled compartments
so obvious, and so certainly effective, that it seems unaccountable
that some engineer has not suggested it before this. Close the hatches
of the flooded compartments and drive the water out by forcing air in.
It would not make the slightest difference how big the holes might be
in the bottom, as the water would be expelled and kept out on the same
principle as in the old-fashioned diving bell.' This suggestion
carries with it a much larger and more important one--namely, the use
of air pumps instead of water pumps to save a leaking ship while
afloat. As Mr. Richards well remarks, the work of trying to pump out a
leaky ship is not only enormously wasted while it is going on, but it
is never finished. If, however, the water leaking into a compartment
of a ship be expelled by pumping air into the space, the work is done
so soon as the compartment is filled with air down to the level of the
leak. After that point is reached the ship is safe, no matter how
large the hole, and no further pumping is necessary."

Chlorate of potash has always been regarded by manufacturers and
chemists as a nonexplosive, and hence there has been little care taken
in handling and storing it. A recent explosion, however, at a large
chemical works at St. Helens, in England, seems to disprove this view.
A storehouse containing about one hundred and fifty tons of chlorate
in the form of both powder and crystals took fire, and almost
immediately after the falling in of the roof an explosion of terrible
violence occurred, the shock being felt over a distance of twenty
miles. The chlorate works were entirely demolished. A large gas holder
of the city gas works, containing two hundred and fifty thousand cubic
feet of gas, was burst and the gas ignited. Eight hundred tons of
vitriol was poured into the streets of the town by the wrecking of ten
vitriol chambers in a neighboring alkali works. Houses were unroofed,
and in the main streets of the town, a quarter of a mile away, nearly
every plate-glass window was demolished. A theory accounting for the
explosion, advanced by Mr. J. B. C. Kershaw, in the Engineering and
Mining Journal, is that it was due to the sudden and practically
simultaneous liberation of all the oxygen from such a mass of
chlorate, combined with the restraining influence of the kegs (the
chlorate was packed in kegs of one hundredweight each), and possibly
also helped by the presence of much charred wood and the dense volume
of smoke. Whatever is the true theory, however, it is evident that our
belief in the nonexplosiveness of potassium chlorate must be modified.


NOTES.

A piece of experimental glass pavement was laid in Lyons, in the Rue
de la République, last fall, and it is reported to have worn very well
thus far. The silicate of which the pavement is composed is called by
the manufacturers ceramo-crystal or devitrified glass. It may be
finished in various colors and with a rough or smooth surface. The
blocks are made by heating broken glass to a temperature of 1,250° C.
and then compressing it by hydraulic power. The resulting compound is
said to have all the qualities of glass except its transparency.

The New York Agricultural Experiment Station reports of its analyses
of sugar beets in 1898 that the average percentage of sugar in the
samples analyzed is 14.2, with a coefficient of purity of 85. In
general the yield of beets was between nine tons and twenty tons per
acre.

An altitude of 12,440 feet, or 366 feet greater than any attained
before, was reached in the kite-flying experiments at Blue Hill
Observatory, Massachusetts, on February 21st. The flight was begun at
twenty minutes to four in the afternoon, with a temperature of 40° and
a wind velocity of seventeen miles an hour at the surface. At the
highest point reached by the kite the temperature was 12° and the wind
velocity fifty miles an hour. Four improved Hargreave kites with
curved surfaces, like soaring birds' wings, were used tandem, and the
flying line was a steel wire.

The first to be unveiled of a series of tablets to be fixed by the
Municipal Council of Bath, England, to mark historical houses is on
the house where William Herschel lived in 1780, and was officially
unveiled by Sir Robert Ball, April 22d. In a little workshop at the
end of the back garden of this house Herschel made his Newtonian
reflector, and here he discovered Uranus.

Attention is called by Dr. Martin Ficker to the fact, brought out in
his experiments, that cultures of microbes are affected by the glass
of the tubes in which they are made. By virtue of differences in
composition, different sorts of glass give varying degrees of
alkalinity to water in contact with them, and the activity of the
bacteria they contain is correspondingly affected.

We have to add to our obituary list of persons in whom science is
interested the names of Professor Socin, late of the University of
Leipsic, Orientalist, and author of Baedeker's Palestine and Syria and
many special works on the Arabic language and dialects; M. N.
Rieggenbach, correspondent of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Section
of Mathematics, at Olten, Switzerland; Elizabeth Thompson, donor of
liberal gifts for scientific purposes, at Stamford, Conn.; she
contributed toward the telescope for Vassar College, was a patron of
the American Association, and endowed the Elizabeth Thompson
Scientific Fund; George Averoff, who died at Alexandria, Egypt, July
27th, leaving, among other bequests, £20,000 to create an agricultural
school in Thessaly, and £50,000 to the polytechnic schools at Athens;
Charles J. Stillé, ex-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, under
whose administration the institution took a great stride in its
development; Mrs. Arvilla J. Ellis, an assiduous student of the fungi,
who assisted her husband, J. B. Ellis, in preparing and mounting the
five thousand specimens for the North American Fungi and the Fungi
Columbiani, and more than two hundred thousand other specimens which
were distributed to the botanists of the world, at Newfield, N. J.,
July 18th; M. Balbiani, Professor of Embryology at the Collége de
France; Prof. Pasquale Freda, Director of the Station for Agricultural
Chemistry at Rome; Dr. S. T. Jak[vc]i[vc], Professor of Botany and
Director of the Botanic Gardens, at Belgrade; Dr. Carl Kuschel,
formerly Professor of Physics in the Polytechnic Institute at Dresden;
M. A. de Marbaix, Professor of Zoölogy and Anatomy in the Agricultural
Institute at Louvain; Dr. N. Grote, Professor of Psychology and
Philosophy in the University of Moscow and editor of a journal devoted
to those subjects; Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, the eminent German chemist,
of whom a fuller notice will be given; and Sir Edward Frankland,
another eminent chemist (English), one of Bunsen's pupils, a member of
the Royal Commissions on Water Supply and River Pollution, and author
of researches on the luminosity of flame and the effect of the density
of a medium on the rate of combustion, died in Norway, aged
seventy-four years.




INDEX.

ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.


  Abbott, C. C. The Antiquity of Man in North America*, 326

  Abuse of Unskilled Labor. (Frag.), 862

  Acetylene, The Use of.* E. Renouf, 335

  A Correction. (Corr.), 702

  African Music in America, Survival of. J. R. Murphy*, 660

     "    Religious Ideas, Variations in. (Frag.), 281

  Agriculture, Fungicides, Relative Power of. (Frag.), 717

  Alleghanies, Folklore of the. F. A. Doughty, 390

  Alloys, Metallic, of Rich Colors. (Frag.), 284

  American Association for the Advancement of Science, Proper Objects
      of. E. Orton, 466

     "         "       Columbus Meeting of, 822

     "         "       Meeting of. (Table), 850

     "         "       Meeting, The. (Frag.), 568

     "         "       Officers of, for 1900. (Frag.), 857

     "     Indians and Mongolians. (Frag.), 715

  Andrews, E. A. Sketch of W. K. Brooks. (Portrait), 400

  Animals Reason? Do. E. Thorndike*, 480

     "      "      "  (Corr.), 843

  An Old-fashioned Moral. (Table), 703

  Anthropology: American Indians and Mongolians. (Frag.), 715

       "        Antiquity of Man in North America. C. C. Abbott*, 326

       "        Aztec Pictorial Record, An. (Frag.), 716

       "        Bows and Arrows, The Teaching of. (Frag.), 715

       "        Brinton, D. G., Death of. (Frag.), 713

       "        European Culture, Origin of. W. Z. Ripley*, 16

       "        Folklore of the Alleghanies. F. A. Doughty, 390

       "        Gypsies and their Folk-Tales. (Frag.), 424

       "        Hopi Indians of Arizona. George A. Dorsey*, 732

       "        Jews? Are Jews. J. Jacobs, 502

       "        Origin of Ancient Hindu Astronomy. Count G.
      D'Alviella, 396

       "        Primitive Man. (Table), 410

       "        Race Questions in the Philippine Islands. F.
      Blumentritte, 472

  Antiquity of Man in North America. C. C. Abbott*, 326

  Astronomy, Origin of Ancient Hindu. Count G. D'Alviella, 396

  Austen, W. Bookworms in Fact and Fancy, 240

  Aztec Pictorial Record, An. (Frag.), 716


  Bacon's Idols. W. H. Hudson, 788

  Baker, Smith. Causes and Prevention of Insanity, 102

  Baldwin, F. S. Present Position of Sociology, 811

  Beautifying the Home Grounds. (Frag.), 430

  Benjamin, M. American Industrial Expositions, 231

  Bering Sea Controversy again. T. C. Mendenhall, 99

  Bertillon, M. J. Remedies for the Depopulation of France, 672

  Bible, Scientific Method and the. (Corr.), 701

    "    The Scientific method and its Application to the. Rev. D.
      Sprague, 289

  Bicknell, E. From Serfdom to Freedom, 84

  Birds as Pest Destroyers. (Frag.), 571

  Block Island, Geology of. (Frag.), 570

  Blumentritte, F. Race Questions in the Philippine Islands, 472

  Books Noticed, 126, 270, 415, 557, 705, 853
    African Frontier, On the South. W. H. Brown, 708.
    -- Studies, West. M. H. Kingsley, 418.
    Agriculture. Fertilizers. E. B. Voorhees, 274.
    -- Practical. C. C. James, 854.
    -- The Principles and Practice of. L. H. Bailey, 421.
    Algebra. Text-Book of. G. E. Fischer and I. J. Schwatt, 420.
    Allen, A. H. Commercial Organic Analysis, 274.
    American Indians. F. Starr, 421.
    Amryc, C. Pantheism: the Light and Hope of Modern Reason, 421
    Anatomy and Physiology, Laboratory Exercises in. J. E.
        Peabody, 277.
    Anglo-Saxon (Monthly), 562.
    Animated Pictures. C. F. Jenkins, 132.
    Anthropology. Australian Bush, In the. R. Semon, 417.
    -- Australia, The Native Tribes of Central. B. Spencer and F. J.
        Gillen, 417.
    -- History of Mankind. F. Ratzel, 272.
    -- Man, Past and Present. A. H. Keane, 852.
    -- Philippines, People of the. D. G. Brinton, 855.
    Arctic, A Thousand Days in the. F. G. Jackson, 705.
    Arithmetic, Primary. A. R. Hornbrook, 420.
    -- The American Elementary. M. A. Bailey, 422.
    Armageddon. Stanley Waterloo, 133.
    Aston, W. G. History of Japanese Literature, 131.
    Astronomy, A Short History of. A. Berry, 710.
    Atkinson, G. F. Elementary Botany, 131.
    Austin, H. E. Observation Blanks for Beginners in Mineralogy, 855.
    Australian Bush, In the. R. Semon, 417.
    Australia, The Native Tribes of Central. G. Spencer and F. J.
        Gillen, 417.
    Badenoch, L. N. True Tales of the Insects, 854.
    Bailey, L. H. The Principles of Agriculture, 421.
    -- M. A. The American Elementary Arithmetic, 422.
    Bardeen, C. W. Commissioner Hume, 562.
    Bates, F. G. Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union, 421.
    Bauer, L. A., and French, Thomas, Jr. Terrestrial Magnetism.
        (Quarterly), 132.
    Beddard, F. E. Structure and Classification of Birds, 128.
    Bell, M. G. Story of the Rise of the Oral Method in America, 711.
    Berry, A. A Short History of Astronomy, 710.
    Bickerton, A. W. New Story of the Stars, 134.
    Biology, Principles of. H. Spencer, 275.
    Birds, Structure and Classification of. F. E. Beddard, 128.
    Botany, Elementary. G. F. Atkinson, 131.
    -- Elementary Text-Book of. S. H. Vines, 131.
    -- Evolution of Plants, Lectures on the. D. H. Campbell, 561.
    -- Ferns, How to Know the, 708.
    Bradford, Gamaliel. The Lesson of Popular Government, 415.
    Brinton, D. G. Peoples of the Philippines, 855.
    Brooks, W. K. Foundations of Zoölogy, 270.
    Brown, W. H. On the South African Frontier, 708.
    Bryant, W. M. Life, Death, and Immortality, 130.
    Buckley, A. B. The Fairy-Land of Science, 854.
    Bush Fruits. F. W. Card, 129.
    Call, R. E. Ichthyologia Ohioensis. (C. E. Rafinesque), 560.
    Cajori, Florian. History of Elementary Physics, 419.
    Campbell, D. H. Lectures on the Evolution of Plants, 561.
    Card, F. W. Bush Fruits, 129.
    Carpenter, F. G. Geographical Reader for North America, 561.
    -- of Nazareth, The, or the Silver Cross, 278.
    Catering for Two. A. L. James, 278.
    Cave Regions of the Black Hills. L. A. Owen, 562.
    Census, The Federal, 558.
    Chemical Experiments. Woodhull and Van Arsdale, 856.
    Cole, J. R. Miscellany, 134.
    Commercial Organic Analysis. A. H. Allen, 274.
    Cuba, Industrial. R. P. Porter, 560.
    Cumulative Index for 1898, 712.
    Dall, C. H. Memorial of W. W. Turner and Sisters, 563.
    Dana, C. A. Recollections of the Civil War, 853.
    Deaf and Dumb. Comparison of Methods of Instruction. Volta
        Bureau, 712.
    -- Oral Method of Instructing, Rise of, in America. M. G.
        Bell, 711.
    De Morgan, A. On the Study and Difficulty of Mathematics, 561.
    Drinking Water, The Microscopy of. G. C. Whipple, 709.
    Dr. Therne. H. R. Haggard, 711.
    Dyers and Colorists, Year-Book of. H. Huntington, 563.
    Economics. Census, The Federal, 558.
    -- Strikes and Lockouts, Sympathetic, 563.
    Education. Commissioner Hume. C. W. Bardeen, 562.
    -- Froebel's, by Development, 855.
    -- Ideals and Programmes. J. L. Gourdy, 421.
    -- Nature Study In Elementary Schools. L. S. W. Wilson, 422.
    -- Report of the Commissioner of, for 1896-'97, 562.
    Elliott, A. G., and Graffigny, H. de. Gas and Petroleum
        Engines, 277.
    Ethnology. American Indians. F. Starr, 421.
    Evolution, Footnotes to. D. S. Jordan, 559.
    Evolution of Plants, Lectures on the. D. H. Campbell, 561
    -- The Last Link. E. Haeckel, 126.
    Eyesight, Defective: Its Relief by Glasses. D. B. St. John
        Roosa, 856.
    Faraday, Michael, His Life Work. S. P. Thompson, 421.
    Farrington and Noll, E. H. and F. W. Testing Milk and its
        Products, 278.
    Ferns, How to Know the. F. T. Parsons, 708.
    Fertilizers. E. B. Voorhees, 274.
    Fischer, G. E., and Schwatt, I. J. Text-Book of Algebra, with
        Exercises for Secondary Schools, 420.
    Fitz, G. W. Revised Edition of H. N. Martin's The Human Body, 422.
    Force, General M. F. General Sherman, 419.
    Fossil Medusæ. C. D. Walcott, 278.
    Froebel's Education by Development, 855.
    Gas and Petroleum Engines. A. G. Elliott, 277.
    Geographical Nature Studies. F. O. Payne, 277.
    -- Reader for North America. F. G. Carpenter, 561.
    Geology. Cave Regions of the Black Hills. L. A. Owen, 562.
    -- Rivers of North America. I. C. Russell, 127.
    -- Stratigraphical, Principles of. J. E. Marr, 276.
    Gourdy, J. L. Ideals and Programmes, 421.
    Graffigny, H. de. (See Elliott, A. G.), 277.
    Guerber, H. A. Story of the English, 133.
    Haeckel, Ernst. The Last Link, 126.
    Haggard, H. R. Dr. Therne, 711.
    Hall, F. S. Sympathetic Strikes and Lockouts, 563.
    Histology, An Epitome of Human. A. W. Weysse, 130.
    History of Mankind. F. Ratzel, 272.
    -- Civil War, Recollections of. C. A. Dana, 853.
    -- of the World. E. Sanderson, 129.
    -- Story of the English. H. A. Guerber, 133.
    Holman, S. W. Matter, Energy, Force, and Work, 276.
    Hornbrook, A. R. Primary Arithmetic, 420.
    Horticulture. Bush Fruits. F. W. Card, 129.
    Human Body, The. H. N. Martin. Revised edition by G. W. Fitz, 422.
    Huntington, H. The Year-Book of Colorists and Dyers, 563.
    Hygiene. Drinking Water, The Microscopy of. G. C. Whipple, 709.
    Hypnotism: its Application to Medicine. O. G. Wetterstrand, 709.
    Imperial Democracy. D. S. Jordan, 851.
    Insects, True Tales of the. L. N. Badenoch, 854.
    Instinct and Reason. H. R. Marshall, 710.
    Jackman, W. S. Nature Study for Grammar Grades, 274.
    Jackson, P. G. A Thousand Days in the Arctic, 705.
    James, A. L. Catering for Two, 278.
    -- C. C. Practical Agriculture, 854.
    Japan-American Commercial Journal. (Monthly), 561.
    Japanese Literature, History of. W. G. Aston, 131.
    Jenkins, C. F. Animated Pictures, 132.
    Jordan, D. S. Footnotes to Evolution, 559.
    -- D. S. Imperial Democracy, 851.
    Keane, A. H. Man, Past and Present, 852.
    Kingsley, Mary H. West African Studies, 418.
    Klondike, In the. F. Palmer, 418.
    Labor, Bulletins Department of: Wages in the United States and
        Europe. The Alaskan Gold Fields, and The Mutual Relief
        Associations in the Printing Trade, 711.
    -- Twelfth Annual Report of Commissioner of, 134.
    Lagrange, J. L. Lectures on Elementary Mathematics, 855.
    Lange, W. Froebel's Education by Development, 855.
    Language Lessons. J. G. Park, 422.
    Life, Death, and Immortality. W. M. Bryant, 130.
    Loomis, Ernest. Occult Science Library, 562.
    Marr, J. E. Principles of Stratigraphical Geology, 276.
    Marshall, H. R. Instinct and Reason, 710.
    Mathematics. Algebra, Introduction to Graphical. F. E.
        Nipher, 133.
    -- Elementary, Lectures on. J. L. Lagrange, 855.
    -- On the Study and Difficulty of. A. De Morgan, 561.
    Mechanics and Heat. Nichols and Francis, 278.
    Merriman, M. Elements of Sanitary Engineering, 130.
    Metric System of Weights and Measures. A. D. Risteen, 132.
    Microscopy of Drinking Water, The. G. C. Whipple, 709.
    Milk and its Products, The Testing of. Farrington and Noll, 278.
    Miller, A. The Sun an Electric Light, 711.
    Mineralogy, Observation Blanks for Beginners in. H. E.
        Austin, 855.
    Music, Short Course in. Ripley and Tappen, 276.
    Natural History. Outdoor Studies. J. G. Needham, 562.
    -- Rafinesque. Ichthyologia Ohioensis (by R E. Call), 560.
    Nature Study for Grammar Grades. W. S. Jackman, 274.
    -- in Elementary Schools. L. S. W. Wilson, 422.
    Needham, J. G. Outdoor Studies, 562.
    New Man, The. E. P. Oberholzer, 133.
    New Story of the Stars. A. W. Bickerton, 134.
    New York Academy of Sciences. Publications, 134.
    Nichols and Francis, E. L. and W. S. Mechanics and Heat, 278.
    Nipher, F. E. Introduction to Graphical Algebra, 133.
    Ober, F. A. Puerto Rico and its Resources, 559.
    Oberholzer, E. P. The New Man, 133.
    Occult Science Library. E. Loomis, 562.
    Owen, L. A. Cave Regions of the Black Hills, 562.
    Palmer, F. In the Klondike, 418.
    Pantheism: the Light and Hope of Modern Reason. C. Amryc, 421.
    Park, J. G. Language Lessons, 422.
    Parsons, F. T. How to Know the Ferns, 708.
    Patten, S. N. The Development of English Thought, 273.
    Payne, F. O. Geographical Nature Studies, 277.
    Peabody, J. E. Laboratory Exercises in Anatomy and
        Physiology, 277.
    Perspective, Elements of. C. G. Sullivan, 277.
    Philosophy. Development of English Thought. S. N. Patten, 273.
    -- Life, Death, and Immortality. W. M. Bryant, 130.
    Physics, History of, in its Elementary Branches. F. Cajori, 419.
    -- Matter, Energy, Force, and Work. S. W. Holman, 276.
    -- Philip's Experiments. J. Trowbridge, 132.
    Popular Government, The Lessons of. G. Bradford, 415.
    Porter, R. P. Industrial Cuba, 560.
    Porto Rico of To-day. A. G. Robinson, 275.
    Psychology. Reason and Instinct. H. R. Marshall, 710.
    Puerto Rico and Its Resources. F. A. Ober, 559.
    Rafinesque, C. S. Ichthyologia Ohioensis (by R. E. Call), 560.
    Ratzal, F. History of Mankind, 272.
    Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union. F. G. Bates, 420.
    Ripley and Tappen, F. H. and T. Short Course in Music, 276.
    Risteen, A. D. Metric System of Weights and Measures, 132.
    Rivers of North America. I. C. Russell, 127.
    Robinson, A. G. Porto Rico of To-day, 275.
    Roosa, D. B. St. John. Defective Eyesight: Its Relief by
        Glasses, 856.
    Russell, I. C. Rivers of North America, 127.
    Sanderson, E. History of the World, 129.
    Sanitation. Elements of Sanitary Engineering. M. Merriman, 130.
    Schimmel & Co. Semiannual Report, 423.
    Science, The Fairy-Land of. A. B. Buckley, 854.
    Semon, Richard. In the Australian Bush, 417.
    Sherman, General. General M. F. Force, 419.
    Socialist Almanac and Treasury of Facts, 563.
    Sociology. Imperial Democracy. D. S. Jordan, 851.
    -- Leisure Class, The Theory of the, 557.
    -- Popular Government, The Lessons of. G. Bradford, 415.
    Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. The Native Tribes of Central
        Australia, 417.
    -- H. Principles of Biology, 275.
    Starr, F. American Indians, 421.
    St. John Roosa, D. B. Defective Eyesight: Its Relief by
        Glasses, 856.
    Sullivan, C. G. Elements of Perspective, 277.
    Sun, The, an Electric Light. A. Miller, 711.
    Terrestrial Magnetism. Bauer and French. (Quarterly), 132.
    Thompson, S. P. Michael Faraday, His Life Work, 421.
    Travel. African Studies, West. M. H. Kingsley, 418.
    -- Arctic, A Thousand Days In the. F. G. Jackson, 705.
    -- Klondike, In the. F. Palmer, 418.
    -- On the South African Frontier. W. H. Brown, 708.
    Trowbridge, John. Philip's Experiments, 132.
    Turner, W. W., Memorial of, and Sisters. By C. H. Dall, 563.
    Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class, 557.
    Vines, S. H. Elementary Text-Book of Botany, 131.
    Voorhees, E. B. Fertilizers, 274.
    Walcott, C. D. Fossil Medusæ, 278.
    Waterloo, Stanley. Armageddon, 133.
    Wetterstrand, O. G. Hypnotism and Its Application to
        Medicine, 709.
    Weysse, A. W. An Epitome of Human Histology, 130.
    What is This? 564.
    Whipple, G. C. The Microscopy of Drinking Water, 709.
    Wilson, Lucy S. W. Nature Study in Elementary Schools, 422.
    Woodhull and Van Arsdale. Chemical Experiments, 856.
    Zoölogy. Australian Bush, In the. R. Semon, 417.
    -- Birds, The Structure and Classification of. F. E. Beddard, 128.
    -- Foundations of. W. K. Brooks, 270.

  Bookworms in Fact and Fancy. W. Austen, 240

  Boston Public Library and Science. (Table), 412

  Botany: Colors of Northern Flowers. J. H. Lovell, 685

    "     Forms, Unusual, in Plants. B. D. Halsted*, 371

    "     of Shakespeare. T. H. MacBride, 219

    "     Poisonous Plants, Somewhat. (Frag.), 572

  Bounties and Free Trade. (Frag.), 569

  Bows and Arrows, The Teaching of. (Frag.), 715

  Bracchi, M. A. The Sense of Color, 253

  Brinton, D. G., Death of. (Frag.), 713

  Brinton's Contributions to American Linguistics. (Frag.), 284

  Brooks, William Keith. Sketch of. (With Portrait), 400

    "     William K. Thoughts about Universities, 348


  Canada, Wheat Lands of. S. C. D. Roper, 766

  Catskills, Forest and Animal Life in the. (Frag.), 569

  Charity, Public and Private Vigilance. F. H. Giddings, 433

  Chemistry Teaching in Grammar and High Schools. (Frag.), 574

  Cherry Leaves, Poison in Wild. (Frag.), 283

  Christian Science from a Physician's Point of View. J. B. Huber, 755

  Climate and Acclimatization. (Frag.), 565

  Climate, Is Freedom limited by. (Table), 124

  Coler, B. S. Abuse of Public Charity, 155

    "    "  "  Reform of Public Charity, 750

  Colonial Expansion and Foreign Trade. J. Schoenhof, 62

  Colors of Flowers, The. Henri Coupin, 386

    "    "  Northern Flowers. J. H. Lovell, 685

  Color, The Sense of. M. A. Bracchi, 253

  Commercial Education in England. (Frag.), 858

  Conn, H. W. The Milk Supply of Cities, 627

  Coolidge, D. Hydrophobia in Baja California, 249

  Country Checks, The Charges on, an Economic Mistake. (Frag.), 567

  Coupin, Henri. The Colors of Flowers, 386

  Cram, W. E. Hawk Lures*, 623

  Crime, Influence of the Weather upon. E. G. Dexter, 653

  Criminology: Desire for Notoriety a Cause of Crime. (Frag.), 568

       "       Luccheni, Study of Luigi. C. Lombroso*, 199

  Curry, J. L. M. The Negro Question, 177


  D'Alviella, G. Origin of Ancient Hindu Astronomy, 396

  Deaf and Dumb, Instruction of the. (Frag.), 573

  Degeneration. (Frag.), 571

  Desire for Notoriety a Cause of Crime. (Frag.), 568

  Dexter, E. G. Influence of the Weather upon Crime, 653

  Dorsey, George A. Hopi Indians of Arizona*, 732

  Doughty, F. A. Folklore of the Alleghanies, 390


  Economics: Colonial Expansion and Foreign Trade. J. Schoenhof, 62

      "      Country Checks, The Charges on, An Economic Mistake.
      (Frag.), 667

      "      Free Trade and Bounties. (Frag.), 569

      "      Philippine Islands and American Capital. J. R. Smith, 186

      "      Unskilled Labor, The Abuse of. (Frag.), 862

      "      Wheat Lands of Canada. S. C. D. Roper, 766

  Edgar, P. Tendencies in French Literature, 207

  Education and Character Building. (Table), 847

  Education: "A Vague Impression of Beauty." (Frag.), 860

      "      Chemistry Teaching in Grammar and High Schools.
      (Frag.), 574

      "      Commercial, in England. (Frag.), 858

      "      Deaf and Dumb, Instruction of the. (Frag.), 573

      "      High School, The Claims of. (Frag.), 570

      "      Kindergartenized Children (Table), 122

      "      Putting Life in the School. (Frag.), 429

      "      Sloyd in. (Frag.), 717

      "      Teaching the Teachers. (Frag.), 138

      "      Universities, Thoughts about. W. K. Brooks, 348

  Educational Work of an Experiment Station. (Frag.), 425

  Egleston, T., Sketch of.* D. S. Martin, 256

  Enchanted Ravine, An. (Frag.), 428

  European Culture, Origin of.* W. Z. Ripley, 16


  Field Columbian Museum, The Work of the. (Frag.), 428

  Firecrackers, Manufacture of, in China. (Frag.), 427

  Fish Supply, Permanence of. (Frag.), 716

  Fittest to Survive, Which is the. (Frag.), 137

  Flies as Bearers of Disease. (Frag.), 425

  Ford, R. C. Malay Literature, 379

  Forest and Animal Life in the Catskills. (Frag.), 569

    "    Reserves, National. (Frag.), 717

  France, Remedies for the Depopulation of. M. J. Bertillon, 672

  Freedom limited by Climate. (Table), 124

  French Literature, Tendencies in. P. Edgar, 207

  Fungicides, Relative Power of. (Frag.), 717


  Genius and Habit. (Frag.), 860

  Geology: Niagara, New Method of Estimating the Age of. G. F.
      Wright*, 145

     "     of Block Island. (Frag.), 570

  Giddings, F. H. Public Charity and Private Vigilance, 433

  Glacier Water. (Frag.), 282

  Gold Ores, The Occurrence of. (Frag.), 862

  Government Scientific Work. (Frag.), 714

  Graphite. (Frag.), 857

  Gypsies and their Folk Tales. (Frag.), 424


  Halsted, B. D. Unusual Forms in Plants*, 371

  Harley, L. R. Sketch of William Pepper. (With Portrait), 836

  Harvard Observatory, A Year at. (Frag.), 429

  Hawaiian Reptiles. (Frag.), 718

  Hawk Lures. W. E. Cram*, 623

  Heilprin, A. Alaska and the Klondike*, 1, 163, 300

  Help that Harms, The. H. C. Potter, 721

  High School, The Claims of the. (Frag.), 570

  Hopi Indians of Arizona. George A. Dorsey*, 732

  Huber, J. B. Christian Science from a Physician's Point of View, 755

  Hudson, W. H. Bacon's Idols, 788

  Hydrophobia in Baja California. D. Coolidge, 249

  Hygiene: Milk Supply of Cities. H. W. Conn, 627

     "     Plague, Are We in Danger from the. V. C. Vaughan, 577

  Hypnotism, The Dangers of. (Frag.), 572


  Imagination, Power of the. (Frag.), 714

  Indian Peoples and the Missionaries. (Frag.), 138

  Industrial Expositions, American. M. Benjamin, 231

  Insane Characters in Fiction and the Drama. C. Lombroso, 53

  Insanity, Causes and Prevention of. S. Baker, 102

  Interpretation of Nature. E. Noble, 72


  Jacobs, Joseph. Are Jews Jews?, 502

  Jews? Are Jews. J. Jacobs, 502

  Jordan, D. S. In the Little Brook, 355


  Keyser, L. S. A Feathered Parasite, 822

  Kindergartenized Children. (Table), 122

  Klondike, Alaska and the. A Heilprin*, 1, 163, 300


  Laisant, M. Mathematics for Children*, 800

  Lamps, Evolution in. (Frag.), 140

  La Nature's Second Scientific Excursion. (Frag.), 568

  Lead Poisoning and Pottery Making. (Frag.), 426

  Life in the School, Putting. (Frag.), 429

  Linguistics, Brinton's Contributions to American. (Frag.), 284

  Liquid Air. I. Remsen*, 35

  Locusts, Seventeen- and Thirteen-Year. (Frag.), 141

  Lombroso, C. Insane Characters in Fiction and the Drama, 53

     "      "  Study of Luigi Luccheni*, 199

  Longevity of Animals, The. (Frag.), 426

  Lovell, J. H. Colors of Northern Flowers, 685

  Luccheni, Study of Luigi. C. Lombroso*, 199


  MacBride, T. H. Botany of Shakespeare, 219

  Malay Literature. R. C. Ford, 379

  Marcy, Death of Prof. Oliver. (Frag.), 137

  Marsh, Death of Professor. (Frag.), 136

  Martin, D. S. Columbus Meeting of the American Association, 828

    "     "  "  Sketch of Thomas Egleston*, 256

  Mathematics for Children. M. Laisant*, 800

  Mather, Fred. White Whales in Confinement, 362

  Meat Extracts. (Frag.), 286

  Medicine: Flies as Bearers of Disease. (Frag.), 425

  Mendenhall, T. C. The Bering Sea Controversy again, 99

  Mental Fatigue. M. V. O'Shea, 511

  Metric System, The. (Frag.), 280

  Milk Supply of Cities, The. H. W. Conn, 627

  Morgan, Appleton. Recent Legislation against the Drink
      Evil, 438, 610

  Murphy, J. R. Survival of African Music in America*, 660


  National Museum, The United States. C. D. Walcott, 411

  Natural History: A Feathered Parasite. L. S. Keyser, 822

     "       "     Hawk Lures. W. E. Cram*, 623

     "       "     In the Little Brook. D. S. Jordan, 355

     "       "     Longevity of Animals. (Frag.), 426

     "       "     Poisonous Fishes of the West Indies. J. M.
      Rogers, 680

     "       "     Reptiles of Hawaii. (Frag.), 718

     "       "     Society as a School, A. (Frag.), 281

     "       "     White Whales in Confinement. Fred Mather, 362

  Nature Study, Experiments in. (Frag.), 573

  Nebraska as a Home for Birds. (Frag.), 714

  Negro Problem in the United States, The. B. T. Washington, 317

    "   Question, The. J. L. M. Curry, 177

  New Zealand Experiment in Woman Suffrage. (Frag.), 279

  Niagara, New Method of Estimating the Age of. G. F. Wright*, 145

  Noble, E. The Interpretation of Nature, 72


  Ornithology: Nebraska as a Home for Birds, 714

  Orthodoxy, The Troubles of. (Table), 704

  Orton, E. Proper Objects of the American Association for the
      Advancement of Science, 466

  O'Shea, M. V. Mental Fatigue, 511

  Oswald, F. L. Physical Geography of West Indies*
      (_continued_), 47, 193


  Papuan Children, Photographing. (Frag.), 285

  Pengelly, William. Sketch of (Portrait), 113

  Pepper, William. Sketch. (With Portrait.) L. R. Harley, 836

  Philippine Islands and American Capital. J. R. Smith, 186

      "        "    Race Questions in. F. Blumentritte, 472

  Philosophy: An Old-fashioned Moral. (Table), 703

  Philozoists, Inconsistent. (Frag.), 140

  Physics: Liquid Air. I. Remsen*, 35

  Physiology: Color, The Sense of. M. A. Bracchi, 253

  Picture Telegraphy. (Frag.), 566

  Plague, Are We in Danger from the. V. C. Vaughan, 577

  Poison in Wild Cherry Leaves. (Frag.), 283

  Poisonous Fishes of the West Indies. J. M. Rogers, 680

      "    Plants, Somewhat. (Frag.), 572

  Popular Co-operation in Health Work. (Frag.), 136

  Population in Maine, The Trend of. (Corr.), 846

  Potter, H. C. The Help that Harms, 721

  Pottery Making and Lead Poisoning. (Frag.), 426

  Practical Philanthropy. H. A. Townsend, 534

  Primitive Man. (Table), 410

  Protection of Plants and Birds in France and Italy. (Frag.), 282

  Psychology: Animals Reason? Do. E. Thorndike*, 480

      "       Crime, Influence of the Weather upon. E. G. Dexter, 653

      "       Habit and Genius. (Frag.), 860

      "       Imagination, Power of the. (Frag.), 714

      "       Insane Characters in Fiction and the Drama. C.
      Lombroso, 53

      "       Mental Fatigue. M. Y. O'Shea, 511

  Public Charity, Abuse of. B. S. Coler, 155

    "        "    Reform of. B. S. Coler, 750

  Purple of Cassius, The. (Frag.), 861


  Race Troubles, Our. (Table), 414

  Racial Geography. (Table), 268

  Recent Legislation against the Drink Evil. Appleton Morgan, 438, 610

  Remsen, I. Liquid Air*, 35

  Renouf, E. The Use of Acetylene*, 335

  Ripley, W. Z. Origin of European Culture*, 16

  Rogers, J. M. West Indian Poisonous Fishes, 680

  Roper, S. C. D. Wheat Lands of Canada, 766


  Sausages, Chemistry of. (Frag.), 285

  Schmidt, Oscar. Sketch. (With Portrait), 693

  Schoenhof, J. Colonial Expansion and Foreign Trade, 62

  Science and the Boston Public Library. (Table), 412

     "    and the Ideal. (Table), 266

     "    Teachers' School of. F. Zirngiebel*, 451, 640

  Scientific Method and its Application to the Bible. Rev. D.
      Sprague, 289

      "        "    and the Bible. (Corr.), 701

  Serfdom to Freedom. E. Bicknell, 84

  Shakespeare, Botany of. T. H. MacBride, 219

  Sloyd as an Educational Factor. (Frag.), 717

  Smith, J. R. Philippine Islands and American Capital, 186

  Sociology: Charity, Abuse of Public, 155

      "      Depopulation of France, Remedies for the, 672

      "      Drink Evil, Recent Legislation against. A.
      Morgan, 438, 610

      "      Help that Harms, The. H. C. Potter, 721

      "      Negro Question, The. J. L. M. Curry, 177

      "      Philanthropy, Practical. H. A. Townsend, 534

      "      Present Position of. F. S. Baldwin, 811

      "      Public Charity and Private Vigilance. F. H. Giddings, 433

      "      Race Problem in the United States. B. Washington, 317

      "      Race Troubles, Our. (Table), 414

      "      Reform of Public Charity. B. S. Coler, 750

  Spencer, Herbert, at Seventy-nine. (Portrait), 542

  Sprague, Rev. D. Scientific Method and its Application to the
      Bible, 289


  Taxation, Best Methods of. Part II. D. A. Wells 524, 778

  Teachers' School of Science. F. Zirngiebel*, 451, 640

  Teaching the Teachers. (Frag.), 138

  Theology: Troubles of Orthodoxy. (Table), 704

  Thorndike, E. Do Animals Reason?*, 480

  Thrasher, M. B. Tuskegee Institute and its President*, 592

  Tortoise Shell. (Frag.), 283

  Townsend, H. A. Practical Philanthropy, 534

  Travel: Klondike, Alaska and the. A Heilprin*, 1, 163, 300

  Tuskegee Institute and its President. M. B. Thrasher*, 592


  Universities, Thoughts about. W. K. Brooks, 348


  "Vague Impression of Beauty, A." (Frag.), 860

  Vaughan, V. C. Are we in Danger from the Plague?, 577


  Walcott, C. D. The United States National Museum, 491

  Washington, B. T. The Race Problem in the United States, 317

  Weather, Influence of the, on Crime. E. G. Dexter, 653

  Weeds under Cultivation. (Frag.), 139

  Wells, D. A. Best Methods of Taxation. Part II, 524, 778

  West Indies, Physical Geography of. F. L. Oswald*
      (_continued_), 47, 193

  Wheat Lands of Canada. S. C. D. Roper, 766

    "   Question. A Correction. (Corr.), 702

  White Whales in Confinement. Fred Mather, 362

  Woman Suffrage, New Zealand Experiments in. (Frag.), 279

  Woodchucks, Operations against. (Frag.), 139

  Wright, G. F. New Method of Estimating the Age of Niagara*, 145


  Xkichmook, Yucatan, Ruins of. (Frag.), 141


  Yang-tse-Kiang, The. (Frag.), 571


  Zirngiebel, Frances. The Teachers' School of Science*, 451, 640


THE END.




Transcriber's Notes:


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this e-text (x being the letter with the symbol caron above it).

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