reported in a London evening paper at the end of November 1907. The
article devoted to it is a mass of absurdity, a burlesque of a genuine
note on the subject. It appears that the most ordinary thing happened
at Los Angeles, California, namely, that some workmen, in driving a
tunnel, unearthed some fossil bones. We are not surprised to learn
(though it is announced as a marvel) that the bones were those of a
mastodon (of which you may see a whole skeleton in Cromwell-road),
and those of the extinct American elephant called Elephas columbi.
This very commonplace occurrence was certainly not worth recording in
a London daily paper. So it is elaborately dressed up with details
intended to “fetch” the innocent reader. The writer says Elephas
columbi is as much larger than the Siberian mammoth as that is larger
than the horse of to-day. The truth is that Elephas columbi and the
mammoth are as nearly as possible of the same size. To writer goes on
to tell of a “fossil horse,” found at the same place, “a wonderful
two-toed animal marked by his cloven hoof.” That is cool impudence; it
is precisely “the double hoof” which none of the horse tribe possess,
but all the deer, cattle, and sheep do. He next tells us that elephants
and mastodons were never found together before, but supposed to have
shunned each other’s company. This is an invention; their remains
are found side by side all over Europe. Then suddenly the surprising
statement is made, like a bolt from the blue, “England ceases to be the
Mother Country and Germany the Fatherland to us,” and the pre-eminence
of America in providing the biggest thing on earth is declared to
have been already manifest “when the world rose out of chaos.” It is
satisfactory to be told that England is not the Mother Country of this
silliness; but whether the world which solemnly prints and reads it can
be said to have yet “risen out of chaos” must be regarded as doubtful.
23. _Mistletoe and Holly_
Christmas things and customs comprise much that has great interest
from a scientific point of view. Our modern celebration of Christmas
in England is a combination of the Christian festival of the Nativity
with that of the Epiphany, and that of St. Nicholas, who long ago
was substituted for the sea god Neptune, of classical mythology, by
sea-faring folk. Santa Claus--or Saint Nicholas--has his festival at
the beginning of December, but he has been carried over to Christmas
Day, and appears as “Father Christmas” in modern celebrations. There
is no great antiquity about this part of the tradition which we try to
keep alive at Christmas. The making of Christmas Day and Christmastide
into a special children’s festival is, on the other hand, a moving back
of the festival of the Epiphany, when gifts were brought to the child
Christ by wise men of the East. In Rome I have assisted in celebrating
our Twelfth Night under the name “Befani,” at a great illuminated
public fair, near the Pantheon, where children are taken to buy toys.
There has been in England also a similar moving back of the very
ancient--even prehistoric--celebrations of the New Year to Christmas,
and hence it is that the mysterious and sacred “mistletoe” of the
Druids is mingled in our houses with the less significant but beautiful
holly as a decoration. The Christian Church, however, did not, and does
not, sanction the introduction of mistletoe into the sacred edifice,
and not many years ago those who loved and truly understood tradition
would not permit mistletoe to be mixed with holly even in the private
house at Christmastide. Mistletoe, it was held, could not be rightly
introduced until the new year. The new year, however, of the Druids
differed in date from that of the later calendar, and fell in what is
to us the second week of March.
The holly tree, with its splendid red berries and shining, prickly
leaves, is a beautiful decorative plant, very hardy and abundant: it
was used by the old Romans in their “Saturnalia,” a feast which nearly
coincided with the Christmas of the new religion. There is a species
of holly in South America the leaves of which are made into tea by the
Indians, the Paraguay tea or matté. This tea is an unpleasant, bitter
decoction, devoid of aroma, if I may judge from samples which I have
tasted in London. “Ilex” is the botanical name of the genus to which
both our holly-tree and the Paraguay tea belong, but it must not be
confused with the evergreen oak to which the name Quercus ilex is given
on account of the resemblance of its leaves to those of a holly.
The mistletoe (or mistil-tan, the pale branch, in Anglo-Saxon) is a
pale-coloured, small-flowered member of a great family of parasitic
plants, the Loranthaceæ. They all live upon trees, and draw a part
of their nourishment from the juices of the tree into which their
rootlets penetrate. The tropical allies of the mistletoe are very
beautiful plants, with fine bunches of brilliantly-coloured flowers
and broad handsome green leaves. Our mistletoe is most commonly found
parasitic on apple trees and poplar trees. It occurs on nearly all our
trees, but is very rare on the oak. A careful inquiry some time ago
resulted in the discovery of only seven oaks in all England on which
mistletoe was growing. The Druids took their sacred mistletoe from
the sacred oak tree on account of its rarity. To them it was a charm
against infertility and sterility, and, according to Pliny, was cut and
distributed at the new year with great ceremony and the sacrifice of
heifers. Its paired white berries contain a viscid fluid which gives it
its botanical name Viscum album--and causes the seeds to adhere to the
beaks of birds--and thus to be transported to a distance and introduced
by the birds’ attempts to wipe their beaks into the cracks of the bark
of trees, in which the seeds germinate.
The white-berried mistletoe is the only English kind, and red mistletoe
seems altogether out of character. But a red-berried species (Viscum
cruciatum) is parasitic on the olive tree in Spain, North Africa,
and Syria. Curiously enough, though the white-berried mistletoe is
excommunicated by the Western Christian Church on account of its use in
pagan worship, the red-berried mistletoe was gathered from olive trees
in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the enclosure of the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem by Sir Joseph Hooker, the great botanist. The red-berried
mistletoe was successfully raised from seed on young olive trees six
years ago in this country by the Hon. Charles Ellis, of Frensham, near
Haslemere, and was figured at that time by Hooker.
The mistletoe has an evil name in Scandinavian mythology. Baldur, the
beautiful, the Sun-god, was made, like Achilles, invulnerable to spears
and arrows cut from whatever tree grows on earth. All things had taken
an oath not to hurt him, and the gods of Walhalla amused themselves by
throwing all sorts of darts and clubs at him--none could hurt him. At
last the blind god Höder, who loved the beautiful Baldur none the less
because he himself was weakly and sightless, also ventured to throw a
dart at his invulnerable friend. It sped home, pierced Baldur’s heart,
and killed him. The dart was made of mistletoe, a tree that does not
grow on earth, but lives as a parasite high up on other trees, and had
taken no oath to spare Baldur. It had been put into the blind god’s
hand in a friendly helpful sort of way by a designing female, who was
really the evil spirit Loki in disguise. What is the allegory? Does
the mistletoe dart stand for calumny? Is the mistletoe associated with
calumny because it is a parasite in high places? If one must choose
between the mistletoe myth of Norsemen and Briton--the latter, which
survives in the power accorded to the mistletoe to license, even to
command, by its mere overhead existence, the giving and taking of
unexpected kisses and of expected ones, too, is certainly the more
cheerful and suitable to the hopeful enterprise of New Year.
24. _The Cattle Show_
I always look upon the Christmas Cattle Show of the Smithfield Club
as a scientific delight. Breeding is a most serious branch of
scientific knowledge, held by many people (of whom I am one) to be
of more importance to statesmen, politicians, and philanthropists
than any other kind of knowledge, and yet almost absolutely neglected
and completely ignored except by our farmers and horticulturists.
When examining in turn the splendid animals at Islington I have felt
indignant that it should be not improbable that, owing to ignorance
and neglect in official quarters, the long matured traditions and
built-up skill of our cattle-breeders will be destroyed, crushed out of
existence by huge, devastating capitalist “combines.” Soon we shall not
get the beef we wish for, but we shall have to take whatever inferior
stuff the giant monopolist chooses to force on us--or go without! Our
wonderful stock, so patiently and happily bred, the envy of the world,
will disappear, and our breeders forget their art. We shall none of us
in Britain know more about prime beef, roasts, grills, and marrow-bones
than do the people of Europe or the eaters of terrapin and soft-shelled
crabs.
It is wonderful that man, by deliberate choice in selecting the sires
and dams, has been able to produce such widely-different races as the
short-horn, the Highland and the Sussex breed, and not only to produce
them, but to keep them there generation after generation. In Nature,
no such deviations are allowed--her motto is “One species, one shape,”
which is only relaxed so as to allow a few geographical varieties. It
is man who makes all these strange breeds, just as he has made such
a queer, irregular, varied lot of creatures from the human stock.
Withdraw once and for all man’s guiding “intelligence,” or perversity,
if you choose so to call it, and all these cattle would in a few
hundred years revert to one form, nearly (but not quite) the same as
that they came from. So, too, the Sheep; so, too, the Pigs. And man
himself, if one could poison him universally with a mind-destroying
microbe, would become a beautiful, healthy, silly creature, dying
at first by millions annually, and at last represented by a hundred
thousand unvarying specimens, inhabiting the warm but healthy corners
of the earth, aimlessly happy, free from disease, neither increasing
nor decreasing in number. It is legitimate, and is a means of examining
the whole problem of man’s history, to inquire whether we have reason
or not to suppose that, were intelligent man thus removed arbitrarily
and completely from the scene, a new “lord of the world” would arise,
by normal evolutionary process. A bird, an elephant, a rat, might give
rise to the new line of progressive development, and, unchecked by man,
once jealous and repressive, but now down-fallen, this new stock might
acquire such brains and wits as we men now boast of, and people the
earth. You never can tell! But it is not the business of science to
expatiate on such possibilities.
The domesticated cattle of Europe are of very ancient prehistoric
origin. They are for convenience called “Bos taurus,” and seem to be
derived from the huge Bos primigenius or Aurochs, the Urus of Cæsar,
which was wild in Central Europe in his time, and from the Indian
Bos indicus--which is represented by the Indian and African native
breeds of “humped” cattle. It is, however, very difficult to trace
most of man’s domesticated animals or his cultivated plants to their
original wild forms and original habitation. At the Cattle Show we
only see British and Irish breeds, and only those cattle bred as
meat-makers--the Highland, the Welsh, the Shorthorns, the polled Angus,
the South Devons, the Hereford, the Sussex, the Galloway, the Dexter.
But there are other British breeds famous for their milk-producing
quality, such as the Guernseys and Jerseys, whilst in Hungary, Italy,
and Spain they have magnificent breeds of great size, and often with
truly splendid spirally-turned horns (e.g. the Spanish), which are
used for ploughing and carting, and are fattened, killed, and eaten
after doing ten years’ good work. These fine creatures are not seen in
England. They come nearest to the extinct Aurochs, which was, however,
bigger than any of them. It, too, existed in prehistoric times in
England, and we find its bones in the gravel of the Thames Valley. The
last aurochs, or wild bull of Europe, was killed in Poland near the
end of the seventeenth century. The wild Chillingham cattle are Roman
cattle run wild. Many of these breeds and the bones of the aurochs to
compare as to size may be seen in the north hall of the Natural History
Museum, where I commenced a collection of domesticated breeds of
cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, &c., eight years ago. Chillingham cattle
are to be seen in the Zoological Gardens.
An interesting fact in this connection is that the splendid bull which
is kept in half-wild herds in Spain for the purpose of “bull-fights,”
is of a totally different race from that of the big, long-horned
agricultural cattle. It may be seen at Cromwell-road, a specimen
killed in the ring having been procured at my request and presented
to the museum through the kindness of the British Consul at Seville.
The Spanish fighting bull is, curiously enough, more like our Channel
Island milk-producing cattle than any other. It probably came to
Spain from North Africa--but there seems to be no record or history
concerning it--and if there were it would probably be a fantastic
invention. It seems that only the bulls of this special breed can be
played with and dazzled by the matador’s red cloak. A Scotch bull was
once brought by sea to Seville and introduced to the arena. He paid no
attention to cloaks, red or otherwise, but always went straight for his
man. It is stated that he was soon left quite alone in the ring! The
native African cattle (of Indian origin) at Ujiji and in Damaraland
have the biggest horns of any true Bos--as much as 13-1/2 ft. along the
curve from point to point. We have to distinguish from our own cattle,
for which there is no name except “Bos taurus,” for neither ox, bull,
cow, heifer, nor steer will do--the other bovines--the buffaloes, the
yak, and the bison--besides those great beasts the gayal and the gaur
of India and the banting of Malay. All these may be seen and studied
either in the Museum or the Zoological Gardens.
25. _The Experimental Method_
The observations lately made by a Chancellor of the Exchequer about an
attempt to put salt on a bird’s tail remind me of my first attempt to
deal experimentally with a popular superstition. I was a very trustful
little boy, and I had been assured by various grown-up friends that if
you place salt on a bird’s tail the bird becomes as it were transfixed
and dazed, and that you can then pick it up and carry it off. On
several occasions I carried a packet of salt into the London park where
my sister and I were daily taken by our nurse. In vain I threw the salt
at the sparrows. They always flew away, and I came to the conclusion
that I had not succeeded in getting any salt or, at any rate, not
enough on to the tail of any one of them.
Then I devised a great experiment. There was a sort of creek eight feet
long and three feet broad at the west end of the ornamental water in
St. James’s Park. My sister attracted several ducks with offerings of
bread into this creek, and I, standing near its entrance, with a huge
paper bag of salt, trembled with excitement at the approaching success
of my scheme. I poured quantities--whole ounces of salt--on to the
tails of the doomed birds as they passed me on their way back from the
creek to the open water. Their tails were covered with salt. But, to
my surprise and horror, they did not stop! They gaily swam forward,
shaking their feathers and uttering derisive “quacks.” I was profoundly
troubled and distressed. I had clearly proved one thing, namely, that
my nursemaid, uncle, and several other trusted friends--but not, I am
still glad to remember, my father--were either deliberate deceivers or
themselves the victims of illusion. I was confirmed in my youthful wish
to try whether things are as people say they are or not. Somewhat early
perhaps, I adopted the motto of the Royal Society, “Nullius in verba.”
And a very good motto it is, too, in spite of the worthy Todhunter
and other toiling pedagogues, who have declared that it is outrageous
to encourage a youth to seek demonstration rather than accept the
statement of his teacher, especially if the latter be a clergyman.
My experiment was on closely similar lines to that made by the Royal
Society on July 24, 1660--in regard to the alleged property of powdered
rhinoceros horn--which was reputed to paralyse poisonous creatures such
as snakes, scorpions, and spiders. We read in the journal-book, still
preserved by the society, under this date: “A circle was made with
powder of unicorne’s horn, and a spider set in the middle of it, but it
immediately ran out several times repeated. The spider once made some
stay upon the powder.”
26. _Hypnotism and an Experiment on the Influence of the Magnet_
A more interesting result followed from an experiment made in the same
spirit twenty-five years later. I was in Paris, and went with a medical
friend to visit the celebrated physician Charcot, to whom at that time
I was a stranger, at the Salpêtrière Hospital. He and his assistants
were making very interesting experiments on hypnotism. Charcot allowed
great latitude to the young doctors who worked with him. They initiated
and carried through very wild “exploratory” experiments on this
difficult subject. Charcot did not discourage them, but did not accept
their results unless established by unassailable evidence, although his
views were absurdly misrepresented by the newspapers and wondermongers
of the day.
At this time there had been a revival of the ancient and fanciful
doctrine of “metallic sympathies,” which flourished a hundred years
ago, and was even then but a revival of the strange fancies as to
“sympathetic powders,” which were brought before the Royal Society
by Sir Kenelm Digby at one of its first meetings, in 1660. In the
journal-book of the Royal Society of June 5 of that year, we read,
“Magnetical cures were then discoursed of. Sir Gilbert Talbot promised
to bring in what he knew of sympatheticall cures. Those that had
any powder of sympathy were desired to bring some of it at the next
meeting. Sir Kenelm Digby related that the calcined powder of toades
reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate
body, cures it by several applications.” The belief in sympathetic
powders and metals was a last survival of the mediæval doctrine of
“signatures,” itself a form of the fetish still practised by African
witch-doctors, and directly connected with the universal system of
magic and witchcraft of European as well as of more remote populations.
To this day, such beliefs lie close beneath the thin crust of modern
knowledge and civilisation, even in England, treasured in obscure
tradition and ready to burst forth in grotesque revivals in all classes
of society. The Royal Society put many of these reputed mechanisms
of witchcraft and magic to the test, and by showing their failure
to produce the effects attributed to them, helped greatly to cause
witches, wizards, and their followers to draw in their horns and
disappear. The germ, however, remained, and reappears in various forms
to-day.
Thirty years ago some of the doctors in Paris believed that a small
disc of gold, or copper, or of silver, laid flat on the arm could
produce an absence of sensation in the arm, and that whilst one person
could be thus affected by one metal another person would respond
only to another metal, according to a supposed “sympathy” or special
affinity of the nervous system for this or that metal. This astonishing
doctrine was thought to be proved by certain experiments made with the
curiously “nervous” (hysterical) women who frequent the Salpêtrière
Hospital as out-patients. That the loss of sensation, which was real
enough, was due to what is called “suggestion”--that is to say, a
belief on the part of the patient that such would be the case, because
the doctor said it would--and had nothing to do with one metal or
another, was subsequently proved by making use of wooden discs in
place of metallic ones, the patient being led to suppose that a disc
of metal of the kind with which she believed herself “sympathetic” was
being applied. Sensation disappeared just as readily as when a special
metallic disc was used.
The old hypothesis of the influence of a magnet on the human body
was at this time revived, and Charcot’s pupils found that when a
susceptible female patient held in the hand a bar of iron surrounded by
a coil of copper wire leading to a chemical electric cell or battery
nothing happened so long as the connection was broken. But as soon as
the wire was connected so as to set up an electric current and to make
the bar of iron into a magnet, the hand and arm (up to the shoulder)
of the young woman holding the bar, lost all sensation. She was not
allowed to see her hand and arm, and was apparently quite unconscious
of the thrusting of large carpet-needles into, and even through, them,
though as long as the bar of iron was not magnetised she shrunk from a
pin-prick applied to the same part. I saw this experiment with Charcot
and some others present, and I noticed that the order to an assistant
to “make contact,” that is to say, to convert the bar of iron into a
magnet, was given very emphatically by Charcot, and that there was an
attitude of expectation on the part of all present--which was followed
by the demonstration by means of needle-pricking that the young woman’s
arm had lost sensation, or, as they say, “was in a state of anæsthesia.”
Charcot went away saying he should repeat the experiment before some
medical friends in an hour or two. In the meantime, being left alone
in the laboratory with my companion as witness, I emptied the chemical
fluid (potassium bichromate) from the electric battery and substituted
pure water. It was now incapable of setting up an electric current
and converting the bar into a magnet. When Charcot returned with his
visitors, the patient was brought in, and the whole ritual repeated.
There was no effect on sensation when the bar was held in the hand so
long as the order to set the current going, and so magnetise the bar,
had not been given. At last the word was given, “Make!” and at once
the patient’s arm became anæsthetised, as earlier in the day. We ran
large carpet-needles into the hand without the smallest evidence of the
patient’s knowledge. The order was given to break the current (that is,
to cease magnetising the bar), and at once the young woman exhibited
signs of discomfort, and remonstrated with Charcot for allowing
such big needles to be thrust into her hand when she was devoid of
sensation! My experiment had succeeded perfectly.
It would not have done to let Charcot, or anyone else (except my
witness) know that when the order “Make” was given, there was no
“making,” but that the bar remained as before un-magnetised. The
conviction of everyone, including Charcot himself, that the bar became
a magnet, and that loss of sensation would follow, was a necessary
condition of the “suggestion” or control of the patient. It was thus
demonstrated that the state of the iron bar as magnet or not magnet had
nothing to do with the result, but that the important thing was that
the patient should believe that the bar became a magnet, and that she
should be influenced by her expectation, and that of all those around
her, that the bar, being now a magnet, sensation would disappear from
her arm. With appropriate apologies I explained to Charcot that the
electric battery had been emptied by me, and that no current had been
produced. The assistants rushed to verify the fact, and I was expecting
that I should be frigidly requested to take my leave, when my hand was
grasped, and my shoulder held by the great physician, who said, “Mais
que vous avez bien fait, mon cher Monsieur!” I had many delightful
hours with him in after years, both at the Salpêtrière and in his
beautiful old house and garden in the Boulevard St. Germain.