Chapter VI: Part 6

A great deal of the appeal of poetry comes through what it suggests of the unknown and mysterious, suggestions, not of the strange and the fanciful, but of the beautiful, hints of a something beyond the beauty to which our eyes have yet come, a beauty to which, perhaps, for all our longing, they may never come. A man for whom the problems of existence have ceased to be problems, a man whose theology is a settled thing, who believes certain things definitely and rests with assured ease in his belief, a man for whom the vague anticipations of a world of doubt as yet beyond his ken “make no purple in the distance,” such a man can neither have appreciation for a wide range of poetry, nor will he write verse that can take any serious place as poetry for modern readers. The poetry of a primitive people, dealing with primitive emotions, finds in more elementary things, like the boy in Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” hints and suggestions of a “something that is gone,” “the glory and the freshness of a dream.” These emotions become our emotions sympathetically, and not because they are quite the normal feelings for the mature reader of poetry to-day. The things that were a wonder to the Greek of Homer’s time have ceased to be a wonder to us, and if a poet would excite the same feelings in us he must employ other means. Science, in giving us absolute knowledge in regard to many things which not so long ago were full of strangeness for us, has taken out of them the olden poetry and the trees have nymphs that direct their growth no longer, the streams that were once dæmon-haunted are now merely water courses, and the other spirits of the earth and air have gone far away into the world’s forgetfulness. But while we have been pushing out into the unknown and annexing portions of it to the region of the known, we have been merely enlarging the boundary, not obliterating it. More than this man never can do. Always beyond the farthest vision of his telescope and microscope will lie the unknowable, growing smaller, perhaps, but seeming larger as it gives up some of its secret places for the inhabiting of the dwellers in the known. And this is the significant thing, that, as our knowledge grows, our sense of what lies beyond that knowledge finds an increasing number of things that may excite wonder. Every new scientific discovery, at least in certain departments of science, simply acts as an index finger pointing the way to related phenomena not yet understood. And so it will be ever. The most learned man that the schools, and the fields and the sky aided by the finest instruments human skill can devise, can produce, will only find himself awed by the vast darkness of the unknown into which his eyes cannot pierce.

There is another phase of the question that must not pass unnoticed. As the region of the unknown widens it offers more objects of interest and may thereby more fully absorb attention. When reality is sufficiently rich in experience we do not care to indulge in dreams. When the present satisfies us and answers all our needs we are less inclined to look forward to the future, whether that glows before us with the hues of promise or darkens with the threat of coming storm. But the fullest life may weary at times and wish, for the mere rest of change, to go outside of itself and find in the strangeness of something new and not yet known a relaxation and recreation for the tired hand and brain. And so the strenuousness of modern life with its ceaseless outreaching for new pleasures and new truths will be ready always for the soothing restfulness of a poetry that gives the form of beauty to things just beyond the wonderland of the known.

But how to make poetry of these things is the perplexing problem. Truth, whether of the world of fact or of the world of imagination reaching out into the spiritual realm, is not poetry until in some fashion it is made beautiful in its appeal to our sensibilities. A hundred years ago the things that were fitting subjects for poetic treatment were much more elementary and as emotional stimulus they reached consciousness in a much more immediate and direct fashion than the themes that are fitted for poetry now. The poet who would achieve distinct success in the higher walks of poetry to-day must be master of an art surpassing that of all but a few of his brethren of the craft who have gone before him. The world of the known is so large, comparatively, now, and the individual is so far removed from the boundaries of the unknown, save, perhaps, at one point, that more art is required to induce him to travel the longer distance out of the world of cold fact into the borderland of strangeness where suggestions of new truth and new beauty may come to quicken aspirations.

It is true that there are themes that were new a thousand years ago and will be new a thousand years hence, but a poet to achieve distinct success must strike a note not only individual, but one closely attuned to the thought and feeling of his time. Milton we know rather as a voice of Puritan England than as a poetic genius. We call Wordsworth a great poet and are conscious as we do so, that he deserves the distinction rather because he interpreted to men a new phase of thought and feeling, than because he knew how to make his verse wholly pure poetry rather than bald prose. Even poets of such spiritual elevation as Shelley and Coleridge caught the feeling and the tone of their time, and the revolutionary spirit and the love of nature that was molding Wordsworth finds a distinct voice in them as well. Even Burns, isolated as he was, is not altogether an anomaly, and no one need be told that Byron was in an extreme degree the voice of the reactionary spirit of post-revolutionary Europe. William Morris, retelling old legends of Greek and Saxon, none the less informed his verse with the humanitarian and æsthetic spirit of modern life, and applied his sense of the beautiful to the problems of nineteenth century existence. Swinburne, too, is democratic and in his vision the world moves on to new glories even though the old be not wholly faded from the earth.

Robert Browning is first and fundamentally a painter of character, a student of the more subtle moods that dominate the individual, and toward this the reader of English fiction would hardly fail to see that the development of literature has steadily been advancing for two centuries. Even Mrs. Browning through the somewhat morbid and mawkish sentimentality and the overstrained art of “Aurora Leigh,” in the vague and uncertain way of a woman whose contact with reality was necessarily slight, catches at the problems of nineteenth century feeling. Tennyson, as all men know, gave us poetry that was inwrought of the latest word of science, the last aspiration of religious hope, the newest sure conclusion in the field of social endeavor for the betterment of man.

And Tennyson in “In Memoriam,” as Browning in “Paracelsus” and Lowell in “The Cathedral,” has taught us that abstract truth may be made into poetry and that of the loftiest and most vitalizing kind. And to such poetry the world is ready to give a willing ear, though it will not be satisfied with the mere tricking out in rhyme and meter of scientific truth. The difficulty for the poet to-day is not merely that of new knowledge, but that of a science advancing so rapidly that the poet, whose art is meditative, can hardly avail himself of its latest revelations before their significance has vanished in the light of some new and revolutionary discovery announced from some investigator’s laboratory. This is so new a thing that literary conditions have not yet been adjusted to it, as we may fairly hope that they will be some time in the not distant future.

A thing, almost if not quite, as distinctive of our time as the progress of scientific discovery is the growth of the democratic spirit. This latter has been a thing of common observation for over a century, and about that long ago Wordsworth and Shelley, Burns and Byron voiced with glowing enthusiasm the new revolutionary gospel. Since then it has been the theme of other pens and has become a matter of commonplace, and yet, though it has not lost interest because of the fulfilment of the hopes of man, it is not now a vital force in literature of the better class. The reason for this is, perhaps, not far to seek. In the domain of politics the advance in thought and feeling from a hundred years ago is a matter of no great moment. The poet who would voice for the world a message of brotherhood, thrilled with the spirit of a new humanity, inevitably finds himself harking back; he is compelled to repeat the sentiments of Mrs. Browning’s perfervid Italian poems, or Whittier’s simple songs, or Shelley’s vague theorizing: he ceases to be individual. Under present conditions, strenuously vocal as the world is with the voices of those trying to be heard, failure to be distinctly and positively individual is failure to gain attention.

And it is significant that we are approaching the solution of social problems in the scientific way. The development of a better state of society is to come about, as we now realize, through the operation of natural laws, and not by the sensational process of awakening in the hearts of men a flashing enthusiasm for new forms of government.

Benjamin Kidd’s ‘Social Evolution’ indicates quite clearly the new point of view from which all problems of society are to be considered, and perhaps, not less remarkable for a like significance is Henry Drummond’s ‘Ascent of Man.’ As the laboratory gives up its secrets, as the mysteries of biology and processes of growth in the organic world become less mysterious, we are approaching nearer and nearer to a knowledge of the laws that are concerned in all growth, whether of the star fish or of the modern state. Assuming that man is the most vitally concerned in the organization of society here in this present world, and with the problem of another world, whether real or imaginary, whether a perfect state, or state of growth as that of earth, one cannot escape the reflection that both these problems have become in a measure problems of science, rather than problems of intuition or authority or emotional susceptibility.

And when science has come so close to all the inmost convictions and aspirations of man, there must follow a poetry of science, fuller, richer, more vitalizing and more enduring than any that has gone before it. It will appeal to a nobler and loftier sense of beauty, a finer and more perfect conception of truth. It will clothe its utterances in an imagery as much more varied as the knowledge of to-day is fuller than that of yesterday. It will be artistic beyond the dreams of other days, and its art will be something more than that of mere intuition. It will glow with color, but no crudeness of taste will guide the artist’s brush, and the intelligent, æsthetic sense of a broadly cultured people will find inspiration in it, as once heroes did in the songs of the bards of old.

L. W. SMITH.
_Tabor, Iowa._

_ANTIQUITY OF THE CHEWING GUM HABIT._

In the letter of Columbus on the discovery of America, facsimile edition, 1892, of the four Latin editions belonging to the Lenox Library, the following occurs in the translation (page 11): “Finally, that I may compress in few words the brief account of our departure and quick return, and the gain, I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed, as much of spices, of cotton, of chewing gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloeswood, and as many slaves for the navy as their majesties will wish to demand.”

The date of this letter is March 14, 1493,--over four hundred years ago. It will be seen by the above that the chewing gum habit is by no means a modern or recent one, and doubtless antedates Columbus’ letter by many years.

The reference to Chios, an island in the Grecian Archipelago, is presumably for the purpose of indicating the character of the ‘gum.’ The Chios ‘gum’ of the ancients has been described as an earth of a compact character, probably argillaceous, and had the reputation of possessing medicinal qualities. Its consistency and appearance may have been such as to have led to its being popularly called ‘gum.’

That the chewing of gum, or some other article or waxy substance suitable for chewing, was in vogue at the time, there can be no doubt, and that the discovery of such a substance would be regarded as an important acquisition is implied by its being specially mentioned and promised by Columbus.

Years ago, more than half a century, shoemakers’ wax, so-called, Burgundy pitch and crude spruce-gum were chewed to a considerable extent, as the writer clearly remembers.

Betel chewing, the leaves and the nut mixed in certain proportions _with lime_, as practiced in Asiatic countries, naturally occurs to the mind in connection with the foregoing, as well as occasional instances of chewing slate pencils and lime mortar, an interesting case of the latter having been brought to my notice several years since by a well-known physician of Newark, N. J. But these are rather exceptional and individual cases, therefore not to be regarded as general or popular habits. From the _chewing_ of earthy substances to the _eating_ of the same, would appear to be but a natural step. The latter habit, so far as facts are available, is of comparatively infrequent occurrence and restricted to a much smaller number of persons. Beds of white infusorial earth, resembling magnesia in appearance, known as _Bergmehl_, occur in Lapland and Finland. This is, or has been used in seasons of scarcity, mixed with flour made of some kind of grain or ground birch-bark, and _clay-eating_ probably, to a greater or less extent, still continues to be a habit in North Carolina as in the past. The effect of this habit, as any intelligent person would suppose, is decidedly injurious to the individual that pursues it. In several cases that have come under my observation the results are exhibited in sallowness of complexion, lack-lustre eyes, distension of the abdomen caused by engorgement or clogging of the liver, and other intestinal derangement, listlessness and general debility.

ROB’T E. C. STEARNS.
_Los Angeles, Cal._

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

_A GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE._

The increasing specialization of the sciences and the consequent occupation with the details and technical manipulations of a specialty render it possible for many a student to secure the equipment needed for his immediate activity, with but little appreciation of the general principles that give direction and solidarity to his science, or of the more general and fundamental conceptions which the various sciences and the spirit and progress of science as a whole have in common. The student runs the danger of gaining a certain familiarity with the vocabulary and the usage of the language of science, but of ignoring its grammar. One of the purposes met by Prof. Karl Pearson’s ‘The Grammar of Science’ is to give the serious student an opportunity to acquaint himself with these underlying conceptions--cause and effect and probability, space and time, motion and matter and the composition of the physical and organic worlds. It discusses with him and for him the nature of the knowing process, and demonstrates how the sciences stand--not for a literal copy of reality, but represent a special abstraction and construction on the basis of experience, which serve the purposes of intelligibility and logical system. A law of nature is not an objective reality, but “a _résumé_ in mental shorthand, which replaces for us a lengthy description of the sequences of our sense-impressions. Law in the scientific sense ... owes its existence to the creative power of his [man’s] intellect.” Science is thus not the mere reflection of perceptual experience, but is dependent for its advance quite as much upon the formation of appropriate conceptions by the exercise of insight and a keen logical analysis and synthesis. Hence, the importance of the imagination as a requisite for scientific discovery, which leads Professor Pearson to regard Darwin and Faraday as superior in this quality to the best of the poets and novelists. Not only the content of the sciences but the spirit and the means that guide its advance form part of the grammar of science. The nature of the scientific method, the appreciation that the scope of science is really coincident with the scope of verifiable knowledge; that science represents a mode of approach and of inquiry, and that the scientist or the scientifically-minded individual is characterized by a definite logical attitude, by a manner of entering into relation with his surroundings and of dealing with reality; that science discountenances attempted short-cuts and inspired revelations, or guesses of the riddles of existence; that it avoids metaphysic and impractical speculation; that it justifies its existence and the energies which are expended on its behalf by the mental training it provides in education, by its illumination of the problems of life and society, by the practical benefits it confers in the various fields of human activity, as well as by the gratification it yields to some of the most permanent and most worthy of our intellectual and æsthetic impulses--these and other propositions are ably and interestingly presented and constitute an essential portion of this very stimulating and clarifying volume. The success of the work is attested by the appearance of this second edition; the chief addition consists of a discussion of the quantitative method as applied to biological phenomena, which the readers of others of the author’s works will recognize as one of his favorite subjects of investigation.

_THE TEACHING OF ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS._

The book with the above title, by David Eugene Smith, principal of the State Normal School, at Brockport, N. Y., contains much of value, presented in a very readable and attractive manner. The subjects treated are arithmetic, algebra and geometry. About half the book is devoted to the first. The author sketches the history of the teaching of arithmetic from the earliest times, gives a critical examination of the different systems which have been tried and aims to discover the correct general principles upon which the instruction should proceed. He notices the tendency of many of our schools to follow too closely the Grube method, or a modification of it. The chapter on the present teaching of arithmetic is full of valuable suggestions. Algebra and geometry are treated in the same way. Much useless lumber is cleared away, and the whole discussion is marked by strong common-sense, an element not always present in discussions of this kind. The extreme differentiation in the teaching of these three branches which prevails in so many schools is condemned. It is urged that the blending of algebraic method and notation with the higher parts of arithmetic, and the early introduction of the inductive study of geometric form, both contribute to the substantial progress and development of the student. Valuable references are given to other writings for fuller discussions on special topics. These references cover works in English, French, German and Italian.

_GEOLOGY._

Professor Suess’s great work, ‘Das Antlitz der Erde,’ has been translated into French with emendations and annotations, and thus becomes accessible to an enlarged number of readers. No strictly geological publication since the time of the first appearance of Sir Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ has brought together so many data concerning the nature of the altitude of the continents in relation to sea level. Geologists have generally assumed that it is the land which rises or sinks when a change of level takes place in relation to the sea. Professor Suess attacks this view and endeavors to show that the ocean has and has had its great movements, now keeping up its waters in the equatorial district, now accumulating about the poles and transgressing the low lands of its borders. An exhaustive review of the geological structure of the known parts of the earth, particularly complete with regard to the borders of the oceans and the the Mediterranean, is presented as a basis for discussing the evidence of such changes as the sinking in modern geological times of lands or islands in what is now the North Atlantic. By the sinking of the ocean floor, it is held that the sea level is lowered around the earth, thus giving rise to emerged lands. Parts of these plateaus have in turn sunk, and so the earth has experienced varied and often sudden changes of the relations of land and sea. The work is entertainingly written, despite the laborious compilation of geological details, which is made evident in its numerous chapters. The geological explanation of the Noachian Deluge is perhaps one of the most interesting sections of the work. Aside from the theory which the work sets forth, it affords the best general survey of the earth’s surface which is at present available in any language. It has been supplied with numerous recent references by M. de Margerie and his able assistants in the work of translation.

_A YEARBOOK OF BIOLOGY._

_L’Année Biologique_ for 1897.--Every year the number of biological workers increases, the number of repositories of researches is multiplied and the difficulties of keeping informed of the results obtained in even a restricted department of science are enhanced. Hence, new bibliographical works are ever welcome, especially if they give not only titles but abstracts. _L’Année Biologique_ does not only this, but more, for its abstracts are likewise critical reviews indicating the true place in the science of the results given in any paper. It goes still further, in that it summarizes the advance made during the year in each subject, and the contents of the volume are rendered still more accessible by a thorough author-genus subject index. Everything seems to be done that is possible to make the results of general biological studies available. Occasionally figures are reproduced and comprehensive, synoptic articles on the recent advances in one subject are printed. In the present volume there is a report on senile degenerescence, by Elie Metchnikov; on the urinary tubules in vertebrates, with seventeen figures, by P. Vignon; and on the conditions of existence in and the bionomic divisions of fresh waters by G. Prouvot. The reviews are all signed by the authors, the critical remarks being bracketed. Many of the reviews have the dignity of distinct contributions to science, as where a half-page abstract is followed by a two-page discussion. The reviewers, or ‘collaborators,’ are drawn from various countries, America, Austria, Belgium, England, Russia and Scotland being represented in addition to France. This periodical may be commended in the strongest terms to biologists and to others interested in the results of biology. It is surprising that the work is still so little known in this country. Scientific men have a right to take pride in the unremunerative efforts of the chief editor, Professor Delage, to make accessible the literature of the science of general biology in order to facilitate its advancement.

_ASTROPHYSICS._

The ‘Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra, together with a Discussion of the Evolutional Order of the Stars,’ by Sir Wm. Huggins, K. C. B., and Lady Huggins (Wesley & Son), is not only a sumptuous and beautifully illustrated volume, but is also of great scientific value. Sir Wm. Huggins belongs to that group of men in England who, unconnected with any university, devote themselves to research for the pure love of truth. His distinguished services to science received recognition on the occasion of the Queen’s diamond jubilee, when with only two other scientific men he received the order of knighthood. His accomplished wife, who is his constant coadjutor, was the only woman mentioned in the list of Jubilee honors. Sir Wm. Huggins may be said to be the founder of the so-called ‘New Astronomy,’ for scarcely more than a quarter of a century ago his spectroscope, turned upon a newly discovered star, first revealed the cause of the sudden lighting up of these beacons in the heavens, and turned upon the nebula showed them to be of glowing gas. Since that time the telescope of the Tulse Hill Observatory, armed with spectroscope and camera, has been constantly and laboriously analyzing the light of star, comet and nebula, to solve the mystery of their constitution. “We never go anywhere,” said Lady Huggins; “astronomy, at best, is a heart-breaking object of devotion beneath English skies, and we are always at home to catch every gleam between the clouds.”

This book gives, in charming narrative, which would be read with interest by one previously ignorant of the subject, the history of the pioneer work “when nearly every observation revealed a new fact, and almost every night’s work was red-lettered by some discovery.”

There follow full details of later work, especially of the first detection, by the shifting of the lines of their spectra, of the motion of stars towards us or from us in the line of sight. We learn also how terrestrial chemistry has been enriched by this study of the stars, and how the nature of long known elements like hydrogen and the existence of undiscovered elements like helium have been first made out from stellar spectra.

But, as the supreme problem for the biologist is the development of man, so the supreme problem for the astronomer is that of the evolutional order of the stars. This problem, too, is discussed in the light of the discoveries at Tulse Hill. From the simple but beautiful harmonic system of hydrogen lines which characterizes a white star like Vega, we learn how we pass to the more developed star of a solar type, like Capella, and thence to Arcturus, and Belelgueze, which indicate a still later stage of development. At least this is the theory of the author. Aside from its great theme lucidly discussed the book deserves to be upon every library table as a superb specimen of bookmaking. For once, beautiful truth is promulgated in fitting guise. Lady Huggins is an artist and archæologist as well as an astronomer, and the initial letters of the chapters are illuminated with original sketches and designs from quaint old manuscripts, which make the book artistically as well as astronomically worthy of the prize which it received from the Royal Society as the most distinguished contribution to the scientific literature of the year.

_EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE._

Anyone who wishes to gain a fairly adequate idea of what experiments on living animals have accomplished for the welfare of the human race and of other animals as well, can now do so by reading ‘Experiments on Animals,’ by Stephen Paget. Mr. Paget has collected evidence showing the part that animal experiments have played in the progress of physiology, pathology, bacteriology and therapeutics. He has not ventured to offer opinion or even statements unsupported by exact and verifiable facts. A large part of the book’s space is filled by original quotations from scientific workers, from Galen down to the recent students of the malaria parasite. It shows plainly that knowledge of the processes of life in health and disease has throughout depended on experiments on living substances. Mr. Paget’s book is not dependent for its interest solely on the laudable curiosity to know the worth of animal experiments. For these have been so important in the science of medicine that their story is at the same time the history of a great number of medical discoveries. There is, too, a freshness and biographical interest in the quotations from the famous past and present students of medical science which makes them very readable.

_ICHTHYOLOGY FOR ANGLERS._

In his “Familiar Fish, their Habits and Capture,” Mr. Eugene McCarthy has put forth a readable volume which doubtless will prove popular among the disciples of Izaak Walton, for it is essentially a book for anglers, written by an angler of experience. A preliminary chapter, devoted to fish-culture, dwells on the destruction of eggs and fry in nature and the necessity for artificial measures. It is a fairly good general outline of the subject, although some of the methods described are obsolete. The many breeders of ornamental fish will wonder whether the author is intentionally facetious in stating that the “famous double-tailed goldfish frequently seen are raised in Japan, and are produced by violently shaking the eggs in a pan.”

About a third of the book is devoted to brief accounts of the distribution, food, habits and peculiarities of the fresh-water fishes most sought by anglers, the salmons, trouts, basses and pikes naturally receiving most attention. The remaining pages deal chiefly with the description of angling paraphernalia and methods, camping, boating and useful data for sportsmen. By far the best chapters are those treating of the ouananiche and its capture, as the author writes from ample experience. He gives it first rank among our game fishes and holds that “pound for pound the ouananiche can greatly outfight the salmon, and none of the freshwater fishes can equal it in this respect; the black bass approaches it the nearest but never equals it.”

The volume is freely illustrated with fishing scenes, angling apparatus and twenty-five full-page figures of fishes, all but one of which are copied, without credit, from the reports of the U.S. Fish Commission.

The author submitted his manuscript to President Jordan “to be justified in advancing the claim” that the descriptions of the different fishes “are absolutely reliable and correct,” and a prefatory note by Dr. Jordan is in that author’s most pleasing style and adds considerably to the literary excellence of the volume; but evidently that distinguished ichthyologist did not believe any responsibility attached to him, for even a cursory glance by him over the manuscript would have eliminated a number of ichthyological incongruities, such as the inclusion of the white bass, one of the Serranidæ, in the same family as the black basses (Centrarchidæ). The author’s conception of zoölogical nomenclature and classification is decidedly novel. In the final chapter, on “scientific names of fish mentioned,” the first species referred to is _Salmo salar_, of which it is stated that “the word _salmo_ is used in connection with a large variety of the trouts, to designate the family or descent. It is the first name given, as is the case with all other kinds of fish, being the specific name indicating the species. The other names following are subspecific.” The land-locked salmon of the Saguenay River is by some systematic writers regarded as a variety of the sea salmon, and bears the name _Salmo salar ouananiche_ McCarthy. Strange to say, this is the only species in the volume for which the name of the original describer is given, and in explaining his own connection with the fish, Mr. McCarthy says: “McCarthy, so named from his first writing fully regarding the fish!”

To the zoölogist the volume will be of no use, as it embodies few new observations on the fishes considered and is largely a compilation from other well-known works. The author, however, deserves credit for bringing the subject to the attention of anglers in such an attractive form; and, as an attempt to extend the knowledge of the habits, distribution and relationships of our game fishes among this large and influential class of citizens, the volume should be accorded a welcome.

_MICROSCOPY OF DRINKING-WATER._

Mr. G. C. Whipple, Director of the Mount Prospect Laboratory of the Brooklyn Waterworks, has prepared a handbook for the water analyst and the waterworks engineer, with the title given above. It deals with the purposes, methods and results of the biological examination of drinking-water, affording means for the identification of the microscopic life found in water supplies and suggesting means for the elimination or control of those organisms which disagreeably affect the color or odor of potable waters. The construction of reservoirs, the storage of surface and of ground waters and the growth of organisms in pipes are also discussed. Though the motive of the book is thus technical, the subject is developed by the author along broad lines in a thoroughly scientific manner, and he has brought together a great deal of information, not only for the sanitary engineer, but also for the physicist, the chemist and the biologist. The problems in limnology, such as the temperature, stagnation and circulation of reservoir waters; the distribution and relative numbers of different organisms and their relation to chemical analyses are discussed in the light of the results of many years’ investigation of water-supplies. The seasonal succession of organisms, their movements with respect to light and other stimuli, and their horizontal and vertical distribution, are in like manner fully treated. The scope of the work and the treatment of the subject make the book a valuable one alike for engineering and biological laboratories and for the general library.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

The summer laboratories and the scientific expeditions which are employing the vacation period of the men of science in this country would make a long list. A vacation from teaching means to the scientific man a chance to work, and at present there are numerous organized means of enabling him to profit by this chance. The most definite form which such arrangements for summer work have taken is the summer laboratory or experiment station for biologists. Such a station affords conveniently the mechanical appliances for scientific work in a good locality for collecting material to work with. The marine or other forms of life are thus made accessible to those whose professional work during the year keeps them in an unfavorable locality. Besides the laboratory at Woods Holl, which is the nearest American representative of Professor Dohrn’s great laboratory at Naples, there is an important summer station at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, under the auspices of the Brooklyn Institute, and others cared for by Leland Stanford, Jr. University, the University of Indiana, the Ohio State University and other institutions. It is common to combine teaching with research at these laboratories and in some cases they become essentially summer schools, though generally giving courses of a higher order than the ordinary summer school for nature study. But research is often the chief and sometimes the sole purpose of these stations, and a vast amount of work is done each year. The most important of these summer stations is the Woods Holl Marine Biological Laboratory, situated on the southern coast of Massachusetts, between Buzzard’s Bay and Vineyard Sound. This laboratory has been fortunate in having been the summer home at one time or another of a majority of the leading zoölogists of the country. It has been usual for the advanced students in universities to take courses or carry on research there, and Woods Holl training has been a valuable recommendation. The reason is not far to seek. The material advantages, the spirit of zeal for concrete fact, the acquaintance with superior men in the science and with a large number of equals, all help to give the best sort of professional training. Such a place also serves as a refinery where opinions and theories may be purified by healthy criticism and by the subtler influence of example. There is a story of three eminent biologists who got involved in a controversy over a disputed question. They argued for a while. Finally one of them said: “Let us get the eggs in question and study them together.” This was done, and the three men spent the afternoon over their microscopes patiently working out the problem together; and they did work it out. One of the great advantages of summer laboratories is that they put fellow-students in a frame of mind in which they can work things out together.

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The Woods Holl Laboratory has a right to claim a large share in the credit for three of the most important developments in biology in the last decade--the study of ‘cell lineage,’ of regeneration of organs and of the influence of abnormal conditions on the development of embryos. Workers there have traced the development of the different cells into which the egg-cell divides and have discovered just what parts of the body arise from each group of cells. They have shown that the way in which the egg divides and redivides is as constant, is as much a part of the nature of the animal, as its adult form and structure are. They have replaced previous vague notions of the development of animals by exact accounts of the cell-origin of different organs of the body. Others have studied the abilities of mutilated animals to reproduce the parts lost and the conditions and limitations of such regeneration. Such studies have greatly broadened our views of the nature of animal tissues. Others have investigated the results of artificial conditions on the development of animals, especially in the earliest stages. For instance, from eggs broken into pieces there have been developed twins, triplets and monsters of various sorts. Such experiments as these are producing data concerning the very fundaments of living matter and are leading biology beyond the mere description of animal structures and functions towards an insight into the elementary principles of development. Among the numerous researches, some seventy in all, which are being carried on at Woods Holl this summer, those of the most general interest are Prof. C. O. Whitman’s study of hybrids and Prof. Jacques Loeb’s study of artificial fertilization. Prof. Whitman has been breeding pigeons of a large number of species for several years, as a means of studying the phenomena of heredity shown in hybrid forms. More or less incidentally, he has discovered many notable facts about the instincts and habits of the birds and about various physiological functions connected with reproduction. Biologists everywhere are coming to realize the necessity of systematic and continuous study of families of animals through a number of generations. Prof. Whitman’s is the most extensive of such studies in this country. The detailed results of Prof. Loeb’s continuation of his experiments on the action of various salts on unfertilized eggs will naturally be awaited with great interest. We have already noticed his success in causing unfertilized eggs of the sea-urchin to develop into normal individuals as far as the pluteus stage. He has this year succeeded in producing artificial parthenogenesis not only in starfish (_Asterias_), but also in worms (_Chaetopterus_). Through a slight increase in the amount of K-ions in the sea-water, the eggs of the latter can be caused not only to throw out the polar bodies as Mead had already observed, but also to reach the _Trochophore_ stage and swim about as actively as the larvæ originating from fertilized eggs.

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In the courses of instruction offered at Woods Holl there are two of more than ordinary interest. Professor Loeb’s course in physiology departs from the traditional study of physiological functions in the frog and in some mammal, and offers instead experimental work on the simpler invertebrate forms. The phenomena of life are there presented in diagrammatic form, and are interpreted as far as possible in terms of physics and chemistry. The course in nature study, given this year for the first time, offers to students without technical training a chance to learn about animals and plants from specialists. It has shown clearly that the best science is popular, that really scientific work can be done without previous drill in terminology or technique. A novel feature of the course has been the systematic experimental study of the instincts and intelligent performances of animals. The method of offering to intelligent men and women, who wish to know about animal life, but have no time or need for special technical training or detailed anatomical work, a chance to get something better than mere book knowledge or haphazard personal observation, should be widely extended.

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The laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, situated at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, is nearly as old as the Woods Holl Laboratory. Prof. C. B. Davenport, its director, is probably the most active worker in this country in the quantitative study of variation, and one of the leading lines of research at Cold Spring Harbor is now and will probably be for some years the attempt to get an exact estimate of normal variation in different animals, of the production of abnormal variations and of the laws of inheritance. Professor Davenport is himself breeding mice extensively and thus securing data. Of the courses offered two deserve special mention. One is the course for teachers of zoölogy in high schools, a chief feature of which is the study of living animals. The other is a course on ‘Variation and Inheritance,’ which gives advanced students a chance to study the most important question of biology and by the most exact methods. The Cold Spring laboratory has been growing very rapidly of late and seems likely to continue to grow. In general the evolution of the summer laboratory is of interest. An enthusiast or a modest association gathers a few sympathetic workers at some favorable locality. The informality and personal contact are inspiring and the place becomes famous for good work. Then come numbers and with numbers a rapid complication of the social life of the school. The eminent leader is replaced by a dozen different instructors; one no longer knows every one else; organization becomes complex and what was at first a sort of scientific family may turn into a formal institution. The summer laboratory should not become a big summer college at the cost of its single-mindedness.

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While special laboratories are open for work in biology, and the universities are extending their sessions through the summer, the common schools are also beginning to realize that they must adapt themselves to an urban civilization. Country schools should adjourn in the summer for obvious reasons, but in the city nothing is gained by turning the children from the schools into the streets. The vacation or play schools now in session in New York City are in every way to be commended. The only drawback is that they cannot hold half of those who wish to attend. Set free from the traditional curriculum the children learn more in the five weeks of ‘play school’ in the summer, than in twice that period of ‘work school’ in the winter. Swimming, open-air gymnastics, team games, chess, visits to parks, piers, museums and libraries, excursions in barges and into the country, sketching, whittling, cooking, sewing and the rest do not lose their educational value because the children like them. Such exercises will do a good deal toward curing the indigestion caused by being fed for five years on the three R’s, and toward correcting the anti-social atmosphere of the ordinary school-room. Among the commonplaces of modern psychology are: It is not what a person knows but what he does that counts; the way to learn is to act; progress follows from the pleasure of partial success; an individual only exists in his relations with others. Such maxims seem to be as clearly kept in view by the New York Department of Education in the summer as they are forgotten in the winter. The committee on the New York Play Schools consists of Messrs. Seth T. Stewart, John L. N. Hunt and A. P. Marble, to whom and to the teachers who have carried out their plans much honor is due. The report for 1899 is an educational document of importance. Copies can probably be obtained from the Department of Education of the City of New York.

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The Paris Exposition and its congresses may be regarded as a great summer school. The applications of science exhibited for amusement, for instruction and for the advantage of commerce and manufactures are bewildering in their multiplicity. It is interesting to note that the group ‘Education’ heads the catalogue of the Exposition. In the exhibits representing higher instruction, the United States received nine grand prizes and nine gold medals, ranking second to France. On the motion of a French juror, three Americans were mentioned as worthy of special distinction: Prof. H. A. Rowland, Johns Hopkins University; Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University; Director Melvil Dewey, University of the State of New York. More than one hundred and fifty international congresses, dealing with various subjects of scientific, industrial and social importance, are held this summer in Paris, and form no small part of the interest of the Exposition, supplementing as they do the exhibits, furnishing the theory, as the exhibits set forth the accomplishments, of art and industry. The magnitude of these congresses may be seen from the fact that the thirteenth International Medical Congress had a registration of over six thousand members, of whom over four hundred were from America.

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Friends of scientific investigation and the teaching of science will rejoice at the recent decision in the courts concerning the Fayerweather will case. For the eighth time the grant of $3,000,000 to the colleges has been confirmed. The case will probably be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the probability is large that Mr. Fayerweather’s wishes will in the end be carried out. At the present time, money left to colleges is likely to be used to a very large extent to promote the progress of science. Required courses in linguistics are decreasing, and the extension of college teaching and university research is largely along scientific lines. New departments, such as those of physiography, physical chemistry, anthropology and experimental psychology are being established, while economics and sociology are becoming less speculative and more like the natural sciences in their methods. The college student of to-day gets proportionately more training in the professedly natural sciences than ever before, and gets scientific training in connection with courses which were once mere exercises in learning the opinions of more or less important people.

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We called attention last month to the completion of the plans for an international catalogue of scientific literature, and stated that Great Britain and Germany had each subscribed for forty-five of the three hundred sets that must be sold in order to defray the cost. It is obvious that the United States, with such a large number of libraries and educational institutions, should subscribe for its share of the sets, namely, not less than forty-five. The Smithsonian Institution has provisionally undertaken to represent the interests of the catalogue in the United States, and will receive promises of subscriptions. The catalogue will be issued in seventeen volumes, comprising the following subjects: Mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology (including terrestrial magnetism), mineralogy (including petrology and crystallography), geology, geography (mathematical and physical), palæontology, general biology, botany, zoölogy, human anatomy, physical anthropology, physiology (including experimental psychology, pharmacology and experimental pathology) and bacteriology. At least one volume will be given to each subject, and it is proposed that not all the volumes shall be issued at once, but in four groups, as soon as possible after the first of January, April, July and October, respectively. The subscription price for a complete set of the whole catalogue, in seventeen volumes, is £17, say $85. The volumes will vary in price and can be obtained separately, but it is necessary to secure the guarantee of the sale of forty-five sets in America during the month of September, and all libraries used for scientific research, and those individuals who can afford the cost, should send subscriptions to Dr. Richard Rathbun, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.

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In the July number of the MONTHLY Dr. H. C. Bolton gave an account of the radio-active substances which have been found in pitchblende, the chief ore of uranium. The subject continues to excite the interest of both chemists and physicists, though just at present the largest amount of work is being done by the chemists, to whom the question is of extraordinary interest as to whether these substances are or are not real chemical elements. Béla von Lengyel, of Budapest, as Dr. Bolton explained, has attacked the problem from the synthetic side, and by fusing inactive barium nitrate with uranium nitrate, he has obtained a barium sulphate which has more or less radio-activity. From this he concludes it is probable that the radio-activity is due rather to a peculiar state of the barium than to a new chemical element. On the other hand, Becquerel has in a somewhat analogous way mixed inactive barium chlorid with uranium chlorid, and from the solution has obtained likewise a radio-active barium. But he finds that the increased activity in the barium salt is attended by a corresponding decrease in the radio-activity of the uranium. Hence it cannot be settled from these experiments whether the uranium salts possess a radio-activity of their own, which can by certain methods be communicated to barium salts, or whether the radio-activity is due to an impurity in the uranium which has thus far eluded isolation.

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The director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Mr. A. Lawrence Rotch, writes to ‘Science’ that the highest previous kite-flight was exceeded on July 19, when, by means of six kites attached at intervals to four and three-quarters miles of steel wire, the meteorograph was lifted 15,170 feet above Blue Hill, or 15,800 feet above the neighboring ocean. At the time that the temperature was 78° near the ground, it was about 30° at the highest point reached, the air being very dry and the wind blowing from the northwest with a velocity of twenty-six miles an hour. The altitude reached in this flight probably exceeds the greatest height at which meteorological observations have been made with a balloon in America. The highest observations that have been published were made by the late Professor Hazen, of the Weather Bureau, in an ascent from St. Louis, June 17, 1887, to a height of 15,400 feet.

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The U.S. consul at St. Gall, Mr. Du Bois, sends to the Department of State the following account of the trial of the Zeppelin air-ship: At the invitation of Count Zeppelin, I was present at the trial ascent of his air-ship on the afternoon of July 2, at Manzell, on Lake Constance. At seven o’clock the great ship, 407 feet long and 39 feet in diameter, containing seventeen separate balloon compartments filled with hydrogen gas, was drawn out of the balloon house securely moored to the float. At the moment of the ascent the wind was blowing at a rate of about twenty-six feet per second, giving the operators a good opportunity of testing the ability of the air-wheels to propel the great ship against the wind. The cigar-shaped structure ascended slowly and gracefully to about thirty feet above the raft. The balances were adjusted so as to give the ship an ascending direction. The propellers were set in motion, and the air-ship, which has cost considerably over $200,000, started easily on its interesting trial trip. At first the ship moved east against the wind for about two miles, gracefully turned at an elevation of about 400 feet, and, making a rapid sail to the westward for about five miles, reached an altitude of 1,300 feet. It was then turned and headed once more east, and, traveling about a mile against the wind blowing at the rate of twenty-six feet per second, suddenly stopped; floating slowly backwards three miles to the west, it sank into the lake, the gondolas resting safely upon the water. The time of the trip was about fifty minutes; distance traveled, about ten miles; fastest time made, five miles in seventeen and one-half minutes. The cause of the sudden stoppage in the flight of the ship was proved to be a slight mishap to the steering apparatus, but the colossus floated gently with the wind until it settled upon the surface of the lake without taking any water. The raft was then brought up and the ship was easily placed upon it and brought back to the balloon house. The weight is 200 centners (22,000 pounds).

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