In the following pages I have brought together some scattered information
on the instruments, especially connected with Folk-Dancing, which give
the title to my address. The coming to life of a mass of beautiful tunes
and dances, in response to the patient search of Mr. Cecil Sharp and a
few others, is one of the most magical occurrences of which I have any
memory. In a less degree I have experienced the same sense of the
unexpected, in learning that in a Kentish village, so near London as
often to be darkened by the skirts of town fogs, the ancient superstition
still existed of telling the bees that their master is dead. Such an
unsuspected lurking of primitive belief in our midst may well give a
shock of surprise. But in the resurrection of the mass of hidden music,
and of the dying traditions of dances, a web of extraordinary beauty is
suddenly revealed--a matter of real importance.
If tunes have souls they are shut out by death from ever again vibrating
in a human tenement. They are like the _gabel-rachels_, the souls of
unbaptised infants whom men in Yorkshire used to hear crying round the
church as though begging to be let in. But the traditional tunes of
England are no longer homeless; they have a safe refuge in the printed
page. They have become immortal, or as near immortality as modern paper
can insure.
Mr. Sharp has done wonderful things; he is like a naturalist who should
discover that we are unconsciously surrounded by whole races of beautiful
things as unknown to us as elves and fairies. In the Commemoration
Service we speak gratefully of all those who "found out musical tunes."
If ever a man deserved remembrance for literally finding out tunes it is
Mr. Sharp.
But to return to the musical instruments of the Morris dancers--the Pipe
and Tabor. I am told that the little drum on which the piper accompanies
his tune should be pronounced 'tabber.' I have no doubt this is right.
The Oxfordshire name Dub suggests it, and the old French word Tabour is
something of an argument in the same direction. In Wright's _Dialect
Dictionary_ it is said that the lesser spotted woodpecker is called the
"tabberer" from its habit of drumming on tree trunks. I should like to
call my pipe a "tabberer's" pipe if only out of affection for the little
black and white bird and his drum, but the modern pronunciation, with a
long _a_, has a strong hold and can hardly be ousted. We nowadays put
the pipe before the tabor, but in Shakespearian days this was not so. In
_The Tempest_ Ariel plays the tune "Flout 'em and scout 'em" on a tabor
and pipe--and the artist was called a taborer {98} not a piper. In the
same way the Provencal performer on the two instruments was (according to
Daudet), and I hope still is, known as the tabourinaire.
Morris dancing, for which the tabor and pipe once supplied the music, is
now an everyday accomplishment. At Cambridge one may see Fellows of
Colleges dancing, waving handkerchiefs and knocking sticks in the old
manner, and I hope the same is true of Oxford.
But piping is not so common. Some of us have heard Mr. Sharp at a
lecture, or Mr. Haydn Coffin on the stage. But it is not an art likely
to spread rapidly, because the old English is pipe rare and hard to come
by, and copies are not common either.
I began to learn the taborer's art on a French or Basque galoubet
obtained in Oxford from that kind friend of many musicians, the late Mr.
Taphouse. But it was only quite recently, when Mr. Manning lent me an
old Oxfordshire instrument and allowed me to have it copied, that I made
any kind of progress.
I do not know when playing the "whittle and dub" (as they were called)
became extinct as a village art. It certainly existed thirty years ago,
and for all I know there are still some living who could hand on the
grand manner of taboring. Mr. Taphouse remembered very well the days
when the pipe and drum were heard all round Oxford at fairs and village
festivals. I remember his showing me a whittle with a crack in it where
it had been broken over the head of a reveller by a drunken taborer.
The two instruments have been generally associated with dancing.
Tans'ur, {100a} writing in 1772, speaks of this. "The Tabor and Pipe are
two musical Instruments that always accompany each other, and are mostly
used at Wakes by Country People, and at their Dancings and innocent
Diversions, and often with Morris Dancers." He speaks of the pipe as
played with the left hand, "on which Wrist hangs a small drum, braced in
Tune to the Pipe, and beat by the Right Hand as a Bass in Time to it:
both of which being well managed make pretty Harmony."
In the Wallace Collection there is a picture by N. Lancret (1690-1743) of
a celebrated dancer, Mme. Camargo, who is accompanied by a small
orchestra of two recorders, a bassoon and one or more viols; these are
partly hidden at the back of the scene, while a boy with pipe and tabor
{100b} stands close to the dancer, giving the impression that she depends
on him rather than on the more formal musicians in the background. It
may remind us of the Duke of Plaza Toro, who sings a song accompanied and
supported by his own particular private drum as well as by the orchestra.
The same quasi independence of the tabor and pipe is still to be found in
the folk music of the Catalans, the inhabitants of the north-east of
Spain. The dance which Mr. Casals--himself a Catalan--described to me,
is a round dance of some complexity. It is held in high esteem as a
national affair, and is danced by gentle and simple together. The band
consists of a tabor and pipe, four large rustic oboes, some cornets and a
double-bass. The interesting point is that the taborer always leads off
with a solo, a spirited flourish which Mr. Casals was so good as to play
on the piano. It is curious that there is only one such traditional
flourish, and this is used whatever the dance-music may be. Mr. Casals
described the effect of the whole band as moving and exciting in a high
degree.
I have an old newspaper cutting of the Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
watching the British sailor dance a hornpipe on the deck of a man-of-war,
accompanied by a couple of marines with a drum and fife. Shakespeare
evidently considered these two instruments as the military equivalent of
the tabor and pipe. He makes Benedick laugh at Claudio, in love, for
throwing over the drum and fife for the taborer's music.
In the middle ages the tabor and pipe were a good deal associated with
the performances of strollers and mountebanks. On the other hand, they
did not always take this role. There is a beautiful carved figure
playing the pipe and tabor in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral,
dating from 1270. In Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_ (Ed. 2, Plate XXIV),
a horse is shown, dancing to a tabor and pipe, from a MS. of about 1300;
on Plate XXIII is a drawing of a taboring hare (without a pipe) of about
the end of the 13th century. I am not aware that these instruments are
known to have existed in England earlier than the 13th century.
Fra Angelico puts these instruments into the hands of an angelic lady.
Her tabor is beautifully given, the pipe is but slightly indicated. In
Florence, among the singing boys of Luca della Robbia (reproduced in fig.
5), is to be found the best representation of a pipe player that I have
seen. There is a comparatively modern picture of Will Kemp, {102a} the
Shakespearian actor, performing his dance to Norwich. He started,
apparently in 1599, on the "first Monday in cleane Lent," and succeeded
in his object, though not without difficulty. His attendants' names are
pleasant: Taborer, Tom Slye, Servant, Wm. Bee, Overseer, Geo. Sprat.
I am glad to say that a tabor and pipe appear in one very honourable
secular affair, {102b} namely, a tournament, more correctly a joust or
single combat. One of the combatants is supported by a bagpipe, the
other by a tabor and pipe. It must be confessed, however, that the
taborer was not well treated in mediaeval times, badly paid, and not
received with the honour given to minstrels.
[Picture: Fig. 5.--Pipe and Tabor]
I like the rustic character of the pipe, and its association with
cheerful mediaeval vagabonds, and, still more, its memories of centuries
of village dances. I wish it had found a place in that "dancing in the
chequered shade," in which Milton has immortalised the jocund rebecks.
But Milton was a player of the bass viol, and does not show any especial
feeling for wind instruments, so at least I gather from Welch's
interesting book. {103a}
The taborer's pipe is a whistle; it happens to be made of wood, but its
musical structure is precisely that of the penny whistle, except in one
important particular, that it has but three holes in place of six. The
pipe is therefore a poor relation of that beautiful but extinct
instrument the _recorder_ {103b} which is only a wooden whistle. The
recorder has a low, hollow, but most effective tone, and I shall never
forget the ravishing effect of a quartet of recorders as played at a
concert given by Mr. Galpin, the well-known authority on old English
instruments. The taborer's pipe has none of the sweetness of the
recorder; it is essentially a shrill instrument; indeed, I am told by a
philologist that its old German name _Schwegel_ contains a root implying
shrillness. Another old German name is _Stamentien Pfeiffe_, which my
philological friend tells me does not occur in the best German
dictionary, and is of unknown origin.
As I have said, the pipe has but three holes (stopped by the index,
middle finger and thumb); these give four fundamental tones, which
however do not occur in the working scale of the instrument. In the
penny whistle, and most wood-wind instruments, the octave or first
harmonic gives the means of extending the scale. But in the taborer's
pipe the whole of the workable scale consists of harmonics; what
corresponds to the lower octave in the penny whistle--the non-harmonic or
fundamental part of the register--can only be faintly sounded. It is the
first harmonic or octave of the lowest of these faint notes that forms
the bottom note of the scale of the three-holed pipe. {104a} This note
is approximately D of the modern flat pitch. By successively raising the
middle and index fingers and then the thumb, E, F, and G are sounded.
Then all the finger holes are again closed, and by a little extra impulse
given to the breath A is sounded, being the harmonic 5th of the lower D.
Then follow B and C as harmonic 5ths of E and F, and the final D as the
octave of the lowest tone. Above this a variable number of notes--about
four--are producible by cross-fingerings. The ordinary work-a-day scale
of the taborer's pipe corresponds to the 12 or 13 uppermost notes of a
seven octave P-F., or to the upper notes of a piccolo. The galoubet's
scale begins on a B flat one-third below the taborer's pipe. There was
also a bass galoubet. This instrument is known from the figures in
Praetorius {104b} (1618), and also from one solitary pipe which has
escaped destruction. Mr. Galpin has a copy of it in his wonderful
collection, and has allowed me to play on it. {105a}
Mersenne, {105b} in speaking of the performance of an Englishman, John
Price, may give to some unwary reader the impression that the said John
could play a continuous scale of three octaves. But it is quite clear
that Mersenne included the faint D an octave below the lowest harmonic
note, so that Price could produce an _interval_ of three octaves but a
continuous _scale_ of only two octaves. This is not impossible. I can
play two out-of-tune shrieking notes above my high A, or 12th note, so
that I can, after a fashion, get within one note of John Price, and I
live in hopes of acquiring yet another and tying with him. The uppermost
sounds are made by what was technically known as _pinching_, _i.e._
crooking the thumb and forcing the nail into the top hole, so that only a
minute stream of air escapes. An old pipe of mine shows the mark of the
pinching thumb nail. Mr. Forsyth speaks of "an instrument with only a
few notes" as being "much restricted in the way of compass": {105c} this
is not quite just to the taborer's pipe.
In relation to Mr. Forsyth's discussion on the _diauloi_, it should be
remembered that the double pipe still exists in Russia. It is described
by Mahillon {106} under the name of the Gelaika. The fundamental tones
of the two instruments are the lower F sharp in the treble stave, and the
B natural above it. Mahillon adds: "tantot elles se partagent la
melodie, d'autres fois elles font entendre des intonations doubles."
With regard to the Greek double-pipe, I am sure that Mr. Forsyth is
right, and that the bandage (_phorbeia_), which is commonly said to have
served to compress the cheeks, must have had some other use. I have no
doubt that he is justified in assuming that the bandage served to support
the instrument. In a pipe with three holes on the upper surface a
certain amount of grip on the instrument is given by pressure of the
little finger above and the thumb below, and with practice it would be
quite possible to manage the instrument. Still, the bandage would give
freedom to the fingers, and for the four-holed pipe this form of support
would be absolutely necessary. My conclusions are based on experiments
on the penny whistle temporarily converted into an instrument for one
hand.
In speculating on the evolution of the taborer's pipe, it must be
remembered that its harmonics (on which, as I have said, its scale
depends) are those of a cylindrical pipe, and a pipe that is long in
relation to its bore. I like to think that it had its origin in some of
the many natural hollow cylinders found among plants, for instance, the
reed grass that grows in fens and dykes, or the elder which supplies a
pipe when its pith is bored out, and is perhaps more familiar as the
parent of pop-guns than of musical instruments. Then again, there are
the hollow stalks of umbelliferous plants, such as angelica and hemlock.
The late Mr. Welch, in his interesting book on Recorders, pointed out
{107} that _sambucus_ the elder, _calamus_ the reed, and _cicuta_ the
hemlock all occur in classic verse in relation to rustic music. Indeed
the word calamus still lives, though corrupted to the French chalumeau
and still further altered to the German Schalmei and the English shawm.
Welch doubts whether hemlock or similar stems would be strong enough for
the suggested purpose. They certainly would not stand rough usage, but
it is possible to make a taborer's pipe out of an _Angelica_ stem, for I
have one. It is husky and out of tune, but it shows the thing to be
possible.
This connexion between music and the form of plants is not without
interest from a wider point of view. We ask ourselves why hollow
cylinders occur so commonly in vegetable architecture. That rough
teacher, the struggle for life, has taught plants that a tube is,
mechanically speaking, the best way of arranging a limited amount of
formative or building material. The hemlock or the reed can thus make
stalks of ample strength and at comparatively slight cost. There is
romance in the fact that plants made tubular stems to their own private
profit for unnumbered ages before the coming of man: the hollow reeds
waiting all these aeons till Pan should come and make them musical.
The pipe and tabor have probably come down to us less changed than any
other wood-wind instrument, with the possible exception of the panpipes;
both flutes and flageolets have become covered with keys, while the pipe
still has no more than three aboriginal holes, one for the thumb behind
and two for the fingers in front. I have wasted some time in trying to
make out how the early taborers held their pipes, but musical instruments
are generally drawn with hopeless inaccuracy. I have been rewarded by
finding that a boy in Luca della Robbia's bas-relief (Fig. 5) at Florence
holds the pipe just as I do, {108a} between the ring and little fingers,
which keep the instrument steady even when all three holes are uncovered.
There is an interesting point connected with the true or French
flageolet. This instrument has six holes arranged in two triads, a thumb
and two fingers of the right hand, and the same for the left, so that if
all holes are open there would seem to be nothing to steady the pipe.
But in Mr. Welch's book (p. 50) is a figure from Greeting's _Pleasant
Companion _{108b} showing how the flageolet should be held, and this,
curiously enough, is one of the best views of what I hold to be the
proper grip for the taborer's pipe.
The tabor is still much as it was in Fra Angelico's day (judging from the
angel above referred to), and indeed in earlier times, as shown in the
piping angel in Lincoln Cathedral. We can see what a drum-maker calls
the ropes and braces {109a} for tightening the parchment; the snares are
also shown in many early drawings of tabors. These are pieces of gut or
of horse-hair, stretched across the drum-head, which add a spirited
rattle to its tone. Why the first edition of the _Dictionary of Music_
went out of its way to say that the tabor had no snares I cannot guess.
In many of the mediaeval drawings the artist is shown beating his drum on
the snare side. I had fancied that this was only one more instance of
the bad drawing of musical instruments, but when I saw the careful work
of Luca della Robbia, in which the tabors are all beaten on the snare
side, I could no longer doubt. I was, however, glad to find in a French
account {109b} of the Provencal 3-holed pipe or galoubet, that this
custom survives. In Luca della Robbia's work a single snare-cord is
shown instead of four to six catgut lines as in modern drums and this is
also true of the Provencal instrument. So that both the characteristics
that seemed strange to me in Luca's tabor survive in Provence.
It may not be generally known that the French for the snare of a drum is
_timbre_; this is the original meaning of the word, and its familiar use
to mean the characteristic tone of a musical sound is later. According
to Darmstetter the word 'timbre' is own brother to 'tambour,' both being
derived from a low Latin form of tympanum.
The tabor-stick has changed since the early centuries. In some of the
old drawings the taborer is striking his instrument with a bludgeon,
instead of the light and elegant sticks such as are to be seen in Mr.
Manning's collection at Oxford. Such implements were doubtless treasured
by the taborer. Valmajour, the tabourinaire in Daudet's _Numa
Roumestan_, possessed a drum-stick which had been in the family for 200
years.
The way of holding the drum has not always been the same. Nowadays we
are told to hang it from the thumb or wrist. But in many early drawings
it is apparently firmly strapped or tied to the forearm, or even above
the elbow. {110a} The Lincoln Angel and Luca's boy have tabors supported
by a string round the neck, and this I find to be the best method.
I hope that the drum may long survive in Provence with its ancient
companion the pipe. {110b} A different instrument, however, supplies an
accompaniment to the galoubet in the Basque provinces. It is a rough
sort of lyre with six or seven strings tuned alternately to the tonic and
dominant, which beaten with a stick make a drone bass to the pipe. It
has the attractively savage name of _toon-toona_, an imitative word like
tom-tom; the galoubet is called the _cherula_.
From a French cyclopaedia I learn that in Provence the taborer's art was
a secret passed on from father to son, a mystery they refused to teach
for money. They appeared to hold the patriotic opinion that the art of
playing the galoubet, or as they call it, the _flutet_, has never spread
from Provence because of its extreme difficulty. This has been a comfort
to me in my attempts to play the pipe and tabor.
APPENDIX I
DRAWINGS AND CARVINGS OF PIPERS
At the risk of being tedious in the way of repetition I have thought it
worth while to put together a rough list of the illustrations of pipe and
tabor which I have met with.
The earliest representation of a player on the 3-holed pipe, of which I
have any knowledge, is the beautiful figure in the Angel Choir at
Lincoln. Its date is, I believe, 1270, and it has been injured so that
it is not possible to be sure of the manner in which the pipe is held.
The tabor is suspended by means of a string round the neck.
The most careful representation of our instrument is that by Luca della
Robbia, figured at p. 102, in which what I call the correct grip is
given.
In Pierpoint Morgan's _Catalogue of Early Printed Books_, Vol II., p.
118, are some illustrations from Gafori, 1492. The pipe is quite
incorrectly held, more than two fingers being employed while the thumb is
free.
_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 82. In a figure from Pierre Michaud's _Dance des
Aveugles_, 1485, the pipe has four instead of two holes on the upper
surface.
_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 86. The pipe is incorrect, the holes being too far
from the lower end of the instrument; the hand is wrongly given according
to our standards, the little finger being flourished in the air. The
tabor is suspended from the hand as in the English style, and is struck
on the snare side.
In Kemp's _Nine Daies Wonder_ (see above p. 102) the drawing of the pipe
is not instructive.
In Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_ there are several early drawings of
performers on the 3-holed pipe. The grip in the majority is correct,
_i.e._ there are three fingers visible, two covering the holes and the
ring finger gripping against the little finger underneath. The
illustrations are also correct in the fingers being close to the lower
end of the pipe.
In Betley Hall, Staffordshire, is a painted glass window, probably dating
from 1535, in which a piper is represented. Mr. Tollet, a former squire
of Betley, gave an account of it in Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare,
which is reprinted in a privately published book by Barthomley. The pipe
is a conical tube, on which four fingers are represented; it could not, I
believe, have been drawn from a model.
In Mahillon's _Catalogue_ i., p. 375, is a figure of a Basque playing a
3-holed pipe, and accompanying himself on the tountouna, a rough stringed
instrument. The grip seems to be carefully drawn, but it is hard to see
how it could be efficient, only two fingers being seen on the upper
surface of the pipe. On the other hand, in a photograph of a Basque
playing the same instrument (which I owe to the kindness of a
correspondent), the grip is like that figured by Mahillon.
Finally, in _Punch_, November 13, 1907, a 3-holed pipe is incorrectly
drawn. The bore of the instrument is conical, the holes are incorrectly
given, and the hand is wrong.
APPENDIX II
THE FINGERING OF THE 3-HOLED PIPER
The following diagram gives the fingerings which I have found to be best
for a 3-holed pipe, a copy of an old one in the possession of Mr.
Manning, of Oxford, to whom I am indebted for much kindly assistance.
[Picture: Fig. 6. 3-holed pipe fingering]
The fingerings are given for the keys D and G. I have not attempted to
play in other keys. For each note the upper circle represents the
thumbhole; 1 and 2 are for the first and second fingers respectively.
The black circles are supposed to be closed, the white are open. Holes
that are half open are represented by circles half white, half black. In
the case of A2 and B2 the circles are three-quarter black; this means
that a very minute crack is left open.
It is important to remember that each pipe has its individuality. For
instance, in one of my instruments G must have the thumb hole completely
open, and the alternate fingering (with the index hole closed) is quite
out of tune. The note E is sometimes sharp; in the pipe, the fingerings
of which are given in fig. 6, this fault is corrected by means of a thin
metal lining to the lower hole.
VIII
STEPHEN HALES {115}
1677-1761
In attempting to give a picture of any man's life and work it is well to
follow the rule of the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and begin with
the dates of his birth and death. Stephen Hales was born in 1677 and
died in 1761, having had experiences of the reigns of seven sovereigns.
The authorities for his life are given in my article on Hales in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. Botanists in general probably take
their knowledge of the main facts of his life from Sachs' _History of
Botany_. It is therefore worth while to point out that both the original
and the English translation (1890) contain the incorrect statement that
Hales was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and that he held the
living of Riddington, whereas he is one of the glories of Corpus, and was
perpetual curate of Teddington. These inaccuracies, however, are trifles
in relation to the great and striking merits of Sachs' _History_, a work
which, to my thinking, exhibits the strength and brilliance of the
author's mind as clearly as any of his more technical writings. Sachs
was no niggling biographer, and his broad vigorous outlines must form the
basis of what anyone, who follows him, can write about the botanists of a
past day.
To return to Hales' birth. It is of interest to note how he fits into
the changing procession of lives, to see what great men overlap his
youth, who were his contemporaries in his maturity, and who were
appearing on the scientific stage as he was leaving it.
Sir Isaac Newton was the dominant figure in English science while Hales
was developing. He died in 1727, the year in which Hales published his
_Vegetable Staticks_, a book, which like the _Origin of Species_,
appeared when its author was 50 years of age. Newton was at the zenith
of his fame when Hales was a little boy of 10--his _Principia_ having
been published in 1687, and when Hales went up to Cambridge in 1696 he
must have seen the great man coming from his rooms {116a} in the N.E.
corner of the Great Court of Trinity--that corner where Newton's and
other more modern ghosts surely walk--Macaulay who used to read, pacing
to and fro by the chapel, {116b} and Thackeray who, like his own Esmond,
lived "near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings." In any case there can
be no doubt that the genius of Newton cast its light on Hales, as Sachs
has clearly pointed out (_Hist. Bot._, Eng. Tr., p. 477). Another great
man influenced Hales, namely Robert Boyle, who was born 1627 and died
1691. John Mayow again, that brilliant son of Oxford, whose premature
death at 39 in 1679 was so heavy a blow to science, belongs to the same
school as Hales--the school which was within an ace of founding a
rational chemistry, but which was separated from the more obvious
founders of that science by the phlogiston-theory of Becchers and Stahl.
I do not find any evidence that Hales was influenced by the phlogistic
writers, and this is comprehensible enough, if, as I think, he belongs to
the school of Mayow and Boyle.
The later discoverers in chemistry are of the following dates, Black
1728-1799, Cavendish 1731-1810, Priestley 1733-1804, Scheele 1742-1786,
Lavoisier 1743, guillotined 1794. These were all born about the time of
Hales' zenith, nor did he live {117} to see the great results they
accomplished. But it should not be forgotten that Hales' chemical work
made more easy the triumphant road they trod.
I have spoken of Hales in relation to chemists and physicists because,
though essentially a physiologist, he seems to me to have been a chemist
and physicist who turned his knowledge to the study of life, rather than
a physiologist who had some chemical knowledge.
Whewell points out in his _History of the Inductive __Sciences_ {118a}
that the physiologist asks questions of Nature in a sense differing from
that of the physicist. The _Why_? of the physicist meant _Through what
causes_? that of the physiologist--_to what end_? This distinction no
longer holds good, and if it is to be applied to Hales it is a test which
shows him to be a physicist. For, as Sachs shows, though Hales was
necessarily a teleologist in the theological sense, he always asked for
purely mechanical explanations. He was the most unvitalistic of
physiologists, and I think his explanations suffered from this cause.
For instance, he seems to have held that to compare the effect of heat on
a growing root to the action of the same cause on a thermometer {118b}
was a quite satisfactory proceeding. And there are many other passages
in _Vegetable Staticks_ where one feels that his speculations are too
heavy for his knowledge.
Something must be said of Hales' relation to his predecessors and
successors in botanical work. The most striking of his immediate
predecessors were Malpighi 1628-1694, Grew 1628-1711, Ray 1627-1705, and
Mariotte (birth unknown, died 1684); and of these the three first were
born one hundred years before the publication of _Vegetable Staticks_.
Malpighi and Grew were essentially plant-anatomists, though both dealt in
physiological speculations. Their works were known to Hales, but they do
not seem to have influenced him.
We have seen that as a chemist Hales is somewhat of a solitary figure,
standing between what may be called the periods of Boyle and of
Cavendish. This is even more striking in his botanical position, for
here he stands in the solitude of all great original inquirers. We must
go back to Van Helmont, 1577-1644, to find anyone comparable to him as an
experimentalist. His successors have discovered much that was hidden
from him; but consciously or unconsciously they have all learned from him
the true method and spirit of physiological work.
It may be urged that in exalting Hales I am unfair to Malpighi. It may
be fairer to follow Sachs in linking these great men together, and to
insist on the wonderful fact that before Malpighi's book in 1671,
vegetable physiology was still where Aristotle left it, whereas 56 years
later, in 1727, we find in Hales' book an experimental science in the
modern sense.
It should not be forgotten that students of animal physiology agree with
botanists as to Hales' greatness. A writer in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ speaks of him as "the true founder of the modern experimental
method in physiology."
According to Sachs, Ray made some interesting observations on the
transmission of water, but on the whole what he says on this subject is
not important. There is no evidence that Ray influenced Hales.
Mariotte, the physicist, came to one physiological conclusion of great
weight; {119} namely, that the different qualities of plants, _e.g._
taste, odour, etc., do not depend on the absorption from the soil of
differently scented or flavoured principles, as the Aristotelians
imagined, but on _specific differences_ in the way in which different
plants deal with identical food material--an idea which is at the root of
a sane physiological outlook. These views were published in 1679, {120}
and may have been known to Hales. He certainly was interested in such
ideas, as is indicated by his attempts to give flavour to fruit by
supplying them with medicated fluids. He probably did not expect
success, for he remarks (p. 360): "The specifick differences of
vegetables, which are all sustained and grow from the same nourishment,
is [_sic_] doubtless owing to the very different formation of their
minute vessels, whereby an almost infinite variety of combinations of the
common principles of vegetables is made." He continues in the following
delightful passage: "And could our eyes attain to a sight of the
admirable texture of the parts on which the specific differences in
plants depends, [_sic_] what an amazing and beautiful scene of inimitable
embroidery should we behold? what a variety of masterly strokes of
machinery? what evident marks of consummate wisdom should we be
entertained with?" To conclude what has been said on Hales'
chronological position--Ingenhousz, the chief founder of the modern point
of view on plant nutrition, was born 1730 and published his book, _On
Vegetables_, etc., in 1779. So that what was said of Hales' chemical
position is again true of him considered in relation to nutrition; he did
not live to see the great discoveries made at the close of the 18th
century.
There is in his writing a limpid truthfulness and simplicity,
unconsciously decorated with pretty 18th century words and
half-rusticities which give it a perennial charm. And inasmuch as I
desire to represent Hales, not only as a man to be respected but also to
be loved, it will be as well to give what is known of the personal side
of his character before going on to a detailed account of his work.
He was, as we have seen, entered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in
June 1696. In February 1702-3 he was admitted a fellow of the College.
It was during his life as a fellow that he began to work at chemistry in
what he calls "the elaboratory in Trinity College." The room is now
occupied by the Senior Bursar, and forms part of the beautiful range of
buildings in the bowling green, which, freed from stucco and other
desecration, are made visible in their ancient guise by the piety of a
son of Trinity and the wisdom of the College authorities. It was here,
according to Dr. Bentley, that "the thieving Bursars of the old set
embezzled the College timber," {121} and it was this room that was fitted
up as "an elegant laboratory" in 1706 for John Francis Vigani, an Italian
chemist, who had taught unofficially in the University for some years,
and became, in 1703, the first Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge.
Judging from his book, _Medulla Chymiae_, 1682, Vigani was an eminently
practical person, who cared greatly about the proper make of a furnace
and the form of a retort but was not cumbered with theories.
Hales vacated his fellowship and became minister or perpetual curate of
Teddington {122} in 1708-9, and there he lived until his death, fifty-two
years afterwards. He was married (? 1719) and his wife died without
issue in 1721.
He attracted the attention of Royalty, and received plants from the
King's garden at Hampton Court. Frederick Prince of Wales, the father of
George III., is said to have been fond of surprising him in his
laboratory at Teddington. This must surely be a unique habit in a
prince, but we may remember that, in the words of the Prince's mock
epitaph, "Since it is only Fred there's no more to be said." He became
Clerk of the Closet to the Dowager Princess, and this "mother of the best
of Kings," as she calls herself, put up his monument in Westminster
Abbey. Hales had the honour of receiving the Copley Medal from the Royal
Society in 1739, and Oxford made him a D.D. in 1733.
Some years ago I made a pilgrimage to Teddington, and found in the parish
registers many interesting entries by his hand; the last, in a tremulous
writing, is on November 4th, 1760, two months before he died. He was
clearly an active parish priest. He made his female parishioners do
public penance when he thought they deserved it. He did much for the
fabric of the church. "In 1754 {123a} he helped the parish to a decent
water supply and characteristically records in the parish register that
the outflow was such as to fill a two-quart vessel in 'three swings of a
pendulum beating seconds, which pendulum was 39+2/10 inches long from the
suspending nail to the middle of the plumbet or bob.'" Under the tower
he helped to build (which now serves as a porch) Stephen Hales is buried,
and the stone which covers his body is being worn away by the feet of the
faithful. By the piety of a few botanists a mural tablet, on which the
epitaph is restored, has been placed near the grave.
Horace Walpole called Hales "a poor, good, primitive creature" and Pope
{123b} (who was his neighbour) said, "I shall be very glad to see Dr.
Hales, and always love to see him, he is so worthy and good a man."
Peter Collinson writes of "his constant serenity and cheerfulness of
mind"; it is also recorded that "he could look even upon wicked men, and
those who did him unkind offices, without any emotion of particular
indignation; not from want of discernment or sensibility, but he used to
consider them only like those experiments which, upon trial, he found
could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he therefore
calmly and dispassionately laid aside."
Hales' work may be divided into three heads:
I Physiological, animal and vegetable;
II Chemical;
III Inventions and miscellaneous essays.
Under No. I I shall deal only with his work on plants. The last heading
(No. III) I shall only refer to slightly, but the variety and ingenuity
of his miscellaneous publications is perhaps worth mention here as an
indication of the quality of his mind. It seems to me to have had
something in common with the versatile ingenuity of Erasmus Darwin and of
his grandson Francis Galton. The miscellaneous work also exhibits Hales
as a philanthropist, who cared passionately for bettering the health and
comfort of his fellow creatures by improving their conditions of life.
His chief book from the physiological and chemical point of view is his
_Vegetable Staticks_. It will be convenient to begin with the
physiological part of this book, and refer to the chemistry later.
_Vegetable Staticks_ is a small 8vo of 376 pages, dated on the title-page
1727. The "_Imprimatur_ Isaac Newton Pr. Reg. Soc." is dated February
16, 1720, and this date is of some slight interest, for Newton died on
March 20, and _Vegetable Staticks_ must have been one of the last books
he signed.
The dedication is to George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III. The
author cannot quite avoid the style of his day, for instance: "And as
_Solomon_ the greatest and wisest of men, disdeigned {124} not to inquire
into the nature of Plants, _from the __Cedar of Lebanon_, _to the Hyssop
that springeth out of the wall_: So it will not, I presume, be an
unacceptable entertainment to your Royal Highness," etc.
But the real interest of the dedication is its clear statement of his
views on the nutrition of plants. He asserts that plants obtain
nourishment, not only from the earth, "but also more sublimed and exalted
food from the air, that wonderful fluid, which is of such importance to
the life of Vegetables and Animals," etc. We shall see that his later
statement is not so definite, and it is well to rescue this downright
assertion from oblivion.
His book begins with the research for which he is best known, namely that
on transpiration. He took a sunflower growing in a flowerpot, covering
the surface of the earth with a plate of thin milled lead, and cemented
it so that no vapour could pass, leaving a corked hole to allow of the
plant being watered. He did not take steps to prevent loss through the
pot, but at the end of the experiment cut off the plant, cemented the
stump, and found that the "unglazed porous pot" perspired 2 ozs. in 12
hours, and for this he made due allowance.
The plant so prepared he proceeded to weigh at stated intervals. He
obtained the area of the leaves by dividing them into parcels according
to their several sizes, and measuring one leaf {125} of each parcel. The
loss of water in 12 hours converted to the metric system is 1.3 c.c. per
100 sq. cm. of leaf-surface; and this is of the same order of magnitude
as Sachs' result, {126a} namely, 2.2 c.c. per 100 sq. cm.
He goes on to measure the surface of the roots {126b} and to estimate the
rate of absorption per area. The calculation is of no value, since he
did not know how small a part of the roots is absorbent, nor how
enormously the surface of that part is increased by the presence of
root-hairs. He goes on to estimate the rate of the flow of water up the
stem; this would be 34 cubic inches in 12 hours if the stem (which was
one square inch in section) were a hollow tube. He then allowed a
sunflower stem to wither and to become completely dry, and found that it
had lost .75 of its weight, and assuming that the .25 of the "solid
parts" left was useless for the transmission of water he increases his 34
by 1/3 and gives 45-1/3 cubic inches in 12 hours as the rate. But the
solid matter which he neglected contained the vessels, and he would have
been nearer to the truth had he corrected his figures on this basis. The
simplest plan is to compare his results with those obtained by Sachs
{126c} in allowing plants to absorb solutions of lithium-salts. If the
flow takes place through conduits equivalent to a quarter of a square
inch in area, the fluid will rise in 12 hours to a height of 4+34 or 136
inches, or in one hour to 28.3 cm. {126d} This is a result comparable
to, though very much smaller than, Sachs' result with the sunflower, viz.
63 cm. per hour.
The data are however hardly worth treating in this manner. But it is of
historic interest to note that when Sachs was at work on his
_Pflanzenphysiologie_, published in 1865, he was compelled to go back
nearly 140 years to find any results with which he could compare his own.
We need not follow Hales into his comparison between the "perspiration"
of the sunflower and that of a man, nor into his other transpiration
experiments on the cabbage, vine, apple, etc. But one or two points must
be noted. He found {127a} the "middle rate of perspiration" of a
sunflower in 12 hours of daylight to be 20 ounces, and that of a "dry
warm night" about 3 ounces; thus the day transpiration was roughly seven
times the nocturnal rate. This difference may be accounted for by the
closure of the stomata at night, a phenomenon unknown to Hales.
Hales {127b} notes another point which a knowledge of stomatal behaviour
might have explained, viz., that with "scanty watering the perspiration
much abated"; he does not attempt an explanation, but merely refers to it
as a "healthy latitude of perspiration in this sunflower."
In the course of his work on sunflowers he notices that the flower
follows the sun. He says, however that it is "not by turning round with
the sun," _i.e._ that it is not a twisting of the stalk, and goes on to
call it _nutation_, which must be the _locus classicus_ for the term used
in this sense.
An experiment {128a} that I do not remember to have seen quoted elsewhere
is worth describing. It is incidentally of interest as showing the
generous scale on which his work was planned. An apple bough five feet
long was fixed to a vertical glass tube nine feet long. The tube being
above and the branch hanging below, the pressure of the column of water
would act in concert with the suck of the transpiring leaves, instead of
in opposition to this force. He then cut the bare stem of his branch in
two, placing the apical half of the specimen (bearing side branches and
leaves) with its cut end in a glass vessel of water; the basal and
leafless half of the branch remained attached to the vertical tube of
water. In the next 30 hours only 6 ounces dripped through the leafless
branch, whereas the leafy branch absorbed 18 ounces. This, as he says,
shows the great power of perspiration. And though he does not pursue the
experiment, it is worthy of note as an attempt, like those of Janse
{128b} and others, to correlate the flow of water under pressure with the
flow due to transpiration.
It is interesting to find that Hales used the three methods of estimating
transpiration which have been employed in modern times--namely, (i)
weighing, (ii) a rough sort of potometer, (iii) enclosing a branch in a
glass balloon and collecting the precipitated moisture, the well-known
plan followed by various French observers.
He (_Vegetable Staticks_, p. 51) concluded his balance of loss and gain
in transpiring plants by estimating the amount of available water in the
soil to a depth of three feet, and calculating how long his sunflower
would exist without watering. He further concludes (p. 57) that an
annual rainfall of 22 inches is "sufficient for all the purposes of
nature, in such flat countries as this about Teddington."
He constantly notes small points of interest, _e.g._ (p. 82) that with
cut branches the water absorbed diminishes each day, and that the former
vigour of absorption may be partly renewed by cutting a fresh surface.
{129a}
He also showed (p. 89) that the transpiration current can flow perfectly
well from apex to base when the apical end is immersed in water.
These are familiar facts to us, but we should realise that it is to the
industry and ingenuity of Hales that we owe them. In a repetition (p.
90) of the last experiment we have the first mention of a fact
fundamentally important. He took two branches (which with a clerical
touch he calls M and N), and having removed the bark from a part of the
branch, dipped the ends in water, N with the great end downwards but M
upside down. In this way he showed that the bark was not necessary for
the absorption or transmission of water. {129b} I suspect that one
branch was inverted out of respect for the hypothesis of sap-circulation.
He perhaps thought that water could travel apically by the wood, but only
by the bark in the opposite direction.
Next in order (p. 95) comes his well-known experiment on the pressure
exerted by peas increasing in size as they imbibe water. There are,
however, pitfalls in this result of which Hales was unaware, and perhaps
the chief interest to us now is that he considered the imbibition of the
peas {130a} to be the same order of phenomenon as the absorption of water
by a cut branch--notwithstanding the fact that he knew the absorption to
depend largely on the leaves. {130b} It may be noticed that Sachs, in
his imbibitional view of water-transport, may be counted a follower of
Hales.
In order to ascertain "whether there was any lateral communication of the
sap and sap vessels, as there is of blood in animals," Hales (p. 121)
made the experiment which has been repeated in modern laboratories,
{130c} _i.e._ cutting a "gap to the pith," and another opposite to it and
a few inches above. This he did on an oak branch six feet long whose
basal end was placed in water. The branch continued to "perspire" for
two days, but gave off only about half the amount of water transpired by
a normal branch. {130d} He does not trouble himself about this
difference, being satisfied of "great quantities of liquor having passed
laterally by the gap."
He is interested in the fact of lateral transmission in connexion with
the experiment of the suspended tree (Fig. 24, p. 126), which is
dependent on the neighbours to which it is grafted for its water supply.
This seems to be one of the results that convinced him that there is a
distribution of food material which cannot be described as circulation of
sap in the sense that was then in vogue.
Hales (p. 143) was one of the first {131a} to make the well-known
experiment--the removal of a ring of bark, with the result that the edge
of bark nearest the base of the branch swells and thickens in a
characteristic manner. He points out that if a number of rings are made
one above the other, the swelling is seen at the lower edge of each
isolated piece of bark, and therefore (p. 143) the swelling must be
attributed "to some other cause than the stoppage of the sap in its
return downwards," because the first gap in the bark should be sufficient
to check the whole of the flowing sap. {131b} He must, in fact have seen
that there is a redistribution of plastic material in each section of
bark.
We now for the moment leave the subject of transpiration and pass on to
that of root-pressure on which Hales is equally illuminating.
His first experiment (_Vegetable Staticks_, p. 100), was with a vine, to
which he attached a vertical pipe made of three lengths of glass-tubing
jointed together. His method is worth notice. He attached the stump to
the manometer with a "stiff cement made of melted Beeswax and Turpentine,
and bound it over with several folds of wet bladder and pack-thread." We
cannot wonder that the making of water-tight connexions was a great
difficulty, and we can sympathise with his belief that he could have got
a column more than 21 feet high but for the leaking of the joints on
several occasions. He notes the familiar fact that the vine-stump
absorbed water before it began to extrude it.
He afterwards (pp. 106-7) used a mercury gauge, and registered a
root-pressure of 32.5 inches or 36 feet 5.5 inches of water, which he
proceeds to compare with his own determination of the blood-pressure of
the horse (8 feet) and of other animals. Perhaps the most interesting of
his root-pressure experiments was that (p. 110) in which several
manometers were attached to the branches of a bleeding vine, and showed a
result which convinced him that "the force is not from the root only, but
must proceed from some power in the stem and branches," a conclusion
which some modern workers have also arrived at.
Assimilation.
Hales' belief that plants draw part of their food from the air, and
again, that air is the breath of life, of vegetables as well as of
animals (p. 148), are based upon a series of chemical experiments
performed by himself. Not being satisfied with what he knew of the
relation between "air" (by which he meant gas) and the solid bodies in
which he supposed gases to be fixed, he delayed the publication of
_Vegetable Staticks_ for some two years, and carried out the series of
observations which are mentioned in his title-page as "An attempt to
analyse the air, by a great variety of chymio-statical experiments,"
occupying 162 pages of his book. {133}
The theme of his inquiry he takes (_Vegetable Staticks_, p. 165) from
"the illustrious Sir _Isaac Newton_," who believed that "dense bodies by
fermentation rarify into several sorts of Air; and this Air by
fermentation, and sometimes without it, returns into dense bodies."
Hales' method consisted in heating a variety of substances, _e.g._
wheat-grains, pease, wood, hog's blood, fallow-deer's horn,
oyster-shells, red-lead, gold, etc., and measuring the "air" given off
from them. He also tried the effect of acid on iron filings,
oyster-shells, etc. In the true spirit of experiment he began by
strongly heating his retorts (one of which was a musket barrel) to make
sure that no air arose from them. It is not evident to me why he
continued at this subject so long. He had no means of distinguishing one
gas from another, and almost the only quality noted is a want of
permanence, _e.g._ when the CO2 produced was dissolved by the water over
which he collected it. Sir E. Thorpe {134a} points out that Hales must
have prepared hydrogen, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, sulphur dioxide,
and marsh gas. It may, I think, be said that Hales deserved the title
usually given to Priestley, viz. "the father of pneumatic {134b}
chemistry."
Perhaps the most interesting experiment made by Hales is the heating of
minium (red-lead) with the production of oxygen. It proves that he knew,
as Boyle, Hooke and Mayow did before him, that a body gains weight in
oxidation. Thus Hales remarks: "That the sulphurous and aereal particles
of the fire are lodged in many of those bodies which it acts upon, and
thereby considerably augments their weight, is very evident in Minium or
Red Lead, which is observed to increase in weight in undergoing the
action of the fire. The acquired redness of the Minium indicating the
addition of plenty of sulphur in the operation." He also speaks of the
gas distilled from minium, and remarks: "It was doubtless this quantity
of air in the Minium which burst the hermetically sealed glasses of the
excellent _Mr. Boyle_, when he heated the Minium contained in them by a
burning glass" (p. 287).
This was the method also used by Priestley in his celebrated experiment
of heating red-lead in hydrogen, whereby the metallic lead reappears and
the hydrogen disappears by combining with the oxygen set free. This was
expressed in the language of the day as the reconstruction of metallic
lead by the addition of phlogiston (the hydrogen) to the calx of lead
(minium). Thorpe points out the magnitude of the discovery that
Priestley missed, and it may be said that Hales too was on the track, and
had he known as much as Priestley it would not have been phlogiston that
kept him from becoming a Cavendish or Lavoisier. What chiefly concerns
us, however, is the bearing of Hales' chemical work on his theories of
nutrition. He concludes that "air makes a very considerable part of the
substance of Vegetables," and goes on to say (p. 211) that "many of these
particles of air" are "in a fixt state, strongly adhering to and wrought
into the substance of" plants. {135a} He has some idea of the
instability of complex substances, and of the importance of the fact, for
he says {135b} that "if all the parts of matter were only endued with a
strongly attracting power, [the] whole [of] nature would then become one
unactive cohering lump." This may remind us of Herbert Spencer's words:
"Thus the essential characteristic of living organic matter, is that it
unites this large quantity of contained motion with a degree of cohesion
that permits temporary fixity of arrangement" (_First Principles_,
section 103). With regard to the way in which plants absorb and fix the
"air" which he finds in their tissues, Hales is not clear; he does not in
any way distinguish between respiration and assimilation. But as I have
already said, he definitely asserts that plants draw "sublimed and
exalted food" from the air.
As regards the action of light on plants, he suggests (p. 327) that "by
freely entering the expanded surfaces of leaves and flowers" light may
"contribute much to the ennobling principles of vegetation." He goes on
to quote Newton (_Opticks, query_ 30): "The change of bodies into light,
and of light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of nature,
which seems delighted with transformations." It is a problem for the
antiquary to determine, whether or no Swift took from Newton the idea of
bottling and recapturing sunshine as practised by the philosopher of
Lagado. He could hardly have got it from Hales, since _Gulliver's
Travels_ was published in 1726, before _Vegetable Staticks_.
Nevertheless, Hales is not quite consistent about the action of light;
thus (p. 351) he speaks of the dull light in a closely planted wood as
checking the perspiration of the lower branches, so that "drawing little
nourishment, they perish." This is doubtless one effect of bad
illumination under the above-named conditions, but the check to
photosynthesis is a more serious result. In his final remarks on
vegetation (p. 375) Hales says in relation to green-houses, "It is
certainly of as great importance to the life of the plants to discharge
that infected rancid air by the admission of fresh, as it is to defend
them from the extream cold of the outward air." This idea of ventilating
greenhouses he carried out in a plant-house designed by him for the
Dowager Princess of Wales, in which warm fresh air was admitted. The
house in question was built in 1761 in the Princess's garden at Kew,
which afterwards became what we now know as Kew Gardens. The site of
Hales' greenhouse, which was only pulled down in 1861, is marked by a big
wistaria which formerly grew on the greenhouse wall. It should be
recorded that Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer {137a} planned a similar arrangement
independently of Hales, and found it produced a marked improvement of the
well-being of the plants.
It is worthy of note, that though Hales must have known Malpighi's theory
of the function of leaves (which was broadly speaking the same as his
own), he does not as far as I know refer to it. In his preface (p. ii.)
he regrets that Malpighi and Grew, whose anatomical knowledge he
appreciated, had not "fortuned to have fallen into this statical {137b}
way of inquiry." I believe he means an inquiry of an experimental
nature, and I think it was because Malpighi's theory was dependent on
analogy rather than on ascertained facts that it influenced Hales so
little.
There is another part of physiology on which Hales threw light. He was
the first, I believe, to investigate the distribution of growth in
developing shoots and growing leaves, by marking them and measuring the
distance between the marks after an interval of time. He describes (p.
330) and figures (p. 344) with his usual thoroughness the apparatus
employed; this was a comb-like object made by fixing into a handle five
pins .25 inch apart from one another; the points being dipped in red-lead
and oil, a young vine-shoot was marked with ten dots .25 inch apart. In
the autumn he examined his specimen, and finds that the youngest
internode or "joynt" had grown most, and the basal part having been
"almost hardened" when he marked it, had "extended very little." In
this--a tentative experiment--he made the mistake of not re-measuring his
plants at short intervals of time, but it was an admirable beginning, and
the direct ancestor of Sachs' {138a} great research on the subject. In
his discussion on growth it is interesting to find the idea of
turgescence supplying the motive force for extension. This conception he
takes from Borelli. {138b}
Hales sees in the nodes of plants "plinths or abutments for the dilating
pith to exert its force on" (p. 335); but he acutely foresees a modern
objection {138c} to the explanation of growth as regulated solely by the
hydrostatic pressure in the cell. Hales says (p. 335): "But a dilating
spongy substance, by equally expanding itself every way, would not
produce an oblong shoot but rather a globose one."
It is not my place to speak of Hales' work in animal physiology, nor of
those researches bearing on the welfare of the human race which occupied
his later years. Thus he wrote against the habit of drinking spirits,
and made experiments on ventilation by which he benefited English and
French prisons, and even the House of Commons; then too he was occupied
in attempts to improve the method of distilling potable water at sea, and
of preserving meat and biscuit on long voyages. {139a}
We are concerned with him simply as a vegetable physiologist, and in that
character his fame is imperishable. Of the book which I have been using
as my text, namely, _Vegetable Staticks_, Sachs says: "It was the first
comprehensive work the world had seen which was devoted to the nutrition
of plants and the movement of their sap. . . . Hales had the art of
making plants reveal themselves. By experiments carefully planned and
cunningly carried out he forced them to betray the energies hidden in
their apparently inactive bodies." {139b} These words, spoken by a great
physiologist of our day, form a fitting tribute to one who is justly
described as the father of physiology.
IX
NULLIUS IN VERBA {140}
There is a well-known story of Charles Darwin which I shall venture to
repeat, because nothing can better emphasise the contrast between
Shrewsbury School as it is and as it was.
Charles Darwin used, as a boy, to work at chemistry in a rough laboratory
fitted up in the tool-house at his home in Shrewsbury. The fact that he
did so became known to his school-fellows, and he was nicknamed "Gas." I
have an old Delphine Virgil of my father's in which this word is
scrawled, together with the name Miss Case, no doubt a sneer at his
having come from Case's preparatory school. Dr. Butler, the Head Master,
heard of the chemical work, and Charles Darwin was once publicly rebuked
by that alarming person for wasting his time on such useless subjects.
My father adds, "He called me very unjustly a _poco curante_, and as I
did not understand what he meant it seemed to me a fearful reproach." A
_poco curante_ means of course "a don't-care person" or one who takes no
interest in things, and might perhaps be translated by "slacker." I do
not suppose that Dr. Butler is likely ever to be forgotten, but as it is,
he is sure of a reasonable share of immortality as the author of a
description so magnificently inappropriate. {141a}
This is the contrast I referred to; on one hand a Head Master in 1822
doing his best to discourage a boy from acquiring knowledge of a great
subject in the best possible way, _i.e._ by experiment. And on the
other, a Head Master of the same school in 1911 encouraging, with a wise
zeal, the rational study of science as a regular part of the school
course. It may not be possible to trace out the complete evolution of
these Darwin Buildings, but I like to fancy that the germ from which they
have sprung is that tool house at the Mount. {141b}
It is some comfort to us to know that Shrewsbury was not the only place
which failed to educate my father in the regulation lines. When he left
school he went to Edinburgh University to study medicine. But he found
anatomy and _materia medica_ intolerable, and the operating theatre was a
horror. So he began to work at science in his own way. He learned to
stuff birds from an old negro who had known Waterton. Of this instructor
he says, "I used often to sit with him, for he was a very pleasant and
intelligent man." He also caught sea beasts in the pools on the shore,
and made one or two small observations, which were communicated to the
Plinian Society.