Chapter IV: Part 4

In the case of Stonehenge, the conclusion at which Sir Norman Lockyer arrives is that there was an earlier circle of small stones (still represented), but that the temple was rededicated, and the larger trilithons (each consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece) erected, and the main opening of the circle aligned to the midsummer rising sun about 1700 B.C., with a possible error of 200 years, more or less. This is arrived at by measurements showing the exact amount by which the alignment is “out” at the present day. This date is confirmed by the recent discovery of numerous stone hammers when one of the big stones was dug under and restored to the upright position from which it had slipped. The stone age is believed to have given place in Britain to the use of metal before 1700 B.C., and no metal tools were found at Stonehenge.

Stonehenge--the most wonderful, mysterious, and complete of the great astronomical temples of Western Europe--has come down to us from the absolute darkness of prehistoric ages. Its secrets are still buried in the ground around and under its huge monoliths. This prodigious relic of the past is actually the private possession of one happy man, Sir Edmund Antrobus. Only two years ago he earned the gratitude of all men by employing workmen and machinery, at considerable expense, to restore one of the great stones to its upright position. The extraordinary thing is that whatever money is needed for the purpose is not at once offered to enable him to examine and replace with scrupulous care every stone, big and small, every scrap of soil, within an area of many hundred yards, embracing Stonehenge and all around it. I understand that he is willing to sell this great possession to the nation. It surely ought to be acquired as national property, and reverently excavated and preserved, whilst every fragment of significance found in the excavations should be placed in a special museum at Amesbury or Salisbury, under unassailable guardianship. Year by year it has crumbled away. We owe the sincerest thanks to Sir Edmund Antrobus for having placed a light wire fence around the venerated relics, and for putting a guardian in charge so as to arrest, even at this latest moment, the final desecration and destruction of this splendid thing by heedless ruffians. The protection afforded is, nevertheless, insufficient. The delay in examining everything on the spot and in making all that remains absolutely secure is a national disgrace.

32. _Alchemists of To-day and Yesterday_

The claim to have devised a secret process in virtue of which sugar or charcoal placed in an iron crucible and heated to a tremendous temperature is found on subsequent cooling to contain large marketable diamonds has a close similarity to the pretensions of the alchemists. It differs in the fact that very minute diamonds have actually been formed by a scientific chemist (M. Moissan) in such a way, whilst the alchemists’ search was for a substance--the “philosopher’s stone,” as it was called, which was never discovered, but was supposed to have the property, if mixed and heated in a crucible with a base metal, of converting the latter into gold. From time to time those engaged in this search honestly thought that they had succeeded; others were impostors, and others laboured year after year, led on by elusive results and dazzling possibilities.

In England, after the true scientific spirit had been brought to bear on such inquiries by Robert Boyle and the founders of the Royal Society in the later years of the seventeenth century, little was heard of “alchemy,” and the word “chemistry” took its place, signifying a new method of study in which the actual properties of bodies, their combinations and decompositions, were carefully ascertained and recorded without any prepossessions as to either the mythical philosopher’s stone or the elixir of life. But as late as 1783--only a hundred and twenty-five years ago--we come across a strange and tragic history in the records of the Royal Society associated with the name of James Price, who was a gentleman commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After graduating as M.A., in 1777 he was, at the age of twenty-nine, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In the following year the University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. in recognition of his discoveries in natural science, and especially for his chemical labours. Price was born in London in 1752, and his name was originally Higginbotham, but he changed it on receiving a fortune from a relative.

This fortunate young man, whose abilities and character impressed and interested the learned men of the day, provided himself with a laboratory at his country house at Stoke, near Guildford. Here he carried on his researches, and the year after that in which honours were conferred on him by his university and the great scientific society in London, he invited a number of noblemen and gentlemen to his laboratory to witness the performance of seven experiments, similar to those of the alchemists--namely, the transmutation of baser metals into silver and into gold. The Lords Onslow, Palmerston, and King of that date were amongst the company. Price produced a white powder, which he declared to be capable of converting fifty times its own weight of mercury into silver, and a red powder, which, he said, was capable of converting sixty times its own weight of mercury into gold. The preparation of these powders was a secret, and it was the discovery of them for which Price claimed attention. The experiments were made. In seven successive trials the powders were mixed in a crucible with mercury, first four crucibles, with weighed quantities of the white powder, and then three other crucibles with weighed quantities of the red powder. Silver and gold appeared in the crucibles after heating in a furnace, as predicted by Price. The precious metal produced was examined by assayers and pronounced genuine. Specimens of the gold were exhibited to his Majesty King George III., and Price published a pamphlet entitled “An Account of Some Experiments, &c.,” in which he repudiated the doctrine of the philosopher’s stone, but claimed that he had, by laborious experiment, discovered how to prepare these composite powders, which were the practical realisation of that long-sought marvel. He did not, however, reveal the secret of their preparation. The greatest excitement was caused by this publication appearing under the name of James Price, M.D. (Oxon.), F.R.S. It was translated into foreign languages, and caused a tremendous commotion in the scientific world.

Some of the older Fellows of the Royal Society, friends of Price, now urged him privately to make known his mode of preparing the powders, and pointed out the propriety of his bringing his discovery before the society. But this Price refused to do. To one of his friends he wrote that he feared he might have been deceived by the dealers who had sold mercury to him, and that apparently it already contained gold. He was urged by two leading Fellows of the society to repeat his experiments in their presence, and he thereupon wrote that the powders were exhausted, and that the expense of making more was too great for him to bear, whilst the labour involved had already affected his health, and he feared to submit it to a further strain. The Royal Society now interfered, and the president (Sir Joseph Banks) and officers insisted that, “for the honour of the society,” he must repeat the experiments before delegates of the society, and show that his statements were truthful and his experiments without fraud.

Under this pressure the unhappy Dr. Price consented to repeat the experiments. He undertook to prepare in six weeks ten powders similar to those which he had used in his public demonstration. He appears to have been in a desperate state of mind, knowing that he could not expect to deceive the experts of the society. He hastily studied the works of some of the German alchemists as a forlorn hope, trusting that he might chance upon a successful method in their writings. He also prepared a bottle of laurel water, a deadly poison. Three Fellows of the Royal Society came on the appointed day, in August, 1783, to the laboratory, near Guildford. It is related (I hope it is not true) that one of them visited the laboratory the day before the trial, and, having obtained entrance by bribing the housekeeper in Price’s absence, discovered that his crucibles had false bottoms and recesses in which gold or silver could be hidden before the quicksilver and powder were introduced. Dr. Price appears to have received his visitors, but whether he commenced the test experiments in their presence or not does not appear. When they were solemnly assembled in the laboratory he quietly drank a tumblerful of the laurel water (hydrocyanic acid), which he had prepared, and fell dead before them. He left a fortune of £12,000 in the Funds. It has been discussed whether Dr. Price was a madman or an impostor. Probably vanity led him on to the course of deception which ended in this tragic way. He could not bring himself to confess failure or deception, nor to abscond. He ended his trouble by suicide. He was only thirty-one years of age! Not inappropriately he has been called the “Last of the Alchemists,” though a long interval of time separates him from the last but one and the days when the old traditions of the Arabians’ al-chemy were really treasured and the mystic art still practised.

33. _A Story of Sham Diamonds and Pearls_

It has been recently declared by a dealer in precious stones that though diamonds and other stones can be very well imitated, yet pearls cannot be. This is hardly correct, as artificial pearls so well made as to defy detection by the casual glance of any but a professional expert are common enough. Who does not know the pathetic story by the greatest of French writers, Guy de Maupassant, of the wife of a poor Government clerk, who borrowed a necklace from another lady to wear at a reception at the “Ministry”? She lost the necklace (I forget whether it was of pearls or of diamonds, or both); but she and her husband were too proud to confess the fact, and purchased another necklace exactly like the lost one, for a sum the outlay of which reduced them for the rest of their lives to a state of penury and social exile. They returned the new necklace in place of the lost one without a word, and accepted their fate. By chance, the poor ruined lady, fifteen years afterwards, met her old friend, who had long since passed from her acquaintance, together with other prosperous people. Moved by her former friend’s kind reception, she related the true history of the pearl necklace of long ago. “Great heavens!” exclaimed the prosperous lady. “The necklace I lent you was made with imitation gems! It was not worth five pounds!” Too late! Nothing now could give back to the high-minded, self-respecting little couple the lost years of youth passed in privation and bitterness.

34. _The Nature of Pearls_

Pearls have been lately studied by zoologists, and their true history made known. They are a disease, caused, like so many other diseases, by an infecting parasite. It is common knowledge that they are found much as we see them in jewellery, as little lustrous spheres embedded in the soft bodies of various shellfish, such as mussels, oysters, and even some kinds of whelks. They are not found in the shellfish like crabs and lobsters, called Crustacea, but only in those like snails, clams and oysters, called Mollusca. Pink pearls are found in some kinds of pink-shelled whelks. A pearl-mussel or pearl-oyster has a pearly lining to its shell, which is always being laid down layer by layer by the surface of the mussel’s or oyster’s body, where it rests in contact with the shell, which consequently increases in thickness. If a grain of sand or a little fish gets in between the shell and the soft body of its maker, it rapidly is coated over with a layer of pearl, and so a pearly boss or lump is produced, projecting on the inner face of the shell, and forming part of it. These are called “blister-pearls,” and are very beautiful, though of little value, since they are not complete all round, but merely knobs of the general “mother-of-pearl” surface. These blister-pearls can be produced artificially by introducing a hard body between the shell and the living oyster or mussel.

It used to be thought that the true spherical pearls were caused by a hard granule of some kind pressing its way into the soft substance of the shell-fish, pushing a layer of the pearl-producing surface like a pocket in front of it. But it is now known that this “pushing in” is the work, not of an inanimate granule, but of a minute parasitic worm, which becomes thus enclosed by a pocket of the outer skin. The pocket closes up at its neck, and lays down layer after layer of pearl substance around the intrusive parasite, the dead remains of which can be detected with the microscope in sections of the pearl forming there a central kernel or nucleus. These parasitic worms were first detected in the small pearls formed by the common edible sea-mussel.

Though they are very small, sea-mussel pearls are collected for the market at Conway, in North Wales, and also on the coast of France. The parasitic worm is the young of a worm which, when adult, lives in the intestine of carnivorous fishes. It appears that it has to pass from and with the mussel into shellfish-eating sea fishes, where, although the mussel is digested, the parasite is not, but grows in size and alters its shape considerably. Then after a time the worm is swallowed, with the fish in which it has fixed itself, by sharks, dogfish, and such fish-eating fishes. In these at last it becomes adult and of some size, an inch or so long, varying according to the particular kind, and produces many thousands of eggs, which hatch out as minute creatures swimming in the sea-water, and fortunate if they fall upon a bed of mussels. They enter the mussel’s shell and make their way into its soft substance. A certain number (very few) get encased in the skin and covered up by pearl-layers, which is the mussel’s way of killing them and putting them out of mischief. The others which have entered other regions of the mussel’s body thrive, and have a chance of being swallowed by a mussel-eating fish, and then a further chance of that fish being eaten by a shark. If this happens the lucky worm--like the Italian who gets a winning number in three successive drawings of a lottery--gains the big prize. He becomes adult and produces innumerable young, who in their turn enter upon the chanceful career of a mussel parasite.

Thus we see that a pearl is not only a disease or abnormal growth caused by a parasite, but is actually an elaborately formed tomb or sarcophagus, in which the parasite is enclosed layer upon layer. This mode of disposing of parasites and other intrusive bodies is not unusual in animals. The terrible little flesh-worm--the Trichina--which causes the death of rats, pigs, and men who eat raw meat, is sometimes conquered in this way. It is found in the muscles (flesh) of man and animals enclosed in little pearl-like sacs, half the size of a hempseed, and it dies there, unless the invaded animal should die, and its flesh be eaten (as raw ham for instance) by another animal. The burying of inconvenient corpses in plaster of paris, corresponding to pearls as we now know them, has been a method of concealment occasionally adopted by criminals. On the whole, pearls have not very pleasant associations.

The history of the special parasitic worm which invades the beautiful little pearl-oyster of Ceylon has recently been followed out by skilful naturalists. There, too, a smaller oyster-eating fish of a peculiar kind, and a larger fish which eats the first fish, are necessary for the reproduction and multiplication of the pearl-producing parasites. The new Ceylon Pearl-Fishing Company has, therefore, to see to it that both these kinds of fish are encouraged to live in the sea near where the pearl oysters are found, and it is their object to increase the parasitic disease by which pearls are formed, and ensure an abundance of parasites.

An interesting new method has been recently applied to the examination of pearl oysters for pearls. The Rontgen rays are used to produce a skiagraph (such as surgeons use in searching for a bullet) of the pearl oysters when brought into harbour. They are thus rapidly examined one by one, without injury, and the shadow-picture shows the pearl or pearls inside those oysters which are infected. The pearlless oysters are returned to the depths of the sea, whence they came--those with small pearls only are kept in special reserves or sea-lakes, in order that the pearl may grow in size, whilst only those with good-sized pearls are opened at once, in order that the pearl may be extracted and sent to market.

There were great findings of pearls in the fresh-water pearl mussels of the Scotch rivers in former days. In the last forty years of the eighteenth century these pearls were exported from Scotland to France to the value of £100,000.

In the eighteenth century not only did they get their pearls from European rivers instead of from the East; but, instead of being excited about the artificial production of diamonds, they were driven wild with astonishment by the demonstration of the volatilisation of these stones--the disappearance of diamonds into invisible vapour when sufficiently heated. That the hardest stone in nature could be thus dissipated into thin air seemed incredible. On Aug. 10, 1771, a chemist named Rouelle invited to his laboratory to witness this wonder a company comprising the Margrave of Baden and the Princess his wife, the Dukes of Chaulne and of Nivernois, the Marchionesses of Nesle and of Pons, the Countess of Polignac, and some members of the Academy of Sciences, including the great chemist Lavoisier. Four diamonds--the largest belonging to the Count Lauraguais--were submitted before the eyes of all to the heat of a furnace, and in three hours had completely evaporated. There was, no doubt, room here for a mystification and for the abstraction of the diamonds with a view to dishonest appropriation. But no such purpose existed. The experiment was a genuine one, and Rouelle and his brother were honest investigators. They established the fact, now demonstrated as a lecture experiment, that the diamond is volatilised at very high temperatures. A more celebrated “evaporation” of diamonds--that which is known as “the affair of the Queen’s necklace”--took place a few years later in Paris, when no scientific investigation was connected with the embarrassing disappearance of the Royal trinket.

35. _A King Who was a Zoologist_

The King of Portugal, Carlos di Braganza, who was assassinated in the spring of 1908, was one of the most gifted and vigorous men of his age, fearless and intelligent to a rare degree, good-hearted, and devoted to the welfare of his people. If any man were justified in having no fear of outrage because he was conscious that his uprightness was proved and known to all men, his benevolence experienced by all, his ability and vast knowledge recognised by all, Dom Carlos was that man. Fanaticism, however, takes no account of the virtues of its victims. Until society has invented a method for keeping instruments of destruction out of the reach of dangerous, more or less maniacal individuals, all those who excite the fanatic’s brain, even by the excellence and nobility of their lives, risk death whenever they trust themselves to the tender mercies of a crowd. Psychology may one day enable us to detect, and improved supervision of children enable us to segregate before it is too late, the latent assassins in our midst. If they have not a king as their quarry their reason is palsied by a president, and were there no presidents, they would become homicidal in the presence of a prefect or a policeman--even of a professor.

Some four years ago I had the honour of conducting Dom Carlos round the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road. He arrived without attendant or escort, and I passed two hours alone with him. I had been told that he was a great shot and fond of natural history, that he played every athletic game, rode, and swam better than the best, that he was a fine water-colour painter, a real artist--and a first-rate musician and singer. I was astonished at his knowledge and personal experience in natural history. His burly form and bright, honest face gave me a most agreeable impression, and when he said (as I had been told he would) to each explanation of a specimen upon which I ventured for his edification, “I know! I know!” felt that it was true, and that he really did know. “I have shot thirty of them in the south of my country,” he said of some rare bird. “I know! I know! I have described a new species like that in my book on the birds of Portugal. I shall send it to you!” was his comment on another. When we came to some wonderful coral-like specimens--sea-pens and sea-feathers, dredged in the deep sea and preserved in spirits, for exhibition in the Museum--he said, to my astonishment, “Those are very bad. I get much better than those in my yacht off the Portuguese coast. I preserve them myself; it is a real art. I shall send you some.” I said they would be a very welcome addition. “Yes, I know! I know!” he said. “Would you like some fishes, too? The Prince of Monaco has some fine things, and he led me to collect also myself. I have now many things better than his. I shall send you some fishes, too.” And he did. A few months after his return to Portugal he sent to the Museum a large collection, preserved in spirit, which included many very fine and interesting specimens of deep-water Atlantic fishes; also his work, with coloured plates, on the Birds of Portugal, and a most remarkable publication on the tunny fisheries of the South Coast of Portugal--giving a careful survey of the waters, sea bottom, currents, fauna, and flora in correct, expert form, such as might issue from a Government Fisheries Board, but in this case done, as modestly indicated on the title-page, by the Head of the State himself, “Dom Carlos di Braganza.” He went into the work-rooms of the Museum, where some new fishes were being drawn, and conversed with the naturalist in charge, and criticised the drawings. He saw everything, appreciated everything, and then looking at his watch, said, “I have only five minutes to get to a lunch party. Thank you very much for the most delightful time. I should like to stay all the day; it is a splendid place,” and was off in his brougham.

I exhibited the specimens and books sent by his Majesty for some weeks in the Central Hall of the museum, before they were incorporated in the great collection, for I felt that it was a rare and interesting thing that a king should not merely take a sportsman’s pleasure in birds, beasts, and fishes, but actually be, so to speak, “one of us”--a zoologist who discovers, describes, and names new things. The Prince of Monaco is the only other head of a State who is a serious scientific naturalist. He has built and endowed a magnificent museum and laboratory at Monaco, where his skilled assistants carry on researches and look after the extremely valuable and important collections which he has himself made in a series of cruises in the Atlantic extending over many years. He has not only employed capable naturalists to help him, but is himself the chief authority and an original discoverer in “oceanography,” the science of the great oceans.

A year or so ago, when Dom Carlos visited Paris, a special fête and reception was organised in his honour at the “Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle,” in the Jardin des Plantes. The “Museum” of the Jardin des Plantes is a very remarkable institution, including a zoological and botanical garden, laboratories of chemistry, physics, and physiology, besides the great collections of minerals, fossils, skeletons, and preserved specimens of animals and plants. It is governed by the professors and the director who are in charge of the garden, the laboratories, and the collections, and owes its dignity and its celebrity to the distinguished men of science who for a century and a half have made discoveries and taught there. They are not subject to a board of eminent and wealthy persons, nor is the administration of the antiquities at the Louvre and of the National Library muddled up with that of the great scientific workshop of Natural History.

When the President of the Republic conceived the plan of entertaining the King of Portugal at the Museum of Natural History there were those who supposed that the Minister of Education would, as a great State official, be called upon to arrange the proceedings. Nothing of the sort was done. It was found that the Minister had no authority in regard to the Museum, which, as an independent State institution, organised and carried out the reception through its own officers. The director and professors received President Fallières and the King, escorted by the troops of the Republic. The garden and buildings were ablaze with light and colour, and a large company assembled to take part in the fête. In the great hall of the museum Becquerel, Moissan, and others showed their most recent discoveries as to radium, artificial diamonds, and such matters to the King; others exhibited new birds and fishes, the okapi and newly-discovered fossils, and briefly explained their history and significance. The King conferred decorations on the scientific staff, and gave friendly acknowledgments to all who had thus sought to gratify his special tastes, and prepared for him a really exceptional gala-demonstration of scientific discovery. The official “middle-men,” who in other countries contrive to divert the honour and emoluments due to men of science, to their own profit, were on this occasion happily kept at a distance.

36. _The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities_

The cruel fate of Dom Carlos of Portugal naturally enough produced philosophic and thoughtful articles in some of the journals of the day. An able writer told his readers that the “kingly caste” has characteristics peculiar to itself, “which illustrate the Darwinian law.” He does not say what Darwinian law, and I am afraid he would find it difficult to do so. He says that people who for centuries have had their own way (how many kingly families have done so?), who have always lived on good food and never tasted bad wine, and have constantly conversed with interesting people (not usually the chance of princes!) must certainly, if subject to “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” produce well-marked characteristics in their offspring--and he goes on to speak of a fine appetite for food (what he describes is really a morbid condition connected with indigestion) as indigenous to Royalty, and declares that the gift of recognising faces and remembering names is “a faculty cultivated by generations of practice.”

One must recognise with satisfaction the desire to explain the facts and varieties of human life and character by reference to “the laws which govern animal and plant life.” It is by faithfully and truly carrying out the inquiries suggested by that desire that the knowledge which is the sole and absolutely essential condition for the safe conduct of human life and the increased happiness of human communities, can be obtained, and by such inquiries only; and, further, only upon the condition that the investigation is conducted in the true scientific spirit with accuracy and without prejudice. The remarks upon the kingly caste which I have quoted above show with what “legerity and temerity” a clever and respected writer will formulate phrases and conclusions which are, in face of what Darwin and his successors have demonstrated, absurdly erroneous, in fact, topsy-turvy as compared with the reality.

The main doctrine which Darwin and his followers have established is that neither castes nor families of higher or lower living things, including man, acquire any new characteristics by exposure to special circumstances or by consuming finer or coarser food, which can or do become innate or fixed in the race. The individual may be improved or depraved, enlarged or enfeebled, by the conditions of his individual life, but he cannot transmit the qualities--the improvement, the depravity, the enlargement, or the dwindling--which have been thus attained by him to his offspring. The race cannot be changed in this way. All the parents can transmit is the quality which they themselves have inherited of resisting or of collapsing, of becoming enfeebled, or of showing strength and vigour, under certain given conditions. The characteristics of Royalty are not characteristics brought about by the Royal state, any more than the characteristics of English race-horses are brought about by the racing state or by life in a breeder’s stable. The characteristics of Royalty are like those of other living things, the characteristics of a certain family or blend of families or strains. Whatever characteristics distinct Royal families have in common with one another are not due to the existence of a natural law in virtue of which the occupations and opportunities of the Royal state produce “faculties” or “characteristics” in the “blood” or “stock.” Such similarity of characteristics is due either to the similarity of the demands and conditions of Court life in all parts of Europe, acting as an educating force on the individual, or to the intermarrying and consequent blending of family characteristics among a large proportion of the Royal Houses at present existing.

It is very difficult--indeed impossible until much more is written and read on the subjects of breeding and of psychology--to persuade people to abandon the notion that a man who has drunk good wine and conversed with interesting people will, as a direct result, transmit something which he has “taken up” or absorbed from the good wine and the clever people to his offspring, and that a faculty for this or that art or accomplishment cultivated by generation after generation is increased thereby, and transferred as it were into the very vitals of the race--the reproductive germs which each individual has within him. There is no truth whatever in these fancies. They are popular and very natural delusions, which are not only devoid of direct proof by simple observation and experiment, such as that made by all breeders of stock and by medical men, but are also contrary to the great general principles which have been found to explain the varied and most important facts known as to breeding, inheritance, and variation. The same erroneous theory of inheritance now applied to royalty has been put forward in regard to the feeble-minded, the ill-grown, and the incapable at the other end of the social scale.

The only way in which a quality, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, is intensified, made inherent and dominant in a race or strain or family, is by selective breeding--selection due to natural rejection of those individuals not possessing the quality, or to artificial rejection of such individuals by the stock owner and breeder. No human maker of breeds--whether of cattle, horses, birds, or plants--ever yet proceeded by exercising, feeding, educating, or otherwise manipulating his sires and dams; he simply selects those as parents which by natural variation have the quality, more or less, which he desires, and he destroys or sterilises those which fail to satisfy his requirements. He is perfectly confident that in this way he can ensure the reproduction and exaggeration or dominance of the characteristics which he desires; he knows that he cannot obtain a “strain” or “breed” by any treatment, any feeding, or education of those which are born without the natural, innate possession of the desired quality, in a more or less marked degree. Once the characteristic turns up as a congenital variation, it can be intensified by coupling its possessor with a mate of like quality; but both sire and dam have to be rigidly selected with this purpose in view. Such methods are not adopted in human families, even royal ones.

In considering these questions as to characteristic qualities or want of qualities in groups and classes of human communities, we see then that we have in the first instance to distinguish very broadly between the body or structure of the individual, and the “stirps” or germ of the race which he carries within him. The former may be vastly changed for the better or worse as compared with average individuals, without affecting in any way the latter. The germ is carried by the individual member of the race in an almost complete state of isolation or safety from the influences which affect the individual’s structure generally (his body as distinct from his germinal or reproductive substance) injuriously or beneficially. The germ varies also, but independently. That is a matter of primary importance. Equally important in the case of man is a peculiarity which affects his manifestation of qualities in a way unknown in any other living thing.

Human society, in more marked and dominating form, in proportion as it is what we call “civilised,” has created for itself an inheritance which is not dependent on the variations of strains and the laws of actual breeding. Over and above--very much above--what each man inherits in the form of qualities and characteristics of his special family and stock--is the enormous mass of accumulated experience, knowledge, tradition, custom, and law--which pervades and envelops, as it were, the mere physical generations of this or that pullulating crowd of human individuals. Tradition, at first conveyed by gesture and imitativeness from parents to offspring, then by word of mouth, then by writing, and finally by printed record, sanctioned and enforced by all kinds of persuasion and compulsion--has culminated in an educative discipline which affects every individual in the community in the most powerful way--and constitutes an inheritance of a significance and activity altogether transcending, and independent of that due to the physical transmission of bodily and mental qualities. Public opinion, law, knowledge, belief, custom, and habit exist, and pursue their own course of change, as it were, outside the successive bodily generations of a population. Yet they determine in very large measure the characteristics which each class, and the community as a whole, exhibit. We have to distinguish those results which are due to physical heredity, similar in man and in animals--from results due to this all-powerful education peculiar to man--education, which for civilised man proceeds from almost innumerable sources--from parents, nurses, playfellows, companions, social, professional, and political organisations, as well as from the professed teacher, and from the local peculiarities of the simplest conditions of life. Hence it is that man inherits very little in the way of ready-made instincts, tricks of his nervous mechanism--but, on the contrary, has an enormously long period of individual growth and education, and inherits “educability” to a degree which varies in every family and race.

To estimate correctly, and so to deal with these various factors in human life, we require to know in detail the laws of breeding, heredity, variation, and selection in animals, and, further, the laws or formulated results of enquiry as to the “educability” of the human being, the range and the limits of “education,” the relation of hereditary quality to education, the causes of mental aberration and defect, of mental qualities of all kinds, the value and the dangers of all kinds of educational influences, whether physical, social, or intellectual. These are matters in regard to which there must be in the future more and more of common knowledge and agreement; at present they are lightly touched by politicians and journalists in a way which is inconsistent with a knowledge of the facts or of their importance.

When publicists airily declare that the virtues of kings and the vices of paupers are both due to the hereditary transmission of characters acquired by the peculiarities of diet and exercise of the progenitors of these classes it is time to protest. To cite the name of Darwin and “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” in support instead of in condemnation of such baseless fancies, is, one must suppose, an evidence, not of a desire to mislead, but of a regrettable indifference to the conclusions of that branch of human knowledge which is of more importance than any other to the statesman and the philanthropist.

“Selection,” whether due to survival in the struggle for existence or exercised by man as a “breeder” or “fancier,” is the only way in which new characteristics, good or bad, can be implanted in a race or stock, and become part of the hereditary quality of that race or stock. This applies equally to man and to animals and plants. And this selection is no temporary or casual thing. It means “the selection for breeding” of those individuals which spontaneously by the innate variability which all living things show (so that no two individuals are exactly alike) have exhibited from birth onwards, more or less clearly, indications of the characteristic which is to be selected. Nothing done to them after birth, and not done to others of their family or race, causes the desired characteristic; it appears unexpectedly, almost unaccountably as an in-born quality. It may be a slight difference only, not easy to take note of; but if it enables those who possess it to get the better of their competitors in the struggle for life, they will survive and mate and so transmit their characteristic to the next generation, whilst those who do not possess it and are beaten in life and fail to obtain food, safety, and mates, will perish and disappear, and their defective strain will perish with them.

37. _Variation and Selection Among Living Things_

Selection is not a thing once done and then dropped--natural selection is continuous and never-ending, except in rare and special circumstances, such as man may bring about by his interference, and then it does not really cease but only changes its demand. The characteristics of a race or species are maintained by natural selection, just as much as they are produced by it. Cessation of a previously active selection (which is sometimes brought about by exceptional conditions) results in a departure of the individuals of the race, no longer subject to that selection, from the standard of form and characteristics previously maintained. To understand this, we must consider for a moment the great property of living things, which is called “variation.”

No two animals, or plants even, when born of the same parents, are ever exactly alike. Not only that, but if we look at a great number of individuals of a race or stock, we find that some are very different from the others, in colour, in proportion of parts, in character, and other qualities. As a rule it is difficult to look at such a number, because in Nature only two on the average out of many hundreds, sometimes thousands, born from a single pair of parents, grow up to take their parents’ place, and these two are those “selected” by natural survival on account of their close resemblance to the parents. But if we experimentally rear all the offspring of a plant or animal to full growth--not allowing them to perish by competition for food, or place, or by inability to escape enemies--then we see more clearly how great is the in-born variation, how many and wide are the departures from the favoured standard form which are naturally born and owe their peculiarities to this birth-quality--called innate or congenital variation--and not to anything which happens to them afterwards differing from what happens to their brothers and sisters.

Of course, we are all familiar with this “congenital or innate variation,” as shown by brothers and sisters in human families. How and why do innate variations arise? They arise from chemical and mechanical action upon the “germs” or reproductive cells contained in the body of the parents, and also sometimes from the mating in reproduction of two strains or races which are already different from one another. When an animal or plant is given unaccustomed food or brought up in new surroundings (as, for instance, in captivity) its germs are affected, and they produce variations in the next generation more abundantly. The best analogy for what occurs is that of a “shaking up” or disturbance of the particles of the germ or reproductive material, somewhat as the beads and bits of glass in a kaleidoscope are shaken and change from one well-balanced arrangement to another. And the same analogy applies to the crossing or fertilising of “strain” or “race” by another differing from it. A disturbance is the consequence, and a departure in the form and character of the young from anything arrived at before often takes place. These variations have no necessary fitness or correspondence to the changed conditions which have produced them. They are, so to speak, departures in all and every direction--not very great, but still great enough to be selected by survival if occurring in wild extra-human nature, and obvious enough when produced in cultivated animals and plants to be seen and selected by man, the stock-breeder or fancier.

Indeed the stock-breeder and horticulturist go to work in this way deliberately. Though when they have fattened an animal or fed up a plant they cannot make it transmit its fatness or increased size to its offspring, yet they can, by special feeding and change of conditions of life--or by cross-breeding--break up the fixed tendency or quality of the germs within the parents so treated. Thus they get offspring produced which show strange and unexpected variations of many kinds--new feathers, new colours, new shapes of leaf, increased size of root, length of limb--all kinds of variations. From the congenital varieties thus produced by “stirring up,” “breaking down,” or disturbing the germ-matter (germ-plasm) of the parents, the breeder next proceeds to select and mate those which show the character which suits his fancy, whilst he destroys or rejects the others. Thus he establishes, and by repeated selection in every generation maintains, and if he desires increases, the characteristics which he values.

Birth-variation is then an inherent property of living things (including man) as much as heredity, which is the name for the property expressed in the resemblance of offspring to parent. And birth-variation, or congenital variation--that is to say, the being born with a power to grow into something different (not greatly, but still obviously, different) from their parents or ancestry, and from their brethren and cousins, though not subjected after birth to any treatment or conditions differing from those common to all of them--is a quality of living things which must be distinguished altogether from the power of the individual itself, though not born with qualities differing from those of its brothers and sisters, to vary or change in some respects as compared with other individuals when it is specially fed or exposed to special treatment. The first is change, or variation, of the “stirps,” or germ plasm; the second is change, or variation, of the transient body of the individual. The first is indefinite and may be of almost any kind or form; once it has appeared, it is a permanent possession of the race descended from its owner. The second is definite and a direct reaction to the environment. Such an individually induced or stimulated change is often called an “acquired character.” It does not affect the stirps, the inner reproductive germs, and cannot be handed on by inheritance to a new generation.

What happens, then, when there is a cessation of selection? All sorts of birth-variations appear and grow up. The fine adjustment of form--maintained by natural selection carried on unceasingly--no longer obtains. The characteristics of the race become less emphasised. All sorts of birth-variations have an equal chance, and the tendency must be for those characteristics which have most recently been established and maintained by severe selection to dwindle and then to disappear altogether. The majority of birth-variations will--when selection is prevented--always tend to present a lessened, rather than an increased, development of any one characteristic--the excelling minority will no longer be selected, but all will have an equal chance in mating and reproducing. Hence, bit by bit, all salient features, all the characteristics of the race previously maintained by selection, will, as a result of survival of all variations and general crossing and interbreeding--dwindle and disappear. It is to this process that the term “degeneration” has been applied by biologists. How far it may go, and what are its limits and various outcomes, I cannot now discuss. It is sometimes spoken of as “retrogression”--which implies wrongly a return to a previous state. From some points of view it might be called “simplification.”

The point to which I have been making is this--that civilised mankind appears to be very nearly in regard to most points of structure and quality in a condition of “cessation of selection.” It is the better-provided and well-fed, well-clothed, protected classes of the community, in which this cessation of selection is most complete. Racial degeneration is, therefore, to be looked for in those classes quite as much as in the half-starved, ill-clad, struggling poor, if, indeed, it should not be expected to be more strongly marked in them. There are facts which tend to show that such anticipations are well-founded.

This is a matter requiring further discussion. It is probable, I may say in anticipation, that whilst natural selection in the struggle for existence is only obscurely operative (except as to alcoholism and some diseases) in civilised man, yet what Mr. Darwin called sexual selection--the influence of preference in mating--has an important scope, and it may be that hereafter it will be of enormous importance in maintaining the quality of the race.

Meanwhile, it seems that the unregulated increase of the population, the indiscriminate, unquestioning protection of infant life and of adult life also--without selection or limitation--must lead to results which can only be described as general degeneration. How far such a conclusion is justified, and what are possible modifying or counteracting influences at work which may affect the future of mankind, are questions of surpassing interest. In any case, it is interesting to note that the cessation of selection is more complete, and the consequent degeneration of the race would, therefore, seem to be more probable in the higher propertied classes than in the bare-footed toilers, whose ranks are thinned by starvation and early death. One may well ask, “Is this really so?”

38. _The Movement, Growth, and Dwindling of Glaciers_

Last summer we were watching the gradual change of the brilliant sunlight on the snows of Mont Blanc as the shadows crept up the pine-covered sides of the valley of Chamonix. We noted how the highest peak--the true summit of Mont Blanc--remained almost white and brilliant when the somewhat lower and nearer Dome de Gouter (so often, when clouds are about, mistaken for the true summit by tourists) had assumed a marvellous shade of saffron-rose colour. The crevasses of the glaciers were marked by an unearthly pale-green tint and delicate purple hues of weird beauty were spreading over the evanescent forms of the great snow-field, when one of the hotel guests--a citizen of Geneva--said, “Ah, yes! Look at them whilst you may, and wonder at them, those glaciers of the Alps. They are but the remnants, the roots, as it were, of the vast glacier which once filled the whole of this vale of Chamonix and spread down into the valley of the Rhone, and ploughed out with the slow movement of its huge mass the deep rock basin of the Lake Leman. Every year they dwindle, as they have dwindled for ages past, and soon--perhaps not more than another 100 years hence--they will have disappeared utterly from human sight and knowledge.” I continued to gaze at the scene, and as the night fell and the distant details were lost to view I felt as though a venerable, but decrepit, friend had passed from my sight, never to return. I was rejoiced to see the glaciers still there when the morning sun showed forth their strange opaque white and faintly green masses on the mountain sides--stupendous outpourings, as it were, of whipped cream tinted with pistachio-nut.

But was it true, that lament of the Genevese savant? Undoubtedly the glaciers in many parts of the Alps have been shrinking for the last thirty years. It is longer than that since I first saw the glaciers of the Chamonix valley, and there is no doubt that they have shrunk up since then, leaving acres of boulders and bare polished rock where was the ice I formerly climbed. The glacier of Argentière, near the upper end of the valley, is a mile or more shorter than it was; the ice caves which we used to visit at the foot of the Mer de Glace have melted away, and the end of the glacier is now high up above a precipitous surface of polished rock far from the site of the little pavilion, with its gay flag and amiable guardian, who used to exhibit the marvellous ice cavern.

I find on looking into the matter that it is true that there has, during the latter half of the past century, been a great dwindling of the lower end or “snout,” a drawing back, as it were, not only of Swiss glaciers, but of glaciers in other parts of the world--as, for instance, in Alaska and in the Himalayas. But I cannot avoid a feeling of satisfaction in recording the opinion of geological authorities that, contrary to the assertion of the Swiss pessimist, there is not any ground for believing that the present noticeable shrinking is due to a continuous process by which the enormous glaciers of remote ages have been incessantly reduced until now they are but rootlets or stumps of the former masses, destined to evaporate completely under the continued remorseless operation of increasing temperature. On the contrary, it appears that, though there are not accurate records and measurements as to past centuries as there will be as to present and future years, yet there is abundant evidence that Alpine glaciers have grown longer in some centuries and retreated in others. The period of alternate extension and retraction has not been ascertained with accuracy, but by some geologists it is supposed to be about fifty years. The retraction or shrinking is not due to a continuous increase of the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere--or of this hemisphere--but to contending causes which operate alternately towards increase and towards decrease when one or two hundred years are considered. Such are the greater or less rainfall and snowfall over a very large area, and the formation and persistence of clouds, concerned with which are probably those varying quantities--the spots on the sun.

The simple proof that glaciers have extended and again retreated within historic times is furnished by the fact that in some parts of the Alpine range the retreat of a glacier has uncovered ancient miners’ excavations, which must have been worked when the glacier did not reach the spot excavated. Subsequently the glacier advanced, and now after some hundreds of years it has again retreated and exposed the ice-covered borings and workings. The tradition of a glacier-enclosed village in the Zermatt mountains, shut off from the world by the advance of glaciers, lost and mysterious, is evidence that such advance has been observed by the native population.