THE WILLS OF THE TRIUMVIRATE.

"Nothing so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections

of mankind," says Sir William Blackstone, "as the right of property."

Sure it is, that society palpitates whenever a great estate passes to a

new owner, disclosing its vastness in the act of transit. Perhaps for

this fact we may find another reason in Blackstone, where he says:

"There is no foundation in nature why the son should have the right to

exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground because

his father had done so before him, or why the occupier of a particular

field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to

maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world

which of them should enjoy it after him." But since the law, to reward

thrift and avoid strife, has established this artificial right of

disposal, the disparities of fortune, on these signal occasions of

transfer, always set us to pondering.

Vanderbilt, last of the three monstrously rich men of New York who have

died within three years, furnishes in his will the now tripled evidence

of a new ambition in American Croesuses--an aim to keep their fortunes

rolling and greatening for several generations in the exact paths where

they were started. Supposing that Mr. Stewart's bequest to Judge Hilton

was designed to purchase his entrance into the dry goods firm, we should

have a common aim of the triumvirate, since each has put a chosen man

into his shoes, as if with the hope to live on in this successor, like

Mordecai in "Deronda." The master passion of acquisition is thus

striving to outwit death. Astor and Vanderbilt found their second selves

in favorite sons; childless Stewart could only take his confidential

agent. Each conceivably died in the hope that a successor so carefully

selected and endowed would in turn hand over the bulk of his gigantic

wealth, in its original channel, to some steward chosen with equal care;

so that ages hence the Astor fortune still in houses, the Stewart

fortune still in trade, the Vanderbilt fortune still in railways, might

flourish under successive guardians, faithful to their tradition and

training. The John Jacob, the Cornelius, the Alexander of the past has

been blessed with the vision of his millions multiplying as he would

have them multiply, and haply has dreamed of accomplishing by his own

foresight an entail which he could not create under the laws.

If this be the new tendency that American life is called upon to face,

it is at least not hard to account for. The thirst for posthumous fame

which inflamed old heroes and poets rages still in days when greatness

collects rents, sells dry goods, and corners stocks. And after all, what

is there stranger in struggling to prolong after death one's imperious

railroad sway, his landlord laws, his massive trade monopolies, than in

slaving out one's childless old age in the hard rut of traffic, in order

to turn five surplus millions into ten?

To Dives, after a life of accretion, the prospect of frittering his

wealth into fragments must be painful. Heirs will waste what he toiled

to win. That fortune which grew so great while he rolled it on turns

out, after all, but a snowball, to be broken apart and trampled by

careless spoilers when he is gone. There are, to be sure, hard-headed

philosophers who contemplate coolly the dispersion of their hoard. I

remember from boyhood that when somebody rallied Squire Anthony Briggs,

of Milldale, on his veteran vigilance in money-getting, saying, "Your

children will spend as fast as you have made it," stanch old Tony

answered: "If they get as much pleasure from spending my money as I have

in making it, they are welcome." But with prodigious fortunes like

Astor's and Vanderbilt's, the instinct of accumulation which increases

what is already preposterously great may struggle to keep it

accumulating after death. When Bishop Timothy sonorously declares from

the desk that we brought nothing into this world, neither may we carry

anything out, Croesus in the pew below takes this as a very solemn

warning to him--warning to secure betimes the utmost posthumous control

of his money that the laws allow. Dombey's soul is not wrapt up in the

miser's clutching love of money, but in the money-getting institution of

Dombey & Son; and not only in the Dombey & Son of to-day, but the

Dombeys & Sons of centuries hence. To found a dry-goods dynasty, a line

of railway kings, a house of landed Astors, its owner puts the bulk of

his vast wealth into a single hand--in that _exegi monumentum_ spirit

common to bard and broker, soldier and salesman. _Non omnis moriar,

multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam_, the millionaire may then

triumphantly say.

On the other hand, the Cornells and Licks of our day, wonderfully

numerous, have made America renowned by their public uses of wealth,

either in lifetime gift or testamentary bequest; and this devotion of

private fortune to the common weal is fostered by the observed

independence of each generation in pursuing its own mode of life without

regard to the customs of ancestors.

But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America

was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the

perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle

against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost

of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of

fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for

other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or

business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives.

"Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence

marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed,

all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and

incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one

poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or

charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither

cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for

Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an

institution of public beneficence--Astor his library, Vanderbilt his

college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further

true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many

years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and

then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one

has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of

America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride

of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by

removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously

just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of

"one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk

from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts;

but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard,

what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace

that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York--the gift of

his picture gallery for public uses--even this act Stewart did not do.

The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a

Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins.

THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.

Barring the two services, doctors used, I fancy, to be the great

duellists among professional men. And still, ever and anon, some

irascible Sawbones rushes to the ten-paced turf, where, though he be

spectacled or pot-bellied, those disadvantages rarely calm his

blood-letting rage. But editors are the modern magnates of the code; not

because they thirst for gore, but only because the guild of M. Paul de

Cassagnac is professionally liable to give offence, and hence to be

dragged to the field of glory and to die with boots on. I once saw a

statement that the famous fighting editor of the "Pays" had taken part

in eighteen duels, "besides having a man to kill next month"; and he was

greatly coveted by a Missouri paper that had been losing its writers in

street encounters too rapidly for convenience.

The newspapers have emptied their vials of wrath or ridicule upon Mr.

Bennett for his duel with young May: now in horror over his resort to

the measured ground, and anon in scorn at the bloodless result.

Nevertheless, had Mr. Bennett failed to fight that duel, he and his

newspaper would have been butts during his lifetime for the shafts of

half the editorial archers of the land. A noble refusal to resent the

public insult would have been misrepresented with ingenious malice, in

the hope to disgrace him and ruin his property. In answer to "Herald"

arguments on disputed questions, the unresented cowhiding of its owner

would have been paraded by rival sheets. Rarely in business or political

controversy would they have failed to taunt him with cowardice. Life

would have been a burden to him; and if the consciousness of having

refrained in that instance from breaking the laws of man and of God

could have saved him from desperation, it would not have been for lack

of the sneers of newspapers continually fomenting and reviving public

contempt against him. Sometimes a man is goaded by such stings into a

second duel, after having been able to resist fighting the first; or

else he puts an end to a life which has been made unendurable through

constant imputations. Let those who doubt what would have occurred

recall the instantaneous newspaper sarcasms, after the street assault,

on the question "whether a man is answerable for hereditary tendencies

to receive a public cowhiding without resenting it." The satirist who

eggs on a duel in that fashion feels justified afterward in invoking

public contempt for the man that fights it.

What is the upshot of this comment? That duelling is ever commendable?

Most emphatically no. Duelling, branded by the law, is also now so

branded in public opinion that it would be waste of words to

anathematize it. But what is suggested by the venom of some of the press

writers is that they have never put themselves into the place of a man

who, with the average sensitiveness to personal affront, and with

thorough-going physical courage, had also a clear perception of the

remorselessness of his journalistic rivals. From some of them he could

expect no more mercy than from the red gentry of the plains. Let those

who are sending their arrows into Mr. Bennett ask themselves whether

they are wholly sure that in his position, with his family history

behind them, they would have done otherwise after the street assault. At

any rate, neither duelling nor that cowardly substitute, shooting down

an unprepared man who has done some wrong, will be driven out of fashion

by bringing newspaper taunts of "showing the white feather" against

those who fail to resort to such lawlessness.

THE INDUSTRY OF INTERVIEWERS.

It was a quarrel totally apart from newspaper affairs, as we all know,

that carried the editor of the "Herald" to the field of honor at

Marydell. Indeed, Mr. Bennett's conduct before and after the duel was so

"unjournalistic" that the Philadelphia reporters are said to have sent

him a letter, while he tarried in that city, protesting that a gentleman

so well aware of the "usages of the profession" ought to submit to be

interviewed. But the physician does not always swallow his own drugs.

Mr. Bennett, on receiving the missive, remarked that it was "all right,"

and remained uninterviewed, thus setting an awful example to the

community.

A public attack by a man armed with a cowhide upon another not so armed

is hardly a feat that excites admiration, while the affair at Marydell

was in no sense such reparation for the previous insult as in common

parlance to be thought "satisfaction." But one feature of the

Bennett-May quarrel not unpleasant to read was the outwitting of the

news-gatherers and their resulting desperation. "Had the duel taken

place on the Canada border the parties to it could hardly have evaded

our extensive arrangements to report it," said one journal after the

affair, in a somewhat lugubrious and yet self-vindicating strain. The

promptness of Mr. Bennett's movements, and his skill in throwing the

reporters off the scent, lest the duel might be stopped, were hard blows

to the newspapers. But theirs was no dishonorable defeat--it was one of

the fraternity that beat them. Even the device of giving imaginary

accounts of the battle in order to draw out the true one was

unsuccessful until Mr. Bennett had sailed for Europe.

On the May side there was a trifling gain for the interviewers, but not

much. Dr. May, senior, seems to have been condemned to a copious

acquaintance with journalists; for, though in knowing Mr. Bennett he had

already perhaps known one too many of them, his house appears to have

been overrun, after the Fifth avenue assault, with the fraternity, who,

in the "strict discharge of professional duty," swarmed multitudinously

upon him. At least, one morning the "Tribune" said:

The May mansion in West Nineteenth street was a sealed book

to reporters yesterday, and the door was promptly shut in

the face of those who were recognized as newspaper inquirers

by the negro in charge. Dr. May has made no secret of his

anger at the reports, too accurately drawn, of his

appearance of anxiety and alarm when expecting bad news from

his son, and will have nothing to say to representatives of

the press.

Here, it will be observed, is a claim to something professional in the

very aspect of the "newspaper inquirer" whereby the sable guardian of

the portal may know him well enough to take the responsibility of

slamming the door in his face. Again, we observe here a tribute to the

interviewer's skill; for, prior to the duel, Dr. May, though politely

presenting himself, could give no news; but his lynx-eyed visitors had

gathered from the very attitude, tone, and look of their host the

material for an item as picturesque as any tidings. So the besieged

householder, as we have seen, took refuge in total eclipse, leaving only

a "negro in charge" to determine the status of his callers.

Yet the most discerning negro in charge sometimes proves a weak barrier

against invasion. The trained interviewer can take a protean shape, and

introduce himself under disguise of the most sympathetic friendship or

the most urgent business. Sometimes he is the picture of respectful woe,

or anon it is he who has a favor to confer by bringing news of pressing

importance. Close and private indeed must be that conference whose

secrets he cannot worm out. He gave to the public the "family scene of

astonishment at the opening of the Vanderbilt will" the very morning

after the affair occurred. Should moral borings fail, he can resort to

material ones, as when, a few months since, he cut a hole in a hotel

floor, to apply his ear to, over the room where a Congressional

committee sat in secret session, being detected only by the unlucky

plaster falling among the astonished statesmen below. He is the animal

of the fable, who, having once "got in," cannot be got out until ready

to go. In our war times some commanders looked upon him, coming to camp

in never so fair a guise, with the misgivings of the hapless Trojan

regarding the wooden horse; and it is said of Baron Von Werther that he

"treats as an enemy all newspaper correspondents, even though they have

the best personal introductions to him." Such fears of warriors and

diplomats, who quail before no ordinary foes, are tributes to the

interviewer's prowess.

It must go hard but he gets something from the sullenest and most

refractory customer. We have seen his harvests at the May mansion, when

baffled by real ignorance on the part of his victim; hence we may guess

whether he is to be checked by a mere wilful purpose to conceal, or the

whim to keep a matter private. At very worst, his own description of his

rebuff will be humorous and piquant. Often do we have an entertaining

half column beginning, "Our reporter waited upon," etc., and, after

descriptions of household ornaments, personal dress, and so on, ending

in this way:

_Ques._--You say, then, that you can give me no information

whatever?

_Ans._ (_snappishly_)--As I have already told you a dozen

times, no information whatever.

_Ques._--And that is positive and final?

_Ans._ (_savagely_)--Positive and final.

Here our reporter took his leave, wishing the gentleman a

very good morning, to which politeness of our reporter the

uncommunicative gentleman only distantly bowed.

But these defeats form a rare experience of the interviewer, who even

then continues to pluck victory (that is to say, an item) out of their

jaws. His ordinary career is a round of triumph which has made him a

leading figure in the portrait gallery of modern society. I wonder that

Mr. Daly does not introduce it at length into some of his comedies of

American life. Drawn faithfully, and personated by Mr. James Lewis, the

dramatized interviewer would be a wealth of pleasure.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

THE FORCE OF CRYSTALLIZATION.

The old story of a bombshell filled with water and left to burst by

freezing, upon the plains of Abraham, near Quebec, may now be superseded

as an illustration of the power of frost. The men at a Western dockyard

were surprised to find one morning that the paddle-wheel of a steamer in

the dry dock had fallen from the shaft, and was broken in two pieces.

The hub of the wheel, about fifteen inches long, was slightly hollowed

out at the centre to admit of its being slipped on without difficulty

over any uneven portion of the shaft-end. This recess was full of water

when the boat was placed in the dock, and the keying had been so close

that the liquid--about a pailful--was exposed to the frost. As the water

congealed under the sharp wintry atmosphere of the night it expanded and

burst asunder the five-inch walls of iron, and the broken wheel fell

with a crash.

FROZEN NITRO-GLYCERINE.

Two accidents, both fatal, have lately occurred from the use of

nitro-glycerine for blasting. In one case some frozen cartridges were

recklessly placed in the oven of a stove, while others were held up to

the fire. That an explosion should take place under such circumstances

is not surprising, and comment is unnecessary. The other explosion

partook more clearly of the nature of an accident. A well digger, living

near Sing Sing, had buried a can of nitro-glycerine in his garden for

future use; and while digging it up, January 18, his pick struck the

can, ignition followed, and he was blown to pieces. No doubt the can was

frozen, thus proving anew that frozen nitro-glycerine is more dangerous

to handle, though not so powerful in its effects, as in the liquid form.

This is singular behavior and contrary to theory. In general terms,

explosion may be defined as the result which takes place when a portion

of the nitro-glycerine is raised to a given temperature. Now, to produce

this temperature by the friction resulting from the blow of a pick is

manifestly more difficult with frozen than with tepid liquid. In the

former case some of the heat produced would be absorbed by the

liquefaction of the solid substance, and therefore there would be less

available for producing the temperature of explosion. But, plain as this

proposition is, there must be some unknown condition, for it has been

frequently observed in practical work that nitro-glycerine is never so

dangerous to handle as when frozen. This result, however, is directly

opposed to the experiments of Beckerhinn, of Vienna, who lately

experimented to decide this question. He placed a thin layer of

nitro-glycerine on a Bessemer steel anvil, and a weight of about five

pounds, having a small hardened steel face, was dropped upon it. The

height to which it was necessary to raise this weight in order to

produce explosion determined the comparative delicacy of the explosive.

With tepid nitro-glycerine explosion took place when the weight dropped

about 31 inches (0.78 metres), but with frozen liquid the fall had to be

increased to about 85 inches (2.13 metre). Thus the experimental results

are opposed to the acknowledged experience of practical work in the

hands of common laborers. Mr. Beckerhinn found the density of the solid

nitro-glycerine to be 1.735, that of the liquid 1.599, and the average

melting heat to be 33.54 heat units. Thus the explosive shrinks about

one-twelfth in crystallizing.

ENGLISH GREAT GUNS.

The largest rifled cannon in the world is a 100-ton gun, made for the

Italian government by Sir William Armstrong's firm. But the English

government is preparing to outdo this, and already has the plans ready

for a gun of 164 tons. It hesitates, in fact, between a weapon of this

size and one of 200 tons, a mass of metal which its shops are now

perfectly able to handle. The meaning of the term--200-ton gun--is

simply this: a tube of iron and steel of that weight, fifty feet long,

having a calibre of 20 inches, and firing a shot of 3,500 or 4,000

pounds weight, with a charge of 800 pounds of powder! The human capacity

for astonishment has grown perforce as the successive steps have been

taken from the guns of ten and twenty tons to these weapons, which must

remain huge whatever further advances are made. The character of warfare

with them is best indicated by the fact that the 200-ton gun must be

handled entirely by machinery. The advent of these unmanageable weapons

is signalized by the invention of a hydraulic apparatus for working

them. The vast shock of the recoil from the bursting of thirty-two kegs

of powder--enough to throw down 1,200 tons of rock in mining--is taken

up by a cylinder pierced with small holes. These holes are capped with

valves, held down with a pressure of fifty tons to the square inch. When

the force of the recoil exceeds this the water is forced out of the

holes and the recoil thus taken up in work done. The breech of the piece

is supported on a hydraulic ram, the elevation of which depresses the

muzzle of the gun below the level of the deck, and brings it exactly in

line with an iron tube carrying the sponge. This is run up to the base

of the powder chamber, a deluge of water rushes from apertures in its

head, and the bore is completely cleaned out and every spark of

remaining fire extinguished. The rammer then retires, the sponge is

taken off, and the powder hoisted by tackle to the muzzle, whence the

rammer pushes it home, and then does the same for the shot. The shot and

cartridge, weighing together about 1,350 pounds, are stored on little

iron carriages, every charge in the magazine having its own carriage.

The loading finished, the gun is raised, pointed, the port flies open,

and the discharge immediately follows. What the result of the blow from

such a projectile would be is not to be imagined. It is acknowledged,

however, that in the struggle for mastery the gun has beaten defensive

armor. No ship has been built to stand the shock of a 3,500 pound bolt

moving at the velocity of 1,300 or 1,500 feet a second.

EAR TRUMPETS FOR PILOTS.

Prof. Henry has turned his attention to the discovery of means for

increasing the distinctness of sound signals at sea. It is a very large

hearing trumpet, projecting mouth foremost from the top of the

pilot-house of a steamboat. But he soon found that a single hearing

trumpet would not answer the purpose, for though it greatly augmented

the perceptive power of the ear, it destroyed the capacity of that organ

for distinguishing the direction of sound. For this purpose two ears are

necessary. Prof. Henry then made use of two hearing trumpets, the axes

of which are separated about 30 inches. An india-rubber tube proceeding

from the axis of each is placed so as to terminate in the ear of the

observer--one in each ear. With this instrument the audibility of the

sound was very much increased, but as a means of determining the

direction of the source of sound, it was apparently of little use. For

this purpose the unaided ear is sufficient, provided the head is placed

above all obstructions and away from reflections.

HOT WATER IN DRESSING ORES.

We have before alluded to the investigations made to ascertain the

reason why clay settles more rapidly in solutions of some salts than in

pure water, a fact which appears contrary to reason, since it might be

inferred that the greater the specific gravity the more buoyant the

fluid. But the fact is abundantly confirmed, and it is likely to find

important application some day in the arts. The property which every

substance has of sinking through a fluid of less density than its own

forms the basis upon which nine-tenths of the gold and copper, and

probably six-tenths of the silver produced in this country, is extracted

from its ores. It is the foundation of the art of ore dressing, one of

the most important parts of metallurgy. Anything which increases the

rapidity and thoroughness of the process may have a fortunate

application in this art. Mr. Ramsay, of the Glasgow university

laboratory, thinks the property in question depends upon the varying

absorption of heat by the different solutions. When water containing

suspended clay is heated the rapidity of settling is proportional to the

heat of the water. This mode of accelerating the movement of fine

sediments in water is perhaps more easily applied than the solution of

caustic soda or potash, or of common salt. Rittinger, by a mathematical

discussion of the principles which control the downward movement of

solid particles in an ascending stream of water, showed that the

separation of light from heavy minerals is more complete with solutions

of density greater than that of water than in water alone. He found a

solution of 1.5 sp. gr. extremely favorable. If the addition of heat

will increase the effect of such a solution, it may become possible to

separate, by means of the continuous jig, minerals so near in specific

gravity as barite and galena. This whole subject of ore dressing is one

of the most important questions connected with the future of mineral

industry in America. In the Mississippi valley everything connected with

metallurgy, from the fuels to the finished metal, will one day be

closely dependent on it.

OCEAN ECHOES.

Prof. Henry communicated to the National Academy at Philadelphia his

latest researches into the subject of sound, and among them an

explanation of the echo observed on the water. This echo he had formerly

been inclined to attribute to reflection from the crests of the waves.

Tyndall holds that it is due to reflection from strata of air at

different densities. Prof. Henry's present explanation is that this echo

is produced by the reflection of the sound wave from the uniform surface

of the water. The effect of the echo is produced by the fact that the

original sound wave is interrupted. It has what the learned Professor

calls _shadows_, produced by the intervention of some obstacle in its

path. Sound is not propagated in parallel, but in diverging lines, and

yet there are some cases where what may be called a "sound shadow" is

produced. For instance, let a fog-signal be placed at or near water

level on one side of an island that has a conical elevation. Then the

signal will be heard distinctly by a vessel on the opposite side of the

island at a distance of three miles. But when the vessel sails toward

the island (the signal being on the opposite side), the sound will be

entirely lost when the distance is reduced to a mile, and in any smaller

distance it is not recovered. In this case the station of the vessel at

the shorter distance is in the "sound shadow." The termination of that

shadow is the point at which the diverging beams of sound, passing over

the crest of the island, bend down and reach the surface of the water.

The formation of the sound echo may be explained by this extreme

divergence of the sound waves, for it is rational to suppose that at a

great distance from the source of sound some of the dispersed waves will

reach the water surface at such an angle as to be reflected back to the

hearer. This was well illustrated by an experiment made to test

Tyndall's theory. A steam siren was pointed straight upward to the

zenith, but no echo from the zenith was heard, though the presence of a

cloud from which a few raindrops fell certified the presence of air

strata of different densities. But, strange to say, an echo _was_ heard

from every part of the horizon, half of which was land and half water.

The only explanation of this fact is that the sound waves projected

upward were so dispersed as to reach the earth's surface at a certain

distance, and at that point some of them had curled over and assumed a

direction that caused their reflection back to the siren.

THE DELICACY OF CHEMISTS' BALANCES.

In making chemical balances for fine work the beam is made in the truss

form to prevent the bending which takes place even under such small

loads as an ounce or two. Prof. Mendeleef has a balance that will turn

with one-thousandth of a grain, when each pan is loaded with 15,000

grains. This extreme sensibility is obtained by the use of micrometer

scales and cross threads at the end of the beam, these being observed by

means of a telescope. Of course one weighing with this complicated

apparatus occupies a long time. In most balances the beam rests on steel

knife edges; but a maker who has lately obtained celebrity makes his

supports of pure rock crystal. The steel edges can be seen with the

naked eye; the quartz edges cannot be seen even with a magnifying glass.

One writer on this subject thinks that with these perfect crystal edges,

with an inflexible girder beam, a short beam giving quick vibrations,

and a sensitiveness that can be increased by screwing up the centre of

gravity, there can hardly be a practical limit to the smallness of the

weight that will turn the beam. The amount of motion may be very small,

but if this can be observed, the limit of possible accuracy is very much

extended.

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE DEAD.

What the population of European countries was a hundred years ago it

would be hard to tell with accuracy; but the nations have doubled and

trebled in strength within the century. Sanitary precautions have

increased in importance, and the very noticeable movement in regard to

social hygiene which now possesses English society is perhaps due in

part to the obvious dangers to which thirty million human beings are

subjected when living together on such a small area. The medical officer

for Birkenhead has pointed out that it may be necessary for the

government authorities to take more complete charge of the dead as a

possible source of infection. He says that the intelligence of deaths

from infectious diseases now furnished by local registrary would be much

more useful than it is as a means for limiting the spread of disease if

the medical officer were vested with further powers in respect to the

infected dead body. At present neither the medical officer nor any one

else has any power to order the immediate removal of an infected body,

and those in charge of it might do what they liked with it. He advocated

the necessity of power being given to medical officers to order the

immediate removal of the infected bodies to a public mortuary and their

speedy burial.

MICROSCOPIC LIFE.

Dr. Leidy lately described to the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia an

encounter for life which he witnessed between two microscopic

animalcules. The two creatures were respectively 1-625th and 1-200th of

an inch in diameter. On the morning of August 27, from some mud adhering

to the roots of sphagnum, obtained the day previously in a nearly

dried-up marsh at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he obtained a drop of material

for examination with the microscope. After a few moments he observed an

amoeba verrucosa, nearly motionless, empty of food, with a large central

vesicle, and measuring 1/25th of a millimetre in diameter. Within a

short distance of it, and moving directly toward it, was another and

more active amoeba, regarding the species of which he was not positive.

It was perhaps the one described by Dujardin as amoeba limax, by which

name it may be called. As first noticed, this amoeba was one-eighth of a

millimetre long, with a number of conical pseudopods projecting from the

front border, which was one-sixteenth of a millimetre wide. The creature

contained a number of spherical food spaces with sienna colored

contents, a large diatom filled with endochrome, besides several clear

food spaces, a posterior contractile vesicle, and the usual glanular

endosarc. The amoeba limax approached and came into contact with the

motionless amoeba verrucosa. Moving to the right, it left a long

finger-like pseudopod curved around its lower half, and then extended a

similar one around the upper half until it met the first pseudo-pod.

After a few moments the ends of the two projections actually became

continuous, and the verrucosa was enclosed in the embrace of the amoeba

limax. The latter assumed a perfectly circular outline, and after a

while a uniformly smooth surface. It now moved away with its new

capture, and after a short time what had been the head end contracted

and became wrinkled and villous in appearance, while from what had been

the tail end ten conical pseudopods projected. The amoeba verrucosa

assumed an oval form, and the contractile vesicle became indistinct

without collapsing. Moving on, the amoeba limax became more slug-like in

shape. The amoeba verrucosa now appeared enclosed in a large oval, clear

vacuole or space, was constricted so as to be gourd-shaped, and had lost

all trace of its vesicle. Subsequently it was doubled upon itself, and

at this point the amoeba limax discharged from one side of the tail end

the siliceous case of the diatom, which now contained only a shrivelled

cord of endochrome. Later the amoeba verrucosa was broken up into fine

spherical granular balls, and these gradually became obscured and

apparently diffused among the granular contents of the entosarc of the

amoeba limax. The observations from the time of the seizure of the

amoeba verrucosa to its digestion or disappearance among the granular

matter of the entosarc of its captor, occupied seven hours. From naked

amoeba the shell-protected rhizopods were no doubt evolved, and it is a

curious sight to observe them swallowed, home and all, to be digested

out of their house. It was also interesting to observe the cannibal

amoeba swallowing one of its own kind and appropriating its structure to

its own use, just as we might do the contents of an egg. The amoeba

verrucosa he describes as remarkable for its sluggish character, and in

appearance reminds one of a little pile of epithelial scales or a

fragment of dandruff from the head. It is oval or rounded, transparent,

and more or less wrinkled, or marked with delicate, wavy lines.

THE SOURCES OF POTABLE WATER.

In the British Social Science meeting, Mr. Latham, a civil engineer of

London, brought up the question of water supplies and endeavored to find

rules for the guidance of water engineers in those apparently

contradictory facts which the observation of recent years has produced

so abundantly. It has been generally considered that water which has

received the sewage of large populations must be unfit for domestic use;

but careful investigation would show that when such polluting matter has

been passed into a river, and exposed to the influence of light,

vegetation, etc., it becomes innocuous. This is shown by the good health

enjoyed by the inhabitants of London, which place receives its supply

chiefly from the Thames and the Lea, both of which rivers receive a

considerable amount of sewage pollution. The author instanced Wakefield,

Doncaster, and Ely as towns that draw their supplies of water from

sources into which sewage matter enters, and yet whose inhabitants are

healthy. The cholera epidemic at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1853 was supposed

to have been caused by the use of polluted Tyne water, and yet it was

clearly ascertained that disease was much more rife among those persons

who used local well water. These facts, which have often been quoted,

were not favorably received by the audience, who greeted with laughter

Mr. Latham's assertion that water into which sewage matter has entered

can be purified by a short exposure to the air. That statement may be

too strong; but there is acknowledged truth in the author's main point.

He considered it was clearly proved that water derived from underground

sources, or from which light and air have been excluded, is impure, and

consequently unfit for domestic use. Universal testimony showed that

decaying matter easily found its way into underground sources of supply.

Well water may become seriously contaminated by the slow steeping of

noxious matters, and be less wholesome than the water of a running

stream that receives much larger quantities of impurity.

THEORY OF THE RADIOMETER.

Prof. Crookes has at length announced a theory in explanation of the

movements exhibited by the remarkable "light mill" of his invention. He

says: "The evidence afforded by the experiments is to my mind so strong

as almost to amount to conviction, that the repulsion resulting from

radiation is due to the action of thermometric heat between the surface

of the moving body and the case of the instrument, through the

intervention of the residual gas. This explanation of its action is in

accordance with recent speculations as to the ultimate constitution of

matter, and the dynamical theory of gases." The most refined means for

exhausting the air from the glass bulb which contains the suspended

vanes of the radiometer leave, and if they were to be carried to

absolute mechanical perfection, would still leave a certain amount of

gas in it. But Dr. Crookes has carried this attenuation so far that the

number of gas molecules present can no longer be considered as

practically infinite. Nor is the mean length of their paths between

their collisions any longer very small compared to the size of the bulb.

The latest use to which the radiometer has been put was to test the

viscosity of gases at decreasing pressures. The glass bulb was furnished

with a stopper lubricated with burnt rubber. This was fixed and carried

a fine thread of glass which is almost perfectly elastic. To the end of

this thread hung a thin oblong plate of pith to which a mirror was

attached. The glass stopper being fixed, and the bulb capable of

rotation through a small angle, it is evident that when the bulb is

rotated the pith ball will remain at rest except as it yields to the

friction of the air moved by the bulb. It does move, swinging a certain

distance and then back, like a pendulum. The amount of this movement is

carefully observed by a telescope, and recorded for five successive

beats. As the pith and glass fibre form a torsion pendulum, it is

evident that these beats will gradually die down in consequence of the

resistance of the air. By exhausting the air to various degrees of

rarity, it was proved that Prof. Clerk Maxwell's theory, that the

viscosity of a gas is independent of its density, is correct. The

logarithmic decrement of the first five oscillations (that is, the

decrease, oscillation by oscillation, of the logarithm of the arc

through which the pith vanes swing), was found to be nearly the same

when the air was almost exhausted as when it was at its natural

pressure, proving that its viscosity remained nearly equal for all

pressures. Only in the exceptionally perfect vacuum referred to above

did this logarithmic decrement sink to about one-twentieth of what it

had commenced with. Repulsion of the vane by the action of light

commences when this decrement is one-fourth of what it was before the

exhaustion of air began. As the rarity of the air within the bulb

increases the force of this repulsion begins to diminish, like the

logarithmic decrement, and when the latter has sunk to one-twentieth the

former has fallen off one-half. All these and other facts previously

obtained prove that the action of light is not _direct_, but _indirect_;

and Dr. Crookes has, after repeatedly refusing to consider hasty

judgments, in consequence come to the conclusion stated above, that the

rotation of the light mill is the result of heat. This decision accords

with the opinion of other observers. The radiometer has already entered

the field of industrial science, and is used to measure the duration of

exposure of photographic plates. De Fonvielle has made with it a new

determination of the sun's thermometric power. He made a spectroscope

with a graduated screen, which permitted the amount of light that

entered the apparatus to be graduated at will. In the path of the beam

he placed a radiometer, and by comparing its action in the graduated

light ray, and in the light of a standard oil lamp, burning 42 grammes

(11.3 ounces Troy) per hour, he found that at 4 o'clock, on June 4,

1876, the radiating force of the sun was equal to 14 lamps placed 25

centimetres (10 inches) from the radiometer.

TEMPERED GLASS IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

The "tempered glass," which has made the name of M. de la Bastie, its

discoverer, so well known, does not prove to be always manageable. It

was to have the strength of metal, and not shiver with changes of

temperature. But an English lady has found that it sometimes has

precisely the contrary characteristics. She purchased twelve globes for

gaslights, and they were made in the manufactory of M. de la Bastie

himself. But one night, after the gas had been extinguished for exactly

an hour, one of the globes burst with a report, and fell in pieces on

the floor, leaving the bottom ring still on the burner. These pieces,

which were of course found to be perfectly cold, were some two or three

inches long and an inch or so wide. They continued for an hour or more

splitting up and subdividing themselves into smaller and still smaller

fragments, each split being accompanied by a slight report, until at

length there was not a fragment larger than a hazel nut, and the greater

part of the glass was in pieces of about the size of a pea, and of a

crystalline form. In the morning it was found that the rim had fallen

from the burner to the floor in atoms. In all these phenomena the

behavior was that of unannealed glass, of which so many curious

performances have been related.

THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM.

A marine and fresh-water aquarium has been opened in New York, and both

from its intrinsic merits and as the first attempt to institute in this

country a valuable mode of scientific amusement and instruction, it

deserves mention. It does not equal in size or arrangements any of the

celebrated places of the kind abroad. Still it contains tanks of

considerable size, and in them some very interesting denizens. The

shark, sturgeon, skate, sea-turtle, and other fishes are represented by

large individuals, and their habits can be watched at leisure. A small

white whale was also at one time one of the attractions. Fish breeding

is carried on in the establishment, which receives constant additions to

its occupants by expeditions which are said to be especially planned for

this purpose. In any case New York is an excellent point for an

aquarium, and probably receives every year enough rare living fish at

its great markets to maintain such an institution. The commencement now

made is a worthy one, and it can easily become an important source of

pleasure and usefulness. The system employed is that of constant

circulation, the water being pumped from a reservoir to the several

tanks. Pumps and pipes are made of hard rubber. A library, a

naturalists' laboratory, equipped with tables, microscopes, etc., are

either established or projected in the building.

THE CRUELTY OF HUNTING.

The outcry against the practice of making surgical experiments upon

living dogs, rabbits, and other animals has roused some vivisectionists

to return to the subject of hunting. This is one of the principal themes

of the philosophic philanthropist, whose opposition to the practice

seems to be an outgrowth of the better acquaintance which man has made,

through science, with the lower animals. He accomplishes his task very

effectively by calculating the number of animals which are wounded but

not recovered by English sportsmen every year. The official returns show

that in 1873-'4 there were 132,036 holders of gun licenses, and 65,846

holders of licenses to kill game in the British dominions. In 1874-'5

the numbers were 144,278 and 68,079, showing that the disposition and

ability to hunt are on the increase. As a basis for computation, the

partridge season of 21 weeks is taken, and two days' hunting are allowed

for each week; while three birds are supposed to be wounded and "lost"

daily by each sportsman. This gives 126 birds wounded and left to suffer

unknown torments by each one of the 68,079 holders of game licenses. The

total is no less than 8,296,496 "lost" birds in 1873-'4, and 8,577,954

in 1874-'5. Then the holders of gun licenses have the right to shoot

birds which are destructive to crops, etc., and two lost birds each week

in the year is calculated to be the average. This makes no less than

13,731,744 wounded birds in 1873-'4, and 15,004,912 in 1874-'5. The

total is in round numbers _twenty million_ birds injured each year!

These estimates are made by "Nature," and they correctly represent the

ground on which the modern opposition to the hunt as a cruel and

unnecessary occupation is based. Of course the figures are not exact.

The only effort made was to have them within bounds; and considering all

the varieties of game pursued in England, and the extraordinary keenness

of Englishmen for sport, this estimate is probably correct. Quite lately

they have been confirmed by a noted hunter on the western plains, who

says that in his case a day's sport was usually marked by the "loss" of

two or three animals. As he is an uncommon shot, his experience cannot

be more unfortunate than the average. Such calculations show us how

enormous are the results when the whole human race engages in one

action. At present, English society offers the contradictory spectacle

of a large and increasing body of hunters who oppose vivisection on the

ground of cruelty, and a small and increasing body of vivisectionists

who oppose hunting also on the ground of cruelty.

THE GORILLA IN CONFINEMENT.

Great interest attaches to the career of the young gorilla now in the

Berlin aquarium. Dr. Hermes described some of his peculiarities at a

late meeting of the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians. He

nods and claps his hands to visitors; wakes up like a man, and stretches

himself. His keeper must always be beside him and eat with him. He eats

what his keeper eats; they share dinner and supper. The keeper must

remain by him till he goes to sleep, his sleep lasting eight hours. His

easy life has increased his weight in a few months from thirty-one to

thirty-seven pounds. For some weeks he had inflammation of the lungs,

when his old friend Dr. Falkenstein was fetched, who treated him with

quinine and Ems water, which made him better. When Dr. Hermes left the

gorilla on the previous Sunday the latter showed the doctor his tongue,

clapped his hands, and squeezed the hand of the doctor as an indication,

the latter believed, of his recovery. Apparently he means to support, by

every means in his power, the effort at a hot-house development of the

ape to the man. A large glass house has been built for him in connection

with the palm house.

INSTRUCTION SHOPS IN BOSTON.

The Boston Institute of Technology is somewhat noted for its boldness in

making educational experiments; its efforts so far having been directed

toward the introduction of practical trade instruction into an advanced

school. Some years ago it endeavored to establish a model room for

dressing ores and another for smelting them; but the success of this

trial seems to be more than doubtful. Both of these pursuits are too

extensive to be represented by one shop or by sample work. Nothing

daunted by this failure, President Runkle has lately introduced a

"filing shop" as the first step toward practical instruction in

engineering work. This shop has about thirty work tables, each provided

with a vise and tool drawers. Filing is one of the first things the

young apprentice has to learn; and those who think that anybody can file

who has hands may be surprised to learn that the filing of a hexagon

bolt head is one of the tests for a Whitworth prize scholarship. The

difficulty of making a flat surface is in that task combined with the

necessity of having the faces of equal size and placed at equal angles

to each other. The plan in the Boston institute is to have the student

spend ten weeks in filing, and then the same length of time in each the

forging shop and the turning shop. The two latter are not yet ready.

These three steps form part of a two years' course in mechanical

engineering, the tuition fee to which is $125 yearly. The main objection

to such schools is that engineers and practical men persist in refusing

to accept such instruction as a substitute for actual work. The Boston

institute is making praiseworthy efforts, but it seems to be adopting a

system which has never been in favor just at a time when the smelting

works and machine shops of the country appear willing to unite with the

scientific schools in supplying students with real experience of work as

a requirement for a diploma.

* * * * *

A new mode of compressing arteries is by the use of a hard pad having a

prominent projection, which is pressed against the artery or vein by a

strong elastic ring of rubber passed over the limb.

* * * * *

The Harvard summer schools were so far successful that the last

catalogue reports forty students in geology, twenty-five in chemistry,

twenty-five in phenogamic botany, and six in cryptogamic botany.

* * * * *

A case in which the heart was severely wounded without causing immediate

death lately occurred in England. The wound was made by a knife which

passed between the third and fourth ribs, through the wall of the heart

into the cavity of the left ventricle. The man lived sixty-four hours.

* * * * *

M. Peligot warns housekeepers against the advice so often given, to use

borax for the preserving of meat. He finds that borax and the borates

affect plants very seriously, and doubts whether it can be innocuous to

animals. French beans watered once with a solution of borax quickly

withered and died.

* * * * *

A young American, Dr. James by name, was killed with his partner (a

Swede) at Yule Island in September last, by the natives of New Guinea.

They were hunting birds of paradise at the time. Dr. James left some

valuable collections which have been described before the Linnaean

Society of London.

* * * * *

In extending the underground railway of London, the excavations

disclosed Roman and other remains of considerable interest. Among the

former there were found fragments of urns, specimens of pottery, and

bronze coins. The most remarkable discovery was that of a thick stratum

of bullock's horns, commencing about twenty feet below the surface, and

extending to an unascertained distance beneath. Although the deposit was

doubtless made many centuries ago, the horns had suffered so little by

decay that they found a ready sale in the market. This road has carried

in thirteen years 408,500,000 passengers. In 1863, the first year, the

number was 9,500,000, which increased to 48,500,000 last year.

* * * * *

Foreign papers say that Mr. Floyd, the President of the board of

trustees for the Lick donation, has come to an arrangement with M.

Leverrier, the celebrated French astronomer, for the better execution of

the instruments to be made for the Lick Observatory. The masses of glass

required are to be made in Paris, at Feil's glass works, and the

object-glasses very likely by an English optician.

* * * * *

Two distinguished men were officially superannuated last year: Profs.

Milne-Edwards and Delafosse of the Paris Museum. The son of the former

takes his place, and Descloiseaux succeeds to the chair of mineralogy.

Professors Dove of Berlin and Woehler of Goettingen have had their

_jubilaeum_ or fiftieth anniversary of their doctorates. All these facts

illustrate the conservative influence of student life.

* * * * *

The Western mines of gold and silver have lately yielded some new and

interesting minerals. Roscoelite is a vanadium mica from a gold mine at

Granite creek, California. The vanadic acid varies from 20 to 23 per

cent. Psittacinite is a vanadate of lead and copper, which occurs

associated with gold, lead, and copper minerals at several mines in

Silver Star district, Montana. It is considered to be a favorable

indication, for when that is found the vein is said to become rich in

gold. Coloradoite is a telluride of mercury, also a new mineral and

quite rare.

* * * * *

Dr. Piggott proposes to replace the spider's web of telescopes by a star

illuminated transit eye-piece. A sheet of glass, on which a thin film of

silver is deposited, is placed in the focus of the eye lens; transparent

lines are drawn on the film, instead of wires, and as the star passes

across the lines it is seen to flash out brightly. The film of silver is

made sufficiently thin to permit of the star being seen when it is

between the lines, but it appears that the lines themselves are only

visible, except in the case of very large stars, when the star disc is

in transit across a line.

* * * * *

Singular results of strains existing in the granite rocks through which

the St. Gothard tunnel is passing are recorded. When the shots are fired

at the end of the gallery they are sometimes succeeded at unequal

intervals by other explosions at points where there is no drill hole and

no powder. Workmen have been injured by these spontaneous explosions,

which are to be explained only on the theory that there are strains in

the rock; and when this tension is increased by the shock of a heavy

explosion, the rock flies in pieces with noise. Similar effects have

been noticed in other granites.

* * * * *

It is said that aniline colors are now used to color wines, and that

enough of them is taken into the Bordeaux district of France to color

one-third of its whole product. Husson gives the following method for

detecting it: Take a small quantity of the wine and add a little

ammonia, when the mixture turns a dirty green. Steep a thread of white

woollen yarn in the liquor and allow a drop of vinegar to flow along it.

If the color of the wine is natural, as the drop advances the original

whiteness of the wool is restored; but if the wine has been

sophisticated with magenta, the wool will take a rose color. This test

is simple, easily tried, and effective.

* * * * *

An inquiry into the results of systematic gymnastic exercises in a

French military school shows that the strength is increased on the

average 15 to 17 per cent., and is also equalized on both sides of the

body. The capacity of the chest is increased at least 16 per cent. and

the weight 6 to 7 per cent. Coincident with this increase is a decrease

in the bulk of the body, showing that fat is changed to muscle. The

improvement is confined to the first three months of the course unless

the exercise is then moderated. If continued at too high a rate,

weakness succeeds the increase of strength. It would be a good plan to

place a dynamometer in every gymnasium as a measure of the changes which

take place in the gymnast.

MOON MADNESS.

The popular belief that the moon's rays will cause madness in any person

who sleeps exposed to them has long been felt to be absurd, and yet it

has appeared to have its source in undoubted facts. Some deleterious

influence is experienced by those who rashly court slumber in full

moonshine, and probably there is no superstition to which the well-to-do

pay more attention. Windows are often carefully covered to keep the

moonbeams from entering sleeping rooms. A gentleman living in India

furnishes "Nature" with an explanation of this phenomenon which is at

least plausible. He says: "It has often been observed that when the moon

is full, or near its full time, there are rarely any clouds about; and

if there be clouds before the full moon rises, they are soon dissipated;

and therefore a perfectly clear sky, with a bright full moon, is

frequently observed. A clear sky admits of rapid radiation of heat from

the surface of the earth, and any person exposed to such radiation is

sure to be chilled by rapid loss of heat. There is reason to believe

that, under the circumstances, paralysis of one side of the face is

sometimes likely to occur from chill, as one side of the face is more

likely to be exposed to rapid radiation, and consequent loss of its

heat. This chill is more likely to occur when the sky is perfectly

clear. I have often slept in the open in India on a clear summer night,

when there was no moon; and although the first part of the night may

have been hot, yet toward two or three o'clock in the morning, the chill

has been so great that I have often been awakened by an ache in my

forehead, which I as often have counteracted by wrapping a handkerchief

round my head, and drawing the blanket over my face. As the chill is

likely to be greatest on a very clear night, and the clearest nights are

likely to be those on which there is a bright moonshine, it is very

possible that neuralgia, paralysis, or other similar injury, caused by

sleeping in the open, has been attributed to the moon, when the

proximate cause may really have been the _chill_, and the moon only a

remote cause acting by dissipating the clouds and haze (if it do so),

and leaving a perfectly clear sky for the play of radiation into space."

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VACCINATION.

An English physician opposes compulsory vaccination on the ground that

it prevents further discovery, and compels medical science to halt at

just that point, because it forbids experiment upon methods of

prevention that may prove to be better. He says: "It stereotypes a

particular stage of scientific knowledge, and bars further progress. If

I remind you of the great improvement thought to have been made by the

introduction of inoculation by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the end of

the last century, and ask you to suppose that Parliament might then have

passed an act to compel every one to be inoculated, you will, I think,

see what is meant. This method was tried for some years with great

_eclat_, but afterward it was found to spread the smallpox so much that

an act of Parliament was passed to forbid its use. Vaccination,

introduced by Dr. Jenner, has followed, and this was another step in

advance. I was the first child in my father's family vaccinated

seventy-one years ago, several elder brothers and sisters having been

inoculated. Both methods answered in our cases. But for many years I

have been satisfied that other diseases besides the modified small-pox

(called cow-pox) are now introduced by the old vaccine, and have

steadily refused to use it, seeking rather, at increased trouble and

expense, new vaccine. And the question which comes forcibly to the front

is this: May not some other preservative be discovered which shall be a

further improvement? This question cannot be answered so long as

vaccination is compelled by law. There are no persons upon whom

experiments can be tried." So far as it goes, this is valid ground for

criticising vaccination laws. But the proof that small-pox is more

disastrous to the human race than the evils that vaccination brings with

it is so strong that there is little likelihood society will subject

itself to the attacks of the greater enemy in order to avoid the lesser.

The evils of the old system of using vaccine taken from human beings for

new inoculations are now no longer inevitable. Fresh vaccine direct from

the calf, and called "Bovine," can be had everywhere. A large

establishment for obtaining it is situated near New York.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Colonel Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"[O] is one of the most

entertaining and important books of the kind we have met with. Whether

he treats of the chase, the natural history of the wild animals found on

our continent, or the Indians, he draws upon abundant resources of

observation and experience. His description of the much talked of

"plains" is new. He distinguishes three of these, the first lying next

the mountains, the next known as the "High Plains," being to the

eastward, and finally the broad surface of the lower plains. As the high

plains are more fertile than either of the others (owing to diversities

of soil), we have the singular effect of a country suddenly becoming

more fertile as the interior of the continent is more deeply penetrated.

Of other peculiarities exhibited in this region our author gives a vivid

account, and it requires all our faith in his accuracy to have

confidence in the following description of the famous Bad Lands, the

scene of so much Scientific search:

The ground is covered with fragments of the bones of animals

and reptiles, and the man must indeed be insensible who can

pass unmoved through these most magnificent burying-grounds

of animals extinct before the advent of his race.

Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of

the plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal

remains, fossils, shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very

numerous and in great variety, from the saurian and mastodon

to the minutest reptile, ranging in point of time from the

remotest ages to the present day.

[Footnote O: "_The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants._" By

(Lieutenant-Colonel) RICHARD IRVING DODGE. With an Introduction by

William Blackmore. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

His description of other features of this vast region is full of

interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers,

stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not

increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the

extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound

the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which

repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even

more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber

belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these

sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to

rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams

pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill

nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they

may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain

themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove

that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature.

Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes,

and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language.

Colonel Dodge is one of the most noted hunters in our army, and his

descriptions of the chase deserve to rank with those of Cummings, Baker,

and other great African sportsmen. It is true our country does not

afford the hunter such a slaughter field as South Africa has been. A few

animals have increased on our soil to such an extent as to afford at

certain seasons opportunities for unlimited slaughter. But the past five

years have seen such destruction of the last of these--the buffalo--that

wholesale killing is no longer possible on any ground the white man is

suffered to visit. Three years more will carry us to the end of the

decade, and probably of the buffalo hunt as it has been in the past.

About five years ago a change came over the pursuit of this animal. He

began to be killed for his hide alone, and the results are almost

incredible. Colonel Dodge shows that in three years no less than

4,373,730 buffalo were killed by whites and Indians. It is evidently

impossible for any animal, bringing forth but one at a birth, to

maintain its increase against such heedless destruction. The present

winter has witnessed what is probably the last grand attack upon these

animals, as they took refuge in the sheltering mountains of northwestern

Texas from the cold and snow-covered plains. Very soon the noblest prey

of the sportsman on this continent will be one of his rarest prizes.

Colonel Dodge does not lack the usual hunter's fund of anecdote. His own

adventures are modestly told, and when "seven antelope and a fine dog"

are bagged with one shot, the story is credited (with the Colonel's

guarantee) to an anonymous "old hunter"! We have said that the plains do

not rival the African field in quantity of game, but the dimensions of

two separate "bags," shot in successive years, shows how great even in

this country the rewards of the chase may be. In 1872 five gentlemen, of

whom Colonel Dodge was one, bagged 1,262 head, and next year four shot

1,141 head on the same ground, and the author thinks "the whole world

can be safely challenged to offer a greater variety of game."

But interesting as the chase is in our author's hands, the most

important part of the book is that in which the Indians are described

and discussed. To one who knows the unanimity of army opinion concerning

the much debated Indian question in the West, it is almost unnecessary

to say that Colonel Dodge wishes to see the tribes transferred to the

sole control of the War Department, treaty-making stopped at once,

discipline introduced, the vagabond whites eliminated from the tribes,

and the never-ceasing stream of outrages stopped. These opinions, which

the author shares with the Western community at large, are founded on a

very intimate knowledge of the Indians, and while they are invaluable as

the testimony of so competent an authority, they must yield in immediate

interest to the very vivid picture which the author gives of Indian life

and his estimate of Indian character. While what he says is not novel,

and could hardly be novel after the many thousands of works on the same

subject, his views are based on his own observation, and the facts are

presented with so much force that we gain a new idea of the American

savage. His essential moral characteristic is his love of cruelty. What

the savage thinks about in the frequent and long continued seasons of

idle solitude, it has long puzzled the ethnologist to discover. Colonel

Dodge says that a large part of the Indian's brooding thoughts are given

to the invention of modes of inflicting pain when he has the opportunity

to do so, and many of the camp fire discussions are upon suggestions for

cruelty. When the captive is brought in his tortures are not inflicted

in mere accordance with the momentary promptings of a brutal nature.

They may have been invented years before in some far distant camp, in

the profoundest peace, or may be copied from some noted example of

successful cruelty. They may have grown by one suggestion added to

another, among men whose knowledge of natural history includes a

marvellous perception of what parts of the frame are most sensitive to

pain. The Indian's cruelty is his pride. He gains credit by it among his

people, and he who invents a new torture is a leader. Cruelty is a merit

among these savages. It has rewards which make this passion one of the

most noticeable elements in their system of morality. No other author

has presented this aspect of Indian character with the clearness of

Colonel Dodge. His frequent illustrations show that it is no temporary

impulse, but a race characteristic carefully fostered by tradition and

perhaps by religion. But what position does all this give the Indian

among other races of men? Clearly he stands apart. The cannibal may

dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table,

and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the

altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but

no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate

cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from

fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so

fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be

enjoyed for itself. The author has spoken with such plainness upon the

position of captive women in the hands of Indians, that we fear his book

will be objected to in just those quarters where its revelations are

most likely to do good. There is one thing which we wish he had made

clear--whether the brutality shown toward captive women is a practice

which has grown among the Cheyennes since they were driven from their

old home, or whether that has always been their mode of procedure. In

some quarters this particular brutality has been spoken of as the

outgrowth of their sufferings at the hands of the whites.

Colonel Dodge's book shows a rare combination of acute observation, long

experience, and the spirit of good fellowship. It is one of the best

books of hunting we know of, the best book ever written about the

plains, and its pictures and anecdotes of hunting life and Indian

fighting are a faithful reproduction of the peculiar conditions to be

found only on our great plains, with the anomalous relations of the

civilized and barbarous races that haunt them. The publishers have

illustrated it liberally. The Indian portraits are worthy of especial

mention for the minute accuracy which makes them ethnological examples

of unusual value.

* * * * *

The zoological collections described in the fifth volume of Reports,

Survey west of the Hundredth Meridian,[P] were all obtained in that

zoological province known as the "Campestrian region," from the great

plains which it includes. There the animal colors are pale and tend

toward uniformity, corresponding to the low rainfall of from three to

twenty inches per year. In this peculiarity, and also in comparison with

the surrounding more humid regions, the district of country in which the

Government surveys are now carried on sustains the general theory that

coloration in animals is closely dependent on rainfall, a humid

atmosphere serving to cloak the sun's rays and preserve the natural dyes

(mostly organic) from bleaching out. Dr. Yarrow thinks that the entirely

rainless parts of this vast Campestrian region may ultimately deserve

recognition as a separate zoological province. The observations made as

to the mimicry of color which some animals, especially reptiles, exert

or suffer lead him to believe that "a law may yet be formulated in this

respect which will equally apply to all classes of animals." This

mimicry was especially noticed in serpents and lizards found near red

sandstone deposits, the well-known little _Phrynosoma_, or horned toad,

being greenish gray, nearly white, or deep red, as it was found on the

plain, the alkali flat, or the sandstone soil. But however profound the

change, the skin returned to its normal color within a day or two after

removal from the determining locality. In regard to the rattlesnake, we

have the welcome information that it is apparently decreasing in

numbers, and the less agreeable fact that with other serpents, it

principally frequents the neighborhood of settlements. The collections

of all kinds made by the explorers prove to be unexpectedly perfect in

spite of the rapidity with which they are forced to move, and losses by

fire and railroad accident. The report upon these collections is drawn

up with the care and thoroughness that are such creditable features of

recent American official work. A copious bibliography and synonomy is

attached to the descriptions of species. The allotment of reports is as

follows: Geographical Distribution, Dr. H. C. Yarrow; Mammals, Dr.

Elliott Coues and Dr. Yarrow; Birds, H. W. Henshaw; Batrachians and

Reptiles, Dr. Yarrow; Fishes, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. Yarrow; Insects,

E. T. Cresson, E. Norton, T. L. Mead, R. H. Stretch, C. R. Osten-Sacken,

H. Ulke, R. P. Uhler, Cyrus Thomas, H. A. Hagen; Mollusca, Dr. Yarrow.

These names show how carefully the head of the survey, Lieutenant

Wheeler, has sought assistance in the important work of classification.

But these are by no means all from whom he and his assistants

acknowledge service. The list given in the preface numbers more than

forty persons, and includes the best known specialists in this country.

Forty-five plates, colored when necessary, accompany the text. In every

respect the report is worthy the important survey from which it

emanates.

[Footnote P: "_Report upon Geographical and Geological Explorations and

Surveys West of the Hundredth Meridian_," in charge of First Lieutenant

GEORGE M. WHEELER. Vol. V., Zoology.]

* * * * *

Though it is now quite common to find the life of two or even three

continents mingled in one web of fiction, few writers make so close a

subjective study of the immigrant's experiences as Mr. Boyesen has done

in his "Tales from Two Hemispheres."[Q] In fact he stands almost alone

in this field, and for a good reason; he is a participant where others

are onlookers. We are often told of the impression American ladies make

on foreign gentlemen, but rarely receive an analysis of it or are

offered even an attempt to analyze it. And yet this appears to be one of

the most promising exhibitions of human feeling ever studied. The

intercourse of the sexes, necessarily the subject of all romance, may

obviously have its situations heightened in every way by the

juxtaposition of two races, two diverse educations, and two opposite

moral systems, conjointly with the customary incidents of love-making.

Our author is fully alive to his opportunity, and, short as his tales

are, they bristle with dramatic scenes, and have an element of the

mythical and legendary in them, even when they are removed from such

professedly mystical subjects as he has treated in "Asathor's

Vengeance." Even in drawing-room scenes in New York the love-making is

ideal and romantic instead of calculating or passionate, as the current

novel commonly paints it. This mode of treatment implies that the tales

are either pathetic or fanciful, and in Mr. Boyesen's hands they are all

pathetic. He shows unusual power in this style of writing, and has the

natural and quiet humor which it demands. But there is a rudeness in the

construction and language of all of these stories which sometimes blinds

the reader to the really delicate insight into human feeling displayed

in them. The author writes like one who has the conception of what he

wants to do, but not yet the full command of the means. But this is a

fault that practice cures, and we trust Mr. Boyesen will continue his

studies in this essentially novel and peculiarly promising field of

literature.

[Footnote Q: "_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" By HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.]

--In "Captain Mago"[R] we have a kind of book which with proper

attention may be made extremely interesting and valuable. It is an

attempt to reconstruct the life of three thousand years ago, not merely

among the Phoenicians, but in many other countries. Under the guise of

an expedition sent by the King of Tyre to Tarshish for the purpose of

collecting materials for the Jewish temple which King David was then

planning, we are taken to Judaea, Egypt, Crete, Italy, Spain, France,

England, and Africa. Such an expedition of course gives the author an

opportunity to present a panoramic view of the civilization in those

countries thirty centuries ago. We cannot say that he has performed the

task well. He dwells too much upon what he imagines to be the language

and conversation of the ancients and too little on those material facts

in their life which can be proved or plausibly imagined from the remains

of it which we have gathered. Ancient habits are but very obscurely

exhibited in the rude tools, the fragments of village houses, the

necklace of the Man of Mentone, the whistles and other toys of the

caves, the funereal fireplaces, and similar objects, but they are much

more plainly discernible than are the peculiarities of speech which must

have made up the bulk of daily conversation among our ancestors. A

reconstruction of ancient life based on a good knowledge of these

objects is likely to be more instructive and real than one that depends

for its force on a fanciful conception of their _thouing_ and _theeing_,

their love-making, and what oaths they swore. In fact, real service

could be done to "popular" science by a book that should exhibit our

remote forefathers as we really know them, and not attempting to go

beyond that point. Difficult as it will necessarily be to make such an

undertaking successful, we have no doubt that it will one day be

accomplished. "Captain Mago," though falling far short even of

excellence in this field, is nevertheless an interesting and peculiar

book.

[Footnote R: "_The Adventures of Captain Mago_; or, A Phoenician

Expedition B.C. 1000." By LEON CAHUN. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer.

Illustrated. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.]

--The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored to

reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time

which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another

author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he

chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of

a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece"

and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw

that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,[S] written

after a personal visit and stay of some time, that his former writings

were sufficiently true to the Greece of to-day to deceive living Greeks

into the belief that he had been intimately acquainted with their

landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern

Greeks are a very interesting finish to his idealizations of their

ancestors. It is comforting to know that after all her spoliations the

country is still so rich in remains of ancient art as to retain more

fine and pure specimens of the best work than are to be found in all the

rest of the world. Very little is done toward uncovering and nothing

toward restoring these sculptures, for the Greeks are jealous of

foreigners and unable or not sufficiently interested to do this

themselves. They are willing to allow others to do the work, but Greece

must have all the profit. Still, there the works lie, and may be

recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted to think they are

well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of the country, with

exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not have practised, use

the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol practice! Another

point in which they show a constitutional divergence from their

forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen upon their

women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. Now the

household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the

wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for

companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and

this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While these

differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange

resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are

even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the

language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race

continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere

mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion

of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He

thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of

government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic

he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek,

for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest

promptings of patriotism. Mr. Mahaffy shows himself to be as able as an

observer as he is as an historian.

[Footnote S: "_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" By J. P. MAHAFFY.

Macmillan & Co.]

--The peculiar character of De Quincey's work gives unusual opportunity

for such a volume of selections as this, published under the untasteful

name of "Beauties."[T] He had all the mental power required for

sustained efforts in composition, though his plans for such works were

always defeated by physical weakness. His productions, therefore, though

incomplete, are not those of a literary trifler. His genius and methods

seem to be especially suited to the tastes of the present day, for he

excelled in the qualities that make the professional magazinist: great

learning, research, and acuteness, combined with a humor that sports

most waywardly through everything he wrote, a vivid fancy, a wonderful

use of words, and a style which even in its faults exhibits the needs of

periodical literature. He was, perhaps, more exactly fitted to serve the

world in its chosen field of current publications than any other man who

has written for it. Were he living now he would be acknowledged the

prince of the nebulous gentlemen who occupy easy chairs, gather in

contributors' clubs, and fill up "editors' baskets" with their

effusions. We have additional respect for the somewhat chopped up

productions of these gentlemen, after reading the numerous volumes that

bear his name, for there we find how much of every sort of literary good

they can contain. The editor of these selections is a lucky man, for his

work has the merit, rare among such books, of being thoroughly good in

itself. He has with excellent judgment given us somewhat of

autobiography, somewhat of the rare and indescribable dream life of De

Quincey, and somewhat of his tales, essays, and critiques. The character

of his author's writings relieves these morsels from the air of

incompleteness and decapitation which so often attaches to selections.

What he has given us is not all of De Quincey, but each chapter is

complete in itself. Selections usually repel us. We cannot join in the

argument so often found in prefaces to such works, that the reading of

them may lead to the reading of the author's whole works. On the

contrary, we are of that class to whom the cutting up of a good author

is apt to seem like vivisection--necessary, perhaps, but revolting. This

book, however, does not leave such an impression. On laying it down we

wonder why we are not constantly reading the great essayist, the

precursor of the literary spirit of our own times, probably a better

example than any now living of the many virtues demanded from the

popular writer.

[Footnote T: "_Beauties Selected from the Writings of Thomas De

Quincey._" New York: Hurd & Houghton.]

* * * * *

Under the editorship of Mr. John Austin Stevens we may look for a

valuable and permanent publication in the "Magazine of American History,

with Notes and Queries," of which A. S. Barnes & Co. are the publishers.

The position of the editor as librarian of the New York Historical

Society will, or at all events should, be an additional source of

strength to the publication. Experience shows that literary undertakings

which possess more merit than popularity can derive great advantages

from the official countenance of societies pursuing allied subjects of

investigation. Properly managed, the two modes of obtaining union in

action can be made to help each other materially. This hint will perhaps

be considered not amiss since the pamphlet, printed with the neatness

characteristic of such works, which lies before us, is but a specimen

and preliminary number, which is to be followed by monthly issues in

quarto form, at $5 yearly, if sufficient support is obtained. The editor

says: "Each number will contain: I. An original article on some point of

American history from a recognized and authoritative pen. II. A

biographical sketch of some character of historic interest. III.

Original documents, diaries, and letters. IV. Reprints of rare

documents. V. Notes and queries in the well-known English form. VI.

Reports of the proceedings of the New York Historical Society. VII.

Notices of historical publications." He also promises to keep it free

from sectional prejudices and "from personality and controversy in any

form." He has ready for publication a large number of interesting old

manuscripts contributed by historians and collectors, and it is to be

hoped his attempt to establish a periodical for historical literature

will be sustained.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"_Materialism and Theology._" JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D. G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition, "Heart of Midlothian." Hurd &

Houghton.

_The Same._ "Bride of Lammermoor."

_The Same._ "The Monastery."

"_Footsteps of the Master._" HARRIET B. STOWE. J. B. Ford & Co.

"_Functions of the Brain._" Illustrated. D. FERRIER, M.D. G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

"_The Plains of the Great West._" Illustrated. Lieutenant Colonel

RICHARD I. DODGE. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"_The Sons of Godwin._" A Tragedy. WILLIAM LEIGHTON, Jr. J. B.

Lippincott & Co.

"_Personal Relations Between Librarian and Readers._" SAM. S. GREEN.

Chas. Hamilton, Worcester, Mass.

"_Special Report on Worcester Free Library._" The same.

"_Tales from Two Hemispheres._" H. H. BOYESEN. Jas. R. Osgood & Co.

"_The Problems of Problems._" CLARK BRADEN. Chase & Hall, Cincinnati.

"_Archology_; or, The Science of Government." V. BLAKESLEE. A. Roman &

Co.

"_Woman as a Musician._" FANNY RAYMOND RITTER. Ed. Schuberth & Co.

"_Vivisection._" Copp Clark & Co., Toronto.

"_Cholera Facts of the Last Year._" E. MCCLELLAN, M.D. Richmond &

Louisville Medical Journal office.

"_Art Journal._" Photo-Engraving Co., New York.

"_History of the City of New York._" Parts 5 to 10. Mrs. M. J. LAMB. A.

S. Barnes & Co.

"_The Magazine of American History._" JNO. AUSTIN STEVENS, editor. A. S.

Barnes & Co.

"_National Quarterly Review._" D. A. GORTON, editor.

"_National Survey West of 100th Meridian._" Vol. 5, Zoology. Dr. H. C.

YARROW and others. Government Printing Office.

"_Catalogue Siamese Exhibit International Exhibition._" J. B. Lippincott

& Co.

"_Planetary Meteorology, Mansill's Almanac of._" R. MANSILL. R.

Crampton, Rock Island.

"_Notes on Assaying._" R. DE P. RICKETTS. Art Printing Establishment.

"_Mental Powers of Insects._" A. S. PACKARD, Jr. Estes & Lauriat.

"_Beauties of De Quincey._" Hurd & Houghton.

"_The Convicts._" B. AUERBACH. H. Holt & Co.

"_Philosophical Discussions._" C. WRIGHT. H. Holt & Co.

"_The Sons of Goodwin._" W. LEIGHTON. J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"_Rambles and Studies in Greece._" J. P. MAHAFFY. Macmillan & Co.

"_Mother and Daughter._" F. S. VERDI, M. D. J. B. Ford & Co.

"_Marie._ A Story of Russian Lore." MARIE H. DE ZIELINSKI. Jansen,

McClurg & Co.

"_The Barton Experiment._" By the author of "Helen's Babies." G. P.

Putnam's Sons.

NEBULAE.

--It would seem that we must return to the old fashion of strong boxes,

old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the receptacles of our savings. As

to savings banks and trust companies, and life insurance companies, the

revelations of the last few months go to show that they do anything but

save; that they are no longer to be trusted, and that they ensure

nothing but total loss to those who put their money into them. Ere long

it will be said of a young man that he was poor but honest, although he

had the misfortune to have a father who was a director in several

important financial institutions. The state of affairs in this respect

is frightful; and it frightens. The financial panic has been followed by

a moral panic which is really as much more deplorable than its

predecessor as moral causes are more radical in their operation and more

enduring than those which are merely material. Confidence is gone. How

it is to be restored is a problem far more perplexing than how to revive

drooping trade. For that the real wealth of the country, never greater

than it is now and constantly increasing, must bring about sooner or

later. But if men of wealth and of fair reputation are no longer to be

trusted, what is the use of saving, to put money into a box where it

gains nothing and where thieves break through and steal? Robbery seems

to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your

heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other

hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your

money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their

characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in

luxurious living. Of the two, the burglars seem to be rather the more

respectable. It is said, on good authority, that the West India slaves

of a past generation could be trusted to carry bags of gold from one

part of the Spanish Main to another, and that they were constantly so

trusted with entire impunity. They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or

cut a throat; but if they were trusted, they would not break their

faith. The honesty of the Turkish porters is so well known that it has

become almost proverbial. Does not the honesty of these pirates and

pagans put to shame the Christians who with the professions and the

faces of Pharisees "devour widows' houses"?

--For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and trust

companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than mere

business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess that it

is. A life insurance company is a grand combination

philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread

upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But

the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon

the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your

eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our

knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary,

with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty

years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was

always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward,

when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their

purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that

his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed.

But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon

him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may

live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured

at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that

the company in question _did_ take his life); and he has the prospect

before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although for

nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to provide

against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company lived

luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, and in

living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and dishonest. And

they were all men of reputation, were selected for their positions

because it was thought that men of their position and habits of life and

outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured that

prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical

Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon

them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get

their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in

splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that

handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with

many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich carpets!

And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a

pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not

mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and

even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to

be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are

only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury,

and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening

that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these

defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are

picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very

nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on

for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we

have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous

scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found

in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and

grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and

abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their

friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain

English, money which was brought within their reach because of their

pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we

repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these

wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially

and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly

profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man

who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a

savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the

fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men;

and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest dye.

--In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the business of

life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when it has not

been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a benevolent

contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by year make

provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left destitute,

it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of life

insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles and in

the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have been

only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper

conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been

the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such

indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found

that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey

upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm

around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers;

they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives

they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the

common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into

bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had

agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking,

shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as

they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and

splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that

justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so

untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual"

plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure

their own lives--which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself over

a fence by the straps of his boots--and yet these mutual officers,

benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as ready to pay

large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they had expected to

get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and enormously

expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known to our

country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, with

cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents to the

beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the money

passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large

pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of

late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now,

making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under

philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be,

as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most

heartless fraud.

* * * * *

The point of honor has been deemed of use

To teach good manners and to curb abuse.

So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when

duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not

look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the

passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of

settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the

moral poet _par excellence_ of the English language, attained this

eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting

pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of

family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to

gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that

he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view

of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English

blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin

races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late

slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our

western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the

knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a

regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to

the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these

exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come

to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more

strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the

world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept

such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest

duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without

advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned

whether that reason has entirely disappeared.

* * * * *

--Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to palliate

the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which began in

Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but the fact

that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the

attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark

upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set

aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its

reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final

judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position

is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied

in the couplet--

Amoral, sensible, and well-bred man

Will not affront me, and no other can.

But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which is

an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know--and we are happy if

we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted more

frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it

does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it

certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the

teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and

arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what

we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A

man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of

social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his

assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the

stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That

may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say

nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater

part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two

courses are open to a person so assailed--either to place the matter in

the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to challenge the

assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the former course is

the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection against personal

injury is sought a police justice and a police officer are the effective

as well as the lawful means. But there is something else to be

considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there may be no

fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may rankle

deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most men of

character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of money or

of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one which the

law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated in damages;

none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man who suffers

it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, do

gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although invisible, and not

even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in words, are more

forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault than the regular

bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this wrong is not to be

measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that is inflicted. Two

men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely injure the other; but

no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that not because no injury

was intended, but because no offence was meant; whereas the flirt of a

kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict a wrong that if not

atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's whole life. To

attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is quite useless:

as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human nature. It is this

feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels since duels passed out

of use as a mode of determining guilt or innocence, or of deciding

questions as to property, or position, or title. In the sixteenth,

seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels were chiefly the remedy for

wounded honor, as they are when they are rarely fought nowadays. True

there was the duel fought between two gentlemen "to prevent the

inconvenience of their both addressing the same lady"; but the duel for

that reason pure and simple was always comparatively rare, as, owing to

the infirmity of human nature, the agreement in opinion of the lady and

the disagreement as to the disposition to be made of her were almost

sure to take the form of a more reasonable if not more deadly cause of

quarrel.

--But society--that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes of thought

and feeling prevail--says that no matter what the provocation, or how

great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it has been made a

crime in some if not in most of such communities even to send a

challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of morality, and

not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a duel is murder.

Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its essence entirely

inconsistent with the fact that the person killed voluntarily placed

himself, and generally with much trouble and at great inconvenience, in

the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of _hari-kari_, or

happy release, as our Japanese friends have well phrased it, but it is

with the cooperation of a second party who voluntarily places himself in

similar peril, the happy release being in both cases from the stigma of

dishonor. This is shown very clearly by the distinction which is drawn

in general estimation between the man who challenges because he has

suffered an insult or an injury to his family honor, and one who does so

from a feeling of revenge and with the intent to rid himself of a hated

opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron Burr in his duel with

Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a century ago, when there

were no such laws against duelling as now exist; but Burr, although he

rid himself of his hated rival on what was called the field of honor,

was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. If Hamilton had

offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family

relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight

of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world

recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding

and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense

of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who

fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel

a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings of

Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient suffering

of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, have the

feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he saw his

old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of

swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a

Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on

the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern

days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are

inclined to think, the most admirable of them all:

Woe's the day, he sadly said,

With a slowly shaking head,

And a look of pity:

Wry's honest lord reviled,

Mock of knave and sport of child,

In his own good city.

Speak the word, and master mine,

As we charged on Tilly's line

And his Walloon lancers,

Smiting through their midst, we'll teach

Civil look and decent speech

To these boyish prancers.

--What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We all

feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear;

we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law;

and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is

called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which

human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect

all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men have

not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, who

----stood

Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood

With the great Gustavus.

We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them

by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains

turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to

do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a

personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be

understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the

most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that

the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his

tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity

of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be

pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there

would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which

touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so

developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is

not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than

himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor,

if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then _his_ dishonor

is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of

a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal

indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called

upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids

him to seek the only reparation.

--That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor,

as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The

purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal

indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk

of his life. If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would

operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of

practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a

very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it

are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and

implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their

murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more

erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to

be desirous of using arms on slight provocation; whereas the contrary is

the case. No men are so reluctant to begin fighting as thoroughbred

soldiers; for they know what it means and to what end it must be carried

if it is once begun. The code has been reduced to writing, and by a

"fire-eating" South Carolinian, so that we can see just how bloodthirsty

it is. It provides first that if an insult be received in public it

should not be resented or noticed there, out of respect to those

present, except in case of a blow or the like, because this is insult to

the company which did not originate with the person receiving it; that a

challenge should never be sent in the first instance because "that

precludes all negotiation," and that in the note asking explanation and

reparation the writer should "cautiously avoid attributing to the

adverse party any improper motive"; that the aggrieved party's second

should manage the whole affair even before a challenge is sent, because

he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and his friends' feelings are

more or less irritated" ["more or less" here is excellent good as

expressive of the state of mind of a man so aggrieved that he is ready

to risk his life]; the second is to "use every effort to soothe and

tranquillize his principal," not to "see things in the aggravated light

in which he views them, but to extenuate the conduct of his adversary

whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to do so"; to "endeavor to

persuade him that there has been some misunderstanding in the matter,"

and to "check him if he uses opprobrious epithets toward his adversary";

"when an accommodation is tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy

of the most respectful consideration, "never require too much; and if

the party offering the _amende honorable_ wishes to give a reason for

his conduct in the matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your

friend, refuse to receive it. By doing so you heal the breach more

effectively." Strangers may call upon you for your offices as second,

"for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs as well as others, and

the rules of honor and of hospitality should protect them." The second

of the party challenged is also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay

the excitement which your principal may labor under," to search

diligently into the origin of the misunderstanding, "for gentlemen

seldom insult each other unless they labor under some misapprehension or

mistake," and if the matter be investigated in the right spirit, it is

probable that "harmony will be restored." The other parts of the code

refer to the arrangements for and the etiquette of the hostile meeting,

of which we shall only notice the censure passed upon the seconds if

after either party is hit the fight is allowed to go on. The last

section implies, although it does not positively assert, that "every

insult may be compromised" without a hostile meeting, and it is directly

said that "the old opinion that a blow must require blood is of no

force; blows may be compromised in many cases." We do by no means

advocate the fighting of duels; but we must say that we cannot see in

this code the blood-thirstiness and the quarrel-seeking generally

attributed to it. On the contrary, all its instructions seem to tend

toward peacemaking, the restoration of harmony, the restraining of even

expressions of ill feeling. It does recognize as indisputable that an

insult must be atoned for, and if necessary, at the risk of life. That

necessity society can do away with by placing its ban upon the man who

insults another.

* * * * *

--It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the world

in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed

southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from

Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge--exactly of what sort we

don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or

perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This

cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand

junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these

associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there

asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his

master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss,"

replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top

nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all

that it cost?

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors corrected.

Text changes:

English Peerage: replaced "e.i." with "i.e."

..._i.e._ the mayor being...

Misanthrope: replaced "acquintance" with "acquaintance"

...to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy...

Wordsworth: Corrected "ta de, kollomelei" to "ta de kollomelei"

The Greek word "k'autonomazei" appears in other editions as

"k'antonomazei."

Replaced "Jeffry" with "Jeffrey" ...Jeffrey looked for logical...

Used =[text]= to indicate word typed with strike-out

=Those= lips...

Replaced "chearful" with "cheerful" ...Be wise and cheerful...

Portrait: Open quote without close quote in poem retained;

"Is thine that great,...

Tinsel: Removed extra period: ...before I asked it.".

Eastern: Corrected "Mediterannean" to "Mediterranean"

...superior fleet in the Mediterranean;...

Added comma between "there there" ...In religion there, there are...

Assja: Consolidated 'The young man smiled and answered, "Yes; we are

Russians."' into one paragraph.

Removed hyphen from "hemp-field" ...a hemp field of moderate size...

Scientific: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic.

Nebulae: Added thought breaks between paragraphs at change of topic.