and assumes its greatest intensity in the equatorial regions. The
intensity in latitudes 40° to 45° north would be represented by
1.5 units, and at the equator by 1.6 units. Near the equator the
intensity is so great that an ordinary leaf may not receive the full
force of the noonday sun without damage. The injury would not result
from the luminous rays, but from the temperatures, 40° to 50° C.,
arising from the conversion of light into heat. As an adaptation to
this condition nearly all leaves have either a pendent or a vertical
position, or the power of assuming this position by motor or
impassive wilting movements.
Among the plants of the temperate zone the so-called compass plants
are examples of similar adaptations. The compass plants include,
among others, the wild lettuce (_Lactuca scariola_) and rosin weed
(_Silphium laciniatum_). These plants place the leaves in a vertical
position with the tips pointing north and south in such manner that
the direct rays of the morning and evening sun only may strike the
surfaces at right angles, while the edges are presented to the
fierce rays at noonday. That this arrangement is an adaptation
against the intense light is evident when it is seen that specimens
growing in shaded locations or in diffuse light place the leaves in
the typical horizontal position. To meet the functional conditions,
both sides of the compass leaves are almost equally provided with
palisade cells for food formation and stomata for transpiration.
The estimation of the light striking a compass leaf shows that it
receives approximately the same amount of light as a horizontal leaf
during the course of a day, but the two maxima of intensity, morning
and evening, are much below that of the noon of horizontal leaves.
The influence of light upon plants may be briefly summed as follows:
Light is necessary for the formation of food substances by green
plants, and it is an important factor in distribution in land and
marine forms.
Growth and reproduction are generally retarded by the action of the
blue-violet rays.
Light is fatal to certain bacteria and other low forms of vegetable
life.
Many plants have the power of accelerated growth of stems in
diminished light as an adaptation for lifting the leaves above
"shading" objects.
The growth of many leaves and of the perianth of flowers is hindered
in diminished light.
The outward form of many organs, particularly leaves, is dependent
upon the intensity of the light received.
The internal structure of bilateral or dorsiventral organs is largely
determined by the direction of the rays.
Plants have the power of movement to adjust their surfaces to a
proper angle with impinging light rays, as a protective adaptation.
* * * * *
Matches which do not contain any phosphorus and which take fire by
friction on any surface--a match that has been long sought--have
been prepared by Mr. S. A. Rosenthal and Dr. S. J. von Kornocki.
It is represented that they can be manufactured as cheaply as
ordinary matches.
THE STONE AGE IN EGYPT.
BY J. DE MORGAN.
The investigation of the origin of man in Egypt is a very complex
problem, belonging as much to geology as to archæology. The earliest
evidences we have of human industry, in fact, go back to so remote
a period that they should be regarded rather as fossils than as
archæological documents. They are very coarsely worked flints, which
are found near the surface of the ground among the pebbles of the
Quaternary or Pleistocene epoch, and similar to those which occur
abundantly in Europe, America, and Asia; but the study and collection
of them have been pursued with less method than in those countries.
The more recent monuments, so much more conspicuous and more easily
accessible, have attracted most attention, while these have been left
in the background.
No region in the world presents a clearer and more distinct
individual character than Egypt. Each village is a special world,
each valley a universe that has developed its own life; and man has
felt the special local impressions; and even in modern times, while
all the Egyptian villages present a similar aspect, and although the
fellah appears to be the same sort of a man everywhere, each locality
has its special individual characteristics. One who knows how to
observe men and things critically will find considerable differences.
These dissimilarities are as old as Egypt itself. They have always
existed, and are as much more intense as the communications between
district and district were formerly more difficult. They are due to
physical conditions special to each village, to the prevailing winds,
the form and character of the mountains, the extent of cultivable
lands, and the supply of water. A study of the detail of the country
is a very important preliminary to the examination of Egyptian
history. Every village and every nome had formerly its special
divinity and its particular usages. Are we sure that the gods and
customs were not imposed by local conditions? At Ombos two hostile
gods were adored in the same temple. May we not see in this fact a
recollection of the hostility which has always prevailed between the
inhabitants of the two banks of the river, and still continues?
Previous, however, to investigating these details which have been
so influential on Egyptian civilization, we ought to dispel the
darkness which hides from us the earliest traces of man in the valley
of the Nile, and examine how man lived in his beginning, to study
the geology of the country and its condition when it issued from the
seas. As one of the results of this study we find that palæolithic
man, known to us only through the rough-cut flints we find in the
alluvions, made his first appearance. After this period of excavation
came that of filling up with silt, which still continues. New
evidences of man appear in his burial places and the ruins of his
villages, the kitchen middens which he has left in his habitations
of unburned brick and in his camps. This time he is more civilized;
he chips his flints with a skill that is not surpassed in European
neolithic implements; he makes vessels of stone and clay, covers them
with rude paintings, sculptures animal forms of schist, and wears
necklaces of the shells and the stones of the country. Then comes a
foreign people to take possession of Egypt, bringing knowledge of
metals, writing, hieroglyphics, painting, sculpture, new industries
and arts that have nothing in common with the arts of the people it
has overcome. The ancient Pharaonic empire begins, or perhaps the
reign of the divine dynasties. The men with stone implements are
the aborigines; the others are the conquering civilized Egyptians.
Nothing can be more interesting than a comparison of the arts of
the aborigines and those of the Egyptians of the earlier dynasties.
Nearly all their characteristics are different, and it is impossible
to regard them as of common origin. Yet some of the native forms
persisted till the last days of the empire of the Pharaohs. These
aborigines belonged to a race that is now extinct, they having been
absorbed into the mass of the Egyptians and Nubians among whom they
lived, and from this mixture the fellah of ancient times is derived.
The origin of the conquering race--of the Egyptians as we know
them--has not been precisely determined. The weight of evidence, so
far as it has been obtained, and the balance of opinion, are in favor
of an Asiatic origin and of primary relationship with the Shemites of
Chaldea.
In Egypt more than in any other country it is necessary to proceed
with the most scrupulous circumspection in the examination of remote
antiquities. The relics of thousands of years of human life have been
piled one upon another and often intermixed. The questions they raise
can not be answered in the cabinet or by the study of texts; but
the inquiry must be prosecuted on the ground, by comparison of the
deposits where they are found and in the deposits from which they are
recovered.
From my first arrival in Egypt, in 1892, my attention has been
greatly occupied with the question of the origin of the relics of the
stone age that have been found from time to time in that country. I
have gathered up the scattered documents, explored a large number of
sites, and have bought such flint implements as I have found on sale.
I have gradually been led to believe that while some of these cut
stones may possibly belong to the historical epoch, we shall have
to attribute a much more remote antiquity to the most of them, and
that evidences of a neolithic age in the valley of the Nile are more
abundant than has generally been supposed.
In many minds the historical antiquity of Egypt, the almost fabulous
ages to which its civilization ascends, seem to challenge the
history of other countries, and the land of the Pharaohs, rejecting
all chronological comparison, to have appeared in the midst of the
world as a single example of a land which savage life had never
trodden. Yet what are the centuries since Menes ruled over the
reclaimed valleys, the few thousand years of which we can calculate
the duration, by the side of the incalculable lapse of time since
man, struggling with the glaciers and the prehistoric beasts,
began his conquest of the earth? The antiquity of Egypt, the eight
thousand years (if it be as many) since the first Pharaoh, are only
as an atom in the presence of these ages. We can assert some vague
knowledge of these pre-Pharaonic inhabitants, for two hatchets of
the Chellean pattern were found some time ago in the desert, one
at Esnet, the other near the pyramids of Gizeh; and we can now
affirm in the most positive manner that Quaternary man lived in the
country which is now Egypt, and was then only preparing to be. Four
palæolithic stations have been more recently discovered--at Thebes,
Tukh, Abydos, and Daschur. Join these sites to the other two where
isolated pieces were found, and we have the geography of what we
know at present of Chellean man in the valley of the Nile. Doubtless
continuous researches would result in similar discoveries at other
points, for I have met these relics wherever I have been able to make
a short sojourn. The Chellean implements are found in the gravels
of the diluvium on the pebbly surface. They have been disturbed and
probably scattered, but some places yield them more numerously than
others--points possibly corresponding to the ancient workshops. I
have found a considerable number of specimens at Deir-el-Medinet;
M. Daressy, of the Bureau of Antiquities, found a perfectly
characteristic Chellean hammer stone in the Yalley of the Queens at
Gurneh, as perfectly worked as the best specimens found at Chelles,
St. Acheul, and Moulin-Quignon.
The finds are not very numerous at Tukh, but one may in a few hours
make a collection there of hatchets (or hammer stones), scrapers,
points, simple blades, and a large number of stones bearing
indisputable marks of having been worked, but not presenting precise
forms. The deposit at Abydos is in the bottom of a circle behind
the ruins surrounding the Pharaonic necropolis. The specimens seem
sufficient to prove the existence of Quaternary man in Egypt, while
the search for them has hardly yet begun. In view of them it is
extremely improbable that man did not also exist there during the
long period that intervened between this primitive age and that of
the earliest Egyptians who had metals. He did exist there then, and
the evidences of it are found in neolithic remains between Cairo
and Thebes, a distance of about eight hundred kilometres along the
valley of the Nile, in the Fayum, and in Upper Egypt. Among these
are the remarkable tombs at Abydos which have been explored by M. E.
Amélineau, and of which he has published descriptions. They belong
to a category which I have characterized as tombs of transition and
as signalizing the passage from the use of polished stone to that of
metals. Their archaic character can not be disputed, and their royal
origin is probably certain. They may belong to aboriginal kings or
to the earliest dynasties. They reveal a knowledge of brass and of
the use of gold for ornament. At the necropolis of El-'Amrah, a few
miles south of Abydos, are some archaic tombs, all of the same model,
composed of an oval trench from five to six and a half feet deep.
The body is laid on the left side, and the legs are doubled up till
the knees are even with the sternum; the forearms are drawn out in
front and the hands placed one upon the other before the face, while
the head is slightly bent forward. Around the skeleton are vases,
and large, rudely made urns, often filled with ashes or the bones of
animals, and nearer to them are painted or red vessels with black
or brown edges, vessels roughly shaped out of stone, and figurines
in schist representing fishes or quadrupeds, cut flints, alabaster
clubs, and necklaces and bracelets of shells. Bronze is rare, and
found always in shape of small implements. Both purely neolithic
tombs and burials of the transition period to metals occur at
El-'Amrah. The most remarkable feature of the burials is the position
of the corpse, totally unlike anything that is found of the Pharaonic
ages.
The Egyptian finds of stone implements present the peculiarity as
compared with those of Europe, that types are found associated
together belonging to what would be regarded in other countries
as very different epochs. The time may come when subdivisions can
be made of the Egyptian stone age, but the study has not yet been
pursued far enough to make this practicable at present. Among these
articles are hatchets showing the transitions, examples of which
are wanting in Europe, from the rudest stone hammer to the polished
neolithic implement; knives of various shape and some of handsome
workmanship; scrapers, lance heads, arrowheads, saws, pins, bodkins,
maces, beads, bracelets, and combs. The large number of instruments
with toothed blades found at some of the stations may be regarded
as pointing to a very extensive cultivation of cereals at the time
they were in use. The deposits of Tukh, Zarraïdah, Khattarah,
Abydos, etc., situated in regions suitable for growing grain, yield
thousands of them, while they are very rare at the fishing station of
Dimeh. That the use of sickles tipped with flint very probably lasted
long after the introduction of metals seems to be proved by the
hieroglyphics; but very few evidences of the existence of such tools
are found after the middle empire.
No traces of articles related to the religion of the Pharaohs are
found in the burial places of the aborigines. In place of the
statuettes and funerary divinities of later times are found rude
figurines of animals cut in green schists. They represent fishes,
tortoises with eyes adorned with hard stone or nacre, and numerous
signs the origin of which is unknown, and were apparently regarded
as fetiches or divinities. Articles of pottery are very numerous,
very crude, and of a great variety of forms. It is not necessary to
suppose that the people who have left these relics were savages or
barbarians. History and even the present age afford instances of
many peoples who have obtained considerable degrees of civilization
while backward in some of the arts. It is hardly possible to
achieve delicacy of design and finish without the use of metals. I
believe I have shown that an age of stone once existed in Egypt,
and that it furthermore played an important part, even in Pharaonic
civilization.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Author's Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte._
SUPERSTITION AND CRIME.
BY PROF. E. P. EVANS.
In January, 1898, an elderly woman came in great anxiety to a priest
of the Church of St. Ursula, in Munich, Bavaria, and complained that
the devil haunted her house at night and frightened her by making
a great noise. In explanation of this unseasonable and undesirable
visit from the lower world she stated that a joint-stock company
had been formed in Berlin, with a branch in Munich, for the purpose
of discovering hidden treasures, and that in order to attain this
object a human sacrifice must be made to the devil, and that she
had been selected as the victim. A woman, whose husband was a
stockholder in the aforesaid company, had kindly communicated to her
this information, so that she might be prepared and have time to set
her house in order. Satan, however, grew impatient of the promised
sacrifice, and began to look after her. The priest sent one of his
younger assistants at the altar to read appropriate prayers in the
haunted house, and thus exorcise the evil spirit. We can hardly
suppose that his reverence believed in the reality of the reported
apparition, and yet he could not assert its impossibility by calling
in question the existence of the devil or the actuality of diabolical
agencies in human affairs without undermining the foundations of the
ecclesiastical system, of which he was an acknowledged supporter.
Such a declaration would "take away our hope," as the Scotchman said
of the denial of a literal hell-fire and the doctrine of eternal
punishment. It was for the same reason that the great body of the
Catholic clergy, from Pope Leo XIII and the highest dignitaries
of the church down to the humblest country vicar, so easily fell
into the snares laid by Leo Taxil and accepted the signature of the
devil Bitru as genuine, and his revelations concerning the pact of
the freemasons with Satan as authentic. It is certainly somewhat
startling to meet with such a case of gross superstition as the
above-mentioned in one of the seats of modern science and centers of
European civilization. In rural districts, remote from the influences
of intellectual culture, however, instances of this kind are of quite
frequent occurrence, and often result in the commission of crime.
Human sacrifices to Satan are still by no means uncommon in many
parts of Russia, and are supposed to be effective in warding off
famine and in staying the ravages of pestilence. Even in Germany and
other countries of western Europe the belief in their prophylactic
virtue is remarkably prevalent, and would be often put into practice
were it not for the stricter administration of justice and the
greater terror of the law.
In October, 1889, the criminal court in the governmental province
of Archangelsk, in northern Russia, sentenced a Samoyede, Jefrern
Pyrerka, to fifteen years' imprisonment with hard labor for the
murder of a maiden named Ssavaney. His sole defense was that an
unusually severe winter with a heavy fall of snow had produced a
famine followed by scurvy, of which all his children had died. He
therefore made an image of the devil out of wood, smeared its lips
with fat, and set it up on a hillock. He then attempted to lasso
one of his companions, Andrey Tabarey, and had already thrown the
noose round his neck, when the energetic wife of the intended victim
intervened and rescued her husband. Shortly afterward he succeeded
in strangling the girl and offering her as a sacrifice to his idol.
In the province of Novgorod, known as "the darkest Russia," it is a
general custom among the country people to sacrifice some animal,
usually a black cat, a black cock, or a black dog, by burying it
alive, in order to check the spread of cholera. In the village of
Kamenka, a peasant, whose son had died of this disease, interred
with the body eight live tomcats. The immolation of dumb animals,
however, is deemed less efficacious than that of human beings. On
one occasion, when the cholera was raging severely, a deputation of
peasants waited upon their parson, stating that they had determined
to bury him alive in order to appease the demon of the plague. He
escaped this horrible death only by apparently acceding to their
wishes and craving a few days' respite in order to prepare for such a
solemn ceremony; meanwhile he took the measures necessary to secure
his safety and thwarted the purpose of his loving parishioners. In
Okopovitchi, a village of the same province, the peasants succeeded
in enticing an aged woman, Lucia Manjkov, into the cemetery, where
they thrust her alive into the grave containing the bodies of those
who had died of the epidemic, and quickly covered her up. When
brought to trial they proved that they had acted on the advice of
a military surgeon, Kosakovitch, who was therefore regarded as the
chief culprit, and sentenced to be knouted by the hangman, and then
to undergo twelve years' penal servitude in Siberia. We are indebted
for these instances of barbarous superstition to the researches of
Augustus Löwenstimm, associate jurisconsult in the department of
justice at St. Petersburg, who has derived them from thoroughly
authentic and mostly official sources. He reports several occurrences
of a similar kind during the epidemics of cholera in 1831, 1855, and
1872. Indeed, it is very difficult to abolish such pagan practices
so long as the clergy foster the notion that animal sacrifices are
expiatory and propitiatory in their effects. In some parts of the
province of Vologda it is still customary on the day dedicated to
the prophet Elias (July 20th in the Greek calendar) to offer up
bullocks, he-goats, or other quadrupeds within the precincts of the
church. The animal is driven into the courtyard surrounding the
sacred edifice and there slaughtered; the flesh is boiled in a large
kettle, one half of it being kept by the peasants who provide the
sacrifice, while the other half is distributed among the priests and
sacristans.[26]
The belief that the walls of dams, bridges, aqueducts, and buildings
are rendered preternaturally strong by immuring a living human being
within them still prevails in many countries of Christendom, and
there is hardly an old castle in Europe that has not a legend of this
sort connected with it. Usually a child is supposed to be selected
for this purpose, and the roving bands of gypsies are popularly
accused of furnishing the infant victims. The custom of depositing
gold coins or other precious objects in the foundation stones of
important public edifices is doubtless a survival of the ancient
superstition.[27]