Chapter XX: Love and Electioneering (6)

Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority, all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness--this is the music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing shafts of sound. The time is quickened until _allegro_ has become _presto_, and _presto_ a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the "Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable, musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in expression.

This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind. The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers. He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing; his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly. But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7] They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes, technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.

[7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Haertel.

As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound, out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the paulo-post-future tense.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the "Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be four, notes in a chord, and a melody is--well, a melody; an unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is little.

Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration--orchestral and choral--is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas, melodies, harmonies--in a word, musical forms which in themselves have the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work--notably in Wagner's--an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music "interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration what they lack in inspiration.

This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor. Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends; while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

SPRING.

Spring gives the order, "Forward, march!"
'Tis borne along the eager line;
Breathes through the boughs of rustling larch,
And murmurs in the pine.

"March!" At the sound, impatient, springs
The mountain rill, with rippling glee,
And rolling through the valley, brings
Its tribute to the sea.

"March!" and upon each sunny hill
Old winter's allies, ice and snow,
Start at the music of the rill,
And join its onward flow.

"March!" Down among the fibrous roots
Of oaks we hear the summons ring.
The long-chilled life-blood upward shoots
To hail the coming spring.

"March!" and along each narrow neck,
Across the plain, and up the steep,
The spring tide clears the winter's wreck
With its resistless sweep.

Advancing in unbroken lines,
New allies rush to join its bands,
Till winter, in despair, resigns
The sceptre to its hands.

On southern slopes, in quiet glades,
And where the brooklets murmuring run,
The grass unsheathes its tiny blades
To temper in the sun.

Flora unfurls her banner bright
Above the field of flashing green,
And crocus blooms in lines of light
Throw back the sunlight's sheen.

The birds on every budding tree
Take up anew the old refrain:
The spring has come: rejoice all ye
Who breathe its air again.

H. R. H.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE TRAVELLERS.

May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both sexes, all ages, all sorts and conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord he was of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad, strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lordship's tailor, on the same errand.

"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.

"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.

"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius. Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his family on the first available steamer.

Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the McBrides went last year. Fashion pries us out of our comfortable domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom, gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all its curses and none of its compensations.

Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a glass of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger, "Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws require a certain notice of quitting.

A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking specimens he sees there, surpassing the fancy of Dickens and Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an eyeglass held muscularly in one eye socket by screwing up the face; and all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming out of bandboxes a hundred years old.

So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it," says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."

Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fashion as this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon, showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000 inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.

I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a tithe of the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing. Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not pronounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously, when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller modifies our stay-at-home impressions.

Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable _aplomb_; they bring a certain refreshing atmosphere of leisure to our round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the libretto; he is verifying the assertions of his Murray, when he should be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.

The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cumming, who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah," adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but successful _chasse_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers, a panther, and a bear."

As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli," pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of that title, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.

The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us. He visits Europe as often as he can procure his passage and pocket money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but, once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_ sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

* * * * *

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are men of high standing," and so on.

One trick is the "cash assessment on prizes." The investor is notified that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward" to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and Bottle Washer's Library Fund Association. The gudgeon protests that there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150 by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of stock in the Seashore Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the association having recently decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward their "five per cent."

Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise," whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The "committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is what happened:

_We are compelled to make an assessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all
prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to
expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding
the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification
of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount
of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of
their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be
forfeited.

Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the class of men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as "references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth, presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "association." "Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second; "An institution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies; "Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that "$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.

* * * * *

PEGASUS IN HARNESS.

The muse that in our day quits Parnassus to pay gossiping visits among the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving, doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!" they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call in an hour."

Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:

For many weeks we work have sought,
But work we cannot procure.
Sad distress has been our lot,
To go from door to door.

May want upon you never frown,
Nor in your dwelling come;
May Heaven pour its blessings down
On every friendly soul.

Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood
For thousands such as we;
Many despise the poor tradesman's lot,
But to Thy Cross I flee.

Suddenly shifting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:

A BLESSING.--May the blessings of God await you; may the bright sun
of glory shine above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and
happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days,
and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep,
and the lamp of life extinguishing, may it not receive one rude
blast to hasten its extinction.

Thus having propitiated the aesthetic feeling as well as the benevolent heart of the householder, the circular proceeds to business by declaring that "the bearers are a party of unemployed tradesmen, who," etc. There is, of course, no resisting the appeal to buy the poem and the benediction; only, when Dora the doormaid is afterward questioned how many unemployed tradesmen formed the party, and she answers, "Only one, ma'am, and he's no tradesman," we look at each other as we do when "The Blind Man's Prayer" is given to us in the street car by some bright-eyed little girl, or some boy who meanwhile munches an apple. "It's my uncle," says the lad, if asked whether he is perhaps, the person alluded to in the lines, "You see before you a poor, blind man," etc.; and I fancy that the literature of mendicancy has now become important enough to furnish a large variety of printed forms, so that the regular customer can choose for himself whether in any particular season he will be a poor blind man, or a lady that has seen better days, or a party of poetical mechanics.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

THE SURVEY IN CALIFORNIA.

In Lieutenant Wheeler's report of operations on the geographical and geological survey of the Territories west of the 100th meridian during 1876, we find the first explanation of the origin of the name California. The mountainous country of Mexico has three climates through which the traveller passes in going from the sea to the high country, the hot, the temperate, and the cold zones. The Mexicans call them _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra fria_. They entered the present region of California from Sonora or New Mexico, and on their way passed a lake now called Lake Elizabeth, on the border of the California desert. There a violent west wind blows night and day. It is a real _sirocco_, dry, and so hot as to remind one of a blast from a furnace. The Mexicans accordingly made the country beyond it the fourth in their series of ascending temperatures, and named it _tierra california_, the country hot as a furnace.

This report is one of the most valuable produced by the survey. During the year the great area in California which lies below the level of the sea was examined to ascertain whether it could be filled and maintained as a lake by a canal from the Colorado river, and the decision is in the negative. The depressed area covers about 1,600 square miles in California, and the difference between the rainfall and the evaporation is so small that if the whole Colorado river were poured into the basin, it would cover only 556 square miles of surface, or little more than one-third the basin. Filling would cease at that level for the reason that the whole supply of the river would disappear in vapor. The slope of the Colorado river is extraordinary, 2.13 feet per mile at Stone's Ferry, and 1.21 feet at Camp Mohave, which may be compared with eight inches, the average fall of the Mississippi per mile. At Stone's Ferry the velocity is 3.217 feet per second and the discharge 18,410 cubic feet. Great difficulties stand in the way of the proposed canal, and the engineers do not think the lake, if it could be formed, would have an appreciable effect upon the climate of the surrounding region. The primary object of this survey is to carry the grand triangulation of the continent across the country under its jurisdiction, and to map the surface so as to enable the Government to put the ground properly in market. In addition to these objects a great amount of valuable work is done in geology and natural history.

Prof. Jules Marcou, geologist attached to the survey, points out that the valleys of Santa Clara and Santa Barbara in California may become the site of _true_ artesian oil wells. The ordinary flowing oil well is supposed to obtain the force which lifts its oil above the surface level from confined gases in the earth, but in California the lift will be obtained in precisely the same manner as in the case of artesian wells for water. There are strata of sandstone impregnated with the petroleum, and these strata are lifted up on the mountain sides, so that a well bored at a low point in the valley would be supplied from a reservoir some thousands of feet high. The wells will have to be about three thousand feet deep.

The naturalists of the survey noted many singular phenomena of animal life. On the islands off the coast there is a race of liliputian foxes which is supposed to have been derived from the Gray fox, its small size and perfect fearlessness, together with its insect diet, being due to its confinement to the islands. This animal is so small that even the sheep breeders do not fear it. It lies under the cactus plants for its noonday nap, and to this fact must be due the remarkable circumstance noticed in skinning a number of them. In every instance the interior surface of the hide was perforated by cactus spines, and in one individual the hide was fairly coated within by these spines, some of which had become soft with age. There were so many that a knife could not have pierced the hide without touching the spines!

Another fact developed was that the great dread of the grizzly bear is resulting in his rapid extinction. Strychnine is considered indispensable to the outfit of a California shepherd, and the grizzlies have been killed or forced to the mountains, where they still linger in considerable numbers in the chapparal. It is noticeable that the Rocky mountain grizzly is a tame creature compared with his brother of the Sierra Nevada, who does not hesitate to take the initiative in a combat with man.

* * * * *

A GERMAN SAVANT AMONG THE SIOUX.

Prof. Virchow lately informed the Berlin Anthropological Society that an intrepid young German traveller, Herr von Horn von der Horck, is now (January, 1877) living among the Sioux Indians busily engaged in taking plaster casts for craniological studies. Von der Horck made a journey to the Polar sea last summer, returning by way of Lapland, where he made enormous collections of bones, skulls, and casts. Prof. Virchow says these collections are more complete in Scandinavian ethnology than all that European museums outside of Scandinavia contain. One result of this journey was the discovery of a continuous water way between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar sea, though not one that is capable of navigation. A lake, called Wawalo Lampi, lies on the divide between these two bodies of water, and sends a river to each. The northward flowing one is the Ivallo and the southward the Kititui. We are glad to welcome so enthusiastic and thorough a student to this country. It is precisely work like his that is needed in America, and the time for accomplishing it is rapidly passing away. We have too much theory and too little real investigation in American ethnology, and while the men of hypotheses are talking about the origin of the Indians, and endeavoring to trace them to Asiatic stocks through the medium of language, the race is fast losing its purity by intermarriage, as it has already lost the most distinctive of its peculiarities by intercourse with the whites.

* * * * *

BALLOONING FOR AIR CURRENTS.

It is well known to meteorologists that the wind vanes as ordinarily placed near the surface do not give a true indication of the wind. Even when the vane is not over a city or town where the air currents near the earth are affected by the direction of the streets, the varying character of the surface in respect to radiation and absorption of heat will modify them. It is therefore for good reasons that vanes are perched up on high flagstaffs fixed on the roofs of buildings. Some of these are more than a hundred feet above the ground, but recent observations in Paris show that this is not enough. Small India-rubber balloons a foot in diameter and with an ascensional force of about one ounce were sent up, and as they rose slowly, at the rate of twelve feet per second, the effect of the air currents upon them could be easily marked. This was found to be very variable at heights of less than one or two hundred metres (300 to 600 feet). The conclusion was that no observations at lower levels were trustworthy.

* * * * *

THE GREATEST OF RIFLES.

In spite of the familiarity with great cannon which the advances in gun construction of late years have produced, the experiments with the 100-ton gun of the Italian government have not failed to awaken general interest and wonder. It fires a 2,000-pound shell, and a charge of 240 pounds of powder is but a portion of what the gun will bear. These light charges have to be used if the penetrative effects of the gun under unfavorable conditions are to be studied, for with its full charge the weapon simply destroys anything that is put before it. Comparative results cannot be obtained when the only effect is complete ruin. It is somewhat remarkable that an over confident iron founder should have chosen this weapon to test once more the value of _cast_ iron for defensive armor. His idea was that armor could be made so hard by chilling the surface that the shot would be broken to pieces upon it, and experiments with a good iron and guns of small calibre had encouraged the hope. But a 2,000-pound shell and 400 pounds of powder in the 100-ton gun proved anew the unfitness of this material for armor plating. The shot had a velocity of 1,494 feet per second, and it smashed through an 8-inch plate of wrought iron, a wood layer, and a 14-inch plate of chilled cast iron. The ruin produced was greater than in any other experiment, the cast iron breaking into fragments. The power of this gun, the greatest rifle ever made, is such that a solid 22-inch plate of the best English wrought iron is completely penetrated by its shot.

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VIENNA BREAD.

A "Vienna bakery" has been one of the most prominent objects at each of the last three international exhibitions, and probably there are many housekeepers who would be glad to know how this delicious bread is made. Unfortunately success does not always follow imitation, and several attempts to introduce the manufacture of this bread have failed, even when Vienna bakers were employed in the work; and yet there is absolutely no secret in the process. One of the American commissioners to the Vienna exhibition, Prof. E. N. Horsford, gave an elaborate report on this bread, and since he came to the conclusion that it _can_ be made elsewhere, we will recount some of the causes upon which in his opinion its excellence depends. These are the mode of baking, the mode of making, the use of fresh "compressed yeast" which produces no acetic acid in fermentation, the use of selected flour, the mode of milling, and the kind of wheat.

_The Baking._--The loaf should be so small that fifteen or twenty
minutes will be sufficient to cook it through in an oven which is
heated to a temperature of about 500 deg., or the melting point of
bismuth. The rolls should not touch each other.

_The Mixing._--The proportions are:

8 pounds of flour,
3 quarts of milk and water, in equal proportions,
3-1-2 ounces of pressed yeast,
1 ounce of salt,

which should make about 380 rolls of the ordinary "Kaiser semmel"
size. The milk and water in equal parts are first mixed and allowed
to come to the usual temperature of a kitchen, and a small amount of
flour is then mixed in it so as to make a thin emulsion. The yeast is
added and well mixed in, first crumbling it in the hand, and the pan
is left covered for three-quarters of an hour. Then the rest of the
flour is slowly mixed in, with thorough kneading. The dough is left
for two hours and a half, "at the end of which time it presents a
smooth, tenacious, puffed, homogeneous mass, of slightly yellowish
color." It is weighed into pound masses (all bread must be sold by
weight in Europe), each of which is cut into twelve rolls. The
proportions for twelve rolls should therefore be about as follows:
1-4 pound of flour, 1-5 pints milk and water, 1-10 ounce pressed
yeast, and 1-32 ounce of salt. The small masses of dough have a
thickness of three-quarters of an inch, and the workman, laying the
back of his left forefinger in the centre of one, pulls out and folds
up the corners of the irregular mass, and pinches them together. The
little lump of dough is then reversed upon a smooth board, and after
remaining there long enough to finish "rising," they are placed in
the hot oven by means of a wooden shovel.

_The Yeast._--Pressed yeast, which is now made in America, is
obtained by skimming the froth from mash while it is in active
fermentation. The yeast is repeatedly washed with cold water until
it settles pure and white in the water. It forms a tenacious mass
which is pressed in a bag. It will keep about eight days in summer,
and indefinitely if put on ice.

_The Flour._--Only a selected part of the flour is used in Vienna
for the manufacture of white bread and rolls, amounting to about
forty-five per cent. of the wheat. Precisely the same grades are
not produced in the American process of milling, but Dr. Horsford
thinks that good, fresh middlings flour will compare favorably with
the average Hungarian flour.

_The Milling._--A peculiar mode of milling wheat has grown up in
Austria and Hungary, which is almost the antipodes of the old and
crude methods of grinding. It is called "high milling," and
consists in cracking the wheat by successive operations down to the
required size. First the wheat is run through a coarse mill, which
takes off the beard at one end and the germ at the other. The
resulting powder is then sifted, to separate the grits from the
dross and flour, and the central part is again cracked, and the
products sifted. Some flour is produced in each of these steps, but
the best of the wheat kernel is still in the condition of grits,
and the bran and outer coat of the kernel having been separated by
the sifting, the pure grits are now cracked once more, and number
one flour is produced. All the other flour from these three
operations is purified from bran, mixed and ground, making number
two flour. In short, the essential characteristic of the Austrian
system of milling lies in a gradual process of reducing the wheat,
with careful separation of the products, or cleaning, at each step.
These products are quite numerous, as the following list shows:

_Class._ _Percentage._

A. { Lady groats.
B. 4.25 { Table groats, fine.
C. { Table groats, coarse.
0. { Extra imperial flour.
1. 5.53 Extra fine flour.
2. 5.76 Ordinary fine flour.
3. 5.51 _Extra roll or semmel flour._
4. 6.48 _Common roll or semmel flour._
5. 7.12 First pollen flour.
6. 13.30 Second pollen flour.
7. 11.85 First dust flour.
8. 9.95 Second dust flour.
9. 4.36 Brown pollen flour.
10. 6.32 Fort flour.
F. 8.94 Fine bran.
G. 6.87 Coarse bran.
H. 3.76 Chicken feed, loss, and dirt.
----
100

This chicken feed consists of the foreign seeds, the tares, which
grow up with the wheat, and which are separated before milling. In
the above list only 39 to 40 per cent. of the flour is fit for white
bread making.

_The Wheat._--Last of all, in following back the processes of
Vienna bread making, we come to one of the essential requirements,
a proper kind of wheat. "The virtues of this bread," says Dr.
Horsford, "had their origin principally in the Hungarian wheat.
These are not due to any particular variety of wheat, or to any
marked peculiarity of soil or mode of fertilizing, or to a mean
annual temperature characterizing the climate of Hungary as a
whole, but to _a peculiarity of climate_, uniting especial dryness
of the air during the hot season, from the time of the development
of the milk of the berry, through the period of its segregation of
the various constituents of the grain, down to its being housed for
thrashing." The Hungarian wheat is red, shrivelled, and hard, and
it is this hardness that fits it so well to the successive
crackings which constitute the process of "high milling."

Vienna bread is white, fine grained, perfectly sweet, aromatic, agreeable without butter, thoroughly baked, and has a tender crust, and Dr. Horsford shows dearly that this combination of excellences is not the result of an art, but of the joint operation of many arts. Its introduction may be made an economical act, for its peculiar succulence makes butter or other condiment unnecessary. It is, however, essentially a _baker's_ bread, for it should be eaten on the day it is made, and is at its best immediately after becoming cold. There is little room for expecting it to replace the kind of bread in vogue in American homes, for that is just as much the result of peculiar circumstances as the product of the Hungarian farm, the Austrian mill, and the Vienna oven. Economy in labor is just as much a consideration in most American families as it is in our workshops, and the semi-weekly or weekly baking is the means by which it is obtained. But American housewives can improve their bread by adopting from the Austrian system the whitening of the yeast by washing, the small loaf, and the rapid baking. The use of selected flour can hardly be obtained unless the millers are offered a market for the darker flour that remains. In Europe that is at hand in the nutritious "black" bread which is everywhere _the_ staff of life, white bread being a luxury taken only with coffee. In fact it is American cake that the Vienna roll comes in competition with, and the habit of making cake almost daily, which obtains in so many American homes, shows that there is time and labor which can be turned to the production of the Vienna bread if desired.

* * * * *

MODERN LOSS IN WARFARE.

The German government has just published the official statistics of the losses in the war with France. The total killed and wounded was 3,919 officers and 60,978 men. The killed and dead of wounds were 1,374 officers and 16,877 men, the proportion being 1 killed to 3.44 wounded among the officers, and 1 to 5 among the men. The infantry lost 57,943, artillery 4,266, and cavalry 2,236. Fighting in line, and at such a distance as modern weapons command, have made the loss by artillery a minimum; 5,084 of the casualties being due to artillery and 55,862 to rifle practice. One noteworthy item is the proportion--12,717 out of the whole number--that were struck about the head and shoulders. This is held to show that the French troops fired high, but it may also be due to the attention now paid to field defences. It is quite possible also that all modern rifles are sighted a trifle too high.

* * * * *

A NEW TREASURY RULE.

The Secretary of the Treasury has lately issued a circular which affects rather uncomfortably the interests of educational, scientific, and literary institutions. They are allowed by law to import books, instruments, and illustrative collections free of duty, and the Secretary now says that the sale or distribution of articles imported in this way will not be allowed. They must be retained in the institutions that bring them into the country. It is quite probable that advantage has sometimes been taken of the law's liberality in this respect, but we fear this circular will really defeat the purpose of the law. Collections of all kinds in colleges and schools are kept up by a system of exchange, which is very necessary to them on account of the small sums of money at their disposal. To break up this system in the case of European specimens would be especially hard, for each institution would then be forced to import single specimens at much greater cost and trouble; or what is more likely, it would be found cheaper to pay the duty; that is, purchase through a dealer. So long as the exchange is confined to the circle of institutions which the law was designed to benefit, we cannot see that its provisions are unduly taken advantage of.

* * * * *

A HYGIENIC SCHOOL.

Dr. Agnew, the celebrated oculist of New York, has indicated his idea of a school for little children, in which health should be a first consideration, as follows: "If we could effect some alterations in the style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the school room and of conducting the same. I never could understand why children of the primary age are kept sitting on benches for a large number of hours at a time. School houses ought to be built like the hospital building at the corner of Lexington avenue and Forty-second street, used for cripples, where there is in the upper story a large room, called the solarium, which is in fact a large play room, exposed to the sun, where these little ones are kept the greater part of the time. The upper story of the school houses should be so constructed; and children should be encouraged to bring their toys and playthings with them; and then, instead of changing the age of admission from four years, it might be kept as it is; and instead of shortening the hours of attendance, lengthen them. Of course it should be taken for granted that the school house is constructed for the accommodation of the poor children, and in this light it would be better that such children should spend most of the day in school houses having good sanitary conditions, rather than, as they now do, in tenement houses. Thus you would have these primary schools with plenty of air and light, which you can get in the upper story, and children would be glad to come early, and remain until three or four o'clock, or even later in the afternoon."

* * * * *

MICROSCOPIC COMPARISON OF BLOOD CORPUSCLES.

Dr. J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia, whose views upon the subject of proving blood stains by the use of the microscope have been described in this Miscellany, has lately prepared slides for the microscope so as to show blood corpuscles from two different animals on the same field. He did this by flowing two drops of blood down the slide, and nearly in contact. Dr. C. L. Mees has modified this proceeding. He spreads the blood by Johnston's method, which is to touch a drop of blood to the accurately ground edge of a slide, and then draw it gently over the face of the other slide, leaving a beautifully spread film. In this way one kind of blood is spread upon the slide, and another on the cover. When dry, one half of each is carefully scraped off with a smoothly sharpened knife, and the cover inverted upon the slide in such position as to bring the remaining portions of the film into apposition. When thus prepared the magnified image can be photographed.

* * * * *

THE SUMMER SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS.

The Peabody Academy of Science at Salem, Massachusetts, will open the second session of its summer school of biology July 6, the course to continue for six weeks. Four days in each week will be given to lectures and laboratory work, and one day to a dredging expedition. Entomology, together with spiders, crustacea, and vertebrate anatomy, will be the especial subjects of study this year, and as usual the advantages enjoyed by this institution for studying marine zoology will be fully utilized. Dr. A. S. Packard, assisted by Messrs. Emerton and Kingsley, will have charge of zoology, Mr. Robinson of botany, Rev. Mr. Bolles of microscopy, and Mr. Cooke of the dredging parties. Fees, $15, or for lectures only, $5. Board $5 to $7 weekly. Application should be made to Dr. Packard.

A four weeks' school will be opened at the State normal school, West Chester, Pennsylvania, beginning July 11. Zoology and botany will be taught by Prof. M. W. Harrington, geology and physiological chemistry by Mr. V. C. Vaughan, and mineralogy by George G. Groff, all these gentlemen being connected with the University of Michigan. Elocution and industrial drawing will also be taught. Fees are for board and tuition $30, and tuition alone $12. Apply to Mr. George L. Maris, principal.