1892. Royal Astronomical Society's Medal.
1911. Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
1912. Royal Geographical Society's Medal.
_Offices_.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Plumian Professor in the
University.
Vice-President of the International Geodetic Association, Lowell Lecturer
at Boston U.S. (1897).
Member of the Meteorological and Solar Physics Committees.
Past President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, {193} Royal
Astronomical Society, British Association.
_Doctorates_, _etc._, _of Universities_.
Oxford, Dublin, Glasgow, Pennsylvania, Padua (Socio onorario), Gottingen,
Christiania, Cape of Good Hope, Moscow (honorary member).
_Foreign or Honorary Membership of Academies_, _etc._
Amsterdam (Netherlands Academy), Boston (American Academy), Brussels
(Royal Society), Calcutta (Math. Soc.), Dublin (Royal Irish Academy),
Edinburgh (Royal Society), Halle (K. Leop.-Carol. Acad.), Kharkov (Math.
Soc.), Mexico (Soc. "Antonio Alzate"), Moscow (Imperial Society of the
Friends of Science), New York, Padua, Philadelphia (Philosophical
Society), Rome (Lincei), Stockholm (Swedish Academy), Toronto (Physical
Society), Washington (National Academy), Wellington (New Zealand Inst.).
_Correspondent of Academies_, _etc._, _at_
Acireale (Zelanti), Berlin (Prussian Academy), Buda Pest (Hungarian
Academy), Frankfort (Senckenberg. Natur. Gesell.), Gottingen (Royal
Society), Paris, St. Petersburg, Turin, Istuto Veneto, Vienna. {194}
XI
WAR MUSIC
AN ADDRESS TO A SOCIETY OF MORRIS DANCERS
DECEMBER 21, 1914
According to the _Dictionary of Music_ {195} the military march is meant
"not only to stimulate courage but also to ensure the orderly advance of
troops." In other words, military music serves to incite and to regulate
movement. But these cannot always be discriminated. The tramp tramp of
marching soldiers is ordered by the rhythm of the band. This is obvious,
but we cannot say how far the bravery of the tune puts strength into
tired legs, and this would be incitement,--and how far it is the
unappeasable rhythm that forces the men to keep going, and this may
perhaps be called regulation. There are occasions when the trumpet comes
as a signal to troops waiting to make some sublime effort, and where the
fierce imperious sound has a lift and a sting which perhaps no
pre-concerted signal of a weaker type could give. This is an example of
incitement, but in as much as it determines the moment of attack it is
also a regulating agent.
Marching is still of importance,--in spite of the part taken by railways
in modern strategy. I should like to know whether the magnificent
marches of the Russians are made to the accompaniment of a band or of the
regimental choir. One sees in our volunteer army the tendency to sing on
the march. But it must be allowed that neither words or tunes are
particularly inspiring. The Englishman is habitually afraid of being
solemn, and though his marching songs may contain good things they are
apt to be treated in a light spirit. There is one which includes the
words, "Rule, Rule, Britannia!" and "God Save the Queen!" but these
famous phrases serve as chorus to lighthearted fragments, _e.g._ nursery
rhymes, such as "Little Miss Muffett." I regret to add that even this
classic is not respectfully used. It should run, "There came a great
spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffett away." I
forget the precise words of the parody, except its ending, "And Little
Miss Muffett said, 'Bother the creature!'" I still remember the fine
effect of German soldiers heard many years ago singing the "Wacht am
Rhein" on the march. Once, too, I listened to Zouaves, and no greater
contrast can be imagined. It was hardly more than a murmur, a chatter of
diverse scraps, and had no inspiring effect. These magnificent troops
may need no artificial stimulus, but ordinary folk are certainly kept
going by martial music. I remember, as a boy, marching to the tune of
the "British Grenadiers," which has foolish words, and is not striking
from a musical point of view, but it seemed to take us along. This
march-tune comes in finely in Rudyard Kipling's story of the _Drums of
the Fore and Aft_. An untried British regiment is cut up by Afghans and
retires in a helter-skelter rush, leaving behind two boys of the Band,
who strike up the "British Grenadiers" with the solitary squeak of a fife
and the despairing roll of a drum. The answer comes in a great cheer
from the Highlanders and Gurkas waiting on the heights, and in a charge
that turns defeat into victory. I wish that Kipling had allowed the boys
to survive, but the tragedy of their death is after all the effective
close. To return to marching-tunes. For average people all that is
needed is a well marked rhythm: "John Brown's body," etc., is an
admirable march, though taken from its context of tramping soldiers it is
hardly a fine tune. But so far as words are concerned it must be allowed
that the refrain, "His soul goes marching along," is in the right mood
for a war song.
It may be objected that if all I want is rhythm I should be satisfied
with instruments of percussion alone. To this I reply that the effect of
drums is splendidly martial. I was at Aix at the outbreak of the war,
and every day the regiment quartered there used to march out to the music
of drums, and of bugles which played simple tunes on the common chord.
When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with
magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in
with its brave out-of-doors flavour--a romantic dash of the hunting song,
and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. And indeed this is
the sort of melody that suits the dauntless spirit of our allies. As I
watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of
that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead
comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living to victory or death.
Drums are said (incorrectly I believe) to be made of donkey's skin, and
Stevenson imagines how, after death, the poor beast takes this magical
revenge for the blows received in life, by leading cruel man to
destruction. The old English military music seems to have been played by
drums alone. King Charles I issued a warrant in the following words:
{198a} "Whereas . . . the March of this our nation so famous in all
honourable achievements and glorious warres of this our Kingdom in
forraigne parts was through the negligence and carelessness of drummers
. . . so altered and changed from the ancient gravity and majestic thereof
as it was in danger utterly to have been lost and forgotten. . . ." He
therefore wills and commands drummers to play only what is recorded in
the curious old notation of that day. It must be remembered that drums
and trumpets had something of the sacredness of Royalty in the 17th
century. No one was allowed to play them in public without a license
from the Sergeant Trumpeter, {198b} an officer who certainly existed a
few years ago, and may, for all I know, still survive. In the 17th
century it was a post of some dignity, and gave its holder the title of
Esquire.
During the great retreat in the winter of 1914 the effect of music was
magnificently illustrated. Mr. Conan Doyle {199} writes, "Exhausted as
the troops were, there could he no halt or rest until they had extricated
themselves from the immediate danger. At the last point of human
endurance they still staggered on through the evening and the night time,
amid roaring thunder and flashing lightning, down the St. Quentin road.
Many fell from fatigue, and having fallen continued to sleep. . . . In
the case of some of the men the collapse was so complete that it was
almost impossible to get them on. Major Tom Bridges, of the 4th Royal
Irish Dragoons being sent to round up and hurry forward 250 stragglers at
St. Quentin, found them nearly comatose with fatigue. With quick wit he
bought a toy drum, and accompanied by a man with a penny whistle he fell
them in and marched them, laughing in all their misery, down the high
road towards Ham." When he stopped he found that the men stopped also,
so he was compelled to march and play the whole way to Roupy.
In Sir Henry Newbolt's _Song of the Great Retreat_ (_The Times_, Dec. 16,
1914), this triumphant success is described:
"Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night,
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat:
Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight,
With a little penny drum to lift their feet."
This song ought to be especially interesting to our Society, because the
effect of a small drum and a penny whistle is roughly the same as that of
the pipe and tabor, and these are the traditional instruments for English
Folk Dances. It is perhaps worth noting that they must in old days have
been used in war, for there is an illustration in an ancient manuscript
of a taborer piping at the head of a body of troops marching out from a
town.
Man is a social animal, and his natural strength lies in community of
action with his fellows. It is this which gives music its power over
masses of men, the pulsation of the drum, the blare of the answering
trumpets, or the strident voice of the bagpipe cry to them in tones which
cannot be misunderstood, binding them into a brotherhood of courage and
obedience. But a society of Morris Dancers does not need to be reminded
of the noble effect of human movement controlled by music. The word
'caper' has somewhat ridiculous associations, but we have learned to
respect it for what it implies: the finely ordered strenuous movement of
strong bodies leaping in rhythmic dance. It suggests something pagan and
prehistoric, a physical religion of astonishing beauty. Some of our
Morris men are now giving all the vigour of their young bodies to a great
and just cause. Let us wish them a victorious home-coming.
XII
THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE {201}
It is not difficult to sympathise with what Dr. Birkbeck aimed at in
founding the College which bears his name. His idea seems to have been,
that whatever a man's calling may be, he is the better for accurate
knowledge of the things with which he deals. This is a sufficiently
obvious statement. But if for the word 'accurate' we substitute
'scientific,' it is no longer a platitude--at least it is not so in the
ears of the semi-educated. For we can still find people who believe in
the "practical man" as opposed to one whom they probably call a
scientist. One would like to know more of the conception of science
formed by the unscientific. They are probably unaware that science is
eminently practical in asserting that only to be true which rests on wide
and accurate generalisation. It is also practical wisdom to hold, as
science does, that truth is temporary and relative, and is in fact merely
the best conclusion that can be drawn in the present state of knowledge.
To many people science is wearisome and somewhat ridiculous, and these
qualities appear in the naturalist of fiction. Thus when even George
Eliot draws a coleopterist, he is made a feeble old man shuffling to and
fro among his ridiculous beetles. And on the French stage I have seen a
botanist treated in the same spirit.
Positiveness and bumptiousness are also supposed to be our attributes.
In the 'New Republic' the characters said to represent Huxley and
Clifford are completely disguised by their pompous pretentiousness.
It is not difficult to describe the ideals of science, but it is only too
easy to fall short of them. It is easy for instance to become a
sectarian, to belong to a school, and to be literally incapable of
fairness towards the opposition. This was plainly seen at the incoming
of evolution, and it was one of the many glories of Sir Charles Lyell
that he could accept the 'Origin of Species,' and that, in the words of
Hooker, he could under-pin his work with an evolutionary foundation and
find his edifice stronger than ever. But we need not consider the
battles of giants; we are much more likely to be concerned with the
mentally dwarfed or deformed--with the dangerous man who makes positive
statements on insufficient data, or suffers from that other vice of not
being able to confess ignorance. The only lectures which impressed me,
as an undergraduate at Cambridge, were those of the late Sir George
Humphry; and his most striking words were confessions of complete
ignorance about many parts of physiology. Here is an instance of an
opposite state of things, of a want of courage. An eminent chemist was
asked why common salt thrown on the fire gives a blue flame. Now the
chemist was a German, and having been brought up in that land of stoves,
probably had not performed an experiment so easily made in the home of
open fires. So he rashly answered, "It does not burn blue, it is
impossible, sodium-salts give a yellow flame." On this my friend fetched
the salt and threw a handful on to the glowing coals--with the result
that the eminent chemist rose up and fled in silence from the room. He
gave an admirable example of how not to behave. He ought not in the
first place to have denied the fact _a priori_, and when he was convicted
he should have been glad to learn.
It has been said that in scientific work accuracy is the most valuable
quality and the hardest to attain. Accuracy alone may strike us as a
dull quality to be so highly rated. When a given result has been
obtained in eleven successive experiments, and fails on the twelfth
occasion, it is the accurate-minded man who makes a wise use of the
failure. It ought to arouse in us a flame of curiosity, lighting in us a
whole posse of theories, which force us to vary our procedure and finally
enable us to solve the difficulty.
Most of us are inclined to treat an unexpected result in a cavalier
spirit, pushing it aside as "only an exception," whereas it should be
received as possibly a personage of distinction in disguise, and not as a
rude disturber of our pet ideas.
A class of experimentalists exists from whom we all suffer--namely,
cooks. How happy we should be if they possessed this lively desire to
understand their own lapses from good cookery! It may be urged in
excuse, that although the essence of cooking is the application of heat
to food, not one cook in a thousand has a thermometer in her oven. I
hope that some of the ladies who have in these laboratories learned to
believe in accuracy, will become missionaries among the ignorant and
insist on this simple reform.
There is a type of accuracy of a very different kind which may become an
actual vice. For instance, the desire to weigh things to 1-10 mg. which
should only have been weighed to a centigram, measuring to 1-10 mm., and
calculating averages to several places of decimals. In such a science as
Botany this may be positive waste of time. Sachs, the great German
botanist, in whose laboratory I worked, was never tired of complaining of
this "sogenannte Genauigkeit," (this so-called accuracy). I am told that
Lord Rayleigh, whose physical inquiries demand in some cases excessive
and minute accuracy, has a wonderful instinct for knowing when and where
he may relax his methods.
I have been compelled to use the words 'science' and 'scientific' because
these terms have become firmly adherent to a group of subjects such as
Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Botany, etc., and cannot now be detached
from them. Unfortunately 'scientific' is used in another sense as
implying accuracy of experimental method and in deduction from results.
So that in calling ourselves scientific men we run the risk of seeming to
claim a monopoly of method, as though we pretended to be somehow superior
to the trained workers in other branches. The current use of the word
seems therefore to cast unjust suspicion on literature. I wish that the
word _science_ could be restored to its original meaning of knowledge, or
the art of knowing; but words (like organisms) are evolved, and against
evolution the gods fight in vain. In any case I hope it will be believed
that in speaking of knowledge I have taken instances from what is usually
called science, not out of disrespect to literature, but like Dr. Johnson
in a different affair--from ignorance.
I imagine Dr. Birkbeck to have had no idea that this institution would be
so extensively used for preparing people for examinations. I doubt
whether he would have liked it, but respect to the pious memory of a
founder may be exaggerated, and since there is no getting rid of
examinations, the next best thing is to make the art of coaching as
little harmful as may be to pupil and teacher. I do not mean to speak
slightingly of coaching as a whole, for a great deal of it is only a very
skilful way of imparting knowledge, but it will be allowed that some of
it is not educative in a broad sense.
You will remember that Mr. Brooke, in _Middlemarch_, was in the habit of
mildly investigating questions which he always threw over because he
foresaw they would "carry him too far." I confess to feeling very like
Mr. Brooke when I attempt to balance the interests of teacher and
student. In that comfortable period, the 18th century, things were all
in favour of the teacher. The poet Gray, who was Professor of History at
Cambridge, could never decide whether to lecture in Latin or English, and
ended by never lecturing at all.
It is now easier to find cases where the teacher is the victim and slave
of his pupils, and has no time or strength to continue his own education.
This has at least two bad results, and probably more than that number:
(1) From want of time for reading the teacher can hardly avoid falling
behind in a rapidly progressive subject such as one of the natural
sciences, and consequently the University or College that enslaves him is
injuring its own property. (2) He has no time to do any original work,
and this is even worse for him (and therefore, as before, for the
College). He ceases to be on intimate terms with the plants or animals
or chemical substances with which he has to deal, and his teaching must
necessarily lose that vigour and freshness that comes from first-hand
personal knowledge. It is downright cruelty to deny time for research to
those who vehemently desire to add something to the fabric of human
knowledge.
The hampered teacher reminds me of a certain migratory bird living with
clipped wings in a Zoological Garden: when the migrating season came
round the unfortunate prisoner started to walk, and was to be seen
pressing its breast against the bars at the north end of its pen. I hope
that nowadays all Colleges realise that they must not prison their birds,
but give them the means of satisfying their natural instinct for fresh
and self-gained knowledge. The students are in one way better off than
their masters, since laboratory work is generally new to them and has
therefore some of the charm of discovery.
In what I have said to-night I have confined myself to Natural Science,
in which alone I have had experience of teaching or examining. On the
literary side of things I am, I fear, a Philistine, or _enfant terrible_.
I belong to that class of persons (which has at least the merit of being
very large) who have hardly opened a Greek or Latin book since the day
they passed their Little-go.
I grudge the time that is given at school to making small boys groan over
books not well suited to them, while French and German are, or were in my
day, all but untaught. If I had had good oral teaching in modern
languages (such, for instance, as that given at the Perse School in
Cambridge) I could forgive my teachers. We should without tears have
learned to talk fluently and write correctly in at least one modern
language, and for the sake of this I could perhaps have borne the
weariness of Greek and Latin grammar. If it were not for the tyranny of
examinations, classical teaching might be put to its proper use, which is
not to serve as an instrument of torture, but to enable us to read
ancient authors.
I would teach Latin and Greek only to older boys, and by the method in
which we all learn a modern language--that is when we have the advantage
of being at once teacher and learner. I mean by reading quickly, with a
translation if necessary; at first without understanding half of what we
read, but gradually picking up words as we go along. This is how I
learned to read easy Italian. By the advice of the late Henry Sidgwick I
began on a bad Italian translation of a French novel, because such a
version, being full of French idioms more or less literally translated,
is easier than idiomatic Italian. The right book to begin on is a good
murder story, such as one of Gaboriau's, which are fortunately to be had
in bad Italian. What would an old fashioned teacher of Greek and Latin
have said to this! In my own case I feel that the _difficulty_ of
reading the classics was good discipline, and so far educational. In
Henry Sidgwick's method one is carried along by the detective business,
and learns Italian words as a child picks up its own language, by context
and re-iteration. It will be said that this method is not applicable to
Latin and Greek, and that even if it were so, it would not be educative.
I confess I do not expect my words to sink into the hearts of the
teachers of what are unkindly called the dead languages. The great
Moloch of examination has constantly to be supplied with human children,
to say nothing of grown-up people. Some escape, but how many are reduced
to ashes?
I have said nothing about what should have been my theme, namely, the
beginning of the College year. To my thinking beginnings have something
of the melancholy that seems more appropriate to endings. Sad
associations tend to adhere to all that has the quality of periodicity.
I for one feel this when spring once more puts on the familiar look with
which our childhood and youth seemed to mingle on equal terms, but which
upbraids us now we are no longer young.
And in a more work-a-day spirit Monday morning is sad. I think this is
so because the conception Next Week is full of the ghosts of dead
resolutions. No doubt it was on Monday mornings that Mr. Shandy renewed
his vow to have the hinge of the parlour door mended, which I think
remained unrepaired to the end of the book.
But after all, this gloomy point of view belongs to the onlooker, not to
the actors in the rhythm of things. Each particular Monday is a new-born
entity, and doubtless feels a pleasurable excitement in its brief life.
And to the actual snowdrops and winter aconites that pierce the cold
ground, spring is a new and glorious experience. In this academic
springtime (which chances to occur in autumn) the onlooker need have no
morbid feelings, only perhaps a touch of envy of those whose College life
begins to-day.
XIII
PICTURESQUE EXPERIMENTS
To those who have never made experiments on plants it may seem that
'picturesque' is an odd term to apply to laboratory methods. But to an
experimentalist the adjective does not seem overstrained. There is not
merely the pleasure of seeing a prediction verified--that may be
experienced in more everyday matters. There is a peculiar delight in the
discovery of a method of revealing some detail in the natural history of
living things. I remember vividly the pleasure which I felt when I first
tried the experiment on _Sorghum_, described in the essay on the
Movements of Plants in this volume. {210} I hoped that the seedlings
would curve in the elaborate manner shown in Fig. 4. But I had so little
expectation of success that I did not explain the object of the trial to
my laboratory assistant, and it came as a shock of delight when he told
me that the seedlings had "curled up like corkscrews." I do not think
that it is an exaggeration to say, that this result is a picturesque
illustration of the distribution of gravitational sensitiveness in
plants. The instances in the present essay are not concerned with the
movements of plants, and are so far less interesting, but I think the
reader will not refuse them the same adjective.
We all know that in plants--from the smallest weed to the giant trees of
America--there flows a stream of water from the root to the topmost leaf.
Nevertheless, it is an experience to have ocular proof of this
life-giving current. A branch of laurel is so arranged that it has to
suck up the water it needs through a coarse thermometer tube, dipping
into a beaker. The laurel does not wither, and we know therefore that it
is continuously supplied with water. If the beaker is removed we shall
see the absorption, for the thermometer tube does not remain full of
water; a minute column of air is seen at its lower end which rapidly
increases in size, and finally when the tube is emptied of its
water-content, bubbles of air escape one after another into the larger
tube, which contains the cut end of the branch. This, the simplest
possible experiment, is nevertheless a vivid ocular proof of the laurel's
power of absorbing water. It can be shown that the sucking power of the
branch depends on its leaves, for if these are removed the rate of the
current is very greatly diminished. It can also be proved that it
depends on some quality of the leaf surface, for if a new specimen is
taken, and if the lower sides of its leaves are rubbed with vaseline, the
rate of absorption will be seen to diminish very greatly. Greasing the
upper surface of the leaves does not produce this result, and when we
examine the two surfaces it is found that the lower one is riddled with
innumerable microscopic holes (stomata), while the upper side of the leaf
has no such apertures. The stomata in fact are the arbiters of what
shall pass in or out of the body of the leaf; they are the gate-keepers
who regulate both export and import. They are known by actual inspection
(with a microscope) to close at night: the result of this is that the
evaporation of the leaves is much slower at night, and this is true when
allowance has been made for the fact that evaporation is also checked at
night by the dampness of the air.
[Picture: Fig. 7. The Porometer]
The microscopical inspection of stomata is not a completely satisfactory
method of discovering to what degree they are open. It has, however,
been my good fortune to resuscitate and simplify a method of studying the
stomatal condition. The method was many years ago tried in a hopelessly
cumbersome form by a German, but never came into use. My apparatus is
described in the _Proceedings of the Royal Society_, {212} and is known
as the Porometer. Its essential part is shown in Fig. 7. It consists of
a funnel-shaped tube, having a broad flange, which is cemented on to the
stomata-bearing surface of a leaf. The leaf is represented by the
obliquely shaded object and is enormously magnified. To the upper
orifice of the funnel is fixed a rubber tube, and by means of it steady
suction can be supplied. The result is that a current of air is drawn
through the stomata into the leaf, and then out of the leaf into the
cavity of the porometer. The rate of this current is an index of the
degree to which the stomata are open. With this apparatus a number of
interesting points can be determined.
[Picture: Fig. 8. Curve of Porometer readings in light and darkness
(black)]
Fig. 8 shows the effect of alternate periods of light and darkness. The
fall of the curve represents partial closure, and is seen to occur in the
periods of darkness (black), and to rise when the plant is re-illumined.
These changes are necessarily accompanied by rise and fall in the
evaporation of the leaf, but into the question of the accuracy of this
correlation I shall not enter.
There are other methods of demonstrating the movements of the stomata.
Stahl had the happy inspiration of making use of the colour-changes of
cobalt chloride. A piece of filter paper soaked in a 5 p.c. solution of
this salt is blue when dried, and turns pink in damp air. A dry piece of
this material, applied with proper precaution to the stomata-bearing
surface of a leaf, rapidly changes to pink if the stomata are open.
When, however, the same trial is made on the upper surface of a leaf,
where stomata do not occur, no such change occurs. If two leaves are
treated at the same time, one in the normal position and the other upside
down, it is delightful to watch the appearance of a pink picture of that
leaf whose stomatic surface is in contact with the paper, while no such
change takes place over that which exposes no stomata to the tell-tale
material. Another method was discovered by the accident of finding in an
old house in Wales a Chinese figure of a man, cut out of a thin shaving
of horn, which writhed and twisted when placed on the hand. It was
clearly very sensitive to moisture, and it seemed possible that
horn-shavings might be used to test the condition of the stomata. The
first difficulty was to obtain a supply of this material. Having
discovered from the P.O. Directory that there were two horn-pressers in
London I proceeded to visit one of them somewhere in Hoxton. He turned
out to be of a highly suspicious disposition, but his wife had more
discernment, and persuaded him that I was a harmless customer, with no
designs on trade secrets, and I finally obtained what I wanted. A
delicate strip of horn was fixed to a little block of cork and placed on
a leaf, and to my delight showed the stomata to be open by violently
curving upwards. It was only necessary to fix a graduated arc to the
cork, and to fasten a delicate hair on to the horn so as to serve as
index. The instrument is not of course accurately quantitative, but it
does at least show whether the stomata are nearly shut, moderately open,
or widely so. Rough as it is I found it good enough for determining a
number of interesting facts in the physiology of stomata. {215a}
I now pass on to a different subject, the all-important process on which
the life of green plants depends, an act therefore by which our own
existence and that of all other animals is conditioned. I mean the
process known as _assimilation_. This is the truly miraculous feat of
using as a source of food the carbonic acid gas (CO2) which exists in
minute quantities in the atmosphere. The plant is in fact a
carbon-catching machine, and the machine is driven by the energy of the
sun, and can therefore only work in light. The eminent Russian botanist,
Timiriazeff, in a lecture on this subject {215b} before the Royal
Society, made a witty use of _Gulliver's Travels_--a book not commonly
quoted as an authority in scientific matters. He pointed out that the
philosophers of Lagado, who were extracting sun-beams from cucumbers,
were not doing anything absurd. On the contrary, since the cucumbers had
been built with the help of sunshine, it was a reasonable expectation
that energy corresponding to the sunshine should be obtainable. This
indeed is what we do when we drive a steam engine by burning coal which
ages ago was built by vegetable machinery driven by sunlight.
It is possible to show the existence of this process by very simple
experiments. The most direct, but the least interesting, experiment is
to take two similar plants, and expose plant _A_ to an atmosphere
containing CO2 while _B_ is in air freed from that gas. Both specimens
are placed in bright light, and after a sufficient interval of time their
leaves are tested for the presence of starch. This is a simple matter;
the green colouring matter is washed out of them by means of alcohol, and
they are then placed in a dilute solution of iodine, which has the
property of staining starch purple. It is always pleasant to see the
leaf that had been supplied with CO2 turn blue, while the starved leaf
remains a hungry yellow.
Some of the prettiest methods of demonstrating this process depend, not
on the manufacture of starch in the leaf, but on the fact that an
assimilating plant sets free oxygen, by breaking up the molecule CO2,
building the carbon (C) into its own tissues, and letting the oxygen (O)
go free. A beautiful method was discovered on these lines by Engelmann,
which I was never tired of seeing year after year in my Cambridge class.
Defibrinated bullock's blood is freed from air by means of an air pump
and charged with CO2. In the course of this process it acquires the
dingy tint of venous blood. A single leaf of the American weed (Elodea)
is mounted on a glass slide in a drop of this blood and covered by an
ordinary cover slip. Then comes the dramatic moment: the preparation is
exposed to sunshine, and in 3 or 4 minutes a delicate scarlet border
begins to appear round the leaf and grows rapidly, making a curious
sunset effect in contrast with dingy purple of the venous blood. The
meaning is very clear; the Elodea leaf in sunshine took the carbon from
the CO2, and the oxygen thus set free gave the venous blood the scarlet
hue characteristic of the arterial condition. Professor Farmer has
designed a striking method based on another well-known experiment of
Engelmann's. A drop of water containing the products of decay, and
therefore swarming with bacteria, supplies the test. A drop of this
fluid is placed on a glass slip, one or two delicate leaves of a green
water plant (Elodea) are added, and a square of thin glass is placed on
it. Round the edges of the cover-slip the preparation must be sealed
with a preparation of wax, which melts at a low temperature, and when
cold serves to prevent the preparation drying; it also isolates it from
the surrounding atmosphere. After making sure under the microscope that
the bacteria are in active movement, the glass slip is placed in the dark
for some 3 or 4 hours. It is then examined, and the bacteria will be
found to have ceased to move because they and the leaves between them
have consumed the oxygen dissolved in the water, and bacterial activity
being dependent on oxygen naturally came to an end. The preparation is
placed under the microscope and illumined with bright incandescent gas,
and after a short time the bacteria begin to stir and are soon once more
whirling in their insensate dance. The reason is obvious--the green
leaves under the influence of light were able to seize the carbon from
the CO2, and the O thus set free put the bacteria in motion. The
bacterial dance is therefore evidence of the act of assimilation carried
on by the Elodea leaf.
Yet another method is worth mention, viz., that of Boussingault. The
plant is placed in an inverted glass vessel resting in a dish of water,
and is filled with hydrogen mixed with a percentage of CO2. Inside the
vessel a fragment of phosphorus is suspended, and as a small amount of
oxygen is sure to be mixed with the hydrogen the phosphorus will be
oxygenated and white fumes will fill the vessel. The observer must wait
until these clouds have subsided, which may need a couple of hours. This
must take place in the dark, and as soon as the atmosphere is clear, the
whole preparation is placed in bright light, when obvious clouds will
again appear--a proof that oxygen has been set free by the assimilation
of the green plants. With this example I must bring my short series of
experiments to a close, with the hope that my readers may not deny that
they are picturesque.
XIV
DOGS AND DOG LOVERS
"The more I see of men, the more I like dogs."--ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.
{219}
Why is it that some people do not like dogs? There are those who dislike
other people's dogs just as they dislike strange children. This is a
point of view which is comprehensible though unattractive. Still, in
comparison with those who do not like dogs at all this class seem
positively amiable. I knew a lady with the most perfect understanding of
the qualities of human beings, whether bad or good, yet she had no
sympathy with dogs. She would be kind to them, as an external duty to
all living things, but a dog had absolutely no place in her heart. What
made this blindness seem all the more incomprehensible was the fact that
she could love a bullfinch; she could not therefore plead that she loved
humanity so much that she had no love left for beings of another sort.
After all, it may be that not to care for dogs is no more a blemish than
a lack of musical ear, which is not a sign of general dullness of
artistic perception since it is found in some poets. We must accordingly
allow that not to love dogs is not a sign of a black heart or a debased
nature. A dog lover will grant this to be an unavoidable intellectual
conclusion, but in the secret corners of his mind he will feel something
more hostile than mere Christian pity for these emotionally deformed
people. If he holds Erewhonian doctrines he would like to send for the
family straightener, and bear with fortitude the punishment inflicted on
his friends and relations.
I fear that we, the dog lovers, are, by those who do not share our
tastes, held to be unbalanced persons, who intrude their passions on the
reasonable and well bred. They object to us as victims of perverted
instincts, who talk unknown dog-language in and out of season. It is not
clear to me why we care so much for dogs. Is it, in truth, an
exaggeration, or an offshoot of that love of the helpless young of our
own kind which natural selection develops in social animals? This is not
necessarily maternal, as we see in the story of the heroic male baboon,
who risked his life in saving a young one from a pack of baying hounds.
{220a} Or is it an instinct developed in a hunting tribe--a blind
tendency to take good care of the food-providers (at the expense of
starving aunts and grandmothers), such as we see among the Fuegians, who
explained that, "Doggies catch otters--old women no." {220b}
However this may be, it is I think certain that the love of dogs is an
unreasoning passion, having all the force of an instinct. In a story by
Miss Wilkins we see how the love even of a cat may come to be regarded as
a human right or need. The old woman who had lost her cat (he afterwards
emerged half starved from the cellar), rebelled against the will of God.
She allowed that the happiness of husband and children was possibly not
to be expected by everyone, but "there _was_ cats enough to go all
round."
I think it impossible to account for the especial affection that we bear
to certain dogs. Dogs are, as I have said, in a degree like our
children; they come to us and they have to be tended, fed, and guarded,
and in these services we learn to love them. And when our affection is
reflected back to us from the thing we love, it gains an especially
touching quality. In the case of dogs our affection is certainly not a
response to any inherent charm obvious to all the world--and here again
they resemble children. The dog I loved best was an inferior Irish
terrier, who gave me much trouble and anxiety. He was constantly
fighting; he barked fiercely at innocent visitors. He killed chickens,
and for this I had to beat him cruelly, tie him up and leave him
trembling with a dead victim round his neck, a punishment for which I
still feel remorse, though it saved him from being shot as a criminal,
and cured him of his murderous tendency for many years. Pat was not a
clever dog, and when striving to learn certain simple tricks he used to
fall into abysses of miserable stupidity, and give up all hope of winning
the biscuit earned by his fellow-dog, a Scotch terrier, with all the
intelligent certainty of his nation. Pat had one attractive physical
quality; he was perfectly sweet and clean; indeed his adoring family
compared his scent to that of new mown hay; he had also a smooth head,
which was compared, by one enthusiastic admirer, to a putting-green. He
had the attractive and not very common quality of grinning--tucking up
his lips and showing the teeth, but producing the effect of a smile, and
expressing a shy and apologetic frame of mind.
Pat lived with a bad tempered Scotch terrier called Whisk, whom I liked
for his strong character and intellectual acquirements, but I had no
great affection for him. He could not bear being spoken to or even
looked at while he ate his dinner, and would growl with his mouth full,
in a terrific manner, if so disturbed. In the same ferocious spirit he
would growl and snap if his basket was accidentally kicked when he was
dozing in the evening, and however much we apologised he would take each
expression of regret as a fresh insult, and answer them all with growls,
which gradually died away in sleep.
We only once had a big dog, and he was not a success though he was an
agreeable person. We bought him and his brother, two very fat mastiff
puppies, at North Berwick, and brought them south. The one pleasant
incident in the journey was the question of a German in Edinburgh
station: "Madam, who are these dogs?" We gave away one and kept the
other, who bore the magnificent name of Tantallon, soon abbreviated into
Tan. He had many friendly habits, but they were on too large a scale for
domestic life. He had, for instance, a way of placing a dirty paw on the
table cloth at meals, and he knocked down street children by trying to
lick their faces and (so rumour said) by wagging his tail. He frightened
cab horses into hysterics, and their drivers fell off and claimed
damages. He ate with enjoyment the embroidered perambulator-cushion of a
neighbour, who was discovered looking on while Tan tore strips off the
cushion with that powerful upward movement of the head and neck which few
cushions can withstand. Finally poor Tan had to be given away, and was
lost sight of.
These rough outlines of the characters of some of our dogs are meant to
show that the reasons for loving dogs are not patent, and that we cannot
complain if the words, used by a little girl in _Punch_ towards a couple
of earwigs, should be applied to us and our dogs, "Nasty creatures! I
cannot think how they can care for each other."
Stevenson's essay {223} on _The Character of Dogs_ is not entirely
satisfactory. It is surely a one-sided view of the dog that "he is
vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of
ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and
radically devoid of truth." It is hardly possible that he should be
vainer than man; and in the dog, vanity is a far simpler and more lovable
thing than the complex and offensive passion in his master. His greed
for notice and his jealousy are part of his great love for his master. I
do not remember that Stevenson ever speaks of the passionate love (not
for mankind, but for one special person) which burns in the heart of a
dog. It is a singular omission--and I cannot but think it intentional.
If so he was wise, for it certainly does not lend itself to the manner
which Stevenson adopts towards dogs. No doubt I may be led into
sentimentality and general wearifulness in attempting to describe what
seems to me the most striking characteristic of dogs--their great and
enduring power of loving. It may be that "the day of an intelligent
small dog is passed in the manufacture and laborious communication of
falsehood." But he does not lie when he says quite plainly how greatly
he loves his master. Nor do I agree that a small spoiled dog would prate
interminably, and still about himself. I think he would say, "I love
you" rather often, but that bears repetition. I know a Schipperke whose
main interest in life is his dinner, but when his mistress was ill he had
only two desires, to lie on her bed and to bite the doctor for
approaching her. He had to be dragged out for a walk instead of eagerly
begging for one. Was this an elaborate falsehood? Was it pretence? Was
it conventionality?
A dog can hardly be expected to plead guilty when detected in crime. He
jumps off the forbidden bed when he hears someone coming, and, being
unaware that the warm place on the counterpane will betray him, he
assumes a calm and happy air. But this is a lie so natural that I for
one cannot blame the liar.
In my life with dogs I have felt much more clearly their desire to speak,
and to speak truth, than the wish to deceive. I had an old Scotch
terrier, who in his youth, before I knew him, had been called Nigel, no
doubt because he was black and small, but as he grew up he somehow
acquired the uncouth name of Scrubbins. At one stage of his career he
was condemned to death for eczema. I begged him off, and he lived some
five years with me, and was cured of his eczema by the devoted care of a
servant. He was a dog of large heart, who, while he cared for others,
was especially devoted to me. In his old age his eyes became dim and his
limbs stiff. He had a pathetic way of standing staring into my eyes, or
with difficulty getting his paws on to my knees to ask to have his head
rubbed, an attention of which he never wearied. No one could doubt that
this was his expression of the mutual love that bound us to each other.
This was the indestructible impression produced, and it is useless to
tell me that he may have been striving to conceal some crime, or at least
some base and worldly point of view. When sentiment is applied to facts,
rational conclusions are apt to be rare--but without a share of sentiment
there might have been no facts to record.
There are innumerable cases proving the devotion of dogs--a passion
surviving the master's death, and prolonged until the dog himself dies.
Such is the story of the heroic dog seen to watch his master's dead body
in South America, keeping the vultures off it, and only allowing himself
an occasional rush to the river for water, until he too died. What is
there here but a passion of love? We may call it instinct, but what is
the love of a human mother?
A dog differs from his master in not taking offence; you may tread on his
tail and he will only apologise for being in your way. But I have known
a dog bite his mistress when she interfered with him in a fight, while he
was beside himself with anger. In the same way an unhappy dog caught in
a trap may be so maddened with pain as to attempt to bite those who seek
to free him, but these are extreme cases. It is again part of this same
lovable quality of dogs that they are not given to moods. They are
always ready to welcome us and to wag tails when we notice them.
M. Anatole France shows in some ways a sympathy with dogs, and a
sensitiveness to their mental attitudes, finer and more true than
anything in Stevenson's essay. The misery of Riquet {226} over the
_demenagement_ of his master, M. Bergeret, is admirably drawn. Riquet
begins by barking fiercely when "des hommes inconnus, mal vetus,
injurieux et farouches" invade his beloved house, and ends in being
lifted in silent misery and shut up in a portmanteau. Riquet soon
becomes too human, but he does at least show his adoration of M.
Bergeret, in mourning over the desecration and removal of "ton fauteuil
profond--le fauteuil ou nous reposions tous les soirs, et bien souvent le
matin, a cote l'un de l'autre."
No. XII. of the _Pensees de Riquet_ does not bear on the love that
subsists between dog and man; it goes deeper however, for it shows that
men as well as dogs are dominated by instinctive night fears which unite
them by a most ancient and enduring bond. Riquet says: "A la tombee de
la nuit des puissances malfaisantes rodent autour de la maison," a fact
obvious to all children. There is (No. XII.)an admirable comic prayer to
his master beginning, "O mon maitre Bergeret, dieu de carnage, je
t'adore." But it seems to me to miss the true flavour of doggishness.
Professor A. C. Bradley {227} strives to show that Shakespeare "did not
care for dogs." His opinion is worthy of respect, and all the more that
he seems to be a dog lover himself. At least, so I interpret what he
says of Shakespeare: "To all that he loved most in men he was blind in
dogs, and then we call him universal!" "What is significant," he says,
"is the absence of sympathic allusion to the characteristic virtues of
dogs, and the abundance of allusions of an insulting kind."
I had always imagined that the description of the hounds in "A
Midsummer's Night's Dream" was written by one who liked dogs as
individuals, not merely as a picturesque piece of hunting apparatus. But
Professor Bradley's contrary opinion is probably the sounder. In the
same way I think that the passage in "Lear," "Tray, Blanche, and
Sweetheart," etc., could only have been written by one who understood the
shock which the little dogs' behaviour gave the King. On the other hand,
I agree that Shakespeare does not sympathise with the admirable conduct
of Launce, who sat in the stocks to save his dog from execution for
theft.
Scott was a genuine dog lover. It is on record that he excused himself
for not keeping an engagement on the score of the death of an old friend,
that friend being his bulldog Camp. His deerhounds Bran and Maida are,
like the Duke of Wellington's horse Copenhagen, known to all the world.
I am glad to think that Scott's dogs are preserved in several of his
portraits. In his books there are two types of dogs, Dandie Dinmonts'
Pepper and Mustard who have given their master's name to a breed and are
real dogs of flesh and blood. Or again, Harry Bertram's Wasp, who helps
to save Dandie from the thieves. But there is also the theatrical dog,
Roswal, in _The Talisman_, who springs at the throat of Conrad of
Montserrat and saves his master's honour. Between these come Gurth's
dog, Fangs, slightly tinged by the "tushery" of Ivanhoe, but still
striking and pathetic. I keep still my sympathy with Gurth, who swears
"by S. Edmund, S. Dunstan, S. Withold and S. Edward," that he will never
forgive Cedric for having attempted to kill his dog, "the only living
creature that ever showed me kindness."
But apart from his love of dogs Scott shows that he can use them with
splendid dramatic effect; for instance, when Dugald Dalgetty and the
Child of the Mist are escaping from the Duke of Argyll's prison, how we
thrill as the distant baying of those deadly trackers, the bloodhounds,
strikes on the ear of the fugitives.
I am not clear as to what was Dickens' personal attitude towards dogs,
but he certainly understood the passion of the dog lover.
The man who ousted David Copperfield from the box-seat in the London
Coach {229a} remarked, "'Orses and dorgs is some men's fancy. They're
wittles and drink to me--lodging, wife and children, reading, writing,
and 'rithmetic--snuff, tobacker, and sleep." Probably we should have
felt, as Mr. Pickwick did on a similar occasion, {229b} that it would
have been well if horses and dogs had been 'washing' also. I doubt, in
fact, whether we should have enjoyed his company, or even whether we
should have felt him a dog lover of our own sort--but we should not be
too nice, and must allow some merit to his form of the passion.
Another of Dickens's characters, Mr. Sleary, {229c} of "the Horse
Riding," has a much more attractive way of caring for animals. His
theory of how a dog he has lost found him again always pleases me. The
dog is believed to set on foot inquiries among his friends. "You don't
happen to know a person of the name of Sleary, do you? Person of the
name of Sleary in the Horse-Riding way--stout man--game eye?" The
inquiries were successful; and I like, too, the frankly sentimental
account of the appearance of the clown's dog after his master's death,
and the dog's search for the clown's little girl:--
"We was getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there comes
into our Ring by the stage door a dog. He had travelled a long way, he
was in very bad condition, he was lame, and pretty well blind. He went
round to our children, one after another, as if he was a-seeking for a
child he knowd; and then he come to me, and throwed himself up behind,
and stood on his two forelegs, weak as he was, and then wagged his tail
and died."
I might doubtless give other instances of well-known men who were lovers
of dogs, {230a} but I shall refrain from further quotation. The
instincts of man are being purged of the brutality by which they are too
often characterised, and what are clumsily called dumb animals have
benefited side by side with human beings. It is not yet true that even a
merciful man is merciful to his beast, but in England, at any rate, it is
recognised that actual cruelty to animals is wrong, but even this is not
always the case among other nations. My father used to tell us how, when
his horse was exhausted, he lagged behind his S. American companion who
shouted, "Spur him! Don Carlos, spur him! he is _my_ horse," and simply
could not understand my father's motive. But I am glad to remember that
even among rough people, in uncivilised ages, a sense of humanity to
animals was not unknown. Busbecquius {230b} records that in
Constantinople an angry crowd assembled before a shop in which was
exhibited a living bird with its mouth forcibly opened to show its huge
gape.
Cruelty is often said to be the outcome of ignorance and stupidity rather
than of innate brutality. I wish I could believe this: in any case it is
an evil which must be not merely held in check but rooted out. All
lovers of animals owe a debt of gratitude to the Society for Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, not only for their great organisation for the
prevention and punishment of brutalities, but also, and perhaps
especially, for their guidance of public opinion.
* * * * *