The labors of M. Metchnikoff have made known one of the most curious
mechanisms--perhaps the most effective--which Nature employs to protect
the organism against the invasion and ravages of microbes. We are only
beginning to learn the means which are provided for our defense against
the countless swarms of enemies of this class, some of them exceedingly
dangerous, among which we have to live and move. In the first rank of
these defenses is phagocytosis. The struggle of the organism against
its minute assailants is an image of human wars. The cutaneous or
mucous integument, continuous over the whole body, constitutes a kind
of fortified inclosure which the microbe can not penetrate, except
where some breach has been made. On one side of that wall, in the
living city, the phagocytes or leucocytes (white cells) form an immense
defensive army in a state of continual mobilization, or, as M. Duclaux
would say, an innumerable and vigilant police.
These phagocytes or leucocytes are the nomadic elements of our economy.
The animal body may be compared to an organized city in which all the
living corpuscles, all the cellular elements, are sedentary, each
having its place and staying there. Hence the comparison, often made,
with the stones of a building, which is not exact, however, because
these vital elements grow and increase, enlarging the structure
without change of arrangement, while the stones do not. The growth and
nutrition of these anatomical elements, it should be added, are carried
on exclusively at the expense of liquid matters. Nothing solid can
enter them or come out from them.
An exception to these two fundamental rules is found in the single case
of the leucocytes or white globules of the blood. They have no fixed
or determined place in the organism. Besides being carried passively
by the flow of the blood in a perpetual circulation along with the red
corpuscles, they possess a motion of their own. They can swim in the
current that carries them, fix themselves to the walls, and travel in a
sort of creeping way, which has been called the amœboid motion.
They are also exceptions to the second law, according to which living
cells can dispose only of liquefied matters. All solid bodies that pass
within reach of the leucocytes are seized and incorporated by them,
provided they are small or inert enough to be enveloped. The nature of
the body is of little import. Whatever it may be, it is swallowed and
quickly inclosed within the mass of the leucocyte and submitted to the
dissolving action of its juices--or, in a way, eaten. Hence the names
“phagocyte,” or devouring cell, given to the enveloping white globule,
and “phagocytosis” to the process. No other element of the organism,
or hardly any other, possesses this singular faculty of seizure and
swallowing (_inglobement_).
All the other characteristics of the white globules flow from these
two of mobility and phagocytism, the significance of which has been
set in a clear light by M. Metchnikoff. These characteristics are the
attributes of the most primitive types of animal life. They appertain
to cells not yet differentiated, to the unicellular organisms which
occupy the first stages of life. They translate the vital energy of
elements still independent and isolated, without definite place in
the social organization and as yet without special high function,
but for that very reason better adapted to the needs of the simplest
animality. Their voracity is useful for the preservation of the social
organism. By eliminating old, exhausted, diseased cells they rejuvenate
the structure and prepare the way for new generations. And when the
fecundity of these is exhausted the leucocytes come in to occupy the
vacated situations, and conduct the organism thus patched up through a
senile degeneracy to natural death.
The leucocytes, white globules, or phagocytes, by virtue of their
mobility, are found everywhere--in the blood, in all the organs,
and in all parts of the body--but are perhaps most abundant in the
blood. The study of them proceeds slowly, and we are still engaged in
distinguishing the varieties among them. The most abundant and best
known of them--those which answer most closely the description we have
given--are those called the polynuclear, neutrophilous leucocytes. They
are colored with neutral hues, and have a nucleus like a rolled-up
scroll in structure. Other varieties--the eosinophiles, lymphocytes,
etc.--are less mobile and have still less marked phagocytic properties.
The roll-call of the phagocytic army would be a long task. The
phagocytes are numerous in the sanguineous fluid, but are still six
hundred and fifty times less so than the red corpuscles. They are
almost as numerous in the lymph and the conjunctival tissue, where,
besides occurring in their normal condition, they sport into a variety
which appears to have abandoned its migratory habit, for a time at
least, and into a giant variety one hundred times larger than the
ordinary leucocytes, which M. Ranvier calls clasmatocytes. They are
further found in such tissues as the skin and the mucous membrane,
where, notwithstanding the cells are so crowded, they make their way
into the intestine, and, by a sort of diapedesis (passage through the
pores or interstices) called the phenomenon of Stoehr, toward all the
free surfaces, whither exterior soluble substances invite them. As they
go they destroy the microbes which, advancing in an inverse direction,
would invade the organism and provoke an infection of intestinal origin.
The fact that this immense army of phagocytes is always in motion was
first clearly recognized by Cohnheim, in 1867. He saw, in inflamed
regions, where the vessels are gorged and distended, the white globules
thrusting out a prolongation which seemed to pierce the wall, but in
reality simply insinuated itself between its elements, and elongating
itself, drew its entire body, as it were, through the narrow channel.
This emigration, which is produced without making a break, through
the pores and interstices of the vascular wall, has been designated
_diapedesis_. It is ordinarily provoked by some foreign body, a
pathogenic microbe, for instance, which has introduced itself into
the place and spread its irritating secretion or cause of infection
there. The phagocytes, attracted from the interior of the vessel, come
up and devour the invader. But if they are incapable of dissolving it
they bear it away to work their own ruin; they degenerate in their
turn, become transformed into globules of pus, and the inflammation
results in purulence. The study of the mechanism by means of which the
leucocytes traverse the tissues is very interesting.
These remarkable wandering elements are found in all classes of
animals, and in all present the same essential characteristics. They
are more like free existences than the other cells living in society
which compose the bodies of animals, and their history is substantially
like that of the naked one-celled organisms. Their various functions
and properties are of the highest interest in all departments of
physiology. It has been demonstrated, in particular, that the white
globules of the blood give rise to the most energetic and most special
agencies of living chemistry, to the ferments which determine the
coagulation of the blood when drawn from the vessels (coagulating
ferment, or thrombosis) and the consumption of sugar (glycolytic
ferment), and to numerous diastases. The presence of nuclein in their
bodies involves consequences which we are only beginning to perceive.
Behaving like independent beings, the leucocytes or phagocytes
perform similar functions with those of the highest animals, feeding,
respiring, and reproducing themselves; they move and feel--that is,
are impressed by internal excitants. These operations, however, assume
with them a character of extreme simplicity. They seem to be the direct
result of the physical and chemical properties of the protoplasm that
composes them, so that the mysterious side of those vital functions
nearly vanishes when we scan them in these their very beginnings. Their
respiration is the effect of a sort of affinity between their substance
and the vital gas--a chimiotactism directing them toward oxygen. This
may be illustrated by forming a microscopic preparation of fresh lymph,
imprisoning a few bubbles of air, and sealing it hermetically with
paraffin. After two or three hours we can see the leucocytes grouped
around the bubbles. When the provision of air is exhausted, several
hours afterward, the leucocytes will cease to move and become inert. On
inserting a needle, the contact of the air revives them.
The faculty possessed by the leucocytes of seizing solid corpuscles
coming in contact with them, inglobing them, and absorbing them, or, as
M. Metchnikoff calls it, intracellular digestion or phagocytosis, is
easily observed. If we mix fine granulations of carmine or cinnabar,
mingled with slightly salted water, with a drop of lymph, we can see
the coloring matter penetrating the leucocytary protoplasmic mass,
which is soon stuffed with it. The anatomo-pathologists had already
observed, in tattooed subjects, white globules charged with grains of
charcoal or vermilion. It is legitimate to conclude that some parts of
the coloring matter that had been introduced under the epidermis had
been taken up by the white globules. This proceeding has been observed
in the very act by M. Metchnikoff.
A classic experiment illustrating this operation is now common in our
laboratories, and the fact of phagocytosis has come to be regarded as
incontestable.
The generality of the phenomenon results from the leucocyte preserving
its phagocytic faculty in all its peregrinations, and these
peregrinations are unlimited. The tendency of the nomadic elements
to push on and insinuate themselves into the finest interstices and
the narrowest passages is a rudiment of a tactile sense, to this
extent simply a physical phenomenon, which MM. Mascart and Bordet have
clearly distinguished. As soon as a leucocyte touches a resisting body
it reacts to the contact by applying the largest possible surface to
it. It spreads out, becomes thin, stretches itself along, and ceases
deforming itself only after it has obtained the maximum of contact.
By such mechanism it penetrates objects that offer it any breach and
overcomes them. When the foreign body has been disaggregated into
fragments, into small enough grains, phagocytosis intervenes and
disposes of the remains. In this way the organism sometimes rids itself
of splinters of bone that remain in the tissues after a fracture. So,
too, the leucocytes, when occasion arises, repair the blunders of
surgeons by extracting and absorbing forgotten objects left in wounds,
while at other times they act as auxiliaries by destroying things that
have been voluntarily abandoned in them, like threads of catgut in
buried sutures and drains of decalcified bone.
There are two conditions, under normal circumstances, in which
phagocytosis plays a marked part. The first is the case where vital
action brings on the destruction of the organs or the tissues, or,
to use exact language, their disintegration in a solid form. The
wastes of organic activity are usually in liquid form, and, turned
into the blood, they are eliminated in that state through the natural
emunctories. Sometimes, however, disintegration results in solid
wastes, and the phagocytes do the work of carrying them away. This is
the case with the red globules of the blood, which, after a longer or
shorter career, are deposited in the spleen and break up into _débris_,
some of the parts of which are insoluble in the interstitial liquids.
The leucocytes collect around these residues so thickly as sometimes
to fuse themselves into a solid mass, a sort of plasmodium or giant
cell which digests the _débris_. At other times, and more rarely the
isolated leucocytes are not able to absorb the incorporated matters.
They then conduct them to the surface of the intestine and discharge
them there. A like phenomenon occurs in the liver. The coloring matter
of the blood frequently gives rise to insoluble ferruginous deposits
which the leucocytes have to convey to the digestive tube. This occurs
when a wound provokes an effusion of blood and a mortification of the
red globules or of the neighboring anatomical elements. All of the
waste that can not take the liquid form and pass in that condition into
the circulatory passages is incorporated within the phagocytes. The
mechanism of resorption of bone does not seem different.
The phagocytes perform a similar function in another process which
very frequently takes place in various animals that pass through
metamorphoses, as in insects whose organs are transformed in changing
from one stage of their existence to another, and in tadpoles which
lose their tails in becoming frogs; the old parts that disappear are
devoured by phagocytes.
Especially in the case of infectious diseases has the protective part
performed by the leucocytary phagocytes been brought into full view
by M. Metchnikoff. He has shown that the white globules rush to meet
the bacterides of inflammation that are introduced through any wound,
absorb them, and render them powerless to do harm. In the lymphatic
organs--the spleen, the lymphatic ganglions, and the marrow--the white
globules are normally accumulated, and there is where the struggle is
most active between the bacterides of inflammation which are swarming
in the blood and the defensive agents of the organism. The same
takes place with the spirilla of recurrent typhus and the microbe of
erysipelas.
The leucocytes are capable of adapting themselves to conditions
different from those in which they usually live, provided the change
is not too abrupt. It may sometimes occur that the poison secreted
by a microbe will paralyze and kill the leucocyte, unless care
has been taken, by inoculations of virus, at first attenuated and
afterward gradually increasing in virulence, to create an immunity
in the phagocyte, to make it refractory to the poison and capable of
swallowing the toxic bacterium without suffering from it. Explanations
have been sought in this property for the virtue of vaccination and the
immunity that results from it, but they are evidently only fragmentary,
and there are other theories of immunity.
The leucocytes are not always victorious over the microbes, and when
these excel in numbers or force it sometimes comes to pass that
they are overcome and succumb. Poisoned by the substance they have
incorporated, they undergo a fatty degeneration and become globules of
pus. Pus is therefore formed of the cadavers of conquered leucocytes.
Although that humor ought, for the good of the system, to be rejected,
like every other mortified part, it is nevertheless true that the
production of it is a beneficent effort, and a salutary reaction of
Nature against the morbid agent.
It will be an enduring honor to the name of M. Metchnikoff that he has
revealed the importance of the function of phagocytes, and has enriched
science with a large number of new truths. A part of this honor will be
reflected upon the Pasteur Institute, which has welcomed the eminent
biologist for many years, and has intrusted the direction of one of
its services to him. The learned Russian, in creating the study of
phagocytism, with its causes, mechanism, and consequences, has opened a
very extensive field of research to which we have given only a distant
and cursory glance.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue des Deux Mondes._
Editor’s Table.
_LIBERAL EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY._
In a most thoughtful article, in the Modern Education Series of The
Cosmopolitan, President Hadley, of Yale, remarks that the conception of
a liberal education changes as forms of government change. “It takes
one shape,” he proceeds to say, “in a military state, and quite another
shape in a state ruled by public opinion. In the former case it will
teach the sterner virtues of courage and pride. In the latter case it
will teach respect for law, progressiveness, and human sympathy. But
in either case a liberal education is an education for citizenship; a
development of those distinguishing qualities moral, intellectual, and
physical by which the people are to be ruled.”
It is a happy definition of “a liberal education” to say that it is
“an education for citizenship.” From this point of view the _most_
liberally educated man will be he who is educated to be a citizen of
the world and to feel his relation not only to the present but to
the past, and the future as well. Comte had much the same idea when
he taught that the moral and social education of the individual was
accomplished first by the family, then by the state, and finally by the
race. In other words, the egoism of the individual is first tamed by
family life, then broadened by political life, and, lastly, humanized
in the full sense by conscious participation in the age-long progress
of mankind. President Hadley has well chosen the qualities which he
says a liberal education under a democracy should aim at developing,
but we think he might with much advantage have added another. He will
remember that when the poet Horace would describe the character of a
high-principled citizen, a man just and firm of purpose, he says that
his mind is shaken neither by the lowering countenance of a tyrant nor
by the frenzy of the populace commanding vicious courses of policy. In
our land and time the _vultus instantis tyranni_ is no longer, if it
ever was, an object of terror, but the _civium ardor prava jubentium_
is a danger, we fear, which has yet to be reckoned with.
In a state, therefore, which is ruled by public opinion one of the
qualities which a liberal education should most distinctly aim to
impart is firmness to resist popular pressure when exerted in a wrong
direction. In like manner, under an aristocracy a truly liberal
education would not be one that would tend to perpetuate in the
rising generation the faults of the preceding one, or to shut out all
criticism of the established _régime_; on the contrary, its tendency
should be to temper whatever was extreme or one-sided in the views of
the ruling class. The liberality of an education comes in just here,
in opening out wider views than would probably be acquired in actual
contact with private business or public affairs. When William Pitt,
while Prime Minister of England, betook himself to the study of Adam
Smith’s recently published Wealth of Nations, and began to consider
how he could apply the enlightened and philosophical views contained
therein to the fiscal policy of the British Empire, he was converting
his old-fashioned liberal education into a liberal education of the
best kind.
A liberal education, let it be thoroughly understood, is not one which
delivers over an individual to the dominant influences of his place and
time, whatever they may be, but one which enables him to react, when
necessary, against such influences under the guidance of wider views
and deeper principles. It is an _illiberal_ education, let it embrace
what it may, which simply equips a man for exploiting for his own
benefit the conditions and tendencies which he finds prevailing in the
society around him; and too much of what passes for liberal education
has, we fear, had no better result. In a country like ours, liable to
be swept by gusts of popular excitement, not to say passion, the aim of
all higher education should be to create a class of citizens trained
for social influence, and yet able to stand on their guard against
sensational politics, to distinguish between true and false patriotism,
and to uphold the claims of justice and honor when threatened by
popular infatuation and tumult. We read in Thucydides that Cleon, the
typical demagogue of ancient Athens, did not hesitate to tell his
fellow-citizens that republics were not adapted for holding distant
territories in subjection. If Cleon was a demagogue, what are we to
think of the highly educated men who in our country echo the popular
cry for an imperial policy, and say that millions of people beyond sea
who ask only for liberty should be compelled by force of arms to be
our subjects? Let our colleges and universities see to it that they
understand “a liberal education” in the right sense.
_EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL AGGRESSION._
Much surprise has been expressed at the unusual prevalence of violence
of all kinds in the United States during the past year. It has seemed
quite extraordinary that in a nation devoted, as the American nation
is, to vast schemes of philanthropy at home and abroad, such atrocious
crimes as the mutilation and burning of negroes and the explosion of
dynamite under street cars should be committed. From the sympathetic
and self-sacrificing spirit manifested in the enthusiastic response to
the appeal to arms to free Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spanish cruelty
and despotism, and the repression of the insurrection in the Philippine
Islands for the purpose of introducing order and civilization,
something quite different was expected. There should have been a deeper
interest in the welfare of the negro and a greater effort to protect
him in the enjoyment of his rights. There should have been created a
tie between capital and labor that no differences about wages or hours
of toil could have ruptured with murderous animosities. In a word,
there should have been a manifestation of fraternal feeling among
all classes and in all sections that would have advanced the United
States a long step toward the goal of civilization. So general has
been the anticipation of these fruits from the war with Spain that one
of the most familiar arguments in favor of it has been the subjective
regeneration that would follow the attempt at objective regeneration.
That is to say, the American people were to find a cure for their own
moral disorders in their cure of the moral disorders of their neighbors.
To a student of the social philosophy of Herbert Spencer it will
be no surprise nor disappointment that this expectation, so worthy
of a generous and self-sacrificing people, has not been and is not
likely to be realized. No truth set forth in his works is more firmly
established than his profound induction that external aggression always
begets internal aggression--that assaults upon the rights of others
abroad leads to assaults upon the rights of others at home. “As it is
incredible,” he says, “that men should be courageous in the face of
foes and cowardly in the face of friends, so it is incredible that
other feelings fostered by perpetual conflicts abroad should not come
into play at home. We have just seen,” he adds, alluding to the proofs
of this truth that he has given, “that with the pursuit of vengeance
outside the society there goes the pursuit of vengeance inside the
society, and whatever other habits of thought and action constant war
necessitates must show their effects on social life at large.” The
facts in support of Mr. Spencer’s generalization are to be found in
the history of every militant people. He mentions himself the Fijian’s
sacrifice of their own people at their cannibal festivals, and the
prevalence of assassination among the Turks from the earliest times
down to the present. He mentions also the hideous acts of cruelty that
are to be found in the records of Greek and Roman civilization. To
these examples may be added the atrocities committed by Italians upon
Italians during the last days of the mediæval republics, and those
committed by Frenchmen upon Frenchmen during the French Revolution.
“The victories of the Plantagenets in France,” said Goldwin Smith,
pointing out not long ago the futility of war as a cure for national
factiousness, “were followed by insurrections and civil wars at home,
largely owing to the spirit of violence that the raids in France
excited. The victories of Chatham were followed by disgraceful scenes
of cabal and faction, as well as corruption, terminating in the
prostration of patriotism and the domination of George III and North.”
It is impossible to hope that the United States can be an exception
to the social law thus established. However pure the motive that
may lie at the bottom of a war of aggression, it can not annul the
law. The shedding of blood and the seizure of territory produce a
callousness of feeling and a perverted view of the rights of others
that are certain to turn the hands striking a foreign foe to the work
of domestic strife. Already we have seen with what bitterness such
men as Prof. Charles Eliot Norton and Mr. Edward Atkinson have been
assailed. We have seen, too, how attempts have been made to discredit
the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to show that
the Constitution must not be permitted to stand in the way of what
has been politely called the fulfillment of the destiny of the United
States. We have seen, finally, how proposals for the disfranchisement
of American citizens have been listened to in all parts of the country
with a toleration that must cause the old abolitionists to turn in
their graves. But the spirit thus manifested has not, we may be sure,
failed to contribute to the perpetration of the outrages that have
shocked every right-minded observer of current events. It is not a
difference of kind but only one of degree that separates the slaughter
of Spaniards in Cuba and Tagals in Luzon from the slaughter of negroes
in the South and the explosion of dynamite under street cars in the
North. The inhuman instincts that impel to the one impel to the other.
Fragments of Science.
=Zola’s Anthropological Traits.=--Mr. Arthur MacDonald has published,
originally in the Open Court, a minute anthropological study of the
personality of Émile Zola. Passing all the physical points noted, we
select a few only of the most peculiar mental traits mentioned by the
author. Fear is spoken of as Zola’s principal emotion, connected in
him with the instinct of self-preservation. He is not much afraid of
the bicycle, but shrinks from a ride through a forest at night. He has
no fear of being buried alive, yet sometimes when in a tunnel on a
railroad train he has been beset with the idea of the two ends of the
tunnel falling in and burying him. Some morbid ideas have developed in
him, but they do not cause him pain when not satisfied. He lets them
run into their “manias,” and is then contented. The idea of doubt is
one. He is always in fear of not being able to do his daily task, or
of being incapable of completing a book. He never rereads his novels,
for fear of making bad discoveries. He has an arithmetical mania,
and when in the street he counts the gas jets, the number of doors,
and especially the number of hacks. In his home he counts the steps
of the staircases, the different things on his bureau. He must touch
the same pieces of furniture a certain number of times before he
goes to sleep. Some numbers have a bad influence for him, and there
are good numbers. In the night he opens his eyes seven times, to
prove that he is not going to die. He is regarded by the author as a
neuropath, or a man whose nervous system is painful but does not seem
to affect the soundness of his mind. “In brief, the qualities of Zola
are fineness and exactitude of perception, clearness of conception,
power of attention, sureness in judgment, sense of order, power of
co-ordination, extraordinary tenacity of effort, and, above all, a
great practical utilitarian sense.”
* * * * *
=The Simplon Tunnel.=--The following facts are taken from a brief
account of this great engineering feat in the Engineering Magazine:
There is at present no direct rail connection between western
Switzerland and Italy, and to reach Milan it has been necessary to
go around to Lucerne and so on through by the St. Gothard route.
The distance by rail from Milan to Calais by the Mont Cenis is 665
miles, and by the St. Gothard 680 miles. The distance by way of the
Simplon Tunnel will be only 585 miles. The Jura-Simplon Railway from
Geneva around the lake and up the Rhone Valley ascends to Brieg at an
altitude of about 2,300 feet, while on the Italian side the railway
from Milan stops at Domodossola, at an altitude of 900 feet. Between
the two, which are 41 miles apart and over an elevation of 6,590 feet,
lies the famous Simplon Pass. Connection is now made by diligence,
the trip occupying a whole day. The plan of the new railway includes
the prolongation of the present line on the Italian side to Iselle,
at an altitude of about 2,100 feet, where the Italian entrance to the
tunnel was begun in August, 1898. On the Swiss side the entrance is at
Brieg, and the tunnel will connect these two towns, being 12.26 miles
long. This is nearly three miles longer than the St. Gothard, but the
altitude is only 2,300 feet above the sea, instead of 3,800 feet, as at
the St. Gothard. The tunnel is to be straight laterally, but higher in
the middle than at either end, the grade being 1 in 143 on the Italian
and 1 in 500 on the Swiss side. The principal difference between the
Simplon Tunnel and those previously pierced through the Alps is that,
instead of one single tunnel, two separate tunnels, fifty-five feet
apart, are to be constructed, connected by lateral passageways every
650 feet. At first but one of these is to be completed to the full
dimensions, the other being carried through at only about a quarter of
the ultimate cross-section, and not enlarged and put into use until
the traffic demands it. Both tunnels are now being bored by the use of
the Brandt hydraulic rotary drills, water being supplied at a pressure
of 70 to 100 atmospheres. The borings are through gneiss, limestone,
and slate. Holes two inches and three quarters in diameter and four or
five feet deep are bored and the rock dislodged by means of dynamite.
A narrow-gauge railway is used to remove the _débris_. It is expected
that the tunnel will be completed in five years and a half. At the
close of 1898, 300 feet had been penetrated on the south side and 1,300
on the north. The estimated cost of the complete double-track tunnels
is 69,000,000 francs. This does not include the construction of the
permanent way. The Mont Cenis Tunnel cost 75,000,000 francs, and the
St. Gothard 59,750,000 francs. The work is practically controlled by
the Jura-Simplon Railway.
* * * * *
=Grant Allen.=--The death of our contributor, Mr. Grant Allen, was
mentioned in the last number of the Popular Science Monthly. Mr. Allen
was born in February, 1848, the son of the Rev. J. A. Allen, of Wolfe
Island, Canada. He attended schools in the United States, in France,
and in Birmingham, England, and entered Merton College, Oxford, whence
he took his degree of B. A. in 1870. He afterward spent a few years
in Jamaica as principal of a college for the higher education of the
negro, which had only a brief career. He returned to England and
settled down in London for literary work, writing rather on social and
scientific than political subjects, for various journals. While he
loved and appreciated scientific truth, he rather regarded his subject
from the æsthetic side, and this gave a peculiar charm to his articles.
He published books on Physiological Æsthetics and The Color Sense,
which did not prove profitable. Finding it hard to gain a livelihood
from his scientific work, he turned to fiction, and soon found, as
the London Times has it, “that his worst fiction was more profitable
than his best science.” His love of science, however, “approached
enthusiasm,” and he contributed frequent popular scientific articles to
the magazines, so that “for years past hardly one of those publications
has been reckoned complete” without contribution of this character from
him. He removed from London to Dorking, and afterward went to southern
France and Italy for his health. Then, having so far recovered that he
could spend his winters in England, he made himself a home at Hindhead,
Surrey. Here he died, October 25th, after several weeks’ suffering from
a painful internal malady. Among his scientific works, his books on
Physiological Æsthetics, The Color Sense, and the Evolution of the Idea
of God deserve special mention.
* * * * *
=Japanese Paper.=--The peculiar qualities of Japanese paper, most of
them excellent ones, and the great variety of uses to which it is
applied, are known everywhere. It is a wood or bark paper, and derives
its properties from the substances of which it is made and the method
of its manufacture. Several plants are cultivated for the manufacture,
which, in the absence of English names, must be called by their
Japanese or scientific ones, of which the principal are “mitsumata”
(_Edgeworthia papyrifera_), the “sozo” (_Brossonia papyrifera_), and
the “gampiju” (_Wiekstroannia canecensis_). Bamboo bark also furnishes
a good paper, but is not much used. The _mitsumata_ ramifies into three
branches, and is cultivated in plantations, being propagated from
seeds and by cuttings. It is fit for use in the second year if the
soil is good. Its cultivation and exportation have reached an enormous
importance, largely because the Imperial Printing Office uses it for
bank notes and official documents. The _sozo_ is propagated by seeds,
and somewhat resembles the mulberry. The _gampiju_ is a small shrub
which is cut in its third year. To make paper, the bark is steeped
in a kettle with buckwheat ashes to extract the resin in it. When
it is reduced to a pulp, a sieve-bottomed frame with silk or hempen
threads is plunged within, very much as in Western paper-making. This,
letting out the water, holds the pulp, which, felting, is to form the
future sheet of paper. This is pressed, to squeeze all the water out,
and is left to dry. The uses made of paper in Japan are innumerable,
particularly in old Japan, which treasures up its past. The papers,
though all made in a similar way, are called by different names,
according to the uses to which they are applied and their origin.
Window lights are made of paper, and partitions between rooms, when it
is stretched on frames, which work as sliding doors. The celebrated
lanterns, called _gifu_, are made of it at Tokio and Osaka. Under the
name of _shibuganni_ it is applied to the covering of umbrellas which
are sold in China and Korea. As _zedogawa shi_ bank notes are printed
on it. Oiled it is _kappa_, impermeable and suitable for covering
packages and for making waterproof garments. Handkerchiefs are made
from it, cords by twisting. For light, solid articles it is mixed and
compressed very much as our papier-maché. Covered with thick paste and
pounded, it forms tapestries. Imitations of Cordova leather are made
of it by spreading it and pressing it with hard brushes upon boards in
which suitable designs have been cut. It is then covered with oil and
varnish. Japan produced nearly five million dollars’ worth of paper
in 1892. Unfortunately, European methods of manufacture have been
introduced, and there is danger of the paper losing its distinctive
qualities.
* * * * *
=The Deeps of the Ocean.=--In his geographical address at the British
Association, Sir John Murray showed that the deep oceanic soundings
are scattered over the different ocean basins in varying proportions,
that they are now most numerous in the North Atlantic and Southwest
Pacific, and in these two regions the contour lines of depth may be
drawn with greater confidence than in the other divisions of the great
ocean basins. On the whole, it may be said that the general tendency
of recent soundings is to extend the area with depths greater than
one thousand fathoms, and to show that numerous volcanic cones rise
from the general level of the floor of the ocean basins up to various
levels beneath the sea surface. Considerably more than half of the
sea floor lies at a depth exceeding two thousand fathoms, or more
than two geographical miles. On the Challenger charts all areas where
the depth exceeds three thousand fathoms have been called “deeps,”
and distinctive names have been conferred upon them. Forty-two such
depressions are now known--twenty-four in the Pacific Ocean, three
in the Indian Ocean, fifteen in the Atlantic Ocean, and one in the
Southern and Antarctic Oceans. The area occupied by these deeps is
estimated at 7,152,000 geographical square miles, or about seven per
cent of the total water surface of the globe. Within these deeps
more than 250 soundings have been recorded, of which twenty-four
exceed 2,000 fathoms, including three exceeding 5,000 fathoms. Depths
exceeding 4,000 fathoms, or four geographical miles, have been recorded
in eight of the deeps. Depths exceeding 5,000 fathoms have been
hitherto recorded only within the Aldrich Deep of the South Pacific,
to the east of the Kermadecs and Friendly Islands, where the greatest
depth is 5,155 fathoms, or 530 feet more than five geographical miles.
This is about 2,000 feet more below the level of the sea than the
summit of Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, is above it.
* * * * *
=Death of Sir William Dawson.=--By the death of Sir J. William
Dawson, at Montreal, November 19th, America loses one of its most
highly distinguished geologists. Sir William was born at Pictou, Nova
Scotia, in October, 1820, and was deeply interested in the study of
Nature from his early college days, when he made extensive collections
of various kinds. When he was twenty-two years old a happy fortune
brought him in contact with Sir Charles Lyell, then visiting America,
and he was that eminent geologist’s traveling companion during his
scientific tour of Nova Scotia. He studied chemistry at the University
of Edinburgh. Returning to Nova Scotia in 1850, he engaged in teaching,
and was associated with the first normal school in the province. He
was afterward connected with the new University of New Brunswick, and
from 1855 to 1893 was Principal of McGill College and University.
Although his duties in the college were very exacting, Professor
Dawson’s industry in scientific research was never relaxed, and he
was the author of contributions of very great value to the geology
and paleontology of Canada. Among these were the discoveries of the
_Dendrepeton acadianum_--the first reptile found in the American
coal formations--and the _Pupa vetusta_--the first-known Paleozoic
land shell. His discovery and exposition of the _Eozoon canadense_
attracted great attention, and was much discussed, but his views of
its importance do not seem to have been justified, for some doubts now
exist among geologists whether it represents any organic structure.
He was the first President of the Royal Society of Canada, which was
organized in 1882; was one of the sectional presidents of the British
Association at its Montreal meeting (1884), and was president of that
body at its Birmingham meeting, 1886. Among his published works are the
Description of the Devonian and Carboniferous Flora of Eastern North
America, constituting two volumes of the Reports of the Geological
Survey of Canada; Air-Breathers of the Coal Formation; Acadian Geology;
The Story of the Earth and Man; Origin of Animal Life; Fossil Men;
the Canadian Ice Age; the Meeting Place of Geology and History; the
Geological History of Plants (in the International Scientific Series);
Relics of Primeval Life (Lowell Lectures); The Chain of Life in
Geological Times; Modern Science in Bible Lands; the Dawn of Life;
Modern Ideas of Evolution; a book of travels in Egypt and Syria; and
many contributions to scientific periodicals. He received numerous
degrees and honors from learned bodies and institutions, among them
the Lyell medal of the Geological Society of London, in 1882. A sketch
of Principal Dawson, as he was then called, was published, with a
portrait, in the Popular Science Monthly for December, 1875 (vol. viii,
p. 132).
* * * * *
=Glacial Lakes in New York.=--A glacial lake is defined by H. P.
Fairchild, in his paper on Glacial Waters in the Finger Lake Region of
New York (Geological Society of America, Rochester, N. Y.), as a body
of static water existing by virtue of a barrier of ice. Such impounded
waters may exist where a glacier blocks a stream, or where the general
land surface inclines toward the glacier foot. The lakes described in
Mr. Fairchild’s paper belongs to the second class, and were formed
in the southern part of the Ontario basin, where the land slopes
northward from a plateau of two thousand feet elevation down to Lake
Ontario, two hundred and forty-six feet. The high plateau was deeply
gashed by the preglacial stream erosion, and in these trenches along
the northern border of the plateau lie the present “Finger Lakes.”
The topography was peculiarly favorable to the production against the
bold ice front of a series of distinct valley lakes, in many respects
unequaled elsewhere. Between twenty and thirty of these lakes are
described in Professor Fairchild’s paper, which occupied sites now
partly represented by nineteen streams and lakes, beginning with
Tonawanda Creek on the west and extending to Butternut Creek (Jamesburg
and Apulia) on the east. The local lakes were not of long duration, and
their surface level was unstable, changing with the down-cutting of the
outlets and with the greatly increased volume of the summer melting
of the ice sheet. Consequently, true beaches are usually wanting.
The conspicuous evidences are the deltas of land streams, with their
terraces, embankments, bars and spits, and the outlet channels. The
records of these extinct waters are the very latest phenomena connected
with the ice invasion, and are the connecting link between the glacial
condition and the present hydrography. They are of lively interest,
perhaps, to only a few persons, but the details are necessary to the
more general study of the Pleistocene. No economic or practical result
from the knowledge is foreseen, “but as pure science the study of
these waterless lakes, waveless shores, and streamless channels has a
fascination and romance.”
* * * * *
=The Environment In Education.=--“Two considerations of equal and
fundamental importance,” says Mr. Wilbur S. Jackman, “are included
in teaching--the choice of the subject-matter and its presentation,
and the reaction of the pupil as the result of the presentation. No
presentation ever reaches consciousness without a reaction, however
feeble, from which results an immediate and inevitable corresponding
mental construction. Certain instincts called primitive, it may be
generally agreed, exist in children, and, by taking intelligent
advantage of these, definite educative presentation may be begun at
a much earlier age than was once supposed. Under the theory that
the child repeats the racial history in its growth, a practice has
arisen of meeting the early instincts of childhood with presentations
from the adult lives of primitive peoples. Presentations are made to
stimulate the idea of hunting and fishing, of building wigwams and the
like.” But it is a fundamental error, Mr. Jackman believes, to suppose
that while the child may be Indianlike in his instincts he is to be
considered or treated as an Indian. Another factor of which evolution
makes a great deal--the nature of the environment--must be considered,
and it is very powerful. The material for satisfying the cravings of
the early instincts should therefore be chosen from the immediate
environment, to which the pupil’s reaction is at once positive and
definite. “It is scarcely possible to overmagnify the benefits of
an education that seeks first to make the most out of the immediate
things of life. Its results and its ideals are about us everywhere. The
ability to use in the most intelligent and skillful way the materials
of our environment is the necessary condition for the highest purposes
and the most glorified ideals. One must have a profound respect for the
education that proposes to give us clean cities and hygienic homes.”
* * * * *
=An Athabascan Indian Lodge.=--The caribou-skin lodge of the northern
Athabascan Indians is described by Mr. Frank Russell, in his
Explorations in the Far North, as supported by a framework of from
twelve to thirty poles. In pitching camp in winter, sticks are thrust
through the snow in order to find solid earth for a floor. If the stick
enters soft moss the place is avoided, as the camp fire would spread
and undermine the lodge. When a suitable site is found, the men clear
away the snow with their snowshoes, and perhaps assist the women in
cutting and carrying the lodge poles. It is the women’s duty to carry
bundles of spruce boughs with which to cover the floor of the lodge.
The brush is carefully laid, branch by branch, so that the stems are
under the tops and point away from the center. This floor is renewed
every Saturday afternoon. The fireplace is surrounded by a pole of
green wood, three or four inches in diameter, cut so as to be bent in
the form of a polygon. Above the doorway a pole eight feet long is
lashed to the lodge-poles in a horizontal position, six feet from the
ground; this, and a similar pole on the opposite side, support from
six to twelve poles, crossing above the fire, making a stage on which
to thaw and dry meat. Each hunter’s powder-horn and shot-pouch are
suspended from a lodge-pole or his back, while his gun stands in its
cover against a pole or lies on a stage outside. Near the door flap
are several hungry and watchful dogs, which, by constantly running in
and out, make an opening for the cold wind to enter. The dogs are tied
at night. The side of the fire next to the entrance is allotted to the
children and visiting women. On either side sit the wives, for there
are usually two families in one lodge. Behind them are _muskimoots_
and an inextricable confusion of rags, blankets, bones, meat, etc. If
a crooked knife, a tea bag, or anything that is in the heap is needed,
everything is tumbled about until it is found. The sled-wrapper is
extended behind the lodge-poles and serves as a catch-all for stores
of meat, bones to be pounded and boiled to extract the grease, and
odds and ends not in constant use. The next space is occupied by the
men of the house; that farthest from the door is reserved for the
young men and the men guests. At night each adult rolls up in a single
three-point blanket or a caribou-skin robe, and sleeps on an undressed
caribou skin. A piece of an old blanket generally covers the small
children in a bunch.
* * * * *
=The Sand Grouse.=--Pallas’s sand grouse is a native of the Kirghiz
steppes of central Asia, and occasionally, driven by some pressure of
circumstances of which we can only conjecture the nature, makes visits
to England. Its presence in that country has never been recorded till
this century--more, perhaps, for lack of observers than of migrating
birds--but it has appeared in 1863, 1872, 1873, 1888, 1889, and 1899.
The principal migration in recent years was in 1888, when many examples
were seen and shot in different parts of the country. In the same year
it was seen “far and wide” in western Europe, and as far north as
Trondhjem, in western Norway. A writer in the Saturday Review remarks
on the resemblance of this sand grouse, as described by Prjevalski in
central Asia, to the various sand grouse he has seen in South Africa.
At the drinking places they circle round the water. Presently they
alight and, Prjevalski says, “hastily drink and rise again, and, in
cases where the flocks are large, the birds in front get up before
those at the back have time to alight. They know their drinking places
very well, and very often go to them from distances of tens of miles,
especially in the mornings, between nine and ten o’clock, but after
twelve at noon they seldom visit these spots.” In the Kalahari country,
at the scant desert waters, the Saturday Review writer says, three
kinds of sand grouse “are to be seen flocking in from all parts of the
country from eight to ten o’clock A. M. for their day’s drink. Circling
swiftly round the pool with sharp cries, they suddenly stoop together
toward the water. The noisy rustle of their wings as they alight and
ascend is most remarkable. We noticed that the birds nearest the water
drank quickly and moved off, allowing those in the rear to take their
places and slake their thirst, the whole process being accomplished
with unfailing order and regularity.... The spectacle of these punctual
creatures, streaming in from all points of the compass with unfailing
regularity between eight and ten o’clock was always most fascinating.
After drinking they circled once or twice round the water pool, and
then flew off with amazing swiftness for their day of feeding in the
dry, sun-scorched desert. The seeds of grass and other desert plants
seem to constitute their principal food. The sand grouse has some
characteristics of the pigeon and some of the grouse, which suggest a
‘singular blending’ of the two orders.”
* * * * *
=Plantations for Rural School Grounds.=--A paper on the Laying out and
Adornment of Rural School Grounds, by Prof. L. H. Bailey, published
as a Bulletin of Cornell University Experiment Station, lays down
as a general principle in plantation that it should be in the main
for foliage effects. “Select those trees and shrubs which are the
commonest, because they are the cheapest, hardiest, and likeliest to
grow. There is no district so poor and bare that enough plants can not
be secured without money for the school yard. You will find them in the
woods, in old yards, along the fences.... Scatter in a few trees along
the fences and about the buildings. Maples, basswood, elms, ashes,
buttonwood, pepperidge, oaks, beeches, birches, hickories, poplars, a
few trees of pine or spruce or hemlock--any of these are excellent.
If the country is bleak, a rather heavy planting of evergreens about
the border, in the place of so much shrubbery, is very good. For
shrubs, use the common things to be found in the woods and swales,
together with the roots which can be found in every old yard. Willows,
osiers, witch-hazel, dogwood, wild roses, thorn apples, haws, elders,
sumac, wild honeysuckles--these and others can be found in every
school district. From the farmyards can be secured snowballs, spireas,
lilacs, forsythias, mock-oranges, roses, snowberries, barberries,
flowering currants, honeysuckles, and the like. Vines can be used to
excellent purpose on the outbuildings or on the schoolhouse itself.
The common wild Virginia creeper is the most serviceable on brick or
stone schoolhouses. The Boston ivy or the Japanese ampelopsis may be
used, unless the location is very bleak. Honeysuckle, clematis, and
bittersweet are also attractive.” Flowers may be used for decorations.
* * * * *
=Destruction of the Birds.=--A circular sent us by the New York
Zoölogical Society opens with the declaration which is only a moderate
expression of the truth, that “the annihilation of the finest birds
and quadrupeds of the United States is a crime against civilization
which should call forth the disapproval of every intelligent American.”
The second annual report of the society (for 1897) contains an
article on this subject by Mr. William T. Hornaday, which sets forth
some remarkable facts concerning the rate at which the destruction
of Nature’s fair creatures is proceeding. It is not creditable to
American science or American manhood that most of the measures that
have been adopted for the protection of animal life in this country
have been taken in the interest and at the urgency of sportsmen; or,
to prevent killing the poor creatures in an irregular way, in order
that they may be more conveniently killed in the regular way. Mr.
Hornaday has a fairly satisfactory number of reports in answer to his
inquiries concerning the rate at which birds are disappearing from
thirty-six States. From these he has compiled a graphic table for
thirty States, taking care to keep within the conservative limit in
every particular, which shows that forty-six per cent of the birds of
the country have been destroyed within the last fifteen years--the
State averages ranging from ten per cent in Nebraska and twenty-seven
per cent in Massachusetts to seventy-five per cent in Connecticut,
Indian Territory, and Montana, and seventy-seven per cent in Florida.
In North Carolina, Oregon, and California the balance of bird life
has been maintained; and in Kansas, Wyoming, Washington, and Utah it
has increased--Kansas, with its law absolutely forbidding traffic in
certain birds, being the “banner State.” “The western part of the State
of Washington reveals the uncommon paradox of a locality being filled
up with bird forms because of the clearing away of the timber.” The
agencies bringing about the destruction of our animal life are many
and various. There are the “sportsmen,” of whom Mr. Hornaday registers
five kinds, all eager to “kill something,” hunting for one hundred
and fifty-four species of “game birds,” and when these fail, taking
the song birds in their place. If the reports are true, the boys of
America are the chief destroyers of our passerine birds and other small
non-edible birds generally. “The majority of them shoot the birds, a
great many devote their energies to gathering eggs, and some do both.”
Then there are the women wearing birds or feathers in their hats. Egg
collecting, which was fostered at one time as encouraging interest in
natural history, has increased till it has become an abuse as dangerous
and destructive as any of the others, and even genuine scientific
collectors are advised to call a halt. Mr. Hornaday concludes that
“under present conditions, and excepting in a few localities, the
practical annihilation of all our birds, except the smallest species,
and within a comparatively short period, may be regarded as absolutely
certain to occur.”
* * * * *
=Annual Flowers.=--In a Cornell University Agricultural Experiment
bulletin on Annual Flowers the authors, G. N. Lauman and Prof. L. H.
Bailey, teach that the main planting of any place should be trees and
shrubs. The flowers may then be used as decorations. They may be thrown
in freely about the borders of the place, but not in beds in the center
of the lawn. They show off better when seen against a background, which
may be foliage, a building, a rock, or a fence. Where to plant flowers
is really more important than what to plant. “In front of bushes, in
the corner of the steps, against the foundation of the residence or
outhouse, along a fence or a walk--these are places for flowers. A
single petunia plant against a background of foliage is worth a dozen
similar plants in the center of the lawn.... The open-centered yard
may be a picture; the promiscuously planted yard may be a nursery or a
forest. A little color scattered here and there puts the finish to the
picture.” If the person wants a flower garden, the primary question is
one not of decoration of the yard, but of growing flowers for flowers’
sake. The flower garden, therefore, should be at one side of the
residence or at the rear, for it is not allowable to spoil a good lawn
even with flowers. A good small garden is much more satisfactory than a
poor large garden. Many annual plants make effective screens and covers
for unsightly places. Wild cucumber, cobœa, and sweet peas may be used
to decorate the tennis screen or the chicken-yard fence. Efficient
screens can be made of many strong-growing and large-leaved plants,
such as cannas, castor-beans, sunflowers, or tobacco.
* * * * *
=A Thirteenth-Century Miracle.=--The legend of St. Prokopy relates that
on the 25th of June, 1290, the city of Wilikij Ustjug, government of
Vologda, southern Russia, was imminently threatened by a violent storm.
The populace appealed to the saint, and, by virtue of his prayers, the
storm changed its direction, and, passing on one side of the city,
spent its fury upon a desert spot about fifteen miles away, where
it left, with hail, a mass of fire-marked stones, the fall of which
wrought great havoc with the undergrowth. The incident made a deep
impression upon the minds of the people, so that the story is still
current and alive after the lapse of six hundred years. A testimony
to what the people believe is its truth may be found by visiting the
spot, where a surface extending along about four miles is covered with
blocks of stone, assumed to be meteorites. A church dedicated to St.
Prokopy has been built in the neighboring village of Loboff or Catoval,
and near it stands a curious little wooden chapel of great antiquity,
the foundation of which was made of the stones that fell. The church is
decorated with pictures of St. Prokopy and of incidents of the meteoric
storm, and one of the stones that fell has been mounted on a pedestal
in the cathedral of Ustjug, where it is an object of devotion. Mr.
Melnikoff, Conservator of the Mineralogical Collections of the Mining
Institute of St. Petersburg, has examined the place and the stones,
and finds that they are not meteoric and heavenly at all, but simply
earthly granite and sandstone. Yet M. Stanislas Meunier suggests, in
_La Nature_, that the story, so carefully treasured up for six hundred
years, may have a foundation. That such stones as lie on the ground
at Catoval may have been taken up and transplanted by a tornado of
extreme violence he regards as within the possibilities. M. Meunier
has himself investigated a phenomenon of the kind in France, where
the ground was “mitrailled” with stones measuring one, two, and three
cubic centimetres, which had been brought a distance of one hundred
and fifty kilometres. Another possible explanation is that the stones
were already there, so concealed by the dense growth as not to attract
particular attention, but became more plainly obvious when the ground
had been cleared by the tornado.