Chapter I (3)

Hidden beneath our highways lie gas pipes, water pipes, railway tracks, Edison tubes, cement-lined iron subway ducts, and lead-covered cables. These are the electrodes. In contact with these conductors is the soil, containing an electrolyzable salt--chloride, nitrate or sulphate of ammonia, potash, soda, or magnesia, generally. In the presence of moisture this soil becomes an electrolyte, or salt solution. In the absence of electricity no appreciable damage occurs; but the passage of an electric current, no matter how small, from one pipe to another is sure, sooner or later, to leave its traces upon the positive conductor in the form of a decay other than mere oxidation. It is to this decay that has been given the name of _electrolysis_; so that when this heading appears in the daily press or in technical journals one may interpret the term popularly as “the electrolytic corrosion of metals buried in the soil.”

To produce electrolytic disintegration of pipes, etc., on a scale grand enough to cause apprehension, a bountiful source of electricity is essential. Unfortunately, this condition is not lacking to-day in any town in which the usual overhead trolley electric railway is in operation. This system of electric propulsion is based upon the use of a “ground return”--that is to say, the electricity passes out from the power house to the bare trolley wire, thence to the pole on the roof of the car, thence through the motors to the wheels, whence it is expected to return to the power house, _via_ the rails.

As a matter of fact, however, the released electricity by no means confines itself to the rails and the copper return feeders--legitimate paths provided for it. It avails itself, on the other hand, of what may be termed, for brevity’s sake, the illegitimate return--comprising all underground electrical conductors except the rails and return feeders, and including subterranean water-courses, sewers, and metallic earth veins.

The fibrous appearance of the surface is characteristic of wrought iron and steel.]

In the light of our experience of the last eight years, it is easy to identify as electrolysis the effects shown in the accompanying cuts of buried metals that have been actually subjected to a flow of electricity. It is not to be inferred that the destructive action here depicted is universal throughout our towns, but, rather, that the damage occurs in spots, its rate of progress being dependent upon the amount of current and the duration of the flow. Dry, sandy soils tend to keep down the flow of current by interposing a high resistance, so that in such localities electrolytic effects are not as pronounced as in wet, loamy soils. In the same way, the character of the pipe surface--or coating, if there be any--acts as a partial barrier to check the passage of electricity.

Until recently it was generally supposed that cast iron was not attacked--at least not rapidly enough to cause alarm. In Brooklyn the water mains, of very hard, dense, even-grained cast iron, containing alloyed rather than combined carbon, have not been appreciably corroded. At Dayton, Ohio, on the other hand, seventy-seven thousand dollars’ worth of damage has already resulted. One peculiarity of electrolyzed cast iron is that the original shape is usually retained, the iron being eaten away and leaving a punky formation of pure or nearly pure graphite. In such a case a superficial examination detects nothing wrong, and it requires a mechanical scraping to show that the strength is not there. For this reason good photographs of cast-iron electrolysis are somewhat hard to obtain.

The reason for the comparative immunity of cast iron is not as yet definitely understood. It certainly does not lie particularly in the asphaltic varnish usually applied, for this varnish affords little or no protection when used upon wrought iron or other metals. Nor can it be accounted for by the composition of cast iron itself, inasmuch as a fractured or brightly scraped surface of cast iron shows approximately the same symptoms as other metals when acted upon by a given current for a given time. Whether the iron oxide is the saving feature, or whether the “skin” due to the process of casting acts as an insulator, is not yet settled.

When the trouble first appeared in Boston, in 1891, its cause was promptly identified. The electric-railway construction of those days was so crude, however, that many well-informed electricians fell into the error of assuming that heavier rails, more and larger return feeders, and better bonding (i. e., wire connections from rail to rail, around the joints, designed to decrease the resistance) would prove a panacea for all electrolytic ills. Indeed, this view is still held by a surprisingly large number of men versed in matters electrical.

I am of the opinion that it is impossible, from a financial standpoint, to provide so satisfactory a legitimate return that considerable electricity will not seek a path through pipes, cable covers, etc.; for, in order to confine the electric current to the rails, the resistance of the earth and its contained pipes would have to be infinitely great, and this condition can be realized only by making the resistance of the rail infinitely small as compared with that of the earth. The cost of arriving at this condition is prohibitive, and the improved track return is, and always must be, a palliative merely, not a cure.

Assuming, then, that under the most favorable character of electric-railway construction some of the current may be expected to stray from the straight and narrow path, it behooves us to consider how it may best be cared for in order that it may not cause electrolysis. Since corrosion of this nature occurs only at those points where electricity _leaves_ the metal, one might suppose that the attachment of a conducting wire to the affected part would result in the harmless carrying away of the current. In isolated cases, in small towns, such a plan might accomplish the desired result. It is open to the objection, however, that it in a measure legalizes the conveyance of electricity on conductors other than those designed for the purpose. In larger towns, with more than one power house and with car lines radiating from and circumscribing the business center, the attachment of conducting wires entails a ceaseless disturbance of the electrical equilibrium, curing the evil in spots and developing new danger points. Furthermore, these connections tend to decrease the resistance of the total illegitimate return, thereby tempting a greater flow of electricity along other paths than the rails and track feeders. It has been generally believed that this increased current would develop electrolysis at the ends of the pipes, due to the jumping of the electricity around the presumably high resistance of the joints; and, indeed, many samples of such corrosion are in existence. I have found, however, that it is possible to calk a bell-and-spigot joint in cast-iron pipe in such a manner that the resistance is practically _nil_; and as for wrought iron or steel, the joint resistance may be made as low as we please by fitting the surfaces so carefully that white-leading is unnecessary.

Arguing from the fact that the negative electrode is not attacked, it has been suggested to employ an auxiliary dynamo and a special system of wiring, in order to maintain the pipes, etc., at all times and at all points, negative to the rails. Could this ideal condition be realized, the rails alone would suffer. We can not hope, however, to thus easily solve the problem in towns where the distribution of buried conductors is at all complex.

It has been suggested, also, to discourage the flow of electricity along pipes and cable covers by inserting insulating sections of wood or terra cotta. This plan has never been tried on a scale large enough to afford a suitable demonstration of its utility. While it might reasonably be tried on new construction, its application to old work is almost prohibited by the attendant expense.

The other side of this pipe is smooth and clean.]

Attacking the problem from a directly opposite standpoint, there seems to be a chance of successfully invoking the aid of some purely chemical method of rendering lead and iron innocuous, electrolytically speaking. If we can obtain an insulating oxide, lacquer, or varnish that will retain its high-resistance properties during the ordinary lifetime of the buried metal, it will be possible to effectually protect pipes and cable coverings by coating them prior to burial. Or, if we can stumble upon an electrolysis-proof alloy, formed by the addition of a few per cent of some foreign metal to the pipe material during manufacture, the buried conductor will need no protection whatever.

But, supposing that we discover this lacquer or this alloy and by such means guard against damage to all new construction, how are we to care for the metals already buried? We can not dig them all up and paint them, neither can we attempt to replace them by the new alloy. I do not see that the state of the art to-day presents any solution of the difficulty, other than the banishment of the single trolley system. None of the electrical remedies (so called) offers more than partial and temporary relief, and the chemical field is just beginning to be explored.

Permit me to state most emphatically that this is not intended as an argument in favor of the abolishment of single trolley systems. Our civilization owes more to them than could be rehearsed in catalogue form within the limits of one issue of this magazine. We have nothing at present that can be employed as a satisfactory substitute for the ordinary electric railway. The underground trolley is a safe substitute, but the great expense of installation renders it available for very few localities. The overhead trolley, with two wires and no ground return, is cumbersome, vexatious, and unsightly. The storage battery is more or less experimental in its nature. The electro-magnetic contact systems, with plates set in the pavement at stated intervals, make no pretense of avoiding electrolytic troubles. The compressed-air motor has yet to receive popular approval.

In this instance the outer covering consists of a salt of lead, having no strength whatever.]

There seems to be a mistaken impression abroad that the railway companies are indifferent to this subject. So far as my experience and information go, this is not the case. They are only too anxious to find a remedy--not, as some electricians have stated, to save their coal-pile, for energy is wasted in forcing the electricity back to the power house, no matter what the path, but because they fear that at some future date the taxpayer, the corporation, and the municipality will band together, present overwhelming bills for damages, and sweep the trolleys off the face of the earth. The instinct of self-preservation, if nothing else, demands that the electric-railway companies should put forth every endeavor to solve the electrolysis problem.

And yet, conservative judgment requires that the railway companies should not take the initiative. It is one of boyhood’s maxims not to shoot arrows at a hornet’s nest unless one has mud handy to apply to the subsequently afflicted part. Thus it happens that the railway company remains apparently inactive, bearing the burden of public condemnation, while we, whose lethargy is responsible for failing pipes, read electrolysis articles in the daily press and wonder how soon the impending catastrophe is likely to occur.

This condition of affairs is deplorable; for, while we may not care how extensively or how frequently the city authorities or the private corporations are obliged to renew their underground metals, we are at least vitally concerned as to whether the stray electricity is endangering our steel office buildings, our bridges, our water supply, our immunity from conflagrations, and the safety of the hundred and one appliances that go to make up our modern civilization.

Are the Brooklyn Bridge anchor plates going to pieces, or are they not? Are the elevated railroad structures about to fall apart, or are they not? The consulting electrical engineer says “Yes,” the railway man says “No.” The municipal authorities say nothing. “When doctors disagree----”

I deem it doubly unfortunate that so much valuable brain energy has been inefficiently expended in the discussion of electrolysis. Each writer has viewed it from his own standpoint. Electrical literature has acquired in this way a series of views, interesting and instructive, but also bewildering. There is no composite view, such as might be obtained from the report of a commission composed of a technical representative of each of the interests affected. So far as I am able to learn, such a commission has never existed.

* * * * *

A curious coincidence of superstitions, illustrating anew how all
men are kin, is exemplified in the native belief, mentioned in Mrs.
R. Langloh Perkins’s book of More Australian Legendary Tales, that
any child who touches one of the brilliant fungi growing on dead
trees--which are called “devil’s bread”--will be spirited away
by ghosts. An English reviewer of the book remembers having been
dragged away from a fungus of this kind for the same reason. In the
north of England children used to be told that, if they touched the
dangerous growths, a fungus of the same kind would grow from the
tip of every finger.

WINTER BIRDS IN A CITY PARK.

BY JAMES B. CARRINGTON.

Most of us are so used to thinking of birds, if we notice them at all, as belonging to spring and summer that we easily fail to see or hear the comparatively few feathered winter visitors. Among these, however, are some of the most attractive and amusing of birds, and to hear their cheery notes and to watch their busy hunt for food on a cold winter day adds a very considerable pleasure to a walk in a city park or the near-by woods. In New York city bird lovers have learned that Central Park is one of the very best places in which to watch birds both summer and winter. There is room enough there and the conditions are varied enough to offer congenial dwelling places for nearly all of the better-known birds. In the spring and fall the beautiful and tiny migrating wood warblers find the park a good feeding ground, and a safe place wherein to linger for a brief time on their journeys north and south.

With the approach of winter the innumerable fat and saucy robins that have hunted angleworms and strutted about the lawns of the park since early spring disappear, except for an occasional hardy fellow who perhaps prefers the dangers of a northern winter to those of the long journey southward. The wood- and the hermit-thrush; the veery, or Wilson’s thrush; the yellow warbler, so abundant and so musical; the perky little redstart, whose song of “Sweet, sweet, sweeter” closely resembles the yellow warbler’s; the somber-colored blackbirds; the Baltimore and the orchard oriole; the scarlet tanager; the catbird; Phœbe; Jenny Wren; the tiny chipping sparrow; the vireos; and many other familiar warm-weather friends have also journeyed southward.

The bare trees and the ground brown with fallen leaves have to some a bleak and dreary look, but this is because a wrong impression has gone abroad concerning them. Nature in winter is not dead, not even sleeping; she is all the time storing up energy to enable her to greet the returning sun in her very best dress. If you will look carefully at the bare limbs and branches of the trees and bushes, you will see the little buds that are slowly but surely swelling up with the pride of young, active, vigorous life, only waiting, with the great patience of Nature, for the proper and suitable time to break away from their winter retirement and take up their part in the new year.

Some of the pleasantest days I have ever known in the open have been spent in the winter woods, when the snow was on the ground and everything _seemed_ still and unfamiliar. Every little sound is accented on a cold day, and the creaking of a swaying limb or the note of a bird comes to you with almost startling distinctness. Somehow you feel on such days that you are more a part of the things about you than in the full flush of summer. It is like meeting people stripped of all the artificial distinctions of clothes and position.

There is something fine in the way the trees stand up in winter; no one can fail to understand what is meant by the “sturdy oak.” They seem to feel pretty much as you do, and show a spirit of vigorous resistance and power to enjoy and cope with the worst that Jack Frost can bring, and the bright sun sends the sap tingling through their limbs just as it does the blood through yours. One day especially that I remember in Central Park brought me a somewhat novel experience, and gave me the privilege of transferring some old bird acquaintance to the list of my bird friends. It was after a fall of snow, and the air was crisp and sharp, indeed it was nipping, and standing still was a chilly occupation. From long familiarity I knew just about where to go to find certain birds, and I was not disappointed in my hunt. My overcoat pocket, it is needless to say, was fully stocked with peanuts and a box of bird seed, and demands were very soon made upon the peanut supply by the fat and friendly gray squirrels that come bravely up to your hand to be fed. They have a most attractive and appealing way of approaching you. The more timid ones stop often to sit up inquiringly, and put one hand on their heart, as if to stop its excited beating.

The first birds I saw were the rugged and noisy English sparrows, written down in most bird books as “pests,” but I confess I could not resist giving them a crumb or two, for they appeal to my sympathies much as the plucky little _gamin_ newsboys of the streets do, and then, too, I have learned that their loud chatter and rush for food attract more desirable acquaintances. I soon heard the sharp, shrill peep of the white-throated sparrows, and listened to their scratching “with both feet” under the bushes. Now and then one would try his throat with his full song, two sweet whistles followed by very plain calls for “Peabody, peabody, peabody.” They are called the peabody bird by many. There is no mistaking this beautiful sparrow. Among a bunch of his noisy English neighbors the rich brown of his feathers is easily seen, and the three white stripes on his head and the white patch on the throat attract your eye at once. In a group of thirty or forty whitethroats that were feeding on my bird seed I noticed also two plump song sparrows. They are brown, too, but smaller than the whitethroats, and their breasts are streaked with dark-brown stripes, with a spot right in the center. This is the sparrow that makes music for us from very early spring until late in the autumn. I have heard them in February, with the snow yet on the ground, perched on the tip of some bush and singing away with a joyfulness that made everything take on a more cheerful look. While I was watching the whitethroats I heard the jolly little song that I especially hoped for, and very soon had a near view of wee Mr. Chickadee himself, with his jet-black head, throat, and chin, and gray cheeks. He, in company with several of his friends, came down to feed at once, and hopped about my feet and a near-by bench to pick up the bits of peanut I had dropped for his benefit. The chickadees are always “chummy” little birds, and seem to have found their human acquaintances in general pretty good sort of people. After a time I put some peanut crumbs in my hand and held it out invitingly. The chickadees would alight on the tree over my head, sing their song, look down inquiringly, and then fly off, apparently interested in searching for some important business they had overlooked on the bark of another tree. Gradually, however, one became more familiar and finally lighted on my hand with entire confidence, selected the largest piece of peanut to be had, and flew away to eat it. He held the bit between both feet on a bench, and leaned forward and pecked away until it disappeared. Occasionally he would hold a small piece in one foot only. One little fellow stopped to sing me his Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, as he perched on my little finger, before selecting his morsel. They followed me about the paths, and wherever I stopped there were sure to be several chickadees peeping about the tree trunks asking me to please give them more peanuts. While this was going on I heard a hoarse “Quank, quank, quank!” that sounded very near, and on looking up saw a white-breasted nuthatch, a blue-gray bird with a very distinct black band on the top of his head that extends back across his shoulders. His short tail and legs make him look very funny when on the ground. On a tree, however, he is a regular circus, walking head up or head down on the limbs and trunk, and now and then doing the giant swing, completely circling some twig, just to show what he can do when he tries. He was attracted by the noise and conduct of the chickadees, his winter companions, and was calling for something for himself. His long, slim bill is not made for cracking things as the sparrows can with their short, strong bills, but he punches holes in them very much as the woodpeckers do. When he came down to the path and picked up a peanut he flew off to a near-by tree and hunted up and down until he found a place in the bark where he could wedge the nut in and then proceeded to hatch or crack it into bits to suit his taste. A brown creeper was walking up his tree a short distance away very much as the nuthatch does, poking his long, curved bill into the bark, though I did not see him for some time, as his brown and gray feathers were so like the color of the tree on which he walked. He circles round the trunk or limb, and you have to keep a sharp lookout to get more than an occasional rapid glance at him. A loud rapping and a noise that sounded a good deal like a giggle attracted my attention to a downy black-and-white woodpecker, with a bright-red spot on the back of his head. He was hammering away with all his might, and the limb on which he hung, back down, fairly rattled as he drove his chisel-like bill into the wood. Another woodpecker, the big and beautifully marked flicker, with his brown back barred with black, his spotted breast with its big black crescent and the red band on the back of his head, stopped for a minute or two on a tree a hundred feet away. His cry of alarm rang out shrilly as he flew away. All of these birds are handsomely marked, though none of them compare, in the mere matter of color, with some of the many beautiful summer species. There was one bird there that day, though, whose brilliant plumage and altogether tropical aspect comes as a great surprise to the unaccustomed visitor to the park in winter. As he lighted on the snow-covered ground among a group of feeding whitethroats the cardinal, with his splendid crest, stood out like a jet of flame, and the black spot at the base of his bill only made the rest of him seem the brighter. Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal spend their winters regularly in Central Park, and I hear or see them every time I go there. His only note now is a sharp squeak of alarm, but a little later he will perch high up in some tree near the lake and awake the echoes with his loud whistling. High over my head, mere specks of shining white against the blue-gray of the sky, I could see several gulls floating along on their way to the reservoir, where hundreds of them often gather in the open water that is usually found in the center. As I walked toward the entrance of the park, on my way to the car, I heard, on some cedars near the border of the lake, the gurgling music of a party of goldfinches. They had on their winter coats of yellowish brown, but their song and dipping flight made them easily recognizable.

Once you become acquainted with a few birds, every flutter of a wing or cheep or peep becomes an object of interest and a motive for many days in the open. It is very easy also to sentimentalize about Nature and to assume a patronizing air toward her, but the more you know of her and her ways the sooner you get over this. You can not help being impressed with the fact that the life and ways of the animals and birds are, after all, in many ways very like your own. Birds, you will find, are very human indeed, and show a wide diversity in disposition and habit. There is one thing sure to follow an interest of this kind, and that is a greater respect and care for wild life. The cruelty of egg-collecting and the wanton destruction of birds for millinery purposes are becoming less tolerable every year in civilized communities.

OLD RATTLER AND THE KING SNAKE.

BY DAVID STARR JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

“I only know thee humble, bold,
Haughty, with miseries untold,
And the old curse that left thee cold,
And drove thee ever to the sun
On blistering rocks....
Thou whose fame
Searchest the grass with tongue of flame,
Making all creatures seem thy game,
When the whole woods before thee run,
Asked but--when all is said and done--
To lie, untrodden, in the sun!”--BRET HARTE.

Old Rattler was a snake, of course, and he lived in the King’s River Cañon, high up and down deep in the mountains of California.

He had a hole behind and below a large, flat granite rock, not far from the river, and he called it his home; for in it he slept all night and all winter, but when the sun came back in the spring and took the frost out of the air and the rocks, then he crawled out to lie until he got warm. The stream was clear and swift in the cañon, the waterfalls sang in the side gulch of Roaring River, the wind rustled in the long needles of the yellow pines, and the birds called to their mates in the branches. But Old Rattler did not care for such things. He was just a snake, you know, and his neighbors did not think him a good snake at that, for he was surly and silent, and his big, three-cornered, “coffin-shaped” head, set on a slim, flat neck, was very ugly to see. But when he opened his mouth he was uglier still, for in his upper jaw he had two long fangs, and each one was filled with deadly poison. His vicious old head was covered with gray and wrinkled scales, and his black, beadlike eyes snapped when he opened his mouth to find out whether his fangs were both in working order.

Old Rattler was pretty stiff when he first came from his hole on the morning of this story. He had lain all night coiled up like a rope among the rocks, and his tail felt very cold. But the glad sun warmed the cockles of his heart, and in an hour or two he became limber, and this made him happy in his snaky fashion. But, being warm, he began to be hungry, for it had been a whole month since he had eaten anything. When the first new moon of August came, his skin loosened everywhere and slipped down over his eyes like a veil, so that he could see nothing about him, and could not hunt for frogs by the river nor for chipmunks among the trees. But with the new moon of September all this was over. The rusty brown old coat was changed for a new suit of gray and black, and the diamond-shaped checkers all over it were clean and shiny as a set of new clothes ought to be.

There was a little striped chipmunk running up and down the sugar-pine tree over his head, pursing his little mouth and throwing himself into pretty attitudes, as though he were the center of an admiring audience, and Old Rattler kept a steady eye on him. But he was in no hurry about it all. He must first get the kinks out of his neck, and the cold cramps from his tail. There was an old curse on his family, so the other beasts had heard, that kept him always cold, and his tail was the coldest part of all. So he shook it a little, just to show that it was growing limber, and the bone clappers on the end rustled with a sharp, angry noise. Fifteen rattles he had in all--fifteen and a button--and to have so many showed that he was no common member of his hated family. Then he shook his tail again, and more sharply. This was to show all the world that he, Old Rattler, was wide awake, and whoever stepped on him would better look out. Then all the big beasts and little beasts who heard the noise fled away just as fast as ever they could; and to run away was the best thing they could do, for when Old Rattler struck one of them with his fangs all was over with him. So there were many in the cañon, beasts and birds and snakes too, who hated Old Rattler, but only a few dared face him. And one of these was Glittershield,[B] whom men call the King of Snakes, and in a minute I shall tell you why.

[B] _Lampropeltis zonatus._

And when Old Rattler was doing all that I have said, the King Snake lay low on a bed of pine needles, behind a bunch of fern, and watched with keen, sharp eye. The angry buzz of Rattler’s tail, which scared the chipmunks and the bullfrogs and all the rest of the beast folk, was music for Glittershield. He was a snake too, and snakes understand some things better than any of the rest of us.

Glittershield was slim and wiry in his body, as long as Old Rattler himself, but not so large around. His coat was smooth and glossy, not rough and wrinkly like Old Rattler’s, and his upraised head was small and pretty--for a snake. He was the best dressed of all his kind, and he looked his finest as he faced Old Rattler. His head was shiny black, his throat and neck as white as milk, while all down his body to the end of his tail he was painted with rings, first white, then black, then crimson, and every ring was bright as if it had just been freshly polished that very day.

So the King Snake passed the sheltering fern and came right up to Old Rattler. Rattler opened his sleepy eyes, threw himself on guard with a snap and a buzz, and shook his bony clappers savagely. But the King of Snakes was not afraid. Every snake has a weak spot somewhere, and that is the place to strike him. If he hadn’t a weak spot no one else could live about him, and then perhaps he would starve to death at last. If he had not some strong points, where no one could harm him, he couldn’t live himself.

As the black crest rose, Old Rattler’s tail grew cold, his head dropped, his mouth closed, he straightened out his coil, and staggered helplessly toward his hole.

This was the chance for Glittershield. With a dash so swift that all the rings on his body--red, white, and black--melted into one purple flash, he seized Old Rattler by his throat. He carried no weapons, to be sure. He had neither fangs nor venom. He won his victories by force and dash, not by mean advantage. He was quick and strong, and his little hooked teeth held like the claws of a hawk. Old Rattler closed his mouth because he couldn’t help it, and the fangs he could not use were folded back against the roof of his jaw.

The King Snake leaped forward, wound his body in a “love-knot” around Old Rattler’s neck, took a “half-hitch” with his tail about the stomach, while the rest of his body lay in a curve like the letter S between the two knots. Then all he had to do was to stiffen up his muscles, and Old Rattler’s backbone was snapped off at the neck.

All that remained to Glittershield was to swallow his enemy. First he rubbed his lips all over the body, from the head to the tail, till it was slippery with slime. Then he opened his mouth very wide, with a huge snaky yawn, and face to face he began on Old Rattler. The ugly head was hard to manage, but, after much straining, he clasped his jaws around it, and the venom trickled down his throat like some fiery sauce. Slowly head and neck and body disappeared, and the tail wriggled despairingly, for the tail of the snake folk can not die till sundown, and when it went at last the fifteen rattles and the button were keeping up an angry buzz. And all night long the King of Snakes, twice as big as he ought to be, lay gorged and motionless upon Old Rattler’s rock.

And in the morning the little chipmunk ran out on a limb above him, pursed up his lips, and made all kinds of faces, as much as to say, “I did all this, and the whole world was watching while I did it.”

REMARKABLE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES.

BY R. L. PACKARD.

Every one knows that the Philippine archipelago, like other regions in its neighborhood, abounds in volcanoes, some of which are still active, while the majority are extinct. Some geologists have tried to distribute the Philippine volcanoes into two parallel belts or lines running in a general northwest and southeast direction, following the trend of the island group, and extending from the southern end of Mindanao to the northern part of Luzon--some sixteen degrees of latitude. Early, possibly prehistoric, volcanic activity in the group has left its imprint upon the native mythology, as was the case in the Mediterranean, and an explanation of some of the mythical stories is to be found in earth movements. The Spaniards have given accounts of many eruptions in the last three hundred years, which were remarkable either from the destruction they caused or the terror they inspired. Some of these accounts were written by the terrified eyewitnesses themselves, such as the monks in charge of parishes where the greatest damage was done, and are sufficiently vivid, however much they may lack of what would now be called “scientific” accuracy.

Probably the most remarkable volcanic outburst in historical times, on account of the distance apart of the simultaneous eruptions, although its intensity might not be regarded as great when compared with that of Krakatoa, was that of January 4, 1641, when a volcano on the southeastern extremity of Mindanao, another on the northern coast of the island of Sulu to the west, and a third in Luzon far to the north, became active at the same time. A translation of the original Spanish report of this extraordinary phenomenon, which is extremely rare and practically inaccessible to students, is given in Jagor’s _Reisen in den Philippinen_. From this it appears that upon two occasions, toward the end of December, 1640, volcanic ashes fell at Zamboanga (on the southwest coast of Mindanao) and covered the fields like a light frost. On January 1, 1641, the auxiliary fleet carrying troops from Manila to the island of Ternate was off Zamboanga, and on the 3d, at about 7 P. M., people in the latter place heard what they supposed was artillery and musketry firing at some miles’ distance. Believing that an enemy was attacking the coast, preparations were made to meet him, and the commander of the galleys sent a boat out to see if any of the vessels of the fleet needed assistance, but the boat returned without finding the fleet.

On the next day, January 4, 1641, at about 9 A. M., the noise of the supposed cannonading increased to such an extent that it was feared in Zamboanga that the Spanish fleet had been attacked by the Dutch, with whom the Spaniards were then at war. This noise lasted about half an hour, when it became evident that it was not caused by artillery, but proceeded from the outbreak of a volcano, for, toward noon, thick darkness began to spread over the sky to the south, which soon covered that part of the heavens and gradually spread over the whole sky, so that by 1 P. M. it was as dark as night, and by 2 P. M. the darkness had so increased that one could not distinguish objects a short distance off. Candles were lighted, and a great fear fell upon the people, who fled to the churches to pray and confess. This darkness, during which no light was visible in the whole horizon, lasted until 2 A. M., when the moon became visible, to the great joy of both Spaniards and Indians, who were afraid of being buried beneath the ashes which had been falling since 2 P. M. The fleet, which was then passing the southern end of Mindanao, was thrown into confusion by the tumult of the elements, and was in darkness earlier than Zamboanga--viz., at 10 A. M.--because it was nearer the volcano. The darkness was so intense that the crews believed the last day had come, and the vessels were endangered by the heavy shower of stones, ashes, and earth which fell upon them and which the men hastened to throw overboard. The ships’ lanterns were lighted as at night. The volcano could be seen, at a considerable distance, throwing up columns of flame which, on descending, set the neighboring woods on fire. The darkness covered the greater part of Mindanao, which is a very large island, and the ashes were carried to Cebu, Panay, and other islands, and there was an especially heavy fall on the island of Jolo (Sulu), which is more than forty leagues west by south from the southeast point of Mindanao, where the volcano burst out. On this island, on account of the darkness and the general uproar, the source of the ashes which fell there was not known at the time, but when it became light enough to see it was found that at the same time with the eruption on Mindanao a second volcano had burst out upon a small island which lies off the mouth of the principal river of Sulu. There the earth had opened with a violent commotion, and had vomited out flames mingled with trees and huge stones. So great was the disturbance that the sea bottom was mingled with the interior of the earth, and the volcano threw out quantities of shells and other things that grow upon the bottom of the sea. The mouth of this volcano remained open afterward. It was very broad, and the eruption had burned up everything upon the island. But what excited the greatest amazement was that a third volcano broke out on the same day and hour with the two just mentioned, in the province of Ilocos, in Luzon, and at least six hundred miles north; and this volcano ejected water. The outbreak was preceded by a violent storm and earthquake. The earth swallowed up three mountains, on the sides of one of which were three villages. All three mountains were torn from their foundations and blown into the air, together with a vast amount of water, and the chasm which took their place formed a broad lake, that showed no trace of the mountains which had stood on the spot. The letter from which the foregoing account is taken goes on to say that the noise of this outbreak, which occurred between 9 and 10 A. M., was heard not only in Manila but in all the Philippine Islands and the Moluccas. It even reached the mainland of Asia in the kingdoms of Cochin China, Champa, and Cambodia, as was learned from priests and others who came to Manila from those countries afterward. The noise sounded like heavy artillery and musketry fire at two or three leagues’ distance. In Manila it was supposed that the firing was going on in Cavite, while at Cavite it was referred to Manila, and messengers were sent from one place to the other to make inquiries, and a similar impression prevailed in all the islands, cities, and villages in a circuit of nine hundred leagues, within which the noise was heard. Malacca was taken by the Dutch on the 13th of January, and was already hard pressed on the 4th, and many pious Spaniards believed, after the news had come of the capture of the place, that Heaven had taken this volcanic means of warning them of the great injury which would result to the archipelago from the loss of so important a city.

The missionaries in Cochin China gave January 5th as the date of the outbreak, instead of the 4th, there being one day’s difference between the reckoning of the Portuguese, who sailed from west to east, and that of the Spaniards, who sailed from east to west, to their Eastern possessions.

The volcano of Mayon, or Albay, in the province of Camarines, has been in frequent eruption from 1616 down to within thirty years. Some of the eruptions were very destructive to life and property. After an activity in July, 1766, of six days’ duration, accompanied by a great flow of lava, on October 23, 1766, during a violent storm, which began at about 7 P. M. from north-northwest and at 3 A. M. suddenly veered to the south and blew down all the houses of one of the villages in the neighborhood, the volcano ejected such a vast quantity of water that several torrents of thirty varas (ninety feet) wide ran down to the sea between the villages Tibog and Albay. Between Bacacay and Malinao the floods were over eighty varas (two hundred and forty feet) wide, and the highways were obliterated. One village was entirely destroyed, nearly all the houses of the region were swept away, and the fields were covered with sand; another village was partly destroyed, its remainder forming an island, or rather a hill, surrounded by deep, broad ravines, through which the stream of sand and water ran. In another place palms and other trees were buried in sand to their tops. Some fifty persons lost their lives. As far as could be judged, the account declares, this [cold?] water came from the interior of the volcano, while we should be inclined to regard it as a cloudburst. The outbreak of February 1, 1814, however, was the most destructive of all. An eyewitness writes that at about 8 A. M. the mountain suddenly threw out a thick column of stones, sand, and ashes, which quickly rose to the highest layers of the air. The sides of the volcano became veiled and disappeared from the view of the spectators, while a stream of fire ran down the mountain and threatened to annihilate them. Every one fled to the highest attainable point for safety, while the roar of the volcano struck terror into all. The darkness increased, and many of the fleeing ones were struck down by the falling stones. Houses afforded no protection, because the red-hot stones set them on fire, and the most flourishing villages of the Camarines were thus laid in ashes. Toward 10 A. M. the rain of stones ceased, and was replaced by one of sand, and at about 2 P. M. the noise had lessened and the sky began to clear. Twelve thousand persons were killed and many wounded by this eruption. After the mountain had become quiet it presented a frightful appearance, its former picturesque, highly cultivated slopes being covered with barren sand, which enveloped the cocoanut trees to their tops, and some one hundred and twenty feet of its summit had been carried away during the eruption. An enormous opening had been formed on its southern side, near which three other mouths appeared, which continued to emit ashes and smoke. The finest villages of the Camarines were destroyed, and the best part of the province was converted into a sandy waste.

This mountain has been active at short intervals down to the present time. Sometimes its activity has been continuous for a year or more. Its eruptions were frequently accompanied by earthquakes and storms. The next outbreak after that described above was in 1827. In 1834 and 1835 the mountain was active nearly all the time. There was no eruption of ashes, but every night a stream of molten lava could be seen running into the higher ravines. In 1845 there was an eruption of ashes which lasted several days; a violent eruption occurred in 1846, two unimportant ones in 1851, and another violent ash and stone eruption occurred on July 27, 1853, during which thirty-one persons were killed. Others occurred in 1855, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1865, and 1871. The heights of the Philippine volcanoes vary from ten thousand and nine thousand feet (Albay or Mayon) down to Taal, only seven hundred and eighty feet high. This curious volcano is upon an islet in the middle of Lake Bombon, south of Manila. Lake Bombon was originally probably a vast crater. It is separated from the China Sea by a narrow isthmus. Taal contains secondary craters, crevasses emitting vapors, and lakelets of acid water. It is the principal “show” volcano of the islands, and was in action in 1885, when all the vegetation upon the island was burned up. Lake Bombon was doubtless formerly connected with the sea, the intervening barrier being formed of eruptive _scoriæ_. Its water is still saline, and its marine fauna has adapted itself to its modified environment.

On the small island Camiguin, on the northwest coast of Mindanao, is the extinct volcano Catarman, with a crater lake upon its summit whose level has been subject to great fluctuations. Sometimes the lake dried up, and again it has overflowed and inundated the low lands in the neighborhood, as in 1827 and 1862. Often its water has been set boiling by escaping gases. It would be interesting to know what varying pressure caused the changes in the level of this lake on the top of Mount Catarman.

A further idea of the volcanic activity of this region may be gained from the circumstance that a volcanic island emerged from the sea on the north coast of Luzon in 1856, which grew to seven hundred feet in height by 1860, and is now about eight hundred feet high. Every one has seen photographs of the streets of Manila after an earthquake, which form of subterranean activity is so common that it is taken into account in building.

THE SCAVENGERS OF THE BODY.

BY M. A. DASTRE.

The labors of M. Metchnikoff have made known one of the most curious mechanisms--perhaps the most effective--which Nature employs to protect the organism against the invasion and ravages of microbes. We are only beginning to learn the means which are provided for our defense against the countless swarms of enemies of this class, some of them exceedingly dangerous, among which we have to live and move. In the first rank of these defenses is phagocytosis. The struggle of the organism against its minute assailants is an image of human wars. The cutaneous or mucous integument, continuous over the whole body, constitutes a kind of fortified inclosure which the microbe can not penetrate, except where some breach has been made. On one side of that wall, in the living city, the phagocytes or leucocytes (white cells) form an immense defensive army in a state of continual mobilization, or, as M. Duclaux would say, an innumerable and vigilant police.

These phagocytes or leucocytes are the nomadic elements of our economy. The animal body may be compared to an organized city in which all the living corpuscles, all the cellular elements, are sedentary, each having its place and staying there. Hence the comparison, often made, with the stones of a building, which is not exact, however, because these vital elements grow and increase, enlarging the structure without change of arrangement, while the stones do not. The growth and nutrition of these anatomical elements, it should be added, are carried on exclusively at the expense of liquid matters. Nothing solid can enter them or come out from them.

An exception to these two fundamental rules is found in the single case of the leucocytes or white globules of the blood. They have no fixed or determined place in the organism. Besides being carried passively by the flow of the blood in a perpetual circulation along with the red corpuscles, they possess a motion of their own. They can swim in the current that carries them, fix themselves to the walls, and travel in a sort of creeping way, which has been called the amœboid motion.

They are also exceptions to the second law, according to which living cells can dispose only of liquefied matters. All solid bodies that pass within reach of the leucocytes are seized and incorporated by them, provided they are small or inert enough to be enveloped. The nature of the body is of little import. Whatever it may be, it is swallowed and quickly inclosed within the mass of the leucocyte and submitted to the dissolving action of its juices--or, in a way, eaten. Hence the names “phagocyte,” or devouring cell, given to the enveloping white globule, and “phagocytosis” to the process. No other element of the organism, or hardly any other, possesses this singular faculty of seizure and swallowing (_inglobement_).

All the other characteristics of the white globules flow from these two of mobility and phagocytism, the significance of which has been set in a clear light by M. Metchnikoff. These characteristics are the attributes of the most primitive types of animal life. They appertain to cells not yet differentiated, to the unicellular organisms which occupy the first stages of life. They translate the vital energy of elements still independent and isolated, without definite place in the social organization and as yet without special high function, but for that very reason better adapted to the needs of the simplest animality. Their voracity is useful for the preservation of the social organism. By eliminating old, exhausted, diseased cells they rejuvenate the structure and prepare the way for new generations. And when the fecundity of these is exhausted the leucocytes come in to occupy the vacated situations, and conduct the organism thus patched up through a senile degeneracy to natural death.

The leucocytes, white globules, or phagocytes, by virtue of their mobility, are found everywhere--in the blood, in all the organs, and in all parts of the body--but are perhaps most abundant in the blood. The study of them proceeds slowly, and we are still engaged in distinguishing the varieties among them. The most abundant and best known of them--those which answer most closely the description we have given--are those called the polynuclear, neutrophilous leucocytes. They are colored with neutral hues, and have a nucleus like a rolled-up scroll in structure. Other varieties--the eosinophiles, lymphocytes, etc.--are less mobile and have still less marked phagocytic properties.

The roll-call of the phagocytic army would be a long task. The phagocytes are numerous in the sanguineous fluid, but are still six hundred and fifty times less so than the red corpuscles. They are almost as numerous in the lymph and the conjunctival tissue, where, besides occurring in their normal condition, they sport into a variety which appears to have abandoned its migratory habit, for a time at least, and into a giant variety one hundred times larger than the ordinary leucocytes, which M. Ranvier calls clasmatocytes. They are further found in such tissues as the skin and the mucous membrane, where, notwithstanding the cells are so crowded, they make their way into the intestine, and, by a sort of diapedesis (passage through the pores or interstices) called the phenomenon of Stoehr, toward all the free surfaces, whither exterior soluble substances invite them. As they go they destroy the microbes which, advancing in an inverse direction, would invade the organism and provoke an infection of intestinal origin.