The summer laboratories and the scientific expeditions which are
employing the vacation period of the men of science in this country
would make a long list. A vacation from teaching means to the
scientific man a chance to work, and at present there are numerous
organized means of enabling him to profit by this chance. The most
definite form which such arrangements for summer work have taken is the
summer laboratory or experiment station for biologists. Such a station
affords conveniently the mechanical appliances for scientific work in a
good locality for collecting material to work with. The marine or other
forms of life are thus made accessible to those whose professional work
during the year keeps them in an unfavorable locality. Besides the
laboratory at Woods Holl, which is the nearest American representative
of Professor Dohrn’s great laboratory at Naples, there is an important
summer station at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, under the auspices
of the Brooklyn Institute, and others cared for by Leland Stanford,
Jr. University, the University of Indiana, the Ohio State University
and other institutions. It is common to combine teaching with research
at these laboratories and in some cases they become essentially summer
schools, though generally giving courses of a higher order than the
ordinary summer school for nature study. But research is often the
chief and sometimes the sole purpose of these stations, and a vast
amount of work is done each year. The most important of these summer
stations is the Woods Holl Marine Biological Laboratory, situated
on the southern coast of Massachusetts, between Buzzard’s Bay and
Vineyard Sound. This laboratory has been fortunate in having been
the summer home at one time or another of a majority of the leading
zoölogists of the country. It has been usual for the advanced students
in universities to take courses or carry on research there, and Woods
Holl training has been a valuable recommendation. The reason is not
far to seek. The material advantages, the spirit of zeal for concrete
fact, the acquaintance with superior men in the science and with a
large number of equals, all help to give the best sort of professional
training. Such a place also serves as a refinery where opinions and
theories may be purified by healthy criticism and by the subtler
influence of example. There is a story of three eminent biologists who
got involved in a controversy over a disputed question. They argued for
a while. Finally one of them said: “Let us get the eggs in question
and study them together.” This was done, and the three men spent the
afternoon over their microscopes patiently working out the problem
together; and they did work it out. One of the great advantages of
summer laboratories is that they put fellow-students in a frame of mind
in which they can work things out together.
* * * * *
The Woods Holl Laboratory has a right to claim a large share in the
credit for three of the most important developments in biology in the
last decade--the study of ‘cell lineage,’ of regeneration of organs and
of the influence of abnormal conditions on the development of embryos.
Workers there have traced the development of the different cells into
which the egg-cell divides and have discovered just what parts of the
body arise from each group of cells. They have shown that the way in
which the egg divides and redivides is as constant, is as much a part
of the nature of the animal, as its adult form and structure are. They
have replaced previous vague notions of the development of animals
by exact accounts of the cell-origin of different organs of the body.
Others have studied the abilities of mutilated animals to reproduce the
parts lost and the conditions and limitations of such regeneration.
Such studies have greatly broadened our views of the nature of animal
tissues. Others have investigated the results of artificial conditions
on the development of animals, especially in the earliest stages. For
instance, from eggs broken into pieces there have been developed twins,
triplets and monsters of various sorts. Such experiments as these are
producing data concerning the very fundaments of living matter and
are leading biology beyond the mere description of animal structures
and functions towards an insight into the elementary principles of
development. Among the numerous researches, some seventy in all, which
are being carried on at Woods Holl this summer, those of the most
general interest are Prof. C. O. Whitman’s study of hybrids and Prof.
Jacques Loeb’s study of artificial fertilization. Prof. Whitman has
been breeding pigeons of a large number of species for several years,
as a means of studying the phenomena of heredity shown in hybrid forms.
More or less incidentally, he has discovered many notable facts about
the instincts and habits of the birds and about various physiological
functions connected with reproduction. Biologists everywhere are coming
to realize the necessity of systematic and continuous study of families
of animals through a number of generations. Prof. Whitman’s is the
most extensive of such studies in this country. The detailed results
of Prof. Loeb’s continuation of his experiments on the action of
various salts on unfertilized eggs will naturally be awaited with great
interest. We have already noticed his success in causing unfertilized
eggs of the sea-urchin to develop into normal individuals as far as
the pluteus stage. He has this year succeeded in producing artificial
parthenogenesis not only in starfish (_Asterias_), but also in worms
(_Chaetopterus_). Through a slight increase in the amount of K-ions
in the sea-water, the eggs of the latter can be caused not only to
throw out the polar bodies as Mead had already observed, but also to
reach the _Trochophore_ stage and swim about as actively as the larvæ
originating from fertilized eggs.
* * * * *
In the courses of instruction offered at Woods Holl there are two of
more than ordinary interest. Professor Loeb’s course in physiology
departs from the traditional study of physiological functions in the
frog and in some mammal, and offers instead experimental work on the
simpler invertebrate forms. The phenomena of life are there presented
in diagrammatic form, and are interpreted as far as possible in terms
of physics and chemistry. The course in nature study, given this year
for the first time, offers to students without technical training a
chance to learn about animals and plants from specialists. It has shown
clearly that the best science is popular, that really scientific work
can be done without previous drill in terminology or technique. A novel
feature of the course has been the systematic experimental study of
the instincts and intelligent performances of animals. The method of
offering to intelligent men and women, who wish to know about animal
life, but have no time or need for special technical training or
detailed anatomical work, a chance to get something better than mere
book knowledge or haphazard personal observation, should be widely
extended.
* * * * *
The laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, situated
at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, is nearly as old as the Woods Holl
Laboratory. Prof. C. B. Davenport, its director, is probably the most
active worker in this country in the quantitative study of variation,
and one of the leading lines of research at Cold Spring Harbor is
now and will probably be for some years the attempt to get an exact
estimate of normal variation in different animals, of the production
of abnormal variations and of the laws of inheritance. Professor
Davenport is himself breeding mice extensively and thus securing data.
Of the courses offered two deserve special mention. One is the course
for teachers of zoölogy in high schools, a chief feature of which is
the study of living animals. The other is a course on ‘Variation and
Inheritance,’ which gives advanced students a chance to study the most
important question of biology and by the most exact methods. The Cold
Spring laboratory has been growing very rapidly of late and seems
likely to continue to grow. In general the evolution of the summer
laboratory is of interest. An enthusiast or a modest association
gathers a few sympathetic workers at some favorable locality. The
informality and personal contact are inspiring and the place becomes
famous for good work. Then come numbers and with numbers a rapid
complication of the social life of the school. The eminent leader is
replaced by a dozen different instructors; one no longer knows every
one else; organization becomes complex and what was at first a sort
of scientific family may turn into a formal institution. The summer
laboratory should not become a big summer college at the cost of its
single-mindedness.
* * * * *
While special laboratories are open for work in biology, and the
universities are extending their sessions through the summer, the
common schools are also beginning to realize that they must adapt
themselves to an urban civilization. Country schools should adjourn in
the summer for obvious reasons, but in the city nothing is gained by
turning the children from the schools into the streets. The vacation
or play schools now in session in New York City are in every way to be
commended. The only drawback is that they cannot hold half of those
who wish to attend. Set free from the traditional curriculum the
children learn more in the five weeks of ‘play school’ in the summer,
than in twice that period of ‘work school’ in the winter. Swimming,
open-air gymnastics, team games, chess, visits to parks, piers, museums
and libraries, excursions in barges and into the country, sketching,
whittling, cooking, sewing and the rest do not lose their educational
value because the children like them. Such exercises will do a good
deal toward curing the indigestion caused by being fed for five years
on the three R’s, and toward correcting the anti-social atmosphere of
the ordinary school-room. Among the commonplaces of modern psychology
are: It is not what a person knows but what he does that counts; the
way to learn is to act; progress follows from the pleasure of partial
success; an individual only exists in his relations with others. Such
maxims seem to be as clearly kept in view by the New York Department
of Education in the summer as they are forgotten in the winter. The
committee on the New York Play Schools consists of Messrs. Seth T.
Stewart, John L. N. Hunt and A. P. Marble, to whom and to the teachers
who have carried out their plans much honor is due. The report for
1899 is an educational document of importance. Copies can probably be
obtained from the Department of Education of the City of New York.
* * * * *
The Paris Exposition and its congresses may be regarded as a great
summer school. The applications of science exhibited for amusement,
for instruction and for the advantage of commerce and manufactures
are bewildering in their multiplicity. It is interesting to note that
the group ‘Education’ heads the catalogue of the Exposition. In the
exhibits representing higher instruction, the United States received
nine grand prizes and nine gold medals, ranking second to France. On
the motion of a French juror, three Americans were mentioned as worthy
of special distinction: Prof. H. A. Rowland, Johns Hopkins University;
Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University; Director Melvil
Dewey, University of the State of New York. More than one hundred
and fifty international congresses, dealing with various subjects of
scientific, industrial and social importance, are held this summer
in Paris, and form no small part of the interest of the Exposition,
supplementing as they do the exhibits, furnishing the theory, as the
exhibits set forth the accomplishments, of art and industry. The
magnitude of these congresses may be seen from the fact that the
thirteenth International Medical Congress had a registration of over
six thousand members, of whom over four hundred were from America.
* * * * *
Friends of scientific investigation and the teaching of science
will rejoice at the recent decision in the courts concerning the
Fayerweather will case. For the eighth time the grant of $3,000,000 to
the colleges has been confirmed. The case will probably be appealed
to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the probability is
large that Mr. Fayerweather’s wishes will in the end be carried out.
At the present time, money left to colleges is likely to be used to
a very large extent to promote the progress of science. Required
courses in linguistics are decreasing, and the extension of college
teaching and university research is largely along scientific lines.
New departments, such as those of physiography, physical chemistry,
anthropology and experimental psychology are being established, while
economics and sociology are becoming less speculative and more like the
natural sciences in their methods. The college student of to-day gets
proportionately more training in the professedly natural sciences than
ever before, and gets scientific training in connection with courses
which were once mere exercises in learning the opinions of more or less
important people.
* * * * *
We called attention last month to the completion of the plans for an
international catalogue of scientific literature, and stated that Great
Britain and Germany had each subscribed for forty-five of the three
hundred sets that must be sold in order to defray the cost. It is
obvious that the United States, with such a large number of libraries
and educational institutions, should subscribe for its share of the
sets, namely, not less than forty-five. The Smithsonian Institution has
provisionally undertaken to represent the interests of the catalogue
in the United States, and will receive promises of subscriptions. The
catalogue will be issued in seventeen volumes, comprising the following
subjects: Mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy,
meteorology (including terrestrial magnetism), mineralogy (including
petrology and crystallography), geology, geography (mathematical and
physical), palæontology, general biology, botany, zoölogy, human
anatomy, physical anthropology, physiology (including experimental
psychology, pharmacology and experimental pathology) and bacteriology.
At least one volume will be given to each subject, and it is proposed
that not all the volumes shall be issued at once, but in four groups,
as soon as possible after the first of January, April, July and
October, respectively. The subscription price for a complete set of the
whole catalogue, in seventeen volumes, is £17, say $85. The volumes
will vary in price and can be obtained separately, but it is necessary
to secure the guarantee of the sale of forty-five sets in America
during the month of September, and all libraries used for scientific
research, and those individuals who can afford the cost, should send
subscriptions to Dr. Richard Rathbun, Assistant Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
* * * * *
In the July number of the MONTHLY Dr. H. C. Bolton gave an account of
the radio-active substances which have been found in pitchblende, the
chief ore of uranium. The subject continues to excite the interest
of both chemists and physicists, though just at present the largest
amount of work is being done by the chemists, to whom the question is
of extraordinary interest as to whether these substances are or are not
real chemical elements. Béla von Lengyel, of Budapest, as Dr. Bolton
explained, has attacked the problem from the synthetic side, and by
fusing inactive barium nitrate with uranium nitrate, he has obtained
a barium sulphate which has more or less radio-activity. From this he
concludes it is probable that the radio-activity is due rather to a
peculiar state of the barium than to a new chemical element. On the
other hand, Becquerel has in a somewhat analogous way mixed inactive
barium chlorid with uranium chlorid, and from the solution has obtained
likewise a radio-active barium. But he finds that the increased
activity in the barium salt is attended by a corresponding decrease
in the radio-activity of the uranium. Hence it cannot be settled from
these experiments whether the uranium salts possess a radio-activity
of their own, which can by certain methods be communicated to barium
salts, or whether the radio-activity is due to an impurity in the
uranium which has thus far eluded isolation.
* * * * *
The director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Mr. A.
Lawrence Rotch, writes to ‘Science’ that the highest previous
kite-flight was exceeded on July 19, when, by means of six kites
attached at intervals to four and three-quarters miles of steel wire,
the meteorograph was lifted 15,170 feet above Blue Hill, or 15,800
feet above the neighboring ocean. At the time that the temperature was
78° near the ground, it was about 30° at the highest point reached,
the air being very dry and the wind blowing from the northwest with
a velocity of twenty-six miles an hour. The altitude reached in this
flight probably exceeds the greatest height at which meteorological
observations have been made with a balloon in America. The highest
observations that have been published were made by the late Professor
Hazen, of the Weather Bureau, in an ascent from St. Louis, June 17,
1887, to a height of 15,400 feet.
* * * * *
The U.S. consul at St. Gall, Mr. Du Bois, sends to the Department of
State the following account of the trial of the Zeppelin air-ship: At
the invitation of Count Zeppelin, I was present at the trial ascent of
his air-ship on the afternoon of July 2, at Manzell, on Lake Constance.
At seven o’clock the great ship, 407 feet long and 39 feet in diameter,
containing seventeen separate balloon compartments filled with hydrogen
gas, was drawn out of the balloon house securely moored to the float.
At the moment of the ascent the wind was blowing at a rate of about
twenty-six feet per second, giving the operators a good opportunity of
testing the ability of the air-wheels to propel the great ship against
the wind. The cigar-shaped structure ascended slowly and gracefully
to about thirty feet above the raft. The balances were adjusted so as
to give the ship an ascending direction. The propellers were set in
motion, and the air-ship, which has cost considerably over $200,000,
started easily on its interesting trial trip. At first the ship moved
east against the wind for about two miles, gracefully turned at an
elevation of about 400 feet, and, making a rapid sail to the westward
for about five miles, reached an altitude of 1,300 feet. It was then
turned and headed once more east, and, traveling about a mile against
the wind blowing at the rate of twenty-six feet per second, suddenly
stopped; floating slowly backwards three miles to the west, it sank
into the lake, the gondolas resting safely upon the water. The time of
the trip was about fifty minutes; distance traveled, about ten miles;
fastest time made, five miles in seventeen and one-half minutes. The
cause of the sudden stoppage in the flight of the ship was proved to
be a slight mishap to the steering apparatus, but the colossus floated
gently with the wind until it settled upon the surface of the lake
without taking any water. The raft was then brought up and the ship was
easily placed upon it and brought back to the balloon house. The weight
is 200 centners (22,000 pounds).
* * * * *
A joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society
has been held in London to hear preliminary reports from several
British expeditions that went out to observe the recent eclipse of the
sun. Mr. Christie, the astronomer royal, first presented an account of
the observations made by himself and Mr. Dyson at Ovar, in Portugal.
There totality lasted 84½ seconds, and though the sky was rather hazy
he secured some good photographs. The corona seemed distinctly inferior
in brightness, structure and rays to that seen two years ago in India.
Sir Norman Lockyer next described the observations made by the Solar
Physics Observatory Expedition and the officers and men of H. M. S.
Theseus at Santa Pola. Professor Turner spoke of the observations he
had made with Mr. H. F. Newall in the grounds of the observatory near
Algiers. From observations on the brightness of the corona he concluded
that it was many times brighter than the moon--perhaps ten times as
bright. Prof. Ralph Copeland described the observations he made on
behalf of the joint committee at Santa Pola, endorsing Sir N. Lockyer’s
remarks as to the advantage of having the aid of a man-of-war. Mr.
Evershed presented a preliminary report on his expedition to the
south limit of totality. His reason for choosing a site at the limit
of totality was that the flash spectrum was there visible very much
longer. Unfortunately, he accepted the guidance of the Nautical Almanac
Office, and found himself outside the line of totality--about two
hundred meters according to his informants, who said a small speck of
sunlight was visible all the time. He was successful in obtaining some
fine photographs of the flash spectrum.
* * * * *
During the last session of Congress a law was enacted, commonly
known as the Lacey Act, which places the preservation, distribution,
introduction and restoration of game and other birds under the
Department of Agriculture; regulates the importation of foreign birds
and animals, prohibiting absolutely the introduction of certain
injurious species and prohibits interstate traffic in birds or
game killed in violation of State laws. Persons contemplating the
importation of live animals or birds from abroad must obtain a special
permit from the Secretary of Agriculture, and importers are advised to
make application for permits in advance, in order to avoid annoyance
and delay when shipments reach the custom-house. The law applies to
single mammals, birds or reptiles, kept in cages as pets, as well as to
large consignments intended for propagation in captivity or otherwise.
Permits are not required for domesticated birds, such as chickens,
ducks, geese, guinea fowl, pea fowl, pigeons or canaries; for parrots
or for natural history specimens for museums or scientific collections.
Permits must be obtained for all wild species of pigeons and ducks. In
the case of ruminants (including deer, elk, moose, antelopes and also
camels and llamas), permits will be issued, as heretofore, in the form
prescribed for importation of domesticated animals. The introduction of
the English or European house sparrow, the starling, the fruit bat or
flying fox and the mongoose, is absolutely prohibited, and permits for
their importation will not be issued under any circumstances.