FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM, CHICAGO,
_December 7, 1899_.
Editor’s Table.
_THE WAR SPIRIT._
It must be a matter of deep regret to all right-thinking men that
there should have been during the latter half of the century now
expiring so marked a revival of the war spirit. In the middle of the
century it was thought by many that the world had learned wisdom from
the terrible experiences of the past, and that with the development
of international trade war would become an outworn mode of settling
international controversies. How different a turn things were destined
to take need not here be told. Coming to recent events, however, we
may say that it is lamentable our own country could not have won by
peaceful means whatever advantages it has secured by its recent war
with Spain. Equally lamentable is it that Great Britain, the other
great representative of Anglo-Saxon civilization, should at this moment
be engaged in a still bloodier struggle over questions which it is hard
to believe could not have been settled by negotiation. “Whence come
wars and fightings among you?” is a question that was asked very long
ago, and we do not know that it is possible to improve on the answer
then given: “From your lusts.”
We do not say that a nation should not resist to the death a distinct
aggression on its liberties or its independence. We do not say that
when horrors are being enacted in any part of the world force may not
righteously be employed to arrest them; but it is clear to our mind
that, in the present age, wars between civilized countries might be
almost wholly avoided if more reliance were placed upon moral force
and less rein given to the impulse to employ physical force. This is a
matter for the people in any state enjoying free institutions to take
to heart. Let every man in a time of national difficulty ask himself
this question: “Do I personally want to have blood shed over this
matter?” Or this one: “Am I personally indifferent whether or not this
dispute ends in bloodshed?” If a nation or the majority of a nation
wants to have blood shed over a dispute with another nation, or is
indifferent as to whether that shall be the outcome, the discussion
will be carried on in a very different spirit from what it would be
if there were a pronounced aversion to such a result. With nations,
as with individuals, everything depends upon the spirit and ulterior
purpose with which a question is approached. The cases must be very
few in which a great nation, safe itself from attack, might not, in
any matter in which minor interests are involved, resolve within
itself that it will not resort to war--that it will work, and continue
to work, on moral lines, trusting that, if it has right on its side,
it will in due time carry its point. If blood cries from the ground
against the slayer, what must be the responsibility of those who
heedlessly and ruthlessly give their voices for war, when patience,
moderation, and disinterestedness would have better accomplished every
legitimate purpose? Slaughter is slaughter, murder is murder, however
we may seek to weaken their import by a conventional treatment. War is
mutual murder carried on professionally and systematically. Yet the
primal command still makes its solemn appeal to the human heart and
conscience: “Thou shalt not kill.”
It is, unfortunately, only too easy to cultivate the military spirit
in almost any nation, and the military spirit, it need hardly be said,
is the spirit that seeks quarrels. To the military man war means
excitement, emulation, reputation, promotion, subject of course to the
possibility of injury or death. No one denies that deeds of heroism and
self-devotion are done on the battlefield; but that men should acquit
themselves nobly in the field is no compensation for the horrors of a
war brought on by the predominance of the military spirit.
“‘Great fame the Duke of Marlborough won,
And our good Prince Eugene.’--
‘Oh, ’twas a very wicked thing,’
Said little Wilhelmine.”
And every war is wicked and detestable that could consistently
with national honor be avoided. When we say “honor” we do not mean
“reputation.” Reputation depends on the canons of judgment prevailing
among those who presume to award it. In a dueling community a man’s
reputation might suffer by declining a challenge, but his honor would
be intact if he declined from sincere unwillingness to do a wrong act.
There is much honor sometimes in sacrificing reputation, particularly
the “bubble reputation” that is won “in the cannon’s mouth.” Every
appeal to the sword weakens the reliance placed upon principles of
justice, and thus undoes a vast amount of the work of peace. When war
is once set on foot, the national judgment is more or less blinded.
True, it is the action of a majority of the people only--admitting
that a majority wanted it--but who is uncompromising enough, when his
country’s armies are in the field, to proclaim that they are fighting
in a wrong cause? A few may do it, but they do it at their peril. In
all other matters a minority may censure with any degree of severity
the policy of the majority, but not in the matter of a war once entered
on. Yet how perverting such a situation is to right judgment, and how
injurious an effect it must have on the rising generation, are only too
apparent.
These reflections may not at first sight seem to have a very direct
bearing on the interests for which this magazine is supposed to stand,
but to our mind science, in the broad sense, has no function so
important as that of settling the education of the young upon a right
_moral_ basis. No system of education deserves to be called scientific
that does not place the idea of justice at the very foundation of
human life. You can not do this, however, without making it a working
principle, and without inculcating a belief in it as such. Applying
the principle to national affairs, we see at once that a strong nation
which desires to be just will take no advantage of its strength in
its dealings with other nations. If it has a demand to make, it will
make it simply in the name of justice, and cast no sidelong glances at
its up-to-date battle ships or its well-equipped battalions. It will
have unbounded patience with weaker communities, which, rightly or
wrongly, may seem to think they have right on their side. It will not
be ashamed to shrink from the shedding of blood. The “young barbarians”
of our public schools are always only too ready to exalt might above
right; but the judicious teacher into whom the true spirit of science
has entered will seize every favorable opportunity for inculcating the
great lesson that the moral law has a way of vindicating itself in the
end, and that the inheritance of the earth has been promised not to the
quarrelsome or the overweening, but to the meek. A generation brought
up on these principles would be slow to make war, and their influence
on the world would be in every way powerful for good.
_LANGUAGE AND LIFE._
The ordinary school education in language and grammar is doubtless
responsible for the impression which we find existing in so many minds
that, in all matters of verbal expression, there is some one absolute
standard of authority to which it implies simply ignorance not to
bow--some supreme court, as it were, empowered to decide for us what
words we are to use, how we are to pronounce them, and what rules of
syntax we are to follow. It would be difficult, doubtless, to impart
to children or very young people the wider and more scientific view of
language, inasmuch as they need, in the first place, clear guidance as
regards usage rather than correct theory. The idea, therefore, with
which they grow up, if their school studies take any hold upon them
at all and if no wider culture comes to change their way of looking
at things, is that some very wise man made an infallible grammar and
another very wise man an infallible dictionary, and that no one need be
in doubt in regard to what is orthodox in language who has access to
these tables of the law. We have known grown-up persons to turn away
with a very skeptical air, and a kind of look as if they had found out
a weak spot in your educational armor, when they were told that really
it was impossible to say which of two pronunciations of a word was
right and which was wrong--that either might be employed without mortal
offense against elegance of speech or good breeding.
A hidebound view of language tends so much to narrow thought on general
subjects that it seems to us of importance that the true and scientific
view of the subject should be brought forward whenever opportunity
offers. Mr. William Archer, the well-known English critic, contributed
an article not long ago to the Pall Mall Magazine which might be read
with much advantage by pedants and purists, and all blind followers of
authority. He takes the broad ground that language is a transcript,
as it were, of life, and that as life widens and becomes more varied,
language must do the same. It must reflect the fancy, the imagination,
and the humor of the day, and not merely the fancy, imagination, and
humor of past generations. If we want a language that is fixed and
unalterable in its forms we must seek one that has ceased to be spoken
by men. Even then we can not always get absolute decisions. Cicero is
perhaps the best standard of Latin prose, but no competent critic would
say that his writing was flawless. We know that grammatical questions
were much debated among the ancients, and we have no doubt that many
such questions were left unsettled. In a living language there must be
unsettled questions. There is a constant struggle for life going on
among the words and phrases with which men endeavor to express their
ideas, and, at a given moment, it is impossible to say which shall
prosper, this or that. The word or phrase that prospers--that commends
itself, after adequate trial, for expressiveness, convenience, or
euphony, or for any combination of useful qualities--will survive and
become classic; the expression that has nothing special to commend it,
beyond its novelty and slanginess, will probably pass, after a brief
and partial currency, into the vast limbo of the unfit. All we can say
of a word at a given moment is how far it has actually become current
and what kind of society it keeps. What its fortune will be we can only
guess. Just as in the financial world great fortunes are sometimes
very suddenly made and names before obscure spring into world-wide
notoriety, so, in the realm of language, a word of very uncertain
ancestry and no social repute may assert its right to recognition and
take its place among the best.
It does not follow from this that it can ever be a matter of
indifference what words we use or what tricks we play with language,
any more than it can be a matter of indifference what personal habits
we adopt. Language is the clothing of our thoughts, and as such it may
exhibit the same qualities which attach to the clothing of our bodies.
It may be marked by neatness and propriety, or by slovenliness and
want of taste. Some men are over-dressed, and some affect over-fine
language. Some go after the latest novelties in the tailoring world,
and some after the latest slang, asserting thereby their resolution
to be up to date. It is needless to draw the parallel further, but
it is evident that there is wide scope in the choice of language for
the exhibition of personal preference and personal character. We
think it safe to say that the interests of a language, considered as
an instrument of thought, will be best promoted by those who pay due
respect to its established forms, and only countenance such neologisms
as make good their claim to acceptance by supplying a real want. Mr.
Archer, in the article we have referred to, states, and we do not
doubt with truth, that the English language has been greatly enriched
and strengthened by the fact that it has been spoken and written by
millions of people on this side of the Atlantic, leading an intense and
vigorous life of their own, under conditions very different in many
respects from those prevailing in the mother country. The language
moves with a freer step, beats with a stronger pulse, and assumes a
more imperial bearing from the fact that it expresses the activity and
sums up the life of the foremost communities of the human race in both
hemispheres.
A great classical scholar not long ago wrote a letter to an English
weekly newspaper expressing a very contemptuous estimate of the French
language, as being only a degraded form of Latin. He thought it a great
disgrace to the language that it had no better word for “much” than
_beaucoup_, which, as he learnedly explained, came from two Latin words
meaning “fine” and “blow.” The most cursory examination of any language
will show that it abounds in just such verbal devices. We do not in
English put the words “great” and “stroke” together, but, using them
separately, we say “a great stroke” of luck and of many other things
when there is no question of “striking” at all. In the same way we
would say “a great hit,” when there is no question of hitting, except
by remote analogy. Languages grow rich and flexible precisely by the
adoption of such convenient combinations. What they may originally have
meant becomes a matter of little moment when once they have become
thoroughly accepted and thoroughly expressive. After they have become
welded together, as sometimes happens, in one word, it is an advantage
rather than otherwise if the separate meanings of their constituent
parts become lost to all except the professional etymologist. As long
as the separate parts retain their separate meaning some sense of
incongruity will sometimes arise in connection with the use of the
term. Thus to say “a handful of corn” is all right, but one might
feel that it was not all right to say “a mere handful of men.” Yet it
would be futile to criticise the expression which has become idiomatic
English. If the word “handful” had parted with its essential meaning
as completely as say the word “troop” has, for all but etymologists,
there would be no kind of incongruity in its employment for any small
number or quantity whatsoever.
The scientific view of language, then, is that it represents the effort
of mankind to use audible symbols for the expression of thought; that
it follows the development of man’s activity and enlarges with his
enlarging knowledge, and comprehension of things; that while its object
is essentially a practical one it gathers beauty with use and age, and
begins to react on the minds of its makers; that its makers are the
people, not the grammarians, these being merely its policemen, who,
useful in general, are sometimes too officious; that great writers are
the architects who felicitously arrange materials which the people have
gathered and shaped, placing the best of such materials where they can
be seen to best advantage; finally, that the language of each nation
is its most precious possession, the record of its civilization, and
the repository of all that is best in its moral and intellectual life,
and that it is therefore the duty of all who make any pretensions to
liberal training to watch over their heritage and, while allowing all
reasonable scope for further development, to guard it by all means in
their power against degradation and pollution. A great people will
have a great language: when a language shows signs of weakness or
declension, there is reason to fear for the civilization of which it is
the expression.
Fragments of Science.
=“Dark Lightning.”=--The attention of meteorologists and photographers
has been engaged to a considerable extent, within a few months past,
with the appearance on photographs of lightning of what seemed to
be dark flashes as well as bright ones. In the effort to account
satisfactorily for the phenomenon it has been referred to photographic
reversal, due to extreme brilliancy; to a predominance of infra-red
radiations; to the existence of flashes deficient in actinic rays; to
changes in the density of the air occasioned by the spark, when a dark
line with a light line within it is shown if the air is compressed,
and a light line inclosing a dark one if it is rarefied; and to some
qualities of the photographic plate. The first real light was thrown on
the subject by some experiments described by Mr. A. W. Clayden, who,
having photographed some electric sparks of different intensities,
before developing the plates exposed them to the diffused light of
a gas flame. The brilliant sparks then yielded images which might
either be called normal with a reversed margin, or reversed with a
normal core, while the fainter images were completely reversed--or,
in other words, came out darker than the background. The “fogging” of
the picture, to produce this reversal, must be done after the image of
the flash is impressed; for if it is done before, the image appears
lighter than the background. This effect, which is called the “Clayden
effect,” is accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon
by two of the authors who have most studied it--Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer
and Prof. R. W. Wood, of the University of Wisconsin. Professor Wood,
on repeating Mr. Clayden’s experiment, obtained dark flashes without
any difficulty, but as they failed to appear when the light of an
incandescent lamp was substituted for the electric spark, he concludes
that there is something in the spark essential to the reversal. Dr.
Lockyer summarizes his conclusion by saying that dark-lightning flashes
“do not exist in Nature, but their appearances on photographs are due
to some chemical action which takes place in the gelatin film.”
* * * * *
=“Warming Up.”=--“Warming up” is the expressive term of general
currency, which Dr. E. G. Lancaster adopts to denote the process in
which one starting on any work in a little while suffers a short
period of fatigue, from which he soon recovers, to go on with new and
increased vigor. This occurs in the course of walks, with students
engaged in earnest reading or in writing, and in animals, as in dogs
on the chase, the animals pursued, and racehorses. “It is said of two
famous trotters, each of which has reduced the world’s record within a
few years, that the period of warming up was very characteristic....
Athletes, especially ball players, realize the importance of practice
just before the games, to be followed by a slight rest. A pitcher
would hardly enter the box till he had got his arm in working order
by a few minutes’ practice. Orators often are dull at first, but warm
up. It is said that Wendell Phillips was often hissed for his slow,
uninteresting speech, but rallied to the occasion at such times with
his masterly oratory.” Dr. Lancaster has experimented on the phenomena,
using a method like those of Mosso and of Lombard in the psychological
laboratory at Clark University, and publishes the results, with details
and curves, in the papers of the Colorado College Scientific Society.
He tried ten or twelve subjects, experimenting on the middle finger
of the right hand, and gaining most of his results from four or five
persons. He finds that warming up is general, but not universal. One
subject always did his best work first. He likewise showed no warming
up in his mental work. The phenomenon called “second mind” is closely
allied to warming up, but is not the same. The author is of the opinion
that the importance of this process is greatly misunderstood.
* * * * *
=Sixty Years’ Improvements in Steamships.=--A review of what has
been accomplished in sixty years in the improvement of transatlantic
traffic, given by Sir William H. White in his address at the British
Association on Steam Navigation at High Speeds, shows that speed has
been increased from eight and a half to twenty-two and a half knots
an hour, and the time of the voyage has been brought down to about
thirty-eight per cent of what it was in 1838. Ships have been more than
trebled in length, about doubled in breadth, and increased tenfold in
displacement. The number of passengers carried by a steamship has been
enlarged from about one hundred to nearly two thousand. The engine
power has been made forty times as great. The ratio of horse power to
the weight driven has been quadrupled. The rate of coal consumption
per horse power per hour is now only about one third what it was in
1840. Had the old rate of coal consumption continued, instead of three
thousand tons of coal, nine thousand would have been required for a
voyage at twenty-two knots. Had the engines been proportionately as
heavy as those in use sixty years ago, they would have weighed about
fourteen thousand tons. In other words, machinery, boilers, and coal
would have exceeded the total weight of the Campania as she floats
to-day. “There could not be a more striking illustration than this
of the close relation between improvements in marine engineering at
high speed. Equally true is it that this development could not have
been accomplished but for the use of improved materials and structural
arrangements.”
* * * * *
=American Advances in Forestry.=--The Department of Agriculture having
determined to prepare a book for the Paris Exposition, reviewing
what has been accomplished in scientific agriculture in the United
States, the Division of Forestry will contribute to it a short history
of forestry in the United States, with an account of the efforts of
private landholders to apply the principles of forestry. Much more has
been accomplished in the United States in the way of forestry than has
been supposed. Mr. Pinchot, the forester of the division, holds that
wherever private owners have made the effort to use the merchantable
timber on their woodland without injuring its productive power, and to
establish new forests, there has been the intention of true forestry.
The methods may have been imperfect, but they have tended toward
economic forest management so far as their object was the continued
use of the land for producing woods. Among the measures looking in
this direction Mr. Pinchot mentions in his circular the practice
which has been adopted “because it pays,” in some of the spruce lands
of the Northwest, of leaving the small trees standing, so that the
lumbermen can return for a second crop earlier than would otherwise
be possible; and the adoption by farmers of methods in getting their
wood, for saving the best trees and promoting their growth and that
of the new ones; of keeping sprout lands to be cut over regularly and
systematically, for periodical renewal, and of tree planting on waste
places, hillsides liable to be washed, and the banks of streams. Other
forms of planting are the institution of wind breaks in the treeless
West, and special plantations for fence posts, etc. A kind of forestry
practice is likewise indicated in the special pains that are taken
by farmers and in lumbering districts to lessen the danger of fires.
Forester Pinchot desires that all the information that can be gained be
communicated to him for the proposed article.
* * * * *
=Professor Putnam on the Origins of the American Races.=--In his
address as retiring President of the American Association, Prof. F. W.
Putnam, after expressing his high opinion of the late Dr. D. G. Brinton
and his scientific labors, referred to the differences of opinion that
had existed between them in respect to the origin of the American
peoples, and proceeded to expound his own views on the subject. He
regarded the term “mound-builders” as comprehensive enough to include
all the peoples who had left the marks of their former presence in
this country. Even the shell heaps could not be regarded as the work
of one people. From the time of the earliest deposits--which were of
great antiquity--to the present, such refuse piles had been made and
many of the sites reoccupied, sometimes even by a different people.
So with the mounds of earth and stone; many of them are of great
antiquity, while others were made within the historic period, and even
during the first half of the present century. These works were devoted
to a variety of purposes, and there are many different kinds of them.
Besides the mounds, there are groups of earthworks of a different order
of structure, that must be considered by themselves--great embankments,
fortifications, and singular structures on hills and plateaus that are
in marked contrast to the ordinary conical mounds, and mounds in the
form of animals and of man. The considerable antiquity of these older
earthworks is proved by the accumulation of mold and the forest growth
upon them. “If all mounds of shell, earth, or stone, fortifications
on hills, or places of religious and ceremonial rites, are classed,
irrespective of their structure, contents, or time of formation, as
the work of one people, and that people is designated as the ‘American
Indian’ or the ‘American race,’ and considered the only people ever
inhabiting America north and south, we are simply ... not giving fair
consideration to differences, while overestimating resemblances.”
Citing analogies between our earthworks and Mexican structures, and
looking upon the Pueblos as a connecting link, “we must regard the
culture of the builders of the ancient earthworks as one and the same
with that of ancient Mexico, although modified by environment. Our
northern and eastern tribes came in contact with this people when
they pushed their way southward and westward, and many of their arts
and customs still linger among some of our Indian tribes. It is this
absorption and admixture of the stocks that has in the course of
thousands of years brought all our peoples into a certain uniformity.
This does not, however, prove a unity of race.”
* * * * *
=Heat Insulators.=--Mr. C. L. Norton has made experiments, at the
request of Mr. Edward Atkinson, in order to determine the relative
efficiency of several kinds of steam-pipe covering now on the market;
to ascertain the fire risk attendant upon the use of certain methods
and materials employed for insulation of steam pipes; to show the gain
in economy attendant upon the increase of thickness of coverings; and
to find the exact financial return that may be expected from a given
outlay for covering steam pipes. A method of experimentation was
adopted which represented as nearly as practicable the conditions
existing in the actual use of steam pipes. Of sixteen non-conducting
preparations tried, the most efficient were found to be those made of
cork; next was a cover composed of an inner jacket of earthy material
and an outer jacket of wool felt; and next magnesia. In reference to
the last substance it is, however, observed that, while it is a most
effective non-conductor, the name has been applied to many compounds
of which the greater part consist of carbonate of lime or plaster of
Paris, materials which are not good as heat retardents. Asbestos is
merely a non-combustible material in which air may be entrapped, but,
when non-porous, is a good conductor of heat. Generally speaking, a
cover saves heat enough to pay for itself in a little less than a year
at three hundred and ten ten-hour days, and in about four months at
three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days. The decision as to
the choice of cover must, however, come from other considerations, as
well as from that of non-conductivity. Ability to withstand the action
of heat for a prolonged period without being destroyed or rendered
less efficient is of vital importance. The cork coverings were found
to respond to this test extremely well, and there can be no question
respecting magnesia; but Mr. Norton does not consider it safe to put
upon a steam pipe wool, hair, felt, or woolen felt in any form, though
the danger is not likely to accrue when an inch of fireproof material
stands between the felt and the pipe. In general it may be said that
if five years is the life of a cover, one inch is the most economical
thickness, while a cover which has a life of ten years may to advantage
be made two inches thick. The method of judging a pipe cover by the
warmth felt on putting the hand upon it is fallacious; the sensation
depends so much upon the nature of the surface that it utterly fails to
give any idea of the actual temperature.
* * * * *
=Effect of Sea Water on Soil.=--In a paper read at the British
Association, 1899, on the chemical effect of the salts of the
salt-water flood of November 27, 1897, on the east coast of England,
Messrs. T. S. Dymond and F. Hughes recorded the remarkable result that,
although the proportion of salt left in the soil was insufficient to
prove injurious to growing crops, the earthworms were entirely removed,
with the consequence that very few crops were worth harvesting the
following year. In the next year nine tenths of the salt at first
present had disappeared from the soil, and young worms had again
made their appearance, but still the condition of the soil remained
unsatisfactory, the rate of percolation of water through the flooded
earth being only one half as rapid as through the unflooded. The
authors ascribe this to the action of the chlorides of the sea water on
the silicates of the soil with the formation of silicate of alumina in
a gelatinous condition.
* * * * *
=The War against Monopolies.=--Mr. Robert Ewen writes, in the
Westminster Review, demanding free bank circulation as likely to
be a very effective weapon to be used in “the coming contest with
monopolists.” The subject seems to have attracted official attention
in England in 1875, when Sir Stafford Northcote was Chancellor of the
Exchequer. As chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the
working of the Bank Acts, he submitted a memorandum showing that,
while certain items of the monopoly enjoyed by the Bank of England
had been withdrawn, a residuum of restrictions on issuing banks still
remained unrepealed. Some other countries have found a way of giving
elasticity to the currency by buying in and laying aside their bonds,
as the United States has recently been doing. This can not be done
in Great Britain, because the Bank of England and the other bank
monopolists block the way. The bank is tied down by acts of Parliament
to buy and sell gold at a fixed price, and this restriction has been
a cause of panics, whereas had gold been allowed to rise and fall in
price, according to supply and demand, and the bank got a free hand in
dealing with that commodity and in issuing legal notes to supply the
circulating medium, “all would have gone well.” Foreign protectionists
now have the power to prevent British goods from getting into their
markets by imposing heavy duties on them, and at the same time forcing
their produce into British markets, because English laws allow
them to get gold from the English cheaper than their goods can be
obtained. “Suppose a merchant in Britain buys £100,000 worth of corn
from America and gives a check on the Bank of England for the amount
of the purchase. The American draws the £100,000 in gold and takes it
home; he will have to pay no export or import duty thereon--indeed,
the probability is he may get a premium on the gold in America. But
reverse the transaction: Suppose the British merchant sold £100,000
worth of his goods to America, there would, in the first place, be
the exorbitant duty imposed there upon our manufactures of from forty
to fifty per cent. Or suppose our merchant wished to buy corn or any
American produce in exchange for his goods in place of bringing money,
the case would be different--it would tell against the American farmer,
who would get a less price for his corn, etc., than he would have done
by free trade.” This instance is given “to show how free trade in
gold would bring about free trade and reciprocity between the United
States and Britain, and is applicable to every other state with which
we trade.... There should be full scope given to all good banks in
the country, large or small, to carry on banking business in the best
modern manner for the benefit of all parties, so as to encourage and
develop all trades and industries.”
* * * * *
=Rats and the Plague.=--In his introductory address at the opening
of the London School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Manson preached a war
of extermination against rats with the vigor of Cato calling for
the destruction of Carthage. “Were I asked,” he said, “how I would
protect a state from plague, I would certainly answer, Exterminate
the rats as a first and most important measure.” He added, “At the
present juncture, were I the responsible sanitary head of any town in
Europe, in anticipation of a possibility compared to which in horror
and in destructiveness a general European war would be a trifle, I
would do my best to have every rat and, if possible, every mouse in
my district promptly exterminated.” Dr. Manson does not reveal his
plan of campaign. Wholesale poisoning of sewers might have serious
disadvantages, and there would be difficulties about inveigling the
rodent population of these subterranean health resorts (as some
enthusiasts consider them to be) into a lethal chamber. Are we to cry
havoc and let slip the _cats_ of war? or to hurl an army of snakes
against the foe? In either case we might find ourselves in the awkward
position of a king who had called a too powerful auxiliary to his aid.
Already action is being taken on the rat theory of plague. The French
Government has ordered that special precautions are to be taken to
prevent the importation of rats in vessels from plague-stricken places.
It is to be hoped that similar precautions will be taken in regard to
the transports which convey the Indian contingent to the Cape, or the
situation there may become complicated by the intervention of an enemy
who will deal destruction impartially to Boers and to Britons.
* * * * *
=Forestry in California.=--As a remedy for the devastation of the
forest lands of California, Marsden Manson, having shown that
Government administrations with politics in them can not be trusted in
the matter, recommends that all forest reservations and public lands
upon mountain slopes within the borders of the State be granted to the
University of California in trust, for the purpose of maintaining,
developing, and extending the water supply of those regions forever.
For this purpose the regents should be empowered to lease, under
proper control, the timber cutting and pasturage privileges of those
areas, and to use the resultant fund to protect the catchment areas,
to maintain a college of practical forestry, to construct reservoirs
at such points as may be necessary to the industries of the State, and
dispose of the water for the benefit of the trust, to acquire mountain
lands to be added to the catchment areas, and to do all such things as
may maintain wise systems of forest and water conservation and use.
The extent of income-bearing property which can be made available for
forest preservation and storage of flood waters, Mr. Manson says, is
far beyond the general idea.
* * * * *
=Another New Element.=--The mineral pitchblende is distinguished for
its radio-activity, or the property it has of emitting the peculiar
light-rays which have recently attracted attention. The property
has been attributed to the presence of uranium, one of the most
radio-active among the known metals. About a year ago the chemists M.
and Madame Curie, examining the different substances in pitchblende,
found among them two new radiant substances, both more active than
uranium, which they called polonium and radium. Polonium was found
to be closely akin to bismuth, accompanying that metal in all its
reactions, but separable from it by fractionation. Radium resembles
barium in its chemical reactions. Recently M. A. Debierne, examining
one of the products of solution and precipitation of pitchblende,
observed intensified radio-active properties in a portion containing
titanium, and on further investigation found still another substance
showing the principal analytical properties of titanium, but which
emitted extremely active rays. While these rays were comparable with
those observed from polonium and radium, the chemical properties are
entirely different from those of these substances. Radium, however, is
spontaneously luminous, while the new substance is not.