Chapter VII: Part 7

In 1857 Mr. Hitchcock was appointed assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of Vermont. He served the full term of the survey, and had charge of the preparation of the report relating to the stratigraphical geology, the measurement and delineation of the sections, and the compilation of the geological map.

In 1861 he received the appointment of State Geologist of Maine, in which service he spent two summers in field work, preparing two reports of progress, which were published in connection with the report of the secretary of the Board of Agriculture. Besides the general reconnoissance, he discovered the existence of large areas of Upper Silurian and Devonian terranes. He has embodied his views of the distribution of the formations in his general map of the United States.

Having chosen the ministry for his profession, Mr. Hitchcock studied theology under Dr. E. A. Park, of Andover, and the Rev. Dr. Taylor, of New Haven. Questions of the relations of theology and science were attracting much attention, and he treated of them in two papers in the _Bibliotheca Sacra_, one of which was afterward used for the guidance of theological students in several seminaries. As more opportunities were offered for scientific work, the ministry was given up. This was the time when the doctrine of natural selection came to the front for investigation, and the early history of mankind was receiving increased attention. Mr. Hitchcock came home from Europe in 1867 convinced of the truth of some form of evolution, of a considerable antiquity of man, and of the probability of a plural origin of the human race. Finding that some of his views on these subjects were not acceptable to his associates, he ceased to make them prominent in his class instructions, and devoted his attention to the more technical details of geology. Since then general opinion has advanced so far on these subjects that the views he held at that time seem now really conservative.

In 1868 he was appointed State Geologist for New Hampshire, and spent ten years in the survey of that State. The results of his work there were published in three large quarto volumes, with a folio atlas of maps, profiles, and sections. The rocks described consist principally of crystalline schists and marine igneous ejections. The geology of New Hampshire is of peculiar importance, because the situation of the State is such that a correct knowledge of its rocks promotes the understanding of many obscure terranes in the adjacent regions of Maine, Quebec, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Professor Hitchcock's report of the survey may justly be styled his chief work. The part best studied relates to the White Mountains and the Ammonoosuc mining district. Connected with the survey was the maintenance of a meteorological station throughout the year on the summit of Mount Washington. Daily statements of the weather conditions of this station during the winter of 1870-'71 were sent by telegraph to the principal newspapers, and called out much interest--before the United States Signal Service began its weather predictions.

The catalogue of Professor Hitchcock's publications comprises more than one hundred and fifty titles of papers, reports, and books. Perhaps the earliest thorough study represented among them was that of the fossil footmarks. The first of the published papers on this subject related to the tracks of animals in alluvial clay, and was published in the American Journal of Science in 1855. For several years after this he assisted his father in arranging the museum and compiling tables for the Ichnology. He made a complete catalogue descriptive of the more than twenty thousand individual impressions preserved in the Appleton Cabinet, which was printed, with descriptions of a few new species of footmarks, in the Supplement to the Ichnology of Massachusetts, edited by him after the death of his father in 1865. Although circumstances have prevented him from paying much attention to ichnology in later years, he has prepared several papers on the subject, the most important of which was one on the Recent Progress of Ichnology, which was read before the Boston Society of Natural History about twelve years ago. In it the ichnites were carefully catalogued anew and classified in the light of our knowledge of the numerous dinosaurs of the West; and the results of some studies of the slabs exhumed at Wethersfield, Connecticut, are well known. The list of the Connecticut footmarks was increased from one hundred and nineteen in the Ichnology to one hundred and seventy; and facts were cited to show that the _Grallator_, the three-toed animal most allied to birds, possessed a caudal appendage of a reptilian nature. The Trias of New Jersey had been found to illustrate new features in the _Otozoum_, whose tracks are often ornithic in aspect. A comparison of the features of the Triassic skeletons described by Marsh from Connecticut (_Anchisaurus_) shows that the creatures were rather allied to the _Plesiornis_ than to the _Anomoepus_ of the Ichnology, because of the great size of the fore feet. Notes upon footmarks have been gathered also from illustrations in Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, Kansas, Nevada, and Florida.

Professor Hitchcock has studied the Quaternary or glacial deposits with great success. His first publication upon the terraces and allied phenomena of Vermont appeared while the old views of a submergence, with icebergs, prevailed, to account for the phenomena. A study of the glaciers of Switzerland in 1866 satisfied him of the truth of Agassiz's theory; and whenever the opportunity came for re-examination of the surface geology of northern New England, the facts were found to require a different theoretical explanation. He caused a thorough examination to be made of the Connecticut River terranes by Warren Upham in the New Hampshire Survey, and proved that all the high mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine had been glaciated by a southeasterly movement. The ice came from the Laurentian highlands, pushed in a southern direction down the Champlain-Hudson Valley, with a southeasterly flow over New England and southwesterly over the Adirondacks; the last two courses having been subordinate to the first. At present the Laurentian hills are lower than the New England and New York mountains overridden by the ice, and probably the same was the case in the Glacial period. The best explanation of these paths is afforded by the suggestion that a gigantic ice cap accumulated north of the St. Lawrence, towering into the clouds so much that its overflow naturally descended over the White and Adirondack Mountains.

That glaciers should accumulate terminal moraines is axiomatic, but no geologist before 1868 had ventured to suggest where moraines might be located in the United States. In that year Professor Hitchcock delivered a lecture before the Lyceum of Natural History in New York and the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn, in which he affirmed that the drift deposits from Prospect Park along the backbone of Long Island for its entire length constituted the terminal moraine of the great continental ice sheet. This declaration inaugurated a new era in the study of the age of ice. The geologists in their several States found the terminal moraines, and the various phenomena began to be classified according to new laws. The search for moraines has resulted in a restatement of the incident of the age of ice; more than a dozen successive terminal moraines have been mapped between New York and Montana, which suggest to us the existence of several glacial periods. In compiling a catalogue of observations of the course of glacial striæ by the United States Geological Survey, it was found that Professor Hitchcock had recorded for New England as many as all other geologists had observed for the whole country.

_Eskers_ are another interesting class of phenomena, and were first described as _horsebacks_ in Maine, about seventy of them having been described in the report of 1861 and 1862. It was not till after the description of the Swedish Ösar that the nature of these lines or ridges was understood; and now they were found in every prominent valley in New England, as attendant upon the recession of the ice sheet. Professor Hitchcock gave the correct name of these ridges in his Elementary Geology, 1860; while for many years subsequently they were erroneously called _kames_, even in the geology of New Hampshire.

Professor Hitchcock gave the name of Champlain to the fossiliferous clays associated with the till of the Atlantic coast. The term has come into general use as connected with the melting of the ice in the latter part of the period. Because of the presence of boreal species, and of analogies with similar deposits in Europe, Professor Hitchcock has asked the question whether there may not have been a Champlain glacial epoch posterior to those named farther in the interior of the country, the Kansan, Iowan, and Illinoisian epochs.

Those who explore the geology of northern New England have to deal with crystalline rocks of various ages, and the opinions of our best geologists have not been in agreement respecting them. Professor Hitchcock was the first to make a geological map of New Hampshire, and he also demonstrated the anticlinal nature of the Green Mountains of Vermont. His teachers had inculcated the view that these eminences belonged to a synclinal disposition, coupling this with theoretical assertions as to their age and metamorphism. Finding their main principle to be erroneous, he naturally disparaged their theories, though more recent studies are eliminating many of the schists from the Archæan. All the later explorers in the field--Canadians and members of the Geological Survey--accept a pre-Cambrian anticlinal in the heart of the Green Mountains.

The distribution of the New Hampshire formations was made out for the most part before any assistance was derived from the labors of Dr. G. W. Hawes and other petrographers. Twenty years ago, at the date of the final publication of the New Hampshire maps, the doctrine of an igneous origin of the crystalline schist had hardly been hinted at. What seems elemental to the modern petrographer who has acquired his technical education since 1890 was unknown then, and the classification given in the report may not agree with that now taught. In the midst of the diverse views entertained, Professor Hitchcock classified the rocks of northern New England according to this principle: rocks that are identical in petrographical composition are assumed to have had the same origin, and to be synchronous. Professor Hitchcock was almost the first of American geologists to employ the petrographer as a help to the understanding of the crystallines--as was evident by the very valuable contributions to knowledge in Part IV of the New Hampshire Report as prepared by Dr. Hawes.

A vexing question concerning what are now called Cambrian terranes divided geologists for a quarter of a century after 1857, and had to be considered in preparing the geology of Vermont in 1861. This was the Taconic controversy. Trilobites had been discovered in Vermont, which were misunderstood by most of the American geologists following Hall, Logan, Dana, and others. In giving the species the technical name first of _Barrandesi_ and then _Olenellus_, Prof. James Hall asserted its derivation from the Hudson River group--relying upon the stratigraphical determinations of Sir W. E. Logan. As soon as Barrandes's attention was called to these trilobites and the attendant publication, he wrote his famous letter to Logan in 1860, declaring that there must be a mistake somewhere. That error was discovered in time to be eliminated from the Vermont report of the following year. Professor Hitchcock had charge of the field work in this Cambrian district, and his views of the arrangement of the formations are in agreement with those of the latest workers in the field. He applied the term of _Georgia_ to one division of the terrane in 1860; and the designation has been generally adopted since that time. Jules Marcou claimed priority in the suggestion of the application of the term, but upon the publication of Professor Hitchcock's statement on the subject the credit of priority was awarded to him by Director Walcott, of the United States Geological Survey.

Between 1860 and 1870 Professor Hitchcock was occupied largely as a mining geologist in the estimation of mineral deposits for mining companies, with his office in New York. In the prosecution of this business he traveled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Alabama. Subsequently, the study of the phosphate beds led him to the island of Redonda in the West Indies. He further visited the phosphate beds of South Carolina and Florida, the gold fields of eastern Oregon, the Chalcedony Park of Arizona, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and the Yosemite and Yellowstone Parks. Studies made in the Hawaiian Islands and their volcanoes in 1883 and 1886 resulted in the contribution of important observations respecting those regions. At the present writing Professor Hitchcock is spending a year of further observations in those islands.

Mr. Hitchcock was appointed, in 1858, lecturer in zoölogy and curator of the cabinet in Amherst College; an office which he filled for seven years, retiring after the death of his father. In 1866 he was elected professor of geology in Lafayette College, where he gave short courses of instruction to five successive classes. In 1868 he was called to the chair of geology in Dartmouth College, a position which he still occupies, receiving a year's leave of absence for 1898-'99 in consideration of thirty years of service. He taught geology and zoölogy as a provisional professor at Williams College in 1881, and in the following year in the Virginia College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, Blacksbury. He received the degree of M. A. in course at Amherst in 1859, the honorary degree of Ph. D. from Lafayette College in 1870, and that of LL. D. from Amherst College in 1896.

Professor Hitchcock has been connected with the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1856, and a nearly constant attendant upon its meetings and participant in the proceedings. He is a member of local scientific societies in Portland, Me., Boston, Mass., New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, and also of the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna. He was one of the most prominent movers in the inception and early history of the Geological Society of America, and had much to do with the organization of the International Congress of Geologists, and with the preparation of special reports for the several meetings between 1876 and 1890. The handsome geological map of small scale compiled for the United States was prepared by him and published in the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers (1887), to illustrate the nomenclature and color scheme of the International Congress.

Professor Hitchcock is best known to many by his geological maps. The first efforts at mapping the geology of the United States were made independently by Edward Hitchcock and Jules Marcou in 1883--the work of Mr. Marcou extending only to the plains. Prof. H. D. Rogers, five or six years later, prepared a map for Johnston's Physical Atlas. In 1872 Prof. C. H. Hitchcock and Prof. W. P. Blake compiled a map for the ninth census of the United States, and for R. W. Raymond's report upon the mineral resources of the country. The success of his small scale map led Professor Hitchcock to undertake the preparation of a map on a scale of twenty-five miles to the inch for the whole country. For this he consulted every work that had been printed upon the geology of the United States, and obtained the privilege of using many unpublished data collected by geologists of States and Territories in which the work had never been carried to actual completion. The map prepared by the General Land Office was used as the basis for the geological coloration, and the work appeared in 1881, of a size adapted to use in the classroom. Its compiler has never seen any criticism of its accuracy. The edition prepared for the Mining Institute embodies all the information acquired for the large map, with such additional facts as had been learned since that map was published. Prof. Hitchcock's services were called into requisition in the compilation of a similar map for the United States Geological Survey, which was published in its annual report for 1886, under the editorship of W. J. McGee; in fact, the two maps were printed from the same plates, but Dr. Hitchcock's contained certain features not found in the other one--the result of different interpretations--and was more complete. In the Government edition a system of coloration devised by Major J. W. Powell, which was afterward abandoned, was employed.

Professor Hitchcock contributed extensively to the collection of State geological maps in the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, when large scale sheets of New England, and a large copy of the Hitchcock and Blake map of 1872, were exhibited. A medal was awarded for a sheet of thirteen sections illustrating the stratigraphy of Vermont and New Hampshire. The beginning of the measurement of sections was made for the Vermont Geological Report under the direction of Dr. Edward Hitchcock in 1861. Twelve lines of exploration across the entire State were determined upon, and specimens were collected to illustrate all the varieties of rock seen upon each. The specimens were arranged in the State Museum at Montpelier in geographical order. A similar plan of collection and arrangement was projected for the New Hampshire survey, but it was made to extend across the two States, from Maine to New York. Besides the two State reports, later publications were issued, descriptive of explorations and collections for the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the New Hampshire Agricultural Report for 1883. The work did not cease with these publications, for after the transfer of the collection of sections from the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts to Dartmouth College in 1894, additional explorations were made; the number of sections was increased to eighteen; improved drawings of the profiles, colored geologically, were prepared for the cases in the new Butterfield Museum; and the explanation of the details was further facilitated by the construction of a large relief map on the scale of one mile to the inch horizontally, twice as much vertically, and having colors corresponding to those on the profiles between the shelves. About five thousand specimens have been gathered to illustrate the profiles.

The Dartmouth College Museum is filled with specimens accumulated by the energy of Professor Hitchcock. They concern geology, paleontology, petrography, economic botany, and conchology.

FOOTNOTE:

[58] Vol. xlvii, September, 1895.

Editor's Table.

_EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION._

Our attention has been drawn to a lively discussion that has lately taken place in the St. Paul papers over the utterances, on the subject of the doctrine of evolution in its relation to education, of a certain Mr. Smith, who was appointed not long since superintendent of the public schools of that city. What seems clear is that Mr. Smith is a very ignorant man, whose views in regard to education are of an altogether retrograde character. How he came to be appointed to his present position is a question which is being gravely pondered by many of the citizens; but probably the explanation is not very far to seek. The dispensers of patronage in State and municipal affairs are not always competent to make the best nominations to offices calling for high qualifications; and sometimes they do not even act up to their own indifferent lights. The man that has the pull is very apt to be the man that gets the office, and it is not often that the strongest pull goes with the highest professional fitness.

However this may be, there Mr. Smith is, and what kind of a man he is may be judged from his utterances. It is thus that he refers to Mr. Spencer: "There is an old man in England who for years has spent all his time and devoted all his energies to the attempt to create a system which shall entirely ignore the name of the Deity. He will shortly die, and it shall not be remembered that he ever performed an act or said a word that blessed or comforted or relieved his suffering fellows." To further darken the picture, he contrasts Spencer with the late Cardinal Newman, who wrote the hymn "Lead, kindly light," and who, we are told, if he had done nothing more, would have been "followed by the blessings and the prayers of those whom he had comforted and saved." Again, dealing with the modern scientific view that, in the development of the human individual all antecedent stages of human development are, in a manner, passed through, he says: "Let us discard the primitive-man theory. You do not believe it. Rather shall we not hold with Emerson that every child born into the world is a new Messiah given into the arms of fallen humanity to lead them back to paradise?"

It is no part of our purpose to defend Mr. Spencer against the attacks of so negligible an assailant as Mr. Smith, of Minnesota. The words that Mr. Spencer has spoken for truth, for justice, for humanity, for peace, are his sufficient commendation and vindication--were vindication needed--in the eyes of all who have any competent knowledge of contemporary thought. If these words do not help to make the world better we should feel little inclined to put our trust in the most skillfully constructed sacred lyric. Men do not always know their benefactors; and it is altogether possible, nay probable, that thousands who perhaps never heard Mr. Spencer's name have benefited through the greater consideration with which they have been treated by others, owing to his teaching. It is quite possible for men, yes, and women too, to sing "Lead, kindly light" with great unction, and yet to be the ardent abettors of warlike sentiments and warlike acts--to revel in a ruthless and immoral jingoism. Dryden was not referring to the adherents of any evolutionist philosophy when he wrote:

"In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell,
And injuries with injuries repel;
Prompt to revenge, not daring to forgive,
Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe."

"Not daring to forgive" is good, and nearly as true in the nineteenth century as it was in the seventeenth. The one English statesman who dared to forgive a defeat inflicted on English arms and to acknowledge an error, incurred by that single act a deeper hatred and contempt than he earned by anything else, or all else, in his long and storm-tossed career. We refer to the action taken by Gladstone after the battle of Majuba Hill. And we are much mistaken if the majority of those who execrated him most deeply for not crushing the Boers under England's overwhelming force were not immense admirers of the cardinal's hymn. What is certain is that they were not immense admirers of Spencer, and that Spencer did not immensely admire them.

Superintendent Smith has quoted Emerson, but he does not occupy the standpoint that enables him to see Emerson in true perspective, or to feel what his philosophy lacks when confronted with the newer knowledge of the century. Mr. J. J. Chapman, in his recent memorable book of essays, gives us a better view. "A critic in the modern sense," Mr. Chapman says, "he (Emerson) was not. He lived too early and at too great a distance from the forum of European thought to absorb the ideas of evolution, and give place to them in his philosophy.... We miss in Emerson the underlying conception of growth, of development, so characteristic of the thought of our own day, and which, for instance, is found everywhere latent in Browning's poetry.... He is probably the last great writer to look at life from a stationary standpoint."

That the doctrine of evolution constitutes to-day a most important guiding principle in education no competent educationist could be found to deny. It teaches us to deal with the young as in a very true sense the heirs of all the ages, to make due allowance in childhood for instincts and habits which partake of the earlier stages of human development, and to look forward with confidence to later and higher manifestations. We have less faith than our ancestors had in the rod, and more in the gradual unfolding of the powers and capacities of the mind, and therewith the enlargement and improvement of the moral nature. We do not believe as our forefathers did in breaking children's wills; nor do we view their peccadilloes in the lurid light of a gloomy theological creed. We recognize that veracity, in the sense of strict accuracy of speech, purged of all imaginative elements, is a virtue which not all adults are able to practice, and which is not a natural product of the child mind. We can not accept Emerson's doctrine of infant Messiahs, and yet we can recognize very fully the mission of the child in the home, the demand it makes for tenderness, for patience, for thoughtfulness on the part of parents, the hopes and fears and heart-searchings that it calls into play, the aspirations that it promotes toward the realization, if for its sake only, of a higher life. Froebel grasped a large measure of truth in regard to children, but too much of sentiment, in our opinion, entered into his treatment of them. In the full light of the doctrine of evolution we take them as they are, and help them to work out under favorable conditions that development of which they are capable. We are not imposed upon by childish imitations of mature virtues, and are rather disposed to repress recognized tendencies to precocity; but we believe that the germs of good are sown in every normal human being, and that, unless killed by most unwise treatment, they will fructify in due time.

What we may well consider seriously is whether our modern modes of life enable us to do that justice to children which evolutionary teaching requires. Can true health of body and mind be conciliated with social ambition or with commercial ambition? Are we not hampered at every turn by false schemes of education, the object of which is to turn out certain conventional products? How many of us can rise up in effective rebellion against the very fashions that in our hearts we most condemn? Before there can be anything like a perfect education for the young there must be a much more fully developed sense of duty than we see as yet in the older generation. The doctrine of evolution is putting the key to a true system into our hands; but to use that key aright requires courage and high purpose--qualities that are not of everyday occurrence. Still, it is matter of congratulation that the truth is not far from us. It is well established in our theories, and one of these days we may hope it will gain a wide and secure footing in our practice.

_DAVID AMES WELLS._

In the death of David A. Wells, which occurred at his home in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 5th of November, 1898, America has lost one of her ablest and most productive men of letters and science a distinguished representative. Out of a life of seventy years it may fairly be said that Mr. Wells gave fifty of them to intellectual pursuits, which were mainly devoted to the advance of science and its application to practical affairs. After passing the period of early study, and particularly since he became interested in economic questions, much of his work was in the line of original investigation, the results of which have from time to time been given to the public either through his books or in the magazines. Another and more conspicuous feature of his career, the one perhaps that made him best known at home and first gave him reputation abroad, was the valuable service that he rendered the country at large in straightening out the financial tangle the Government had got itself into during and after the civil war. In this undertaking his great store of learning, rare practical sagacity, and unwavering confidence in the final result, carried him through to a brilliant success, earning for him in high quarters the most flattering testimonials of admiration and respect.

Looked at in the light of what he actually achieved, Mr. Wells's preparation for his life work seems to have been almost an ideal one. Gifted with a strong love of Nature and having a decidedly practical turn of mind, he early showed a fondness for the study of science. This led him, soon after graduating from Williams College in 1847, to enter the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University. Here he completed the course with the first class that was graduated by that institution in 1852. While studying in the scientific school young Wells became the special pupil of Agassiz, and, as the sequel shows, caught the enthusiasm with which that great master was wont to inspire the young men who were fortunate enough to come within the range of his influence. During this period Mr. Wells, in association with Mr. George Bliss, began the compilation and publication of the Annual of Scientific Discovery, which he continued for some sixteen years. That he was a clever student with quite exceptional endowments is seen in the circumstance that immediately after graduation he was appointed assistant professor in the scientific school and lecturer on physics and chemistry in Groton Academy, Massachusetts. He also, between 1857 and 1863, prepared a series of scientific school books embracing the subjects of physics, chemistry, and geology, and a volume on the Science of Common Things, all of which attained a wide circulation.

Thus for a period of nearly fifteen years Mr. Wells had devoted himself assiduously to the cultivation of the physical sciences. Beginning with the practical operations of the laboratory, where the value of experiment and observation is made apparent, his work was continued in the strengthening and developing experiences of the teacher, and thence led up to that wider knowledge and that clearness of exposition which a bright mind would acquire in the preparation of a number of successful scientific class books. It may be presumed that by this time he was thoroughly acquainted with scientific method in its applications to the investigation and explanation of physical phenomena. With the results this had yielded in building up the great body of verified knowledge composing the several sciences he must also have been familiar. Mentally alert and with sharpened powers of observation, he was able to seize and classify the facts bearing upon the problem in hand, and subject them to systematic processes of scientific reasoning.

Such, in brief, was the training and such the equipment brought by Mr. Wells to the study of economic questions when he first began to write upon them in 1864. A better preparation for the work to which he was to give the next thirty years of his life can scarcely be imagined. While it is quite true that in entering this new field he was to encounter a class of facts and variety of phenomena that were of a very different order from those with which he had previously been dealing, their apparently haphazard character did not deceive him. Well versed in the practice of tracing effects to causes, gifted with remarkable powers of insight, and thoroughly believing that the methods of science would prove as available in the study of economics as in other fields, he began his investigations without misgiving, patiently accumulated and studied the facts, and when conclusions were arrived at, no matter how contrary they might be to current teaching, fearlessly announced and defended them. Though half his life a firm believer in the doctrine of protection, when Mr. Wells went to Europe for the Government in 1867 to investigate the subject of tariff taxation, high and low tariff countries alike were visited, with the determination to leave nothing undone that would aid to a better understanding of the question. All the varied aspects of the problem were carefully studied in connection with the principal industries of the respective countries, and, finding reason in the facts thus obtained to revise his opinions, he came home a convert to free trade. For an account of what he had observed during the course of his investigations, and of the conclusions based thereon, the reader is referred to the fourth volume of his reports as commissioner of internal revenue, published in 1869. His book on Recent Economic Changes, and the papers on The Principles of Taxation, that have appeared in this magazine during the last two years, are records of equally painstaking research. Moreover, they are both excellent examples of what a strict adherence to scientific method has done and may yet be expected to do toward clearing up the knotty problems in economics that are now engaging public attention.

United with his great learning, and a rare power of generalization, Mr. Wells possessed in full measure that intellectual honesty which is the indispensable characteristic of the true man of science. This enabled him to follow without doubt or hesitation wherever the facts might lead; and with his clear perception of their real import, joined to his habit of independent thought, traits that are displayed throughout all his more formal writings, they are what in our opinion constitute his title to distinction. They give to his teachings, which have already done more than any other agency that we know toward placing the subject of political economy on a sound scientific basis, a high and enduring character.

_A BORROWED FOUNDATION._

"The central idea of Professor Giddings's Principles of Sociology, a work that has the honor of being the first independent attempt in English to treat of sociology as such, is that we must postulate on the part of human beings what he calls a _consciousness of kind_. Critics of his volume have naturally told him that this is essentially a philosophical idea, found in Hegel and in British ethical writers of the eighteenth century."

We quote the above from an article by Professor Caldwell, entitled Philosophy and the Newer Sociology, in the October Contemporary. We are not prepared to dispute Professor Caldwell's statement that the idea of the "consciousness of kind" may be found in the writers to whom he refers; but it would have been very much to the point if he had mentioned that it is to be found most clearly enunciated in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. In an article contributed to this magazine in December, 1896, Mr. Spencer took occasion to point out that what Professor Giddings seemed to regard as an _aperçu_ peculiar to himself had been distinctly formulated years before in his own writings. In proof of this he quoted the following passages:

"Sociality having thus commenced, and survival of the fittest tending ever to maintain and increase it, it will be further strengthened by the inherited effects of habit. _The perception of kindred beings, perpetually seen, heard, and smelt, will come to form a predominant part of consciousness-_-so predominant that absence of it will inevitably cause discomfort." "Among creatures led step by step into gregariousness, there will little by little be established a pleasure in being together--a pleasure in the consciousness of one another's presence--a pleasure simpler than, and quite distinct from, those higher ones which it makes possible."

The fact is that there is much more in Spencer than most recent writers have ever explored; and the newer sociologists would do well, before putting forward claims to originality, to make sure that they have not been anticipated by the veteran philosopher.

Scientific Literature.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

In _The Play of Animals_[59] we are offered a book upon an essentially new topic; for, although much has been written concerning the habits and intelligence of animals, no special consideration has been given to their play or its psychic significance. The survey of this virgin territory seems to the critical reader to have disclosed such limitless area to Professor Groos that he fails to indicate its legitimate boundaries. He confesses himself overcome by a sense of its vastness, stating that the "versatility needed for a thorough investigation is so comprehensive that it is unattainable by an ordinary mortal."

Play, he finds, is not "an aimless activity carried on for its own sake"; neither is it the product of surplus physical energy, as Mr. Spencer defines it, for in youth there is playfulness without this condition. Instincts useful in preserving the species appear before they are seriously needed, and are utilized in play, which serves as preparation for the tasks of life. "Animals do not play because they are young, but have a period of youth in order to play."

The special ends accomplished by play are control of the body, command of the means of locomotion, agility in pursuit of prey and in escaping danger, and prowess in fighting. The games pursued in attaining these ends are classified in nine groups, beginning with those of experimentation and ending with those referred to curiosity. They include plays of movement, hunting, fighting, love, construction, nursing, and imitation. For all of these Professor Groos finds but one instinct of play responsible, supplemented by the instinct of imitation. He enters into an elaborate discussion of instinct, giving an outline of Weismann's theory of heredity and the views of various writers. He adopts Herbert Spencer's definition of instinct as a complex reflex act, referring its origin to the operation of natural selection, acknowledging the process to be beyond our grasp. In seeking to explain bird song and the love play of animals, the theory of sexual selection is not accepted by him without qualification; a modification of the Darwinian principle is suggested in which the female exerts an unconscious choice. The psychic characteristics of play are the pleasure following satisfaction of instinct, energetic action and joy in the acquirement of power. The animal at first masters its own bodily movements, then seeks the conquest of other animals and inanimate objects. When a certain facility in play has been gained a higher intellectual stage is entered upon, that of make-believe, or playing a part. This state of conscious self-illusion is reached by many of the higher animals. Psychically, it indicates a divided consciousness, and occupies a place between the ordinary state and the abnormal ones of hypnosis and hysteria. To this condition Professor Groos ascribes the genesis of artistic production, an hypothesis that he has elaborated more fully in _Einleitung in die Aesthetik_.

The experimental plays of animals, divided into those of courtship, imitation, and construction, correspond to the principles of self exhibition, imitation, and decoration, which are claimed to be the motives of human art. The acquirement of power through play develops a feeling of freedom, and this the artist likewise seeks to realize in the world of ideals.

Artists will not probably acknowledge that "life is earnest, art is playful," nor moralists agree that "man is only human when he plays, for there is no real freedom in the sphere of experience," yet both may find food for thought in Professor Groos's analysis of play.

FOOTNOTE

[59] The Play of Animals. By Karl Groos. Translated by Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 341. Price, $1.75.

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In the spasm of unreasoning hostility to Spain which has come over the people of the United States, succeeding a period of effusive admiration, the public are apt to forget that that nation has done anything creditable for the promotion of civilization. Yet, leaving out other fields of culture for the present, it has produced two painters who rank among the great masters, besides numerous secondary artists, rivals of any of that grade in the world, and a voluminous literature which George Ticknor thought it worth while to make the study of his life, and which inspired the pens of Irving, Longfellow and Lockhart. One of the works of this literature ranks among the world's greatest classics, and has been, perhaps, after the Bible and Shakespeare more universally read than any other book; and numerous other works--chiefly romances--have furnished patterns or themes for the poets, novelists, and dramatists of other nations. Mr. _Fitz Maurice Kelly's_ excellent and convenient _History of Spanish Literature_[60] therefore comes in good time to refresh our memories concerning these facts. One does not have to go very far in the history to find that of the great Latin writers of the age of the Cæsars, the two Senecas, Lucan the poet of Pharsalia, Martial the epigrammatist, and Quintilian the rhetorician--still an authority--and many minor writers, "were Spaniards as well as Romans." It also appears that of what Gibbon declared to have been the happiest epoch of man's history--from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus, seventy of the eighty years, if we take the liberty, as Mr. Kelly does, of counting Marcus Aurelius as a Cordovan, were passed beneath the scepter of the Spanish Cæsars. Prudentius, a distinguished Latin Christian writer of a succeeding age, was also a Spaniard. Although there were "archaic" works of _trovadors_ before that time, traditionally preserved by _juglars_, Spanish literature proper began in the twelfth century. It owed much to French and Italian, and in course of time gave much back to them. Among its earliest signs was the development of the romance (ballad), while Arab writers (whose work Mr. Kelly considers of doubtful value) and Jews, who are better spoken of, were early contributors to it. The earliest works of importance were the Mystery of the Magian Kings, one of the first plays in any modern language, and the great heroic poem of the Cid, both anonymous. The first Castilian poet whose name has reached us was Gonzalo de Berceo, 1198 to 1264, who wrote much, and was, "if not an inventor, the chief of a school." Permanent form was given to Spanish prose by King Alfonso the Learned, 1226 to 1284, who, "like Bacon, took all knowledge for his province, and in every department shone pre-eminent." He had numerous collaborators, and "his example in so many fields was followed"--among others (in some of them) by his son and successor, Sancho IV. The Infanta, Juan Manuel, nephew of Alfonso, in one of the stories of his Conde Lucanor--"one of the books of the world"--created the germ of the Taming of the Shrew. Passing a numerous list of writers of respectable merit, for whose names even we have not room, we come to the age of the Catholic kings and Charles V, when for a hundred and fifty years literature most flourished in Spain. Among the features of this period are the Amadis de Gaul--"the best in that kind"--which inspired Cervantes; Columbus, who, though of Italian birth, "was probably the truest Spaniard in all the Spains," the poet Garcilaso de la Vega, and Bernal Diaz and other historians whose names dot Prescott's books. Passing a large number of writers of mark whose works appeared in this age, and stopping only to mention Alonzo de Ercilla y Zuñiga's Araucana as the first literary work of real merit composed in either American continent, we come to the age of Cervantes, whose story of Don Quixote--"the friendless people's friend," as Browning styles him--is not more distinguished for its satirical wit and humor than for its kindly humanity; and Lope de Vega, that most prolific of all dramatic authors, who "left no achievement unattempted," and died lamented by a hundred and fifty-three Spanish and fifty Italian authors, who sang his praises. Among other of the most distinguished writers of this and succeeding periods are Mariana, "the greatest of all Spanish historians"; Góngora, a famous poet in his day; Quevedo; Tirse de Molina, the creator of Don Juan; Calderon, second as a dramatist among Spaniards, if second, only to Lope de Vega, and Alarcón his compeer; and Velasquez, great in art and not small in letters. An interregnum came in during the reign of Carlos II, and French influence made itself felt. The age of the Bourbons produced among others the Benedictine Sarmiento, who as a botanist "won the admiration and friendship of Linné." The present century has been marked by the names of many authors of merit, novelists known to us in translations, by an active movement of historical composition developing brilliant monographs, and by a marked advance of scholarship and tolerance, led by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo; with a tendency to produce "a breed of writers of the German type."

FOOTNOTE:

[60] A History of Spanish Literature. By James Fitz Maurice-Kelly. New York: D. Appleton and Company. (Literature of the World Series. Edited by Edmund Gosse.) Pp. 433. Price, $1.50.

GENERAL NOTICES.

The great importance of the problems of forestry and all that pertains to them can not fail to be appreciated by any one who has seen the devastation wrought in many sections of this country by the "wood chopper." Forestry is one of the subjects where natural science can step in and guide the way to economic success, and where, in default of scientific methods, economically fatal results inevitably ensue. The preservation of forests has been an important problem in Europe for many years, but until quite recently it has received little attention in the United States. One of the pioneers in the field of forestry in this country was Franklin B. Hough, whose Elements of Forestry is still a used and useful manual. Among his many schemes for attracting attention and study to this important subject was one of making actual sections of the wood of American trees, and arranging them in a compact and attractive manner for general distribution. This idea he never carried out, and it has remained for his son, Mr. R. B. Hough, to finally carry out the scheme, by publishing a complete series of such sections, carefully prepared and compactly bound.[61] In Part I of the series there are cuttings representing twenty-five species of American trees. The sections are sufficiently thin to allow of their study by transmitted light. There are three cuttings from each species, transverse, radial, and tangential to the grain. An accompanying text gives a condensed description of each tree, including its physical properties, uses, and habitat. These descriptions are preceded by a useful introduction to the study of general botany, describing the methods of distinguishing and naming the various parts of plants and trees, and giving an account of their structure and methods of growth. The actual wood sections, quite apart from their scientific value, are worthy of attention because of their great beauty. They are substantially mounted on black cardboard, each card containing the three sections of a species, and its common name in English, French, German, and Spanish. The thinness of the cuttings makes it possible to use them as transparencies, thus bringing out the texture of the wood in a very effective way.

Prof. _Charles Reid Barnes_ is impressed with the fact that while laboratory work has become nearly universal in botany, and laboratory manuals are numerous, there is still a lack of books giving an elementary account of the form and functions of plants of all groups. To supply this want he offers _Plant Life_[62] as an attempt to exhibit the variety and progressive complexity of the vegetative body; to discuss the more important functions; to explain the unity of plan in both the structure and action of the reproductive organs; and to give an outline of the more striking ways in which plants adapt themselves to the world about them. He has made the effort to treat these subjects so that, however much the student may still have to learn, he will have little to unlearn. The book is not intended to be memorized and recited, but to be intelligible to pupils from thirteen to eighteen years of age who are engaged in genuine laboratory study under the direction "of a live teacher who has studied far more botany than he is trying to teach." It is adapted to use supplementarily to any laboratory guide or to the directions prepared by the teacher. The directions are made fullest in relation to cryptogams and physiology, because these fields are at present most unfamiliar to teachers.

Attaching great importance to _Electro-Dynamics_, which he thinks will in the near future assume the same relation to the electric motor that the science of thermo-dynamics already bears to the steam engine, Mr. _Charles Ashley Carus-Wilson_ aims in the book of that name[63] to apply the principles of that science to the direct-current motor. Writing for electrical engineers particularly, he takes for granted a certain acquaintance with the use and design of motors, but avoids unexplained technicalities as far as possible. He has not deemed it necessary to deal with self-induction, except in connection with the question of sparking. The numerical accuracy attempted has been limited to that attainable with an ordinary ten-inch slide rule, on which all the examples have been worked out. Importance is attached to the graphic method of solution.

Of Dr. _Frank Overton's_ three books on _Applied Physiology_,[64] the first or primary grade follows a natural order of treatment, presenting in each subject elementary anatomical facts in a manner that impresses function rather than form, and from the form described derives the function. The facts and principles are then applied to everyday life. The intermediate grade, besides being an introduction to the study of anatomy and physiology, is intended to be a complete elementary book in itself, giving a clear picture of how each organ of the body performs its work. The advanced grade book was suggested by a series of popular lectures in which the author presented the essential principles of physiology about which a physician is consulted daily. His explanations of many common facts were novel to his auditors, and it was found that the school books were silent upon many of these points, especially with regard to the cells. Throughout the series the fact that the cells are the units in which life exists and acts is emphasized. The author has endeavored to include all the useful points of the older text-books, and to add such new matter as the recent progress of physiological and hygienic science demands. Avoiding technical terms, he has sought to express the truths in simple language, "such as he would use in instructing a mother as to the nature of the sickness of her child." The subjects of alcohol and other narcotics are made prominent in all the books, and are discussed fully in the third of the series. The relation of respiration and oxidation to the disappearance of food, to the production of waste matters, and to the development of heat and force, is dwelt upon. Simple and easy demonstrations, many of them new, are provided at the ends of chapters. A chapter on Repairs of Injuries, or the restoration of the natural functions, when impaired, by the body, is new in a school textbook.

In _Yetta Ségal_,[65] a slender thread of a story is used by Mr. _Rollin_ as the vehicle for a theory of "type fusion" or convergence which he thinks has not received sufficient attention from social or scientific students. There are a pair of lovers, one of whom is discovered at a critical period in the courtship to have negro blood in his veins, and a philosopher who comes forward to satisfy the parties (who hardly need it) that this is no serious matter, but is all according to human evolution and the destiny of the race. "You must be impressed," he says, "by the fact that there are a great many people here and there, of mixed blood, and that the number is increasing; ... it is well that not a few are indeed truly admirable specimens of the human race. Such phenomena must be interpreted in a way consistent with man's nature: if he is developmental; if he shall attain a higher status through struggle, or through means that are seemingly, or for the time, degrading; if he is moving from the simple to the complex, as to organization; if universal movement tends to unific existence--then race interchange, with elimination of peculiar characteristics, has probably made its appearance as a phase of infinite order, and for the benefit of future man.... It is presumptuous for the wisest to assert that the man of lower type has no element of strength peculiar to his race which the most advanced does not need in his present organization. It may be needed either for present protection in the way of re-enforcement, or as an element of strength for further advancement." Mr. Rollin does not advocate type fusion or wish to accelerate the movement, but presents it as a fact and factor in human evolution deserving more extensive and thorough study than it has received.