Chapter I: The Secret of the Alcohol Habit 17 (1)

A Trip to the Yosemite 20
The Hospitalities of Nature 21
Perplexities 23
Castle Garden 24
Alone With My Conscience 26
Government Employment for Women 27
Geography of the Heavens 29
The Merciful Institutions of Pennsylvania 30
The C. L. S. C. at the Assemblies 33
Words from Chautauqua 45
Questions and Answers 46
Outline of Required Readings 49
Weekly Program for Local Circle Work 49
The C. L. S. C. Classes 50
Editor’s Outlook 51
Editor’s Note-Book 53
C. L. S. C. Notes on Required Readings for October 55
Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan” 59
The Chautauqua University 60
Books Received 61
Special Notes 61
Popular Education 62

REQUIRED READING FOR OCTOBER.

WHY WE SPEAK ENGLISH.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Learning the reason of anything, by which we generally mean the cause of it, is a process the instructive benefit of which is not limited by the subject immediately under consideration. To trace the relation of cause and effect is a very great and very important part of true education; of which, it needs hardly here to be said, book-learning is only a help and adjunct. Indeed, this learning or finding of causes is an education or discipline which for those who give themselves to intellectual pursuits, continues all their lives. It is the chief occupation of philosophers, of men of science, of investigators, of all real students. Virgil—who was not a very great poet, being of the second, or even of the third rank, because of his moderate creative power, his lack of vividness of imagination and liveliness of fancy, but who is remarkable for a broad and serene thoughtfulness—said: “Happy is he who is able to discover the causes of things.”[A] And indeed this process of finding causes is one of the most delightful and fascinating, and, to the soul of man, most profitable, in which man can engage. Of which the chief reason is the close and intimate relation that exists between all facts and thoughts and things. Isolation and independence are conditions hardly discoverable. Men can not be independent of each other, as we all find very early in life, if we observe and think. But yet, a man may isolate himself upon the top of a pillar; or he may build himself a hut in the woods, and give himself up to contemplation; thinking that in this way he will discover or evolve something that otherwise would be concealed. The discoveries and the evolutions in these cases, however, do not prove of much value, either to the individuals or to mankind. An isolated man, although monstrous, abnormal, unnatural, is possible, but not an isolated fact. An isolated fact is almost, if not quite, a contradiction in terms; for a fact implies conditions and causes from which it can not be separated. We shall thus find that the inquiry into the cause of such a simple, every-day fact as our speaking English will lead us through, although not over, the whole range of the history, known and conjectured, of that great family of the human race to which the people of Europe and of civilized America belong. To follow the steps of this inquiry will not be difficult, and, I hope, not uninteresting to the least learned reader of this magazine.

Why, then, do we in the United States of America speak English? Because that language is the speech of the English, or the so-called, Anglo-Saxon people? Because our forefathers came from England? Partly so. These facts have certain relations with that into the causes of which we are inquiring, but they do not wholly account for it. For although we are, in the main, an English people, and the forefathers of most of us did come from England, there are now many, although comparatively few, of us who are of Irish or of German blood. Moreover, in Ireland there are millions of Irishmen, Celts, who hate “the Saxon” (that is the English), but who speak English, and whose forefathers have spoken it for many generations. Now, the first reason why those Irishmen speak, and so long have spoken English, is a very simple, bald and cogent one, and it is the very reason of our speaking that language. It is, necessity: nothing more. The Celtic Irishman whose race-tongue was Erse, spoke English for the very reason that we, whose race-tongue it is, speak it; because he must speak it to be understood; for no other reason. But how came this necessity about? How came English speech into Ireland or into America, or, for that matter, into England?

Language is a mere instrument of man’s convenience; as much so as a spade or a knife, or any other tool. He uses it for the purpose of communicating with those by whom he is surrounded; and he must give to things and thoughts the names which they give them, or he might as well be dumb. If they call a certain animal a horse, it will not do for him to call it a _cheval_; and if they call it _un cheval_, it will not do for him to call it _ung shovel_, as many persons have found in France to their surprise and inconvenience. And if he is born and bred in France, no matter how thoroughly English or Irish he may be in blood, he will call it _un cheval_, without effort and without thought.

These are obvious facts; but for our present purpose they are not trite, nor is the consideration of them trifling. They have bearing upon the very common belief, or assumption, that language is a product of race; that there is some mysterious and inevitable connection between man’s physical and mental constitution and the language that he speaks. There is no such connection. Manner of speech and style of writing are peculiar in various peoples, as their manner and their style in other things and acts are peculiar. There is a French style of speaking, as there is an Italian, an Irish, and an English, which pertains to those various peoples, and which is a product of their national spirit, their genius, as we say. But there is no such influence of national spirit, or of physiological traits or conditions upon the substance of language—words. The Irish did not speak Erse, because Erse was a natural product of the Irish physical or mental constitution. So with the English; so with all peoples. An English, a German or a French boy, born and brought up in Russia, would speak Russian; and (personal peculiarities apart) they all would speak it alike, and without the least modification dependent upon their respective English, German, and French physical and mental constitution. If, however, their mothers were with them, and their mothers could speak no Russian, each of those boys would speak two languages, English and Russian, or German and Russian, or French and Russian, and, accidents apart, each of them would speak his two equally well, and with equal freedom. He would think with equal freedom in both.

Some of my readers must know, from their own observation, that this is true; and yet I do not doubt that even of these there are not a few who have never thought of it as evidence that, although certain languages are spoken by certain races, this is not because there is any natural and peculiar fitness of the words of any one language to the character or the spirit of any one people. The language used by any and every people has a historical origin; and the peculiar forms of its words are the product of time, of circumstance, and probably, in a certain very moderate measure, of climate, and of physiological conditions.

The sun and the moon received their names for good reasons; the former because it is the creator (light and heat being the causes of inorganic life), and the latter because it was the first measurer of time; and these names they have borne for at least four thousand years—we do not know how much longer. But now those words have become mere names; mere sounds which are the vocal indications of the objects to which they are applied, so that if by some wizardry we were all, with one exception, to wake up to-morrow calling the light which rules the day, moon, and that which rules the night, sun, we should be perfectly satisfied, and find in it no inconvenience; and moreover we should look upon him who used the words in the converse senses, that we had forgotten, as a madman.

Words however have, with very few exceptions, a real meaning, or at least a reason for their use, as _sun_ and _moon_ have. The words without such meaning may be all told upon the fingers. Two words of scientific origin, but very common use, are illustrative examples—_chloroform_ and _gas_, both of which are of recent, the former of very recent, fabrication. Chloroform is so called because it is, or is supposed to be, a chloride of formyl, which is the base of formic acid, a fluid found in red ants; _formica_ being the Latin for ant. It was desirable to have a convenient name for this substance, and the name was made by uniting the first syllable of _chloride_, or _chlorine_, with the first syllable of _formyl_; whence we have _chloro-form_. The name _gas_ was invented, we know not why or wherefore, by a Dutch chemist, some two hundred and fifty years ago, for all those compressible, air-like fluids to which it is now applied. It was convenient and came first into scientific and then into general use, so that now it is one of the commonest words, even in a sarcastic, metaphorical sense, in the speech of all civilized peoples. Now nearly all words have a significant origin, like _chloroform_. Those which are without inherent significance, like gas, are very few indeed. Words like these, and like _oxygen_ (which is only about one hundred and fifty years old, and means acid-maker), are called coined words, because they were recently and deliberately made. The words which form the bulk of language are of very remote origin, and, until lately, of untraced growth.

The tracing of the growth of words which has been scientifically—that is, historically and logically—prosecuted for a little more than fifty years, has brought to light the important fact—a fact the discovery of which is second in importance only to that of the discovery of the law of gravitation—that all the languages of the civilized peoples of Europe and America, together with some in Asia, have a common origin. At one time there was no English, no French, no German, no Russian language, no Erse or Gælic, no Latin, no Greek; but at that time the germ of all these languages, and of others which need not be mentioned, existed in a tongue which for more than four thousand years has been unspoken, but which from the people who spoke it has been called Aryan (pronounced _Ahrian_). This discovery was sure to have been made in one way or another; but the immediate cause of it was the presence in Hindostan of the British East India Company. In 1776, N. B. Halhed, a servant of that company, who had been an early friend of Sheridan, the orator and dramatist, published a Bengali grammar, in which he mentions as very remarkable, “the similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic (?), and even of Latin and Greek; and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts and improved manners might have occasionally introduced, but in the main groundwork of the language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as would be first discriminated on the first dawn of civilization.” Soon afterward, in 1786, Sir William Jones, who had gone to Bengal as a judge, in a paper in “Asiatic Researches,” expressed a like opinion more strongly and in more comprehensive terms. “The Sanskrit language,” he says, “whatever may be its antiquity is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar[B] than could have been produced by accident, so strong that no philologer could examine all the three without believing them to have sprung from one common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.”

What Halhed and Jones put forth as strong probability was ere long found, was clearly proved, to be the truth. Persian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and of course all languages derived from them, were discovered to be identical in origin with Sanskrit. Now, what was this Sanskrit, this wonderful language which so suddenly and so surely unlocked the mystery of the world’s speech, and revealed the source of all the languages of civilized Europe, and some of those of Asia? Sanskrit, (the name means worked-together, elaborated, highly finished,) is the sacred language of the Brahmans, in which was preserved the religious teachings and legends of the people of India, whom we call Hindoos. It is quite four thousand years old in its existing form. For a very long time it was unwritten, the Brahmans having no letters; and the sacred books (so we must call them) were transmitted orally, but with such veneration not only for their doctrine and their story, but their phraseology in its minutest particulars, that among the Brahmans grammar became a religion, and the slightest variation from the text of the Vedas—this was the name of the sacred books—was regarded as a sin. Punctilio in this respect was carried so far that when letters were borrowed from the West, and an alphabet was formed, and the Vedas were written, it was protested against by the conservatives as a sacrilege. Common sense and convenience, however, carried the day. Sanskrit is the most elaborate, the most minutely divided, the most elaborately inflected speech known to man. The sight of a Sanskrit grammar is appalling to the common sense of our day. There are ten conjugations of verbs; and a verb has ten tenses; and each one of these tenses has three numbers, singular, dual and plural; and each tense has two sets of terminations. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are singular, dual and plural, and have eight cases. Inflections of all words are distracting for multitude and intricacy. Yet this elaborately intricate language was spoken in what we think of as the wilds of Asia long before the history of the human race is known; at least four thousand years ago.

A Frenchman named de Chésy learned Sanskrit from a British officer named Hamilton, who, on his way from India, was detained in France, and taught it, as he says, to Franz Bopp, a German philologist, who made use of it in a work on the system of conjugation, and thus became, unintentionally, a Columbus-like discoverer of the great science of Comparative Philology. For Bopp “builded better than he knew.” His purpose was merely to work out his system of conjugation; but in doing this he revealed and established the unity of speech in all the Aryan or Indo-European peoples. This he himself afterward elaborated in his “Comparative Grammar” of the chief Aryan languages. Then came another great German philologist, Jacob Grimm, who discovered the law, or method, according to which words changed their forms; and the great end was accomplished. This happened in 1816-19; and since that time Comparative Philology has worked upon the lines indicated by Bopp and Grimm. Bopp’s great “Comparative Grammar,” however, did not appear until 1833.

One of the most important, if not the most important of the results of the discovery of Sanskrit, and the consequent prosecution of the study of language upon the historical and comparative method—the only safe method for the study of any subject—is the revelation of the origin, and to a certain and very remarkable degree, of the early unrecorded history of the Aryan or Indo-European peoples; that race which has received the latter name because it occupies, and for two thousand years and more has occupied, all India and Europe. Let us glance at this history as it is thus revealed, for it is very much to our present purpose.

Take a good map of Asia, one which shows the eastern confines of Europe, and turn your attention to the country now called Joorkistan, lying between the Caspian Sea and the western boundary of the Chinese Empire. There, some five or six thousand years ago, (it will not do to be too particular, all the more because we can not, if we would,) about the foot of the Hindoo Kosh, and around the sources of the Oxus, there lived, we have good reason to believe, a people who called themselves Aryan. They were a white race; much fairer, at least, than the people who were then occupying Europe and the other parts of Asia. They were strong of body, intelligent and enterprising. They did not live only by hunting and herding, like the nomadic peoples, their neighbors, but cultivated the ground. Their name, Aryan, means honorable, noble; and there is some reason for believing that it is connected with their agricultural pursuits and distinction. For reasons which of course we do not know, but probably from the pressure of population, more than four thousand years ago this people began to send out bodies of emigrants. They moved westward, toward the Caspian Sea, of the existence of which they were probably ignorant. They had used boats upon the Oxus, but the history of their language shows that they knew nothing of what we call navigation. Their progress seems to have been slow, but continuous, one body of emigrants being ere long followed by another. We may be sure that they had to fight their way. So late as eight hundred years ago all emigration was armed. The strong took the land red-handed from the weak, or at least from those who were not so strong and so numerous as they were themselves. The Aryans reached the Caspian Sea; and took possession of the country lying south of it, since known as Persia. After a time, we know not how long, emigration began again from this point. But here the advancing people divided. Some of them moved in a south-westerly direction; and this stream of emigration continued until it overflowed all the vast territory now known as Afghanistan, Belochistan and Hindostan. Another stream moved westward and northward, and passed through Turkey in Asia into Europe.

We have reason for believing that up to the time when this division took place in the country south of the Caspian Sea, the Aryan people spoke one language; but sufficient time had already elapsed for a considerable change to have taken place in the tongue which was spoken on the plains at the foot of the Hindoo Kosh. Language changes rapidly among people in a low state of civilization, without literature, without letters which are the landmarks and conservators of speech. But this point of time and of place is that of a great division in the speech of the Aryan people. Of the language of those who moved westward into Europe there are no remains which date within many centuries of this period; but of the language of those who moved south into Hindostan, we have in the existing Sanskrit a representative which is of almost indefinable antiquity, and the perfect preservation of which is marvelous. It is no rude, ruinous relic, but complete, elaborate, and finished to the highest point of perfection in its kind. It will be seen (and this must be constantly borne in mind) that Sanskrit is not the original Aryan language, but only the oldest existing offshoot from that language. The great, the inestimable value of the discovery of Sanskrit was not that we find in it the source of other languages, not that in it was the origin of the words spoken by the various peoples of Europe; but that it furnished evidence of the most important fact in the history of language, one of the most important facts in the history of the world. It had been assumed that the countless words which were similar in the language of the European peoples, and the many which were identical, were derived one from another; that they were adopted by one people from the language of another; that they were the product of neighborhood, of intercourse, of imitation, of convection—that is that they were carried from one country and people into another. The discovery and the study of Sanskrit proved that these words, or most of them, came into the various languages in which they are found, not by any or by all of these methods, but by direct descent from a speech which was at one time common to the forefathers of all the peoples in India, in Persia, and in Europe. Of these various languages Sanskrit is not only the oldest, but so very much the oldest that it carries us up very far toward the original speech of the Aryan or Indo-European race; so far that we are not without reasonable hope that philological science may elaborate by its help a proximate form of the elements of the original Aryan speech.

It is worthy of remark that the European language most like the Sanskrit, most like it in substance, and notably most like it in grammatical structure, is the Greek; the language of the people nearest Asia, nearest the point of the division of the Aryan people into two great streams of emigration.[C] And here, too, it may well be remarked that the book of Genesis, in one of those ethnological passages which reveal a knowledge of prehistoric man so perfectly in accordance with the results of modern historical inquiry and scientific investigation that it would seem that they must have been a revelation from Omniscience, makes the confusion of tongues and the consequent dispersion of nations take place upon the plains of Shinar, in the very region, at least, where the Aryan dispersion began.

To resume our brief story of the Aryan advance to take possession of the world; for we are no longer concerned with what went on in India or the East. Many centuries had now elapsed, and the Aryan people had multiplied into many millions of men, and had formed themselves into nations or peoples ignorant of their common origin, and regarding each other as all peoples then regarded each other, as enemies, rivals in the possession of the earth and its products. The emigration continued; those in advance being driven and pushed on by those who followed. Europe once entered, there was again a division of the stream of advancing, conquering men. The dispersion was doubtless greater than before, but again there were two main bodies, one keeping to the south along the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the other moving northward, toward the Baltic. The former has been designated from the principal peoples involved in it, or resulting from it, the Italo-Græco-Celtic strain; the latter is the Gothic. It is with this that we are chiefly, but by no means exclusively, concerned. We are Goths.

It has just been said that those who were in the advance in this great emigration were pushed on by those who followed. Who were the advance of this westward movement, the first Aryans who entered Europe? There is no reasonable doubt that they were the Celts, the people who, some thirteen hundred years ago, were in absolute and complete possession of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and a small part of the northwestern coast of what is now, but was not then, France. These people, this head of the Aryan column, passed through southern Europe, (we know it by the names they left behind them, given to places during their temporary, but not short occupation of the soil,) and coming to the ocean, went northward, then crossed the English channel, and took possession of Britain and Ireland. There they stopped simply because they could go no farther. But they were still pushed by those who followed. The invasion of Britain by the Romans, and yet more, the after invasion and occupation of it by the so-called Anglo-Saxons, our forefathers, were a _mere continuation of the Aryan emigration_ which had begun at the foot of the Hindoo Kosh, in Asia, thousands of years before.

These Celts who went first were followed by the people who, in close connection with them as to time and affiliation of blood, became the Latin races (old Romans, Italians, Spaniards, French), and the Greeks. It was natural that the first stream of Aryan emigration into Europe should take its course through the countries of these peoples, because they lie at the south, on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. Men never go northward to find homes amid snows and ice one half the year, if they can find land of more genial clime unoccupied or occupyable. The leading bodies of the Celts having reached the ocean in the southern part of Europe, and being pushed on by the steady flow from behind, moved northward, and as we have already seen, at last left the continent, and rested in Britain and Ireland. Here, from their insular position, they were able to maintain their footing firmly, if not undisturbed, for many centuries. They were not displaced in Britain until about thirteen centuries ago; and then they were not driven onward, as before they had been driven; for there was no place whither to drive them. They were, in the words of an old adage, perhaps as old as this very time, “between the devil and the deep sea;” and most of them were slain to make room for their fellow Aryans, their far-away kindred, whom they knew not, and had no reason to know, and whom they hated with good reason.

The Goths, of whose race we are, and from whom we directly come, moved northwestward from the western shores of the Black Sea, where they are first heard of. Their language, in its original form, is lost like the great original Aryan tongue; but as in the case of that tongue, a very early offshoot of it has been happily preserved. This is the Mæso-Gothic, into which Ulphilas, a bishop of the Mæso-Goths, who had become Christians, translated the New Testament and part of the Old about one thousand five hundred years ago. Of the former a very considerable part remains. It is written in large silver letters, on parchment of a beautiful purple tint. This work shows us all of the structure and much of the substance of the Mæso-Gothic language; and in the former even more than in the latter affords, like the Greek, evidence of an origin identical with that of Sanskrit.

The Gothic people pushed, and were pushed, northward, and began, in their turn, to divide and to disperse, and soon to be unable to understand each other’s speech, and to regard each other as foreigners and enemies. For it must be remembered that these migrations were slow, extending through centuries; that they consisted of alternate movement and settlement; settlement for many generations in one place; so that the mountains and streams and forests still retain evidences of this residence, in the names given to them by these tribes or sub-tribes of the Aryan people. It must be remembered, too, that in these remote times, at that early stage of civilization, when there were no books, except a few manuscripts on parchment, no strongly built towns, no stability of government, and when inter-communication was slow, difficult and dangerous, an interval of a hundred years was quite as long as one of five hundred of the years last passed, in its effect of separation and isolation of peoples, in its dividing families into tribes, and tribes into strange and hostile little nations.

From the Goths there was now a new offshoot, one destined to power and preëminence in the future of the human race. While the greater number of them remained in the country which for some eighteen centuries has been loosely called Germany, a large body of them moved northward and took possession of the countries now known as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, with the neighboring islands. These people are known ethnologically as the Scandinavians; and it is from them, and from some very near neighbors of theirs, also of Gothic race, who settled in the country in and about the lower part of Jutland (the old name of Denmark), that the English people, of whom we are a part, are descended.[D] It so happened that in the continuance of the westward movement of the Aryan people there was a union on the island of Great Britain, of emigrants from Denmark and the neighboring country on the continent, and from the western part of the great northern Scandinavian peninsula (Norway); and the result of that union, which was some eight centuries in forming, was the English people, by whom chiefly this country was settled only some two hundred and fifty years ago, and by whom its laws, its religion, its manners and customs and its language were determined and established. It is with the last of these, language, that we are here concerned. What that language is, and how it became what it is, will be the subject of our next paper.

[A] “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.” Georgicon II, 490.

[B] The grammar, it is to be said, is far more like that of the Greek than like that of the Latin language.

[C] There is a language, the Lithuanian, spoken by a Leth-Slavonic people, northwest of the Baltic, near Poland, which has preserved in a remarkable and unique manner forms of the old Aryan speech which are extinct in other European tongues. But it is the language of a small, rude, unimportant people, without a literature, and indeed was not written until the sixteenth century. It is of great interest to the student of comparative philology, but of none to us at present.

[D] The Scandinavians, and all the peoples who are loosely called German tribes, High-German, Low-German, and what-not, are generally regarded as branches of a great Aryan stem, which is called the Teutonic race; and some of my philological readers, should any such honor these unpretending papers with their attention, may be surprised, and even offended, at my omission of any mention of the great Teutonic family. As to this, my only defense, or rather my only excuse, is that I have been unable to convince myself of the existence of any such branch as the Teutonic, antecedent to the Gothic, of which the Mæso-Goths were an early offshoot. I can not see that the Teutones of the Roman historians represent an elder, dominant, or parent branch of the Aryan race of which the Goths were a younger and minor. As to the word German, and its use in “German tribes,” “German dialects,” every scholar knows that it is not an indigenous name, but that it was imposed from without, by strangers, upon the people who bear it, who call themselves Deutch; and that this name was in effect territorial, meaning all the people, of whatever race, who lived within or beyond certain boundaries. As to the identity of origin in _Deu-tch_ and Teu-ton, that seems to me to be by no means clearly made out. For Teutonic race I would substitute Gothic. The question from the present point of view is happily not of serious or intrinsic importance.

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.

Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

In our day science invades the kitchen. Knowledge knocks at the sitting room door. Literature and art visit the parlor of even our humble homes. To do anything in furtherance of popular education is a delight. Mine be the task of making the laboratory and the home better acquainted.

The limitations of an article for THE CHAUTAUQUAN cause the first embarrassment. One must at once become an eclectic, and select wisely the _best_ from a wide field. The next difficulty is to give coherency and classification to the truths selected. Upon what golden cord shall we arrange the shining truths?

Let us use an ancient, though incorrect classification of elements: Water, air, earth, fire, adding another, organisms. Indeed, this is about the division of matter which the common people make to-day, although chemists tell us that neither of these is an element, and that the simple, indivisible substances in nature are sixty-six in number. As chemistry and physics are so closely related, we shall consider each of these topics from the standpoint of both these sciences. This will call for ten articles, on the following subjects: Chemistry of Water; Physics of Water; Chemistry of Air; Physics of Air; Chemistry of Fire; Physics of Fire; Chemistry of Earth; Physics of Earth; Chemistry of Organisms; Physics of Organisms.

CHEMISTRY OF WATER. H₂O.

Do not be disturbed by these cabalistic symbols; they are simply the chemist’s name for water; a most expressive name, too, as we shall presently discover. Some names are misnomers. Abel Blackman may be both weak and a white man. Our letters can not mislead. They abbreviate, show the class of each substance, the elements that form it, and their proportions. Berzelius devised this mode of naming. (Who was Berzelius?)

On the table stands a glass of water. How beautiful it is! Even diamonds, costliest of gems, are valued in proportion as they possess its marvelous clearness, those of the “first water” being most highly prized. We are now to speak of some of the _chemical_ properties of water; hereafter we shall consider the physical characteristics.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN ATOMS AND MOLECULES.

See! I have dipped my pencil into the goblet, and brought up a drop of water. What force binds together the pencil and the drop? What holds the drop to other drops? Why is not this ice instead of water? If I shake the pencil in what direction does the drop fall? If the drop were larger than the world, which way would the world go? What other force is there in it which, according to Faraday, is equal to that in a flash of lightning? Here are, then, five great forces in a drop of water, yet none of them changes its nature. It is still H₂O.

Let us place this drop of water in the upright tube of an atomizer. Apply air. See, the drop has broken into thousands of particles. Now, suppose we could take one of these and place it in a flask. Apply heat, and we should separate the little particle into thousands of particles of steam, but each of these, and any lesser division of these, would still be H₂O. The minutest division of the water _possible_ would be called a _molecule_, yet it would still be water, and composed of two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen. The old ocean itself contains the same. The Cracow beds of salt are made of chlorine and sodium, and the minutest dust from one of its crystals would be found to contain the same elements, and in the same proportion, both by weight and measure. Molecules, then, combined, make only _masses_ of the same nature. But molecules are composed of atoms, and whenever atoms of two or more different substances are combined they always form something different from either of these. The force that unites them is called chemical affinity, or sometimes the chemical force. For example, tenacious iron unites with a gas and forms a brittle, red substance, rust. Chlorine is a poisonous gas, and sodium will burn on water, both deadly; united they give us salt; absolutely essential to life. Hydrogen is the best substance in the world to burn, and oxygen the best supporter of combustion. When united they form water, which is universally employed to extinguish fire. Blue vitriol is blue, as the name implies, yet it is composed of four elements, two of which, H and O, are colorless, copper, which is red, and sulphur, which is yellow. Sulphur has little or no odor, and hydrogen has none, but when united they form a gas which has the odor of spoiled eggs. White sugar is nothing but black charcoal and water. It will thus be seen that here is a source of _new_ things in nature. Whatever chemical affinity touches is changed.

And so we have found another force in our drop of water taken from the goblet, more wonderful than any yet named, a mighty, transforming energy which has but one worthy rival in the work of creating new things, the vital principle, and even that must yield at last to this all conquering power. If our goblet was large, and held a pound of water, (about a pint,) we should find that to pull the molecules apart, that is, make it into steam, would require a force which would raise four tons to the height of one hundred feet. But more wonderful still, to separate the pound of water into two chemical constituents would require, according to Prof. Cooke, an energy which would raise 5,314,200 pounds one foot. Our pint of water would then occupy 1800 times its present volume.

Let us now give a striking and beautiful illustration of chemical affinity. We will throw into this tumbler a piece of potassium (symbol K) half as large as a pea. This interesting metal was discovered by Davy in 1807. Its affinity for O is very great. As soon as it falls upon the water it abstracts oxygen and forms potassium oxide (potash), while the hydrogen and a small amount of volatilized K escape and are burned with a brilliant violet flame, on account of the heat evolved by the energetic chemical action.

IMPORTANT DATES.

The composition of water was discovered about one hundred years ago. Cavendish found hydrogen in 1776, and Priestly discovered oxygen in 1774, August 1st, a date which some one says “may almost be accepted as the birthday of modern chemistry.”

Is it not remarkable that four of the brightest “red letter days” in the history of this science should be embraced within two decades, from 1754 to 1774? In 1754 Joseph Black discovered carbonic acid gas; in 1766 Dr. Cavendish found hydrogen; in 1772 Dr. Rutherford discovered nitrogen, and in 1774 Dr. Priestly found the King of the Elements, oxygen. Until then mankind were ignorant of the existence of a substance which composes in the aggregate one half the earth.

ANALYSIS OF WATER.

Returning to our glass, let us suppose that the bottom has been so perforated that two little strips of platinum wire can be inserted side by side, at the distance of half an inch from each other, and so as to leave the tumbler water-tight. Now attach the lower ends of these wires to wires connected with the poles of an ordinary galvanic battery. Small bubbles will be seen to rise immediately around the wires in the water. Fill two glass tubes (closed at one end) with water, and having placed a little piece of paper over the top, hold the finger on the paper, and quickly invert the tubes over the wires. The escaping gases will thus be secured. The electric current is counteracting the affinity of the two elements that form water, and they are collecting in the tubes. You will soon find that the H gathers more rapidly than the O, and upon measuring them there will be twice as much of the former as of the latter. Weigh them, and the O outweighs the former eight times. If, then, one atom of O weighs eight times as much as two atoms of H (H₂O is the symbol for water, remember,) then one atom of O weighs sixteen times as much as one atom of H; or, in other words, H is sixteen times lighter than O, and is the lightest substance known.

Place the O and H in a eudiometer over mercury, and send an electric spark through them; the gases will disappear, with a loud explosion, and there, resting on the quicksilver, will be seen the original drops of water which we decomposed. We have now shown the composition of water, both by analysis and synthesis.

HYDROGEN.

An atom of H is the chemist’s unit. This is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, fourteen times lighter than air. When burned it produces a more intense heat than any other substance. Iron burns in its flame like paper. When united with O, and a piece of lime is inserted in the flame, the latter becomes exceedingly brilliant, forming the Drummond light, which has been seen at the distance of one hundred miles in the daytime. So diffusive is H that if a sheet of paper or gold-leaf be placed over an escaping jet of the gas, it will pass directly through the paper, and may be lighted on the upper side. H is easily prepared, and many interesting experiments may be performed with it, some of which it may be well to mention. Take up on a pointed wire or needle or with tweezers, a piece of the metal sodium, quickly insert it under a tube filled with water and invert in a glass of water; the sodium will at once take the O and leave the H to displace the water in the tube. Remove the tube, still holding it with opening downward; apply lighted match and a slight explosion will follow. What two properties of H have you shown by your experiment?

Take a bottle holding one or two pints, fit a cork to it, through which pass a glass or metallic tube, the end of which is drawn out so as to leave a small aperture at the top. Place in the bottle a few pieces of zinc, and some sulphuric acid, diluted with water, in the proportions of one part of acid to six of water, then insert the cork. You will immediately see bubbles of H rising. The explanation of this is as follows: The zinc takes O from the water, thus liberating H; the O forms an oxide on the surface of the metal, which would prevent further action, did not the acid dissolve the oxide, thus leaving a fresh surface to take the O, and continue liberating H until the metal disappears. After the H has been forming for two or three minutes, hold over the tube an inverted tumbler for a moment, remove the tumbler and then apply a match to the contents of tumbler. When the bottle has become _filled_ with H you can light the gas at the top of the tube, and thus have a steady flame. Be careful not to attempt to ignite the gas until all of the air has been forced out of the bottle, as air mixed with H produces an explosive mixture. In the intense heat of the faint flame you can melt metals or glass. By placing a larger glass tube, open at both ends, over the flame, you may be able to produce the celebrated acoustic tones, varying in pitch and intensity with the size and length of the tube used. A hydrogen gun can easily be made by taking a tin tube five or six inches long (closed at one end), from one half inch to an inch in diameter; make a small aperture near the closed end; then invert the tube for a moment over the escaping H, keeping the small hole closed with the finger, place a cork in the open end, and apply a match to the hole. The cork will be forced out with a loud explosion. What compound is always produced when H is burned? Let us see. Invert a cold, dry tumbler over a burning jet, and you will always observe moisture gathering on its surface. Another pretty experiment may be performed with H by inserting the stem of a common clay pipe in a piece of rubber tubing, slip the other end of the tubing over the gas jet, prepare some strong soap suds, and with a little care you can blow beautiful soap bubbles with your pipe, which, by a skillful movement may be detached, and they will rise in the air like miniature balloons; by placing a burning match under them they will explode. Strike a bell in a large jar filled with H, and it has a squeaky sound. Our whole art and science of music would be changed if H should be mixed with the air to any great extent.

Nicely balance a flask or jar containing air; fill the same flask with H, and the beam will at once be seen to rise.

Let us find the antipodes of weight. Iridium, hammered to increase its density, is twenty-three times heavier than water; water is about eight hundred times heavier than air, and air is fourteen times heavier than H: 23×800×14=257,600; that is, one quart of Ir would balance 257,600 quarts of H.

OXYGEN.

There are four kings among chemical substances: Oxygen, king of all the elements; gold, king of the metals; oil of vitriol, king of the acids, and potash, king of the bases.

This term of distinction is given to oxygen because of its marvellous activity and range of powers; it unites with all elements save one, fluorine. Its grasping disposition is often resisted by man; he keeps it from destroying his house by painting it; from gnawing at the quivering nerves of his teeth by filling them; from devouring his fruits by canning them; and Monsieur Goffart has now taught us to save green food for our cattle, from its ravages by excluding O from our silos. In spite of its destroying power we can not live without it. The light and warmth in our homes are produced by its rapid union with fuel. Every moment we breathe we are absorbing it into our bodies, where it unites with waste matter, producing heat and energy, and removing that which would clog and poison the system. There is nothing in nature more beautiful than the plan by which the animal and vegetable kingdoms mutually sustain each other by the interchange of O. Look at this little aquarium; here are two or three shiners, some goldfish, and a few water plants. In this little world we may see exactly what goes on in the great world. That goldfish is inhaling O, which is conveyed into the capillaries, unites there with the carbon, forming CO₂, which is exhaled, seized upon by the plant, and in the wonderful laboratory of its cells, the C is separated from the poisonous gas, and retained, while the O is thrown off, again to be used by the fish. Upon the nice adjustment of the plants to the animals, and vice versa, depends the life of both. While upon this subject we might note another interesting evidence of beneficent design in the provision made for both fish and plants.

Water absorbs gases with great readiness—some of them it takes more readily than others; for example, a pint of water will absorb seven hundred pints of ammonia gas. It will take but its own volume of carbonic anhydride under one pressure of the atmosphere.

The descending rain drops absorb these two gases and convey them to the rootlets of the plant, for food. More wonderful still, the Almighty has arranged that water should remove O from the air more readily than it does nitrogen; consequently the rain carries down the O to the fish in river, lake and ocean, adding its life-giving principle to the air, which is always contained in water. It is a pretty sight to watch the breathing of a fish as he sends the rapid currents of water through his gills in the act of aërating the blood, which, as it passes through, gives them a crimson color.

It may easily be proved that plants throw off O, by submerging any vigorous growing plant in a jar of water; in a short time little bubbles will be seen clinging to the leaves; now fill a bottle with water, invert, and touch the little globules gently, when they will detach themselves and pass up into the bottle, displacing the water, and may afterward be used in experimentation. Perhaps some of you, while drinking at the brook, have noted these bubbles of O on the leaves of the graceful water plants below. This is the only place in nature where you can see O free, and indeed you do not see it here, for O is a colorless, tasteless, odorless substance; what you do see is the thin sphere of water which contains it.

O is held by many substances so tenaciously that we can not liberate it; this gives us “terra firma.” Sand, and many rocks consist of O and silicon, but the greatest heat and heaviest blows can not separate them. There are materials, however, which readily yield their O. Dr. Priestly first found it by heating with a burning glass a compound known now as red oxide of mercury. The O went off, leaving the shining quicksilver.

You may repeat this historic experiment by placing the material in a test tube and heating it over an alcohol lamp.

Another substance used for this purpose is black oxide of manganese (MnO₂), but that which is now generally employed is a white salt, kept by every druggist, and usually called chlorate of potash (HClO₃).

Place a small amount of this, mixed with an equal quantity of the manganese, in a test tube, or flask, and heat over a flame. The O will be liberated, and may be bottled for use. A strange thing about this operation is that the MnO₂ yields none of the O, but comes out of the flask just as it went in. Such action, by mere presence, is called catalysis. We can not explain it, but have some such phenomena in social life, perhaps, when two people with an affinity for each other are having a delightful, confidential chat, and a third person joins the group, immediately producing silence—a plain case of catalysis! Having secured several jars of O we are now ready to test some of its interesting properties. Extinguish a candle and suddenly plunge it into a jar of O. It is relighted. A better way is to make a taper of waxed thread. This will keep the live coal better, and may be relighted many times. Attach to a wire a piece of charcoal bark. Ignite and place in another jar. Beautiful scintillations fill the jar, star like in form. Take a watch spring, heat one end and bend. Split a match and attach to the spring, light and place in the jar. It burns with great brilliancy.

Whittle out a little cup of chalk, or crayon, and place phosphorus in it. Touch the P with a hot wire and lower the cup, with a wire, into a jar of O. A beautiful combustion follows. In like manner sulphur may be burned, and produces a bright blue light.

A little ingenuity will supply all apparatus needed for these and other experiments with H and O. For example, a common pail with a wooden shelf in it two or three inches from the top makes an excellent pneumatic trough for transferring or gathering gases, and if the shelf can not be procured, two or three bricks in the pail will serve the purpose.

Before dismissing our glass of water we must remark that no matter where it may be found, in the depths of the sea or on the mountain; as a dew drop, or sparkling as spray; in lake Nyanza, or lake Chautauqua, the chemical constituents of water are just the same. Almighty care and wisdom weighs the atoms, even as “he weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.” The _apparent_ character of water, as to color, form, hardness, saltness, and so on, is often varied by _mixing_ with it other substances, but the changes produced are not chemical, and belong more properly to the domain of physics.

NOTE.—The illustrations in this article are from “The Young
Chemist” of Prof. John Howard Appleton. We can heartily recommend
to the members of the C. L. S. C., all of Prof. Appleton’s
admirable works on Chemistry.

STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.

I. THE POTATO.

BY BYRON D. HALSTED.

The potato is undoubtedly the leading addition which the New World has made to the list of garden vegetables. Its importance as a food plant may be judged from the fact that during the year 1880 over one hundred and sixty-nine million bushels of potatoes were raised in the United States. If we could obtain the total yield in all countries for a single year, the figures would express only the simple fact of vastness. It only need be said that potatoes furnish the larger part of the food for many millions of people. Think of Ireland, for example, deprived of her annual crop of potatoes; it means famine and all its attendant ills.