Chapter II: COSMOPOLITAN AND PROVINCIAL FAUNAS.--There are apparently in the (3)

Phylogenetically, then, we see this morbid "sense of injury" to be reversional. This is in harmony with the atavic theory of insanity. In the individual it is a delusion, and, like other delusions, an attempt by the reason to explain a disordered feeling; in this case a _painful_ feeling, having its origin broadly in some imperfect adaptation of the organism. This attempt to explain a feeling or sensation seems a human necessity. However wide of the truth such explanations usually are, we seem forced to attempt them. In the case of this _painful_ feeling, with which we are here concerned, we are either unwilling or unable to explain it in its true way, and are prone to attribute it to malevolent agencies, often personal--perhaps the "bogy-man" remnant of the child and race. Such explanation is often an easy escape from truths unwelcome to our ego--truths which, if recognized, would wound pride or conscience beyond easy endurance. It requires a man of rare courage and mental clarity to recognize his particular pain from failure in adaptation as autogenetic, and to lay it to natural and unflattering causes. We prefer, of the two, to accuse the environment rather than the organism, especially when the organism happens to be our own. We take refuge in a grievance rather than impugn the supremacy of our ego. Indeed, it seems to be necessary for healthy subjective activity, so to speak, that a sort of _imperialism_ of the ego, however circumscribed, be maintained. It is the condition _sine qua non_ of the necessary measure of well-being of the individual. It is most reluctantly relinquished, and we constantly see the plainest truths immolated that it be retained. Only in the great self-effacement of melancholia and in those rare characters who recognize and bear complacently naked truths--the _Weltschmerz_ of Goethe--is this well-being renounced. Even those who are willing to father their own wounded ego still seek the necessary approbation by reducing its future pretensions or claims so that they may not be again pained by their failure to achieve them. They _unhitch_ their wagon from the star. Professor James has illustrated this by a fraction showing that our approbation is determined by our _success_ divided by our _pretensions_. Thus, success/pretensions = approbation (self-esteem). The quotient may be increased by diminishing the _pretensions_ or by increasing the _success_. James's fraction is as applicable to the moral conduct as to the intellectual side.

When we look for the physical equivalent of the mental state which evokes the "sense of injury" we find it in dynamic and toxic states of the nervous system and their correlation. Certain conditions of the individual or environment bring these into special relief. Old age is one. The querulousness, the sense of abuse or persecution which afflict the aged and often lead them to take refuge in the martyr-spirit, are sad examples. The state of fatigue or exhaustion is another, and "neurasthenic" insanity is only an expression in greater degree of the morbid mental action found in fatigue and exhausted states.

The primary and secondary effects of alcohol or other narcotic indulgence is another soil in which the "sense of injury" easily grows. The _habitué_ is notoriously suspicious and irritable, and full of fictitious grievances and unwarranted persecutory ideas. His attitude toward them is that of the paranoiac, vindictive, rather than that of the melancholiac, humiliated. They swell the army of so-called "borderland" cases of insanity, fretting their friends and puzzling the doctor with conduct alternately interpreted as "cussed" or "crazy."

Where there is bodily disease, acute or chronic, the morbid "sense of injury" is much in play. An intelligent patient, on recovery from a stomach disorder, admitted that whenever her stomach had ached she was taken with a violent hatred of her companion with whom she was in affectionate relation. An ignorant Southern colored woman, who had rheumatism in her ankle, believed that she had been "hoodooed," and explained the pain in her ankle by the presence of a snake, which she believed had been put there by a "hoodoo." She was not insane, the idea being consistent with her degree of intelligence, training, and early environment. Another patient, a sensible, cultivated woman, while suffering from a non-nervous illness, in which she had received all the consideration that love and money could furnish, believed herself to have been constantly and deliberately abused. After her recovery, now some years, she still maintains the belief. Instances could be multiplied, for doctors continually meet this atmosphere in the sick-room, from ugly little grievances to delusions of persecution. They are not surprised when a patient tells them in mingled confidence and complaint that he is hungry and neglected, that "they" will give him nothing to eat, etc., to find that his wife has been most attentive, has been pressing him to eat, and has stocked the pantry in anticipation. Dr. Johnson had plenty of ground for saying that a sick man is a rascal, though the modern doctor has reversed the formula.

Persons who suffer from actual trouble or ill treatment easily develop a morbid sense of injury, just as under similar conditions they may become insane. Unable to estimate the precise amount of their real grievance, there is an easy mental overflow into the fictitious ones. It is for this reason that the narrative of a real trouble or quarrel is so fraught with calumnious arraignment of others that it is unreliable until we have heard the "other side of the story," and that when disputants meet and explanations follow they often find that they have no _casus belli_. In the examination of the alleged insane for commitment we have constantly to separate the real from the imaginary troubles. Mr. F---- was the subject of such examination. He was suffering from heart disease, and thereby compelled to remain at home idle. His wife was supporting the family by keeping boarders, and he began to develop a morbid jealousy of her. He annoyed her by a constant surveillance and suspicion of her every act, which amounted at times to the delusion that she was unfaithful to him, and which culminated one night in an outbreak in which the police figured. It was difficult to separate his real from his imaginary grievances, for his wife had ceased to have any affection for him, though his delusion in regard to her unfaithfulness was unfounded and had been grafted upon his real trouble. Sent to a general hospital, he improved, and was reported "not insane." Circumstances requiring a hard struggle for existence, disappointment without apparent cause, coupled with a certain sentimental cast of mind, often prevent the correct estimation of the wrongs suffered and the proper relation of undoubted misfortunes.

In the insane the sense of injury or its analogue--delusions of persecution--appears in numerous shapes. Thus patients are defrauded, or conspired against, or acted upon by witchcraft, magnetism, electricity, or poisoned, or preached against, or subjected to disagreeable odors. Sometimes the delusions are but ill-defined and vague. Often it is possible to trace them to their underlying disordered sense impression or the particular environment or to vestiges of outgrown beliefs. They appear in depressed states of melancholia as well as in the exalted states of mania and paranoia. In melancholia they accompany a feeling of worthlessness which is the patient's explanation of his persecution--i. e., he is unworthy of better treatment. In paranoia the patient believes the persecution to be prompted by fear or envy of him, and there is consequently a feeling of self-importance--a morbid egotism which is in direct proportion to the magnitude or complexity of the ideas of persecution. Indeed, it is probable that these ideas of persecution, acting on a potentially melancholic or a potentially paranoiac mind, whatever these may be, determine the type that these mental diseases take.

The difference between the "injured" sense in the sane and insane states we must from our view point, without essaying to bridge all the _terra incognita_ which lies between sanity and insanity, regard as largely but one of degree. And so with the underlying mental and physical states. We find the morbid ideas more fixed in the sane than in the insane, frequent repetitions of the morbid impression tending to its final organization, so to speak. We also find that the morbid idea is usually more elaborated in the insane than in the sane state, although instances of the greatest elaboration are sometimes met with, especially where the element of some external foundation is large. It is probable, however, that the elements of fixity and elaboration of the persecutory idea are after all dependent upon and in proportion to the intensity of the underlying brain and mind states. In other words, that to increase a given intensity of these states is to increase the fixity and elaborateness of the "sense of injury," is to prevent the correction of the morbid idea, until finally exploited in conduct, which is the _début_ of the insanity.

Thus the relativity of insanity which has all along been maintained is clear on the line here pursued. It would be equally so in following other lines of morbid psychology. It has, though, received but little general recognition, and writers still treat insanity as an entity apart from its bearings on the average mind and its evolutionary history. The word "insanity," or "lunatic," is no doubt largely responsible for this, suggesting popularly, as it does, a distinct class of persons--a type of being as unlike ourselves as a Martian might be fancied to be. Nature or science, however, has set no line between the morbid mental manifestations which constitute sanity and those which constitute insanity, that being an arbitrary, however practical, distinction which science has had rather to descend to meet. Nothing so stands in the way of the best welfare of the insane than this abysmal ignorance which still prevails in regard to them--an ignorance which still clings to the mediæval idea of insanity, the classical portraiture, as in the pictures of Hogarth, or on the stage, or in fiction; an ignorance which is ever hearkening for the maniac's shriek or the clanking of his fetters, which recognizes nothing short of "furious madness" as sufficient ground for committing a brain-sick man to the tender therapy of the hospital ward.

But those who know best tell us that the insane are very much like other people, that there is wonderfully little difference between them and ourselves; and sometimes but a slight circumstance, a mere accident of environment, determines which side of the hospital wall we shall be on.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN AIR FLIGHT.

BY M. BANET RIVET.

Man has sought in all times and at all places to find means of leaving the earth's surface, in imitation of the birds, and rising into the air. Ancient legendary lore furnishes many stories, like those of Dædalus and his son Icarus, of attempts of this sort. In the fourth century B. C., Archytas of Tarentum, a learned Pythagorean, who has been credited with the invention of the screw, the pulley, and the kite, according to Aulus Gellius, constructed a wooden dove which could rise and sustain itself in the air by some mechanism the arrangement of which is not known. Credible accounts exist of an English Benedictine monk, Oliver of Malmesbury, in the eleventh century, having tried to fly by precipitating himself from the height of a tower, with the assistance of wings attached to his arms and his feet. It is said that, after having gone along a little way, he fell and broke his legs. He attributed his accident to failure to provide his apparatus with a tail, which would have helped preserve his equilibrium and made the descent a gentler one.

In the sixteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci first demonstrated that a bird, which is heavier than the air, sustains itself, advances in the air, "by rendering the fluid denser where it passes than where it does not pass." In order to fly it has to fix its point of support on the air; its wing in the descending stroke exerts a pressure from above down, the reaction of which from below up forces the center of gravity of its body to ascend at each instant to the height at which the bird wishes to maintain it. Some sketches that have come down to us prove that Leonardo occupied himself, like Oliver of Malmesbury, with giving man power to fly by the aid of wings suitably fixed to his body. We owe to Leonardo also the invention of the parachute, which he described in the following terms: "If a man had a pavilion, each side of which was fifteen braces wide and twelve braces high, he might cast himself from any height whatever, without fear of danger." It may be said, too, of Leonardo da Vinci, that he was the first to suggest the idea of the screw propeller. "If," he said, "this instrument in the form of a screw is properly made--that is, made of linen cloth, the interstices of which have been filled with starch--and if we turn it rapidly, such a screw will make a bearing nut for itself through the air and rise. This can be proved by moving a broad, thin rule rapidly through the air, when it will be found that the arm is forced to follow in the direction of the edge of the board. The frame for the cloth of which I have been speaking should be made of long, stout reeds. A model of it might be made in paper, with, for its axis, a thin strip of iron which we twist forcibly. When the strip is left free it will turn the screw."

In 1680 Borelli published some studies of a remarkably correct character on the flight of birds. According to his view, the wing acts upon the air in the phase of beating down, in the manner of an inclined plane, so as, by virtue of the resistance opposed by the air, to push the body of the animal upward at first and then onward. The action of the ascending wing was compared to that of a kite, and it would consequently continue to sustain the body of the bird while waiting the following stroke. But Borelli never thought of turning his observations to advantage, so as to supply man with the means of flying. Attention was much engaged in 1742 with the attempt of the Marquis de Bacqueville, substantially repeating that of Oliver of Malmesbury, which was terminated by a similar accident. Mention should also be made of Paucton, who in 1768 drafted a plan for a screw machine. In 1784 Launoy and Bienvenu exhibited and operated, before the Academy of Sciences in Paris, a screw which was moved by a strong spring. Before this, however, Joseph and Stephen Montgolfier had filled the world with the noise of their discovery of the air balloon, and the ingenious machine of these aëronauts failed to receive the attention it deserved.

It has been known since the days of Archimedes that every body partly or wholly submerged in a liquid in equilibrium suffers a vertical push upward from the fluid equal to the weight of liquid it displaces.

Let us consider the case of a body entirely plunged in a liquid--water, for example. If its weight exceeds the thrust it suffers it will fall to the bottom of the water under the action of a descensional force equal, at each instant, to the difference between the weight of the body, which is invariable, and the thrust, which is invariable also, and thus constant in direction and also in amount. If the weight of the body is less than the thrust, the latter overcomes it, and, contrary to the usual laws of weight, the body will rise under the action of an ascensional force, which will evidently be likewise constant in amount as well as in direction. A cork held down at the bottom of a vessel of water and then left to itself will supply an example of this ascensional movement.

A third case may be presented--that in which the weight of the body is equal to the thrust of the water. Weight and thrust are then in mutual equilibrium. No force invites the body either to descend or to rise, and it remains balanced in the midst of the liquid, wherever it happens to have been placed. This state of indifferent equilibrium is, however, possible only if the weight of the body remains rigorously constant. The slightest augmentation of the weight immediately causes the body to descend, while the slightest diminution sends it up. From this source arise the difficulties that are met in the construction of submarine boats, when their ascent or descent is obtained by means of air chambers, which are filled with water or emptied of it according to the requirements. The equilibrium of these engines is always precarious, and this explains why none of them, from that of Van Drebbel in 1620 to the experiments of Goubet in 1895, have given really practical results in the matter of stability of immersion.

When Galileo, following Aristotle, had demonstrated the ponderability of the air, and Torricelli had proved that atmospheric pressure was a result of that property, it was immediately thought that the principle discovered by Archimedes might be extended to the air, and Otto von Guericke gave an experimental demonstration of it by the invention of the baroscope.

From this period it seems, then, that the discovery of aëronautics was possible. If the weight of the volume of air displaced is greater than that of the body, the latter should take an ascensional movement in the atmosphere, as a cork does when plunged into water; and it is evident that for a body to satisfy such conditions we have only to fill a very light envelope with a gas less dense than the ambient air. But the study of gases was still in its infancy in the seventeenth century, and it required the labors of Mortrel d'Élement and Hales, at the beginning of the following century, to teach physicists how to collect and retain them.

The history of the progress of the human mind shows, further, that the pure and simple acceptance of a scientific discovery is not enough to make it produce all the consequences we have a right to expect from it. It must, further, impregnating the mind with itself, pass, we might say, into the condition of an innate idea. Chemistry, in this very matter of the discovery of the weight of the air and of the gases, presents a striking example of the accuracy of our proposition. The ponderability of the air had been accepted by physicists for a long time, while chemists continued to take no account of it, although, as Mendeleef has remarked, no exact idea could be conceived, under such conditions, concerning most chemical phenomena. It is to the glory of Lavoisier that he first took account of this ponderability and of that of all the gases as well. When we reflect that it was not till about 1775, or a hundred and fifty years after Galileo, that this illustrious Frenchman began to set forth those ideas, it is not any wonder that the discovery of aërostats was not made till toward the end of the eighteenth century. Lalande was therefore much in the wrong when he said "it was so simple! why was it not done before?"

It would not be just, however, to refer the discovery of aërostats solely to the efforts of the Montgolfiers. Like all inventors, like Lavoisier himself, these brothers, as Figuier has remarked, had the benefit of a long series of isolated labors, carried on often without special purpose, by which the elements of their invention had been gathered up.

Père Lana, of Brescia, conceived a plan in 1670 for constructing a ship which should sustain itself in the air and move by the aid of sails. Four copper globes, in which a vacuum had been produced in order to render them lighter than the volume of air displaced, were to support the ship while the sails propelled it. The scientific conception of the empty globes was correct, but Père Lana did not think of the enormous collapsing force which the atmospheric pressure would exercise upon them. The idea of a sail which would give his aërial boat a resemblance to a vessel driven by the winds was wholly erroneous.

Sixty-five years later, in 1735, Père Galien, of Avignon, gave a fairly clear expression to the theory of aërostats. Resting on the principle of Archimedes, he maintained that if he could fill a globe made of light cloth with a sufficiently rarefied air the globe would necessarily possess an ascensional force, which would permit it to lift itself up in the air with a ship and all its cargo. He proposed to draw this rarefied air from out of the upper regions of the atmosphere, down from the summits of high mountains, forgetting that the air, when brought down to the level of the ground, would contract in volume and assume the density of the ambient atmosphere.

In the condition of ignorance of the properties of gases that existed in that age, it did not occur, and could not have occurred, to Père Galien to use other gases than air; no more could he have thought of employing heat to rarefy the air, for the first not very precise notions on the decrease in densities of gases by heat only date from Priestley. But when Cavendish, in 1765, had fully studied hydrogen gas, and shown that as it was prepared then it was seven times lighter than air, Black was enabled to suggest that by filling a light bag with hydrogen the bag would be able to raise a certain weight in the air. The labors of Cavendish, Black, and the discoveries of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases by Priestley, were described by Priestley a few years afterward in the celebrated book on The Different Kinds of Air--a book which Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier had in their possession. The two brothers evidently found the germ of their invention in it.

It is fair to say that the Montgolfiers, who were already known in the learned world by their discoveries in the mechanical sciences, had thought, before they knew of Priestley's book, of a way of imitating Nature by inclosing vapor of water, a gas lighter than air, in a paper bag, which would be lifted up, the vapor contained in the bag being sustained in the air like a cloud. But the vapor condensed, and the weighted balloon shortly fell to the ground. The smoke produced by burning wood inclosed in a bag gave no better results. After seeing Priestley's book, they substituted hydrogen for vapor and for smoke, but the gas passed through the paper bag, and they gave up this attempt.

They then fancied that electricity was one of the causes of the rise of clouds, and sought for a gas that had electrical properties. They thought they could obtain it by burning wet straw and wool together. A box made of silk was filled with this gas, and they had the great satisfaction of seeing it rise to the ceiling of their room, and, in a second experiment, into the air. This was in November, 1782.

Five months previously, Tiberius Cavallo, in England, had repeated Black's experiment of filling a paper sack with hydrogen; but, as the Montgolfiers had found, the hydrogen leaked through the paper. Cavallo had better success with soap bubbles, which held the gas. His experiments stopped here, while the Montgolfiers carried theirs on to practical success.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique._

SKETCH OF EDWARD ORTON,

LATE STATE GEOLOGIST OF OHIO; LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.

All persons interested in American science were surprised and shocked at learning of the death, from heart trouble, on October 16, 1899, of Prof. Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University. The event occurred only little less than two months after Professor Orton had presided, with a simplicity of manner that did not hide but rather heightened the traits of vigor in his character, over the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at his home in Columbus, Ohio. The services he rendered to geology, his long and honorable career as an educator, and his continual and consistent insistence upon the faithful use of the scientific method well entitle him to be remembered as one of the most meritorious of American scientific workers.

EDWARD ORTON was born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., March 9, 1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born in England in 1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and owners of Farmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of the Ortons in the United States are derived, and represented his town in the General Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grandson of Thomas Orton, was one of the original purchasers and settlers of Litchfield, Conn., where he owned a square mile of land known as Orton Hill, on the south side of Bantam Lake. Two of the maternal ancestors of the subject of this sketch fought in the colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the Revolution.

Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel G. Orton, D. D., and received further training preparatory for college in the academies of Westfield and Fredonia, N. Y. He entered Hamilton College, whence his father had been graduated in 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore, and was graduated in 1848 in a class among the other members of which were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological Seminary, New York, and the Hon. F. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of Albany, N. Y., and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught for a number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Franklin, N. Y., and Chester, N. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science in the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post-graduate studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the Lawrence Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and Gray as his teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover Seminaries. While teaching at Chester, N. Y., he was called to Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took charge of the preparatory department in 1865; was made Professor of Natural History shortly afterward, and was made president of the college in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at the end of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State University at Columbus.

When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken in 1869 under the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton was appointed an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and was continued by reappointment by Governor E. F. Noyes. When Professor Newberry withdrew from the survey in 1881, Professor Orton was appointed State Geologist by Governor Charles Foster, and he was afterward reappointed to the position successively by Governors Hoadley, Foraker, Campbell, and Bushnell. He retained the title of State Geologist till his death, although he had not been engaged in any active public work on the survey for a considerable time.

The Ohio State University having been established on the basis of the grants of land made to the States for colleges under the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Professor Orton was appointed its president and Professor of Geology. He discharged the duties of this office for eight years, or till 1881. But the executive work of the president's office was irksome to him, since it grew constantly heavier as the young college expanded, and therefore left him less and less time for teaching and research in geology. Being in a measure compelled to make a choice between the two fields of activity, he chose the less ambitious position, resigning the presidency, and assuming the position of Professor of Geology, which he retained for the remainder of his life. The geological building of the university is named after him--Orton Hall. Besides his work on the Geological Survey of Ohio and his participation in the composition of its reports, Professor Orton prepared, for the Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, a paper on the New Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana, and another, only recently published in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States Survey, on the Rock Waters of Ohio; a volume for the Geological Survey of Kentucky on the Petroliferous Production of the Western Part of the State, published in 1891; and a report on petroliferous productions which is in process of publication by the Geological Survey of New York.

In the paper on the Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana the discovery of the supply of those materials, the great value of which was only realized in 1884 and afterward, is spoken of as being more surprising and anomalous than any similar discovery that had preceded it, and as a development which experts were hardly more prepared for than others. The oil and gas derived from the Trenton limestone in certain parts of these States were found to differ from the oil and gas in the Pennsylvania wells in chemical composition and physical properties, in the horizons from which they were obtained, in the structural features of the rocks associated with their production, and, most of all, in the kind of rock that produced them. "No facts more unexpected have ever been brought to light in connection with the geology of this country than those with which we are now becoming acquainted." Professor Orton's paper, which fills one hundred and eighty of the large pages of the report of the Geological Survey, includes a sketch of the history of the discovery to July, 1887, when it was prepared; a designation of what was known in regard to the geological scale and geological structure of the regions within which the new fields are embraced, and the tracing of the chief factors that influence or control the productiveness of the oil rock, with the description of the special features and boundaries of the several fields and the setting forth of the leading facts and present development of these lately found sources of power. Two principal conditions under which the new oil rock had proved petroliferous on a large scale were found to be porosity, connected with and apparently dependent on the chemical transformation of the upper portion of the limestone, for a number of feet in thickness, into a highly crystalline dolomite; and a relief resulting from slight warping of the strata, whereby the common contents of the porous portions of the Trenton limestone had been differentiated by gravity, the gas and oil seeking the highest levels, and the salt water maintaining a lower but definite elevation in every field. Professor Orton found nothing in the new experience to make it safe to count the Trenton limestone an oil rock or a gas rock in any locality, unless it could be shown to have undergone the dolomitic replacement by which its porosity was assured; and even in case it had suffered this transformation it would not be found a reservoir of gas or oil in an important sense unless some parts of it had acquired the relief essential to the due separation of its liquid and gaseous contents.

The report on the Rock Waters of Ohio concerns, first, those waters, chiefly in the northwestern and western part of the State, that are obtained from a considerable depth as compared with ordinary wells, the knowledge of which was almost wholly derived from wells drilled in the search for oil and gas, and was necessarily fragmentary and incomplete; because water was not included among the objects of search, but was considered a hindrance and obstruction to be got out of the way as well as possible; and, second, flowing wells, including only those having considerable head of pressure and those occurring in considerable areas, all of which belong entirely to the drift. Further, a brief review is given of some facts of unusual interest that were developed in the deep drillings concerning the preglacial drainage system of the part of the State in question. Indications of old river channels, one of which seems to have been extensive, were found at several points. Among the curious results of these studies was the conclusion, "seeming to be already established," "that the Ohio River, as we now know the stream, is of recent origin, and that the main volume of water gathered in it at the present time originally flowed across the State to the northward at least as far as Auglaize and Mercer Counties, where it turned to the westward toward the present lines of Wabash drainage in Indiana." Professor Orton seems to have placed considerable emphasis on the value of a study of the rocky floor of the State, concerning which all we know at present is derived from the revelations of deep drillings at haphazard; and he thought it would be a good work for the State to make use of all accessible data of this kind at once in constructing a model of the rocky floor of the region under review. The care and fidelity with which he studied the underground geology are exemplified in a map attached to the paper on the oil and gas fields, in which the horizons of the Trenton limestone are indicated and approximately bounded as they occur by gradations ranging from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, from elevations above the ocean level to one thousand and more feet below. Another contribution of Professor Orton's which may appropriately be given special notice is his part of the article on Ohio in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a succinct, clear, and comprehensive account of the geology of the whole State is given, with its salient features delineated so sharply that one may almost conceive from it a definite geological picture of the region.

Of all his scientific work, however, Professor Orton regarded the fixing of the order of the coal measures of Ohio as the most important; and he considered the determination of the order of the subcarboniferous strata, and particularly of the Berea Grit, as constituting a large permanent service to the study of the geology of the State.

At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Orton contributed a special paper on the local geology of Columbus, the place of the meeting, in which he dwelt largely on the origin of the drift that marks the superficial geology of the vicinity.

Of the work he has done for the increase and advancement of knowledge, the extent of a part of which we have only faintly indicated by the mention of a few particular researches, Professor Orton put the highest value on his labors as a teacher, a calling to which he was devoted for more than half a century. He found peculiar pleasure in instructing the children of the old pupils whom he had taught in his younger days. He was actively concerned in the promotion and extension of sanitary science, his addresses in that field having been one of the factors that led to the establishment of the Ohio State Board of Health. He was also greatly interested in the advancement of agriculture.

A theme on which Professor Orton was fond of dwelling in his public addresses was the amount and value of what has been accomplished within a comparatively short time in the world's history by the use of the methods of science. In an address delivered before the alumni of Hamilton College in 1888 he maintained that we were living in a revolutionary period, which is marked by a great advance in knowledge and a vastly larger control of the forces of Nature; by a large increase in freedom of thought and action; by a sudden and remarkable addition to the mobility of man, accompanied by an unexampled growth of great cities; and by an incalculable addition to the wealth of the world. Accompanying these great changes in the material and intellectual world were certain moral transformations appearing to grow out of them. All these advances were ascribed to a movement--a new method of investigating Nature--that began, so far as its particular and continuous development is concerned, about three hundred years ago, but to which no date or founder's name could be attached. This new philosophy thoroughly respected Nature, was humble, patient in the accumulation of facts and the trial of its theories, comprehensive, progressive, and hopeful. It has given us the marvelous increase of knowledge which especially marks the nineteenth century; it has impressed its influence upon all branches of study, and has wrought great improvements in methods and results; and has rendered an immense and inestimable service to Christian theology, and done much to broaden and rationalize it and thus to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on the world. Finally, the method of science was pronounced "the best gift that God has given to the mind of man." A similar train of thought as to the material aspects is apparent, though in a somewhat different form, in an address on The Stored (or Fossil) Power of the World, delivered in 1894.

A considerable part of Professor Orton's presidential address at the last meeting of the American Association was devoted to a summary of the conclusions derived from Alfred Russell Wallace's book, The Wonderful Century, that the progress accomplished in the present century far outweighs the entire progress of the human race from the beginning up to 1800. In this address, also, the author felicitously spoke of the scope of the American Association as possibly including the whole continent, and its object as the advancement of science, the discovery of new truth. "It is possible that we could make ourselves more interesting to the general public if we occasionally forswore our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of our time in restating established truths." But the discoveries recorded, though often fragmentary and devoid of special interest to the outside world, all had a place in the great temple of knowledge; and the speaker hoped that although no great discoveries should be reported this time, the meeting might still be a memorable one through the inspiration it would give to the multitude of workers in the several fields of science.

Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885; received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and that of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected President of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was designated at the Boston meeting of the American Association, 1898, as president for the Columbus meeting, 1899.

In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor Orton was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of man on this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, and had recently been made a member of its board of trustees. He was a prominent member of the Old Northwest Genealogical Society, and was the author of a volume, published in 1896, on the Genealogy of the Orton Family in America. The absolute freedom of his character from any desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well shown by the fact that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor, in the spare minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one paragraph of a hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous members of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard.

He was stricken with hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was able to do a considerable amount of work in his profession afterward. A few days before his death he said, in a note, that he felt that he had lived out his allotted time, and that his work was done. He never met his classes again, though he continued able to be up and about his home till the hour of his death. He seemed to feel that the solemn event was drawing close, during the last two days of his life, and his mind was always busy with the great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He had formed an affirmative answer apparently, as he read Browning's Prospice repeatedly in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the greatest pleasure and solace. His death was a quiet and painless one--a fitting end to a beautiful life.

Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent annual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of incinerations at the Père Lachaise crematory has almost steadily increased since 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513, making 37,068 from the beginning. A fair proportion of the number were women. There are now in Europe and America seventy crematories, twenty-seven of which are in Italy and twenty in the United States. Cremation is making good progress in England, where four crematories are reported from, and two are in course of erection. Germany has six, where 423 incinerations took place in 1898; Switzerland and Sweden have two each, Denmark one, and one has been authorized in Norway.

Editor's Table.

_A COMMISSION IN DIFFICULTIES._

The synopsis which has been given to the press of the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is not encouraging reading for those who like to believe in legislation as an infallible panacea for all public and social ills. The tone of the document indeed is very far from being one of triumph. The note struck in the very first paragraph is the need for more legislation to save the copious legislation already passed from proving ineffectual and abortive. Whether it is that Congress does not wish to make the work of the commission successful, or whether it has begun to have a wise distrust of its own powers, we can not say; but the commissioners complain bitterly of its inaction. We can not do better than quote their own words: "The reasons for the failure of the law to accomplish the purposes for which it was enacted have been so frequently and fully set forth that repetition can not add to their force or make them better understood. It is sufficient to say that the existing situation and the developments of the past year render more imperative than ever before the necessity for speedy and suitable legislation. We therefore renew the recommendations heretofore made, and earnestly urge their early consideration and adoption."

As the document proceeds, we see the good commissioners at war with the wicked railways, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, on the whole, the wicked railways have the best of it. The commissioners admit that certain cases which have come before the courts have been decided against them, and in favor of the railways; but they are far from disclosing the full extent of the discouragement, not to say mortification, they receive. The business of the commission is to interfere between the railways and their customers--the public--in the interest of the latter. The railways naturally consider this a rather one-sided function, and are not extremely zealous to aid in its performance. They have their own troubles with the public, and have no commission to come to their assistance. Everybody is after cheap railway rates, just as everybody is after cheap goods; and the means sometimes resorted to to get reductions would at least hold their own for astuteness with any that could be concocted in a traffic office for the raising of rates. We give the commissioners full credit for doing their best to protect the interests of the public, but we can not help doubting whether, on the whole, the public has derived much benefit from their efforts. In fact, we are strongly inclined to the opinion that the whole idea of the commission is simply a legislative blunder.

The railways undoubtedly possess great powers which theoretically there is nothing to prevent their abusing to almost any extent. But what is theoretically possible is not always practically possible. The President of the United States possesses great powers, which theoretically he might abuse to any extent; so does the Queen of England; so do many other potentates. But of all the evil that is theoretically possible, how much is carried out in practice? All kinds of things _might_ happen if people were fools enough to do all the harm that it is in their power to do. The great saving fact is that it is not possible to go very far in doing harm to others without doing it to yourself. It is this fact which the insatiable legislation-monger ignores. He has an infinite faith in the mischief that will happen if things are left alone. He can not bear to think that somebody is not looking after everybody. He has no faith whatever in natural law or natural actions and reactions, and would hoot the idea of what the poet Wordsworth calls a "wise passiveness." Such people have little conception of the mischief they do, and of the good that fails of realization through their pestilent activity. The readers of Dickens will perhaps remember Mrs. Pardiggle and the admirable system of education she applied to her numerous family of children. The unhappy youngsters were under orders every hour of the day; they were marched round the country with their mother when she went on visits of charity, and compelled to contribute out of their own (nominal) pocket money to all kinds of religious and benevolent schemes. How they kicked and rebelled, and what distressing passions were roused in their youthful breasts, the great novelist has told us; and we think we may take his word for it. The fussy legislator is a Pardiggle. If he would leave things alone, opposing interests would find a _modus vivendi_, and practical justice would more and more assert itself. The more interference there is between parties who in the last resort are dependent on one another's good will, the less likely they are to recognize their substantial identity of interest. If the interference is wholly in the interest of one of the parties, the other is sure to be forced into an undesirable attitude; while the one whose protection is the object in view will not unnaturally take all the protection he can get, and look for something more.

What is wanted to put the relations between the railways and the public upon the most satisfactory footing possible is, in the first place, less legislative interference; and, in the second, a higher tone of business morality throughout the community. We place this second not as underrating its importance, but because we believe it would to some extent flow from the first. It is when the public transfers its right of eminent domain to a railway corporation that it should take adequate measures to protect its own interests; but how can this be done when legislation is sold--when charters are given or withheld, according to the amount of money available for purposes of persuasion? With honest legislators and honest courts there would be very little trouble between the railways and the public, and such as arose could be easily remedied. Commerce commissions are a testimony to the existence of low standards of business morality; and, unfortunately, they tend to keep them low, if not to make them lower.

The sooner we make up our minds to trust more to moral influences freely acting in the intercourse of man with man and of interest with interest, and less to legal compulsion, the better it will be for us in every department of our national life. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is a virtual confession of the failure of legislation to accomplish a purpose which was supposed to be easily within its field of action. The confession is coupled with a demand for more legislation, but, were the demand conceded, who can guarantee that more still would not be wanted? The railways are not at the end of their resources, and new laws would, we fear, be only too likely to suggest new means of evasion. No; the remedy lies elsewhere, and if Congress is wise it will give that remedy a trial by allowing the railways and the public a chance to arrange terms between them, with public opinion as the principal court of appeal.

_THE FUNCTION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY._

A paper that was read by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Library Club, on the subject of Paternalism in Public Libraries, and which we find in the Library Journal for November last, is one which, in our opinion, deserves to be separately printed and widely circulated. It abounds in good sense, and preaches a doctrine of self-help and self-reliance which is much needed in these days.

A question which the author of the paper does not discuss, but which, it seems to us, lies at the threshold of the whole subject, is whether the very existence of a public library--if we understand by the term a library supported by public taxes--is not in itself an exemplification of paternalism. Mr. Swift strikes us as a benevolent bureaucrat who wants to give the people at large a wider liberty in the matter of reading than the ruling influences of time and place are disposed to allow. He sees that liberty is good, that leading strings belong to infancy, and he raises his protest against a paternalism in the management of public libraries which, under the plea of providing only the most approved reading for all classes, would tend to the repression of individuality in the reader and the establishment of the supremacy of commonplace. But what if commonplace insists on being supreme and shutting out whatever is not of one complexion with itself? How are we to resist its demand in the administration of a State-supported, and therefore majority-ruled, institution? "You offer us," say its representatives, "a liberty we do not want for ourselves, and are not prepared to concede to others, as we are sure it can not be for their good. We are not going to consult the tastes of cranks, criminals, intellectual aristocrats, or social mugwumps of any kind. For all practical purposes we are the public, and we mean to run this public library." To the objection that a portion, at least, of the taxes is paid by those whose views and tastes are not going to be consulted, the answer would be ready: "It is for the majority to say how taxes shall be applied." We recognize the excellence of Mr. Swift's intentions and sympathize with his way of looking at things, but we feel that his objections to "paternalism" in connection with public libraries are delivered from a somewhat shaky platform. We observe that a periodical quoted in the Library Journal--the Overland Monthly--makes the remark that "there is nothing to be said for free books that could not be urged in favor of free beefsteaks and free overcoats."

Some of the points, however, that are made by Mr. Swift are deserving of attention. The several professions--law, medicine, theology, etc.--would more or less like to have only such books placed upon the shelves of a public library as represent what may be called their respective orthodoxies. But, as Mr. Swift observes, "libraries are as much the depositories of the folly as of the wisdom of the ages." A library, therefore, should tell us what men have thought and attempted in the past, and what they are thinking and attempting now. It is for schools and colleges, for newspapers and reviews, to afford guidance in the wilderness of opinions, not for the library to make a point of putting out of people's reach everything that is not in line with the scientific, literary, or other orthodoxy of the hour.

"A subtle form of paternalism is the deliberate inculcation of the patriotic spirit, especially in children." Mr. Swift is a brave man to attempt to stem this particular torrent. He thinks there are times when one who loves his country would feel shame for it rather than pride, and that the motto "My country right or wrong" is not the most wholesome sentiment that can be impressed on the mind of youth. "To fill a child with the consummate virtues of Washington, Jefferson, and other of our immortals, and to leave him ignorant of the greatness of Cromwell and of William the Silent, is a serious injustice to the child and to the cause of education." Not only is this done, but, in the domain of literature as well, it seems as if the only names with which public-school pupils obtain any acquaintance are those of national authors. So far as poetry is concerned, Mr. Swift says that almost the only name he hears from the lips of children frequenting the Public Library is "Longfellow." He can not remember ever having had a call from a child for Tennyson, while Wordsworth in the school region is equally unknown.