mystery of slow or cool combustion, the existence of which has been
known since Lavoisier, without its mechanism being understood. That
illustrious student gave out the theory that animal heat and the
energy developed by vital action originated in the chemical reactions
of the organism, and that, on the other hand, the reactions that
produce heat consisted of simple combustions, slow combustions, that
differed only in intensity from that of the burning torch. The
development of chemistry has shown that this figure was too much
simplified from the reality, and that most of these phenomena, while
they are in the end equivalent to a combustion, differ greatly from it
in mechanism and mode of execution. By this we do not mean to say that
all the combustions are of this character, and that there do not exist
in the organism a large number of such as Lavoisier understood, and of
such as the combustions effected by the intervention of iron furnish
the type of. Lavoisier's successors, Liebig among them, tried to find
reactions conformed to this type. Their attempts were unsuccessful,
but they had the happy result of revealing, if not the real function
of iron in the blood, at least that of the red matter in which it is
fixed.
The question of the presence of iron in the coloring matter of the
blood gave rise to long discussions. Vauquelin denied it. He made the
mistake of looking for iron in the form of a known compound, in direct
combination with the blood, while later researches have shown that it
is found almost exclusively in the red matter that tinges the
globules, in a complicated combination that escapes the ordinary
tests; or, according to a usual method of expression, it is
dissimulated. Liebig also failed to find this combination, and it was
not till 1864 that Hoppe-Seyler succeeded in obtaining it pure and
crystallized. But Liebig had already perceived its essential
properties, and was able to point out approximately its functions as
early as 1845; yet the single fact that there was no assimilation
possible between this substance and the salts of iron, cut this
question off into a kind of negative suspense. Different from these
compounds, it could not behave like them, and accomplish slow
combustions of the same type. It is a remarkable fact, and one that
illustrates well how iron preserves through all its vicissitudes some
trace of its fundamental property of favoring the action of oxygen on
substances, that this composition, so special and so different from
the salts of iron, behaves nearly as they do. While it is not of
itself an energetic combustible, it is, according to Liebig's
expression, "a transporter of oxygen"--a luminous view, which the
future was destined to confirm. Although the transportation is not
produced by the mechanism supposed by Liebig, but by another, the
general result is very much the same from the point of view of the
physiology of the blood. The coloring matter of the blood conveyed by
the globules fixes oxygen in contact with the pulmonary air, and
distributes it as it passes through the capillaries upon the tissues.
The globule of blood brings nothing else and distributes nothing else,
contrary to the opinion that had been held before. The theory of slow
combustion effected through iron, while not absolutely contradicted in
principle, was not entirely confirmed in detail, so far as concerned
iron, or the more prominently ferruginous tissue.
No search was made for other tissues or organs presenting more
favorable conditions, for no others were known that had iron in
themselves. The liver and the spleen were supposed to receive it from
the blood under the complicated form in which it exists there, or
under some equivalent form. It was not, therefore, supposed till
within a very few years that the two conditions were realized in any
organ that were required to secure a slow combustion by iron--that is,
combinations resembling ferrous and ferric salts with a weak acid and
a source of oxygen. The doubt has been resolved by recent studies. The
liver fulfils the requirement. It contains iron existing under forms
precisely comparable to the ferrous and ferric compounds, and is
washed by the blood which carries oxygen in a state of simple solution
in its plasma and of loose combination in its globules. Thus all the
conditions necessary for the production of slow combustion are
gathered here, and we can not doubt that it takes place. A new
function is therefore assigned to the liver, and it becomes one of the
great furnaces of the organism.
Compounds of iron are so abundant in the ground and the water that we
need not be surprised when we find them in various parts of plants,
and particularly in the green parts. Their habitual presence does not,
however, authorize the conclusion that this metal is necessary to the
support and development of vegetable life. Some substances, evidently
indifferent, foreign, and even injurious, if they exist abundantly in
a soil, may be drawn into roots through the movement of the sap, and
fix themselves in various organs. This occurs with copper in certain
exceptional circumstances when the soil is saturated with its
compounds, and if such a condition should be found to be repeated over
a large extent of country, we might be led, by analysis alone of its
vegetable productions, to the false conclusion that copper was an
essential or even necessary constituent of them. But the value of the
part performed by an element can not be determined by analysis alone.
Direct proofs are necessary for that, methodical and comparative
experiments in cultivation in mediums artificially deprived or
furnished with the element the importance of which we wish to
estimate. This has been done for combinations of iron, and the utility
of that metal, especially to the higher plants, has been made thereby
to appear.
If iron is absent from the nutritive medium the plant will wither. If
we sprout seeds in a solution from which this metal has been carefully
excluded, the development will follow its regular course as long as
the plant is in the condition properly called that of germination, or
while it does not have to draw anything from the soil. The stem rises
and the first leaves are formed as usual. But all these parts will
continue pale, and the green matter, the granulation of chlorophyll,
will not appear. Now, if we add a small quantity of salt of iron to
the ground in which the roots are planted, or a much-diluted solution
is sprinkled on the leaves and the stem, the chlorotic plant will
recover its health and take on its normal coloration. Experiments of
this sort make well manifest that iron is necessary to green plants,
and they show, besides, the bearing of its action, and that what is
most special and most characteristic in the phenomena of vegetable
life may be traced exactly to the organization of that green matter.
It was long thought that if iron was necessary for the formation of
chlorophyll, it was because it had a part in its constitution. We know
now that this is not so. The metal does nothing but accompany the
chlorophyll in the granulation in which it is found.
The influence which iron exerts in the development of the lower
plants, like the muscidenes, was illustrated with great precision in a
study made about thirty years ago by M. Raulin, who experimented with
the common mold (_Aspergillus niger_), to determine the coefficient of
importance of all the elements that have a part in its vegetation.
When the iron was removed from a medium that had been shown capable of
giving a maximum crop of that mold, the plants languished, and the
return fell off immediately to one third. Estimating the quantity of
metal that produces this effect, it was found that the addition of one
part of iron was sufficient to determine the production of a weight of
plant nearly nine hundred times as great. The suppression of the iron
further caused an irreparable loss, for when it was sought to remedy
the wilting of the plants by restoring the iron which had been taken
from the medium--an experiment which had been successful with higher
plants--the attempt was a failure, and the plants could not be
prevented from perishing.
These facts are full of interest in themselves, and they further show
well the necessity or utility of iron in plant life, but they teach us
no more. They reveal nothing of the mechanism of the action, and if we
wish to penetrate further in the matter we always have to turn to
animal physiology.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue des Deux Mondes._
THE MALAY LANGUAGE.
BY R. CLYDE FORD,
PROFESSOR OF GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, ALBION COLLEGE.
A gentleman who had lived for several years among the Indians of the
Canadian northwest said that he went among them believing they were an
untutored race. But when they told him of a dozen kinds of berries
growing in a locality where he knew but two, brought him flowers he
could not find after careful search, and around their council fires
showed as deep an insight into the mysteries of life as the _savants_
of his university, then he concluded they could no longer be called
untutored.
And why should they be? Is there no culture or civilization outside of
the enlightenment of Europe or America? And because a civilization
does not exactly fit the grooves in which most of the world has moved,
may it not be a real civilization for all that? If such is possible,
then we vote the Malays a cultured people. Of course, their culture is
not like our own; it knows no railroads, no telegraphs, boasts of no
intricate political machinery, has no complicated social despotisms.
Native princes rule for the most part over peaceful states, and
politics means no more than the regulation of quiet village life. But
what need of railroads, when the rivers are avenues of trade and
communication? Why telegraphs, when the world is bounded by the jungle
horizon? Or why, in short, severe civil and social enactments, when
the common _Wahlspruch_ of life is, "Fear disgrace rather than death"?
Such a civilization, we admit, is a humble one; but it also has the
advantage of being a happy one. And where contentment dwells, where
honesty prevails, where the home is a stronghold, there are culture
and civilization, even though they may not coincide with our own.
The Malays are not barbarians, and their language by its grace and
adaptability has shown its right to be. To-day it is the mother tongue
of more than forty millions of people, and the _lingua franca_ of
Chinamen, Hindus, European, and natives. It is spoken from Madagascar
to the distant islands of the Pacific, and from the Philippines to
Australia. With it one can barter in Celebes and sell in Java;
converse with a sultan in Sumatra or a Spaniard in Manila. Moreover,
it is soft and melodious, rich in expression, poetical in idiom, and
simple in structure--a language almost without grammar and yet of
immense vocabulary, with subtle distinctions and fine gradations of
thought and meaning; a language that sounds in one's ears long after
_Tanah Malayu_ and the coral islands and the jungle strand have sunk
into hazy recollection, just as they once dropped out of sight behind
one's departing ship.
Malay is written in the Arabic character, which was adopted with
Mohammedanism, probably in the thirteenth century. Anciently, the
Malays used a writing of their own, but it is not yet clearly settled
what it was. There are now thirty-four characters employed, each
varying in form, according as it is isolated, final, medial, or
initial. Naturally, the Arabic influence over the language has been a
marked one; the priest who dictates in the religion of a people is a
molder and shaper of language. We have only to recall the Catholic
Church and the influence of the Latin tongue in the mouths of her
priests to know that this is so. Many Arabic words and phrases have
been adopted, but more in the language of literature than in that of
everyday speech. A large number of expressions of court and royalty,
and terms of law and religion, are Arabic; also the names of months,
days, and many articles of commerce and trade; nevertheless, the
language of common speech is still Malay.
Another influence, also, has been felt in the Malay--that of the
Sanskrit language. The presence of many Sanskrit words has caused some
very ingenious theories to be constructed in proof that the Malays
were of Indian origin, and such word fragments the survival of the
primitive tongue. Such theories, however, have not stood the test of
philology, and the fact still remains that the language is essentially
unique, with an origin lost in the darkness of remote antiquity.
However, Sanskrit influence has been much greater, and has penetrated
much deeper into the elemental structure of the language than the
Arabic. In fact, the aboriginal language, before it felt the animating
spirit of the Aryan tongue, must have been a barren one, the language
of a primitive man, a fisherman, a hunter, a careless tiller of the
soil. As Maxwell says in his Manual of the Malay Language, the
Sanskrit word _hala_ (plow) marks a revolution in Malayan agriculture
and, one may say further, Malayan civilization. What changed the
methods of cultivating the soil, changed the people themselves. It is
probable that this change came through contact with people to whom
Sanskrit was a vernacular tongue, but whether through conquest by the
sword or by religion is hard to tell. Perhaps it was by both. At any
rate, it was deep and strong, and left a lasting impression on the
language. Sanskrit names fastened on trees, plants, grain, fruits,
household and agricultural implements, parts of the body, articles of
commerce, animals, metals and minerals, time and its division and
measurement, family relationships, abstract conceptions, warfare, and
fundamental ideas of religion and superstition. Such a conquest must
have been an early and tremendous one.
Strangely enough, Malay is almost a grammarless tongue. It has no
proper article, and its substantives may serve equally well as verbs,
being singular or plural, and entirely genderless. However, adjectives
and a process of reduplication often indicate number, and gender words
are added to nouns to make sex allusions plain. Whatever there is of
declension is prepositional as in English, and possessives are formed
by putting the adjectives after the noun as in Italian. Nouns are
primitive and derivative, the derivations being formed by suffixes or
prefixes, or both, and one's mastery of the language may be gauged by
the idiomatic way in which he handles these _Anhängsel_. Adjectives
are uninflected.
The use of the pronouns involves an extensive knowledge of Oriental
etiquette--some being used by the natives among one another, some
between Europeans and natives, some employed when an inferior
addresses a superior and _vice versa_, some used only when the native
addresses his prince or sovereign; and, last of all, some being
distinctly literary, and never employed colloquially. Into this maze
one must go undaunted, and trust to time and patience to smooth out
difficulties.
Verbs, like nouns, are primitive and derivative, with some few
auxiliaries and a good many particles which are suffixed or prefixed
to indicate various states and conditions. These things are apt to be
confusing, and when the student learns that a verb may be past,
present, or future without any change in form, he does not know
whether to congratulate himself or not. Prepositions, too, are many
and expressive; conjunctions, some colloquial, some pedantic.
We now come to a peculiarity which Malay has in common with other
Indo-Chinese languages--the "numeral co-efficients," as Maxwell calls
them, which are always employed with a certain class of objects, just
as we say "head" of horses, "sail" of ships, etc. They are very many
as compared with English, and very idiomatic in their use. For
instance, the Malay says, "Europeans, three _persons_," "cats, four
_tails_," "ships, five _fruits_," "cocoanuts, three _seeds_," "spears,
two _stems_," "planks, five _pieces_," "houses, two _ladders_," and so
on to fifteen or twenty different classes of articles or objects. By
some this has been regarded as a peculiarity of the languages of
southeastern Asia; but the same thing may be noticed in the Indian
languages of our own continent.
As a language Malay is easily learned and has much to repay for so
doing. It is full of wonders and surprises--among other things is the
natural home of euphemism, where a spade is called anything but a
spade. For instance, to die is beautifully expressed in Malay as a
return to the mercy of Allah. The language is decidedly rich in
poetical expression and imagery. A neighbor is one whom you permit to
ascend the ladder of your cottage, and your friend is a sharer of your
joys and sorrows. Interest is the flower of money, a spring is an eye
of water, the sun the eye of day, and a policeman all eyes. A walk is
a stroll to eat the wind, a man drunk is one who rides a green horse,
and a coward a duck without spurs. A flatterer is one who has sugar
cane on his lips, a sharper is a man of brains, a fool a brain-lacker.
In his proverbs also the Malay shows a matchless use of metaphor and
imagery, his words having the softness of the jungle breeze, and at
the same time the grimness of the jungle shades. Nowhere does the
nature of his race or the peculiar genius of his language show out
better than in these terse, pithy sayings which the Malay uses to
sweeten his speech or lend effectiveness to it. The real Malay is a
creature of the forest or the sea, whence he draws his livelihood, and
it is but natural that he should envelop his daily and perhaps
dangerous life with homely philosophy. He loves the freedom which he
enjoys; take him away from it and he eats his heart out in
homesickness. "Though you feed a jungle fowl from a golden plate, it
will return to the jungle again." In his humble life he has discovered
that blood, be it good or bad, counts for something, and he thinks of
the forest lairs; "a kitten and small, but a tiger's cub." He is beset
with dangers by sea and land; often he is between the devil and the
deep. "One may escape the tiger, and fall into the jaws of the
crocodile." He recognizes the inevitable, and draws what consolation
he can. "When the prow is wrecked the shark gets his fill"--a very
stoical recognition of ill winds. "For fear of the ghost he hugs the
corpse," is often the solution of his dilemma. Sometimes he indulges
in drollery, but is never unphilosophical. "To love one's children,
one must weep for them now and then; to love one's wife, one must
leave her now and then." The language is full of such expressions;
they are the natural products of the speech of a poetical and
Nature-loving folk. Without attempting a classification we give a few
of the most characteristic proverbs, drawing largely on a collection
made in the Malay Peninsula by W. E. Maxwell, at one time British
resident there:
Will the crocodile respect the carcass?
Follow your heart, death; follow your feelings, destruction.
You find grasshoppers where you find a field.
Earth does not become grain.
Don't grind pepper for a bird on the wing.
The flower comes, age comes.
When the father is spotted, the son is spotted.
The plant sprouts before it climbs.
When he can't wring the ear, he pulls the horn.
The creel says the basket is poorly made.
Ask from one who has,
Make vows at a shrine,
Sulk with him who loves you.
When the house is done the chisel finds fault.
As the crow goes back to his nest (no richer, no poorer).
Whoever eats chilies burns his mouth.
Because of the mouth the body comes to harm.
If you are at the river's mouth at nightfall, what's the use of
talking of return?
A broken thread may be mended, but charcoal never.
The pea forgets its pod.
As water rolls from a _kladi_ leaf.
A shipwrecked vessel may float again, a heart once broken is broken
forever.
It is a project, and the result with God.
He carries a torch in daylight.
A slave who does well is never praised; if he does badly, never
forgiven.
It rains gold afar, but stone at home.
What if you sit on a cushion of gold with an uneasy mind!
When money leaves, your friend goes.
If you dip your hand into the fish tub, go to the bottom.
Whoever digs a hole falls into it himself.
If your legs are long, have your blanket long.
Like a frog under a cocoanut shell, he thinks he sees the sky.
If you can't get rattan, bind with roots.
The plantain does not bear twice.
He sits like a cat, but leaps like a tiger.
The tortoise lays a thousand eggs and tells no one; the hen lays a
single egg and tells all the world.
Those will die of thirst who empty the jar when it thunders in a dry
time.
Handsome as a princess, poisonous as a snake.
Small as an ant, wise as a mouse-deer.
LIFE ON A SOUTH SEA WHALER.[13]
BY FRANK T. BULLEN.
Cachalots, or sperm whales, must have been captured on the coasts of
Europe in a desultory way from a very early date, by the incidental
allusions to the prime products spermaceti and ambergris which are
found in so many ancient writers. Shakespeare's reference--"The
sovereign'st thing on earth was parmaceti for an inward bruise"--will
be familiar to most people, as well as Milton's mention of the
delicacies at Satan's feast--"Grisamber steamed"--not to carry
quotation any further.
But in the year 1690 the brave and hardy fishermen of the northeast
coasts of North America established that systematic pursuit of the
cachalot which has thriven so wonderfully ever since, although it must
be confessed that the last few years have witnessed a serious decline
in this great branch of trade.
For many years the American colonists completely engrossed this branch
of the whale fishery, contentedly leaving to Great Britain and the
continental nations the monopoly of the northern or arctic fisheries,
while they cruised the stormy, if milder, seas around their own
shores.
As, however, the number of ships engaged increased, it was inevitable
that the known grounds should become exhausted, and in 1788, Messrs.
Enderby's ship, the Emilia, first ventured round Cape Horn, as the
pioneer of a greater trade than ever. The way once pointed out, other
ships were not slow to follow, until, in 1819, the British whale ship
Syren opened up the till then unexplored tract of ocean in the western
part of the North Pacific, afterward familiarly known as the "Coast of
Japan." From these teeming waters alone, for many years an average
annual catch of forty thousand barrels of oil was taken, which, at the
average price of £8 per barrel, will give some idea of the value of
the trade generally.
From the crushing blow of the civil war the American sperm-whale
fishery has never fully recovered. When the writer was in the trade,
some twenty-two years ago, it was credited with a fleet of between
three and four hundred sail; now it may be doubted whether the numbers
reach an eighth of that amount. A rigid conservatism of method hinders
any revival of the industry, which is practically conducted to-day as
it was fifty or even a hundred years ago; and it is probable that
another decade will witness the final extinction of what was once one
of the most important maritime industries in the world.
In the following pages an attempt has been made--it is believed for
the first time--to give an account of the cruise of a South Sea whaler
from the seaman's standpoint. Its aim is to present to the general
reader a simple account of the methods employed and the dangers met
with in a calling about which the great mass of the public knows
absolutely nothing.
* * * * *
At the age of eighteen, after a sea experience of six years from the
time when I dodged about London streets, a ragged Arab, with wits
sharpened by the constant fight for food, I found myself roaming the
streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts.