which should sustain itself in the air and move by the aid of sails.
Four copper globes, in which a vacuum had been produced in order to
render them lighter than the volume of air displaced, were to support
the ship while the sails propelled it. The scientific conception of the
empty globes was correct, but Père Lana did not think of the enormous
collapsing force which the atmospheric pressure would exercise upon
them. The idea of a sail which would give his aërial boat a resemblance
to a vessel driven by the winds was wholly erroneous.
Sixty-five years later, in 1735, Père Galien, of Avignon, gave a
fairly clear expression to the theory of aërostats. Resting on the
principle of Archimedes, he maintained that if he could fill a globe
made of light cloth with a sufficiently rarefied air the globe would
necessarily possess an ascensional force, which would permit it to lift
itself up in the air with a ship and all its cargo. He proposed to draw
this rarefied air from out of the upper regions of the atmosphere,
down from the summits of high mountains, forgetting that the air, when
brought down to the level of the ground, would contract in volume and
assume the density of the ambient atmosphere.
In the condition of ignorance of the properties of gases that existed
in that age, it did not occur, and could not have occurred, to Père
Galien to use other gases than air; no more could he have thought
of employing heat to rarefy the air, for the first not very precise
notions on the decrease in densities of gases by heat only date from
Priestley. But when Cavendish, in 1765, had fully studied hydrogen
gas, and shown that as it was prepared then it was seven times lighter
than air, Black was enabled to suggest that by filling a light bag
with hydrogen the bag would be able to raise a certain weight in the
air. The labors of Cavendish, Black, and the discoveries of oxygen,
nitrogen, and other gases by Priestley, were described by Priestley
a few years afterward in the celebrated book on The Different Kinds
of Air--a book which Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier had in their
possession. The two brothers evidently found the germ of their
invention in it.
It is fair to say that the Montgolfiers, who were already known in the
learned world by their discoveries in the mechanical sciences, had
thought, before they knew of Priestley's book, of a way of imitating
Nature by inclosing vapor of water, a gas lighter than air, in a paper
bag, which would be lifted up, the vapor contained in the bag being
sustained in the air like a cloud. But the vapor condensed, and the
weighted balloon shortly fell to the ground. The smoke produced by
burning wood inclosed in a bag gave no better results. After seeing
Priestley's book, they substituted hydrogen for vapor and for smoke,
but the gas passed through the paper bag, and they gave up this attempt.
They then fancied that electricity was one of the causes of the rise
of clouds, and sought for a gas that had electrical properties. They
thought they could obtain it by burning wet straw and wool together.
A box made of silk was filled with this gas, and they had the great
satisfaction of seeing it rise to the ceiling of their room, and, in a
second experiment, into the air. This was in November, 1782.
Five months previously, Tiberius Cavallo, in England, had repeated
Black's experiment of filling a paper sack with hydrogen; but, as
the Montgolfiers had found, the hydrogen leaked through the paper.
Cavallo had better success with soap bubbles, which held the gas. His
experiments stopped here, while the Montgolfiers carried theirs on to
practical success.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue Scientifique._
SKETCH OF EDWARD ORTON,
LATE STATE GEOLOGIST OF OHIO; LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
All persons interested in American science were surprised and shocked
at learning of the death, from heart trouble, on October 16, 1899, of
Prof. Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University. The event occurred
only little less than two months after Professor Orton had presided,
with a simplicity of manner that did not hide but rather heightened
the traits of vigor in his character, over the meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science at his home in Columbus,
Ohio. The services he rendered to geology, his long and honorable
career as an educator, and his continual and consistent insistence
upon the faithful use of the scientific method well entitle him to
be remembered as one of the most meritorious of American scientific
workers.
EDWARD ORTON was born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., March 9,
1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born in England in
1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and owners of
Farmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of the Ortons in
the United States are derived, and represented his town in the General
Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grandson of Thomas Orton, was one
of the original purchasers and settlers of Litchfield, Conn., where
he owned a square mile of land known as Orton Hill, on the south side
of Bantam Lake. Two of the maternal ancestors of the subject of this
sketch fought in the colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the
Revolution.
Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel G. Orton,
D. D., and received further training preparatory for college in the
academies of Westfield and Fredonia, N. Y. He entered Hamilton College,
whence his father had been graduated in 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore,
and was graduated in 1848 in a class among the other members of which
were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological
Seminary, New York, and the Hon. F. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of
Albany, N. Y., and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught
for a number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Franklin, N. Y., and
Chester, N. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science in
the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post-graduate
studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the Lawrence
Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and Gray as his
teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. Lyman Beecher, at
Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover Seminaries. While teaching at
Chester, N. Y., he was called to Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio,
where he took charge of the preparatory department in 1865; was made
Professor of Natural History shortly afterward, and was made president
of the college in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at
the end of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State
University at Columbus.
When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken in 1869 under
the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton was appointed
an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and was continued by
reappointment by Governor E. F. Noyes. When Professor Newberry withdrew
from the survey in 1881, Professor Orton was appointed State Geologist
by Governor Charles Foster, and he was afterward reappointed to the
position successively by Governors Hoadley, Foraker, Campbell, and
Bushnell. He retained the title of State Geologist till his death,
although he had not been engaged in any active public work on the
survey for a considerable time.
The Ohio State University having been established on the basis of
the grants of land made to the States for colleges under the Morrill
Land-Grant Act, Professor Orton was appointed its president and
Professor of Geology. He discharged the duties of this office for
eight years, or till 1881. But the executive work of the president's
office was irksome to him, since it grew constantly heavier as the
young college expanded, and therefore left him less and less time
for teaching and research in geology. Being in a measure compelled
to make a choice between the two fields of activity, he chose the
less ambitious position, resigning the presidency, and assuming the
position of Professor of Geology, which he retained for the remainder
of his life. The geological building of the university is named after
him--Orton Hall. Besides his work on the Geological Survey of Ohio and
his participation in the composition of its reports, Professor Orton
prepared, for the Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological
Survey, a paper on the New Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana,
and another, only recently published in the Nineteenth Annual Report
of the United States Survey, on the Rock Waters of Ohio; a volume for
the Geological Survey of Kentucky on the Petroliferous Production of
the Western Part of the State, published in 1891; and a report on
petroliferous productions which is in process of publication by the
Geological Survey of New York.
In the paper on the Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana the
discovery of the supply of those materials, the great value of which
was only realized in 1884 and afterward, is spoken of as being more
surprising and anomalous than any similar discovery that had preceded
it, and as a development which experts were hardly more prepared for
than others. The oil and gas derived from the Trenton limestone in
certain parts of these States were found to differ from the oil and
gas in the Pennsylvania wells in chemical composition and physical
properties, in the horizons from which they were obtained, in the
structural features of the rocks associated with their production,
and, most of all, in the kind of rock that produced them. "No facts
more unexpected have ever been brought to light in connection with
the geology of this country than those with which we are now becoming
acquainted." Professor Orton's paper, which fills one hundred and
eighty of the large pages of the report of the Geological Survey,
includes a sketch of the history of the discovery to July, 1887,
when it was prepared; a designation of what was known in regard to
the geological scale and geological structure of the regions within
which the new fields are embraced, and the tracing of the chief
factors that influence or control the productiveness of the oil rock,
with the description of the special features and boundaries of the
several fields and the setting forth of the leading facts and present
development of these lately found sources of power. Two principal
conditions under which the new oil rock had proved petroliferous on a
large scale were found to be porosity, connected with and apparently
dependent on the chemical transformation of the upper portion of the
limestone, for a number of feet in thickness, into a highly crystalline
dolomite; and a relief resulting from slight warping of the strata,
whereby the common contents of the porous portions of the Trenton
limestone had been differentiated by gravity, the gas and oil seeking
the highest levels, and the salt water maintaining a lower but definite
elevation in every field. Professor Orton found nothing in the new
experience to make it safe to count the Trenton limestone an oil
rock or a gas rock in any locality, unless it could be shown to have
undergone the dolomitic replacement by which its porosity was assured;
and even in case it had suffered this transformation it would not be
found a reservoir of gas or oil in an important sense unless some parts
of it had acquired the relief essential to the due separation of its
liquid and gaseous contents.
The report on the Rock Waters of Ohio concerns, first, those waters,
chiefly in the northwestern and western part of the State, that are
obtained from a considerable depth as compared with ordinary wells, the
knowledge of which was almost wholly derived from wells drilled in the
search for oil and gas, and was necessarily fragmentary and incomplete;
because water was not included among the objects of search, but was
considered a hindrance and obstruction to be got out of the way as well
as possible; and, second, flowing wells, including only those having
considerable head of pressure and those occurring in considerable
areas, all of which belong entirely to the drift. Further, a brief
review is given of some facts of unusual interest that were developed
in the deep drillings concerning the preglacial drainage system of the
part of the State in question. Indications of old river channels, one
of which seems to have been extensive, were found at several points.
Among the curious results of these studies was the conclusion, "seeming
to be already established," "that the Ohio River, as we now know the
stream, is of recent origin, and that the main volume of water gathered
in it at the present time originally flowed across the State to the
northward at least as far as Auglaize and Mercer Counties, where it
turned to the westward toward the present lines of Wabash drainage in
Indiana." Professor Orton seems to have placed considerable emphasis
on the value of a study of the rocky floor of the State, concerning
which all we know at present is derived from the revelations of deep
drillings at haphazard; and he thought it would be a good work for
the State to make use of all accessible data of this kind at once in
constructing a model of the rocky floor of the region under review. The
care and fidelity with which he studied the underground geology are
exemplified in a map attached to the paper on the oil and gas fields,
in which the horizons of the Trenton limestone are indicated and
approximately bounded as they occur by gradations ranging from fifty
to two hundred and fifty feet, from elevations above the ocean level
to one thousand and more feet below. Another contribution of Professor
Orton's which may appropriately be given special notice is his part
of the article on Ohio in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a
succinct, clear, and comprehensive account of the geology of the whole
State is given, with its salient features delineated so sharply that
one may almost conceive from it a definite geological picture of the
region.
Of all his scientific work, however, Professor Orton regarded
the fixing of the order of the coal measures of Ohio as the most
important; and he considered the determination of the order of the
subcarboniferous strata, and particularly of the Berea Grit, as
constituting a large permanent service to the study of the geology of
the State.
At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science Professor Orton contributed a special paper on the local
geology of Columbus, the place of the meeting, in which he dwelt
largely on the origin of the drift that marks the superficial geology
of the vicinity.
Of the work he has done for the increase and advancement of knowledge,
the extent of a part of which we have only faintly indicated by the
mention of a few particular researches, Professor Orton put the highest
value on his labors as a teacher, a calling to which he was devoted for
more than half a century. He found peculiar pleasure in instructing
the children of the old pupils whom he had taught in his younger days.
He was actively concerned in the promotion and extension of sanitary
science, his addresses in that field having been one of the factors
that led to the establishment of the Ohio State Board of Health. He was
also greatly interested in the advancement of agriculture.
A theme on which Professor Orton was fond of dwelling in his public
addresses was the amount and value of what has been accomplished
within a comparatively short time in the world's history by the use
of the methods of science. In an address delivered before the alumni
of Hamilton College in 1888 he maintained that we were living in a
revolutionary period, which is marked by a great advance in knowledge
and a vastly larger control of the forces of Nature; by a large
increase in freedom of thought and action; by a sudden and remarkable
addition to the mobility of man, accompanied by an unexampled growth
of great cities; and by an incalculable addition to the wealth of
the world. Accompanying these great changes in the material and
intellectual world were certain moral transformations appearing to grow
out of them. All these advances were ascribed to a movement--a new
method of investigating Nature--that began, so far as its particular
and continuous development is concerned, about three hundred years
ago, but to which no date or founder's name could be attached. This
new philosophy thoroughly respected Nature, was humble, patient in the
accumulation of facts and the trial of its theories, comprehensive,
progressive, and hopeful. It has given us the marvelous increase
of knowledge which especially marks the nineteenth century; it has
impressed its influence upon all branches of study, and has wrought
great improvements in methods and results; and has rendered an immense
and inestimable service to Christian theology, and done much to broaden
and rationalize it and thus to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on
the world. Finally, the method of science was pronounced "the best gift
that God has given to the mind of man." A similar train of thought as
to the material aspects is apparent, though in a somewhat different
form, in an address on The Stored (or Fossil) Power of the World,
delivered in 1894.
A considerable part of Professor Orton's presidential address at the
last meeting of the American Association was devoted to a summary
of the conclusions derived from Alfred Russell Wallace's book, The
Wonderful Century, that the progress accomplished in the present
century far outweighs the entire progress of the human race from the
beginning up to 1800. In this address, also, the author felicitously
spoke of the scope of the American Association as possibly including
the whole continent, and its object as the advancement of science, the
discovery of new truth. "It is possible that we could make ourselves
more interesting to the general public if we occasionally forswore
our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of our time in restating
established truths." But the discoveries recorded, though often
fragmentary and devoid of special interest to the outside world, all
had a place in the great temple of knowledge; and the speaker hoped
that although no great discoveries should be reported this time, the
meeting might still be a memorable one through the inspiration it would
give to the multitude of workers in the several fields of science.
Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was
President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885;
received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and that
of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected President
of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was designated at the
Boston meeting of the American Association, 1898, as president for the
Columbus meeting, 1899.
In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor Orton
was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of man on
this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State Archæological and
Historical Society, and had recently been made a member of its board of
trustees. He was a prominent member of the Old Northwest Genealogical
Society, and was the author of a volume, published in 1896, on the
Genealogy of the Orton Family in America. The absolute freedom of his
character from any desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well
shown by the fact that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor,
in the spare minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one
paragraph of a hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous
members of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard.
He was stricken with hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was able to do
a considerable amount of work in his profession afterward. A few days
before his death he said, in a note, that he felt that he had lived out
his allotted time, and that his work was done. He never met his classes
again, though he continued able to be up and about his home till the
hour of his death. He seemed to feel that the solemn event was drawing
close, during the last two days of his life, and his mind was always
busy with the great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He
had formed an affirmative answer apparently, as he read Browning's
Prospice repeatedly in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the
greatest pleasure and solace. His death was a quiet and painless one--a
fitting end to a beautiful life.
Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent
annual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of
incinerations at the Père Lachaise crematory has almost steadily
increased since 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513,
making 37,068 from the beginning. A fair proportion of the number
were women. There are now in Europe and America seventy crematories,
twenty-seven of which are in Italy and twenty in the United States.
Cremation is making good progress in England, where four crematories
are reported from, and two are in course of erection. Germany has six,
where 423 incinerations took place in 1898; Switzerland and Sweden
have two each, Denmark one, and one has been authorized in Norway.
Editor's Table.
_A COMMISSION IN DIFFICULTIES._
The synopsis which has been given to the press of the Thirteenth
Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is not encouraging
reading for those who like to believe in legislation as an infallible
panacea for all public and social ills. The tone of the document indeed
is very far from being one of triumph. The note struck in the very
first paragraph is the need for more legislation to save the copious
legislation already passed from proving ineffectual and abortive.
Whether it is that Congress does not wish to make the work of the
commission successful, or whether it has begun to have a wise distrust
of its own powers, we can not say; but the commissioners complain
bitterly of its inaction. We can not do better than quote their own
words: "The reasons for the failure of the law to accomplish the
purposes for which it was enacted have been so frequently and fully set
forth that repetition can not add to their force or make them better
understood. It is sufficient to say that the existing situation and the
developments of the past year render more imperative than ever before
the necessity for speedy and suitable legislation. We therefore renew
the recommendations heretofore made, and earnestly urge their early
consideration and adoption."
As the document proceeds, we see the good commissioners at war with the
wicked railways, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, on
the whole, the wicked railways have the best of it. The commissioners
admit that certain cases which have come before the courts have been
decided against them, and in favor of the railways; but they are far
from disclosing the full extent of the discouragement, not to say
mortification, they receive. The business of the commission is to
interfere between the railways and their customers--the public--in
the interest of the latter. The railways naturally consider this a
rather one-sided function, and are not extremely zealous to aid in its
performance. They have their own troubles with the public, and have
no commission to come to their assistance. Everybody is after cheap
railway rates, just as everybody is after cheap goods; and the means
sometimes resorted to to get reductions would at least hold their own
for astuteness with any that could be concocted in a traffic office for
the raising of rates. We give the commissioners full credit for doing
their best to protect the interests of the public, but we can not help
doubting whether, on the whole, the public has derived much benefit
from their efforts. In fact, we are strongly inclined to the opinion
that the whole idea of the commission is simply a legislative blunder.