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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
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POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
J. MCKEEN CATTELL
VOLUME LXXX
JANUARY TO JUNE, 1912
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NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
19 12
Copyright, 191 2 ^"^ The Science Pkbss
Press of
The new Era printing compact
Lancaster. Pa.
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THE
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JANUARY, 1912
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE^
By JACQUES LOEB
EOCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOE MEDICAL EESEAECH
1. Introductory rriHE reader is aware that two conflicting conceptions are held in -L regard to the nature of life, namely, a vitalistie and a mechan- istic. The vitalists deny the possibility of a complete explanation of life in terms of physics and chemistry. The mechanists proceed as though a complete and unequivocal physico-chemical analysis of life were the attainable goal of biology. It should also be stated that when- ever a vitalist desires to make a contribution to science which is more substantial and lasting than mere argument or metaphor, he forgets or lays aside his vitalism and proceeds on the premises and methods of the mechanist. It is thus obvious that as far as the progress of biology is concerned the difference of viewpoint between vitalists and mechanists is of no consequence.
The difference between the two opposite views becomes only of importance when the results of biology are applied to ethical and so- ciological problems. Since applications of this kind present them- selves constantly, the biologist may be pardoned if he raises the question whether or not our present state of knowledge justifies the expectation that life phenomena may ultimately be completely explained in terms of physics and chemistry. I intend to put before you a brief survey of some results, in the main recent, of scientific inquiry which I think may be utilized for an answer to this question.
Before going into these data, it may be necessary to allude briefly to a not uncommon misapprehension in regard to the nature of biolog-. ical " truth " and methods. It is seemingly often taken for granted-
* Address delivered at the First International Congress of Monists at Ham-^ burg, September 10, 1911.
6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
by laymen that " truth " in biology or science in general is of the same order as " truth " in certain of the mental sciences ; that is to say, that everything rests on argument or rhetoric and that what is regarded as true to-day may be expected with some probability to be considered untrue to-morrow. It happens in science, especially in the descriptive sciences like paleontology or zoology, that hypotheses are forwarded, discussed and then abandoned. It should, however, be re- membered that modern biology is fundamentally an experimental and not a descriptive science; and that its results are not rhetorical, but always assume one of two forms: it is either possible to control a life phenomenon to such an extent that we can produce it at desire at any time (as, e. g., the contraction of an excised muscle) ; or we succeed in finding the numerical relation between the conditions of the experiment and the biological result (e. g., Mendel's law of heredity). Biology as far as it is based on these two principles can not retrogress, but must advance.
2. The Beginning of Scientific Biology
Scientific biology, defined in this sense, begins with the attempt made by Lavoisier and Laplace (1780) to show that the quantity of heat which is formed in the body of a warm-blooded animal is equal to that formed in a candle, provided that the quantities of carbon dioxide formed in both cases are identical. This was the first attempt to re- duce a life-phenomenon, namely, the formation of animal heat, com- pletely to physico-chemical terms. What these two investigators began with primitive means has been completed by more recent investigators — Pettenkofer and Voit, Eubner and Zuntz. The oxidation of a food- stuff always furnishes the same amount of heat, no matter whether it takes place in the living body or outside.
These investigations left a gap. The substances which undergo oxidations in the animal body — starch, fat and proteins — are substances which at ordinary temperature are not easily oxidized. They require the temperature of the fiame in order to undergo rapid oxidation through the oxygen of the air. This discrepancy between the oxida- tions in the living body and those in the laboratory manifests itself also in other chemical processes, e. g., digestion or hydrolytic reactions, which were at first found to occur outside the living body rapidly only under conditions incompatible with life. This discrepancy was done away with by the physical chemists, who demonstrated that the same acceleration of chemical reactions which is brought about by a high temperature can also be accomplished at a low temperature with the aid of certain specific substances, the so-called catalyzers. This prog- ress is connected preeminently with the names of Berzelius and Wilhelm Ostwald. The specific substances which accelerate the oxidations at
TEE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 7
body temperature sufficiently to allow the maintenance of life are the so-called ferments of oxidation.
The work of Lavoisier and Laplace not only marks the beginning of scientific biology, it also touches the core of the problem of life; for it seems that oxidations form a part, if not the basis, of all life phenomena in higher organisms.
3. The " Eiddle of Life "
By the " riddle of life " not everybody will understand the same thing. We all, however, desire to know how life originates and what death is, since our ethics must be influenced to a large extent through the answer to this question. We are not yet able to give an answer to the question as to how life originated on the earth. We know that every living being is able to transform food-stuffs into living matter; and we also know that not only the compounds which are formed in the animal body can be produced artificially, but that chemical reac- tions which take place in living organisms can also be repeated at the same rate and temperature in the laboratory. The gap in our knowl- edge which we feel most keenly is the fact that the chemical character of the catalyzers (the enzymes or ferments) is still unknown. Nothing indicates, however, at present that the artificial production of living matter is beyond the possibilities of science.
This view does not stand in opposition to the idea of Arrhenius that germs of sufficiently small dimensions are driven by radiation- pressure through space; and that these germs if they fall upon new cosmic bodies possessing water, salts and oxygen and the proper tem- perature, give rise to a new evolution of organisms. Biology will cer- tainly retain this idea, but I believe that we must also follow out the other problem : namely, either succeed in producing living matter arti- ficially, or find the reasons why this should be impossible.
4. The Activation of the Ego
Although we are not yet able to state how life originated in general, another, more modest problem has been solved, that is, how the egg is caused by the sperm to develop into a new individual. Every animal originates from an egg and in the majority of animals a new individual can only then develop if a male sex-cell, a spermatozoon, enters into thfi egg. The question as to how a spermatozoon can cause an egg to develop into a new individual was twelve years ago still shrouded in that mystery which to-day surrounds the origin of life in general. But to-day we are able to state that the problem of the activation of the egg is for the most part reduced to physico-chemical terms. The egg is in the unfertilized condition a single cell with only one nucleus.
8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
If no spermatozoon enters into it, it perishes after a comparatively short time, in some animals in a few hours, in others in a few days or weeks. If, however, a spermatozoon enters into the egg, the latter begins to develop, i. e., the nucleus begins to divide into two nuclei and the egg which heretofore consisted of one cell is divided into two cells. Subsequently each nucleus and each cell divides again into two, and so on. These cells have in many eggs the tendency to remain at the surface of the egg or to creep to the surface and later such an egg forms a hollow sphere whose shell consists of a large number of cells. On the outer surface of this hollow sphere cilia are formed and the egg is now transformed into a free-swimming larva. Then an intestine develops through the growing in of cells in one region of the blastula and gradually the other organs, skeleton, vascular system, etc., origi- nate. Embryologists had noticed that occasionally the unfertilized eggs of certain animals, e. g., sea-urchins, worms, or even birds, show a tendency to a nuclear or even a cell division; and R. Hertwig, Mead and Morgan had succeeded in inducing one or more cell divisions artificially in such eggs. But the cell divisions in these cases never led to the development of a larva, but at the best to the formation of an abnormal mass of cells which soon perished.
I succeeded twelve years ago in causing the unfertilized eggs of the sea-urchin to develop into swimming larvae by treating them with sea- water, the concentration of which was raised through the addition of a small but definite quantity of a salt or sugar. The eggs were put for two hours into a solution the osmotic pressure of which had been raised to a certain height. When the eggs were put back into normal sea- water they developed into larvae and a part of these larvae formed an intestine and a skeleton. The same result was obtained in the eggs of other animals, starfish, worms and mollusks. These experiments proved the possibility of substituting physico-chemical agencies for the action of the living spermatozoon, but did not yet explain how the spermatozoon causes the development of the egg, since in these experi- ments the action of the spermatozoon upon the egg was very incom- pletely imitated. When a spermatozoon enters into the egg it causes primarily a change in the surface of the egg which results in the formation of the so-called membrane of fertilization. This phenom- enon of membrane formation which had always been considered as a phenomenon of minor importance did not occur in my original method of treating the egg with hypertonic sea-water. Six years ago while experimenting on the Calif ornian sea-urchin, Strongylocentrotus pur- puratus, I succeeded in finding a method of causing the unfertilized egg to form a membrane without injuring the egg. This method con- sists in treating the eggs for from one to two minutes with sea-water
TEE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 9
to which a definite amount of butyric acid (or some other monobasic fatty acid) has been added. If after that time the eggs are brought back into normal sea-water, all form a fertilization membrane in exactly the same way as if a spermatozoon had entered. This membrane for- mation or rather the modification of the surface of the egg which underlies the membrane formation starts the development. It does not allow it, however, to go very far at room temperature. In order to allow the development to go further it is necessary to submit the eggs after the butyric acid treatment to a second operation. Here we have a choice between two methods. We can either put the eggs for about one half hour into a hypertonic solution (which contains free oxygen) ; or we can put them for about three hours into sea- water deprived of oxygen. If the eggs are then returned to normal sea- water containing oxygen they all develop; and in a large number the development is as normal as if a spermatozoon had entered.
The essential feature is therefore the fact that the development is caused by two different treatments of the egg; and that among these the treatment resulting in the formation of the membrane is the more important one. This is proved by the fact that in certain forms, as for instance the star-fish, the causation of the artificial membrane formation may suffice for the development of normal larvae; although here too the second treatment increases not only the number of larv^, but also improves the appearance of the larvae, as E. Lillie found.
The question now arises, how the membrane formation can start the development of the egg. An analysis of the process and of the nature of the agencies which cause it yielded the result that the unfer- tilized egg possesses a superficial cortical layer, which must be destroyed before the egg can develop. It is immaterial by what means this superficial cortical layer is destroyed. All agencies, which cause a definite type of cell destruction — the so-called cytolysis — cause also the egg to develop, as long as their action is limited to the surface layer of the cell. The butyric acid treatment of the egg mentioned above only serves to induce the destruction of this cortical layer. In the eggs of some animals this cortical layer can be destroyed mechanically by shaking the egg, as A. P. Mathews found in the case of star-fish eggs and I in the case of the eggs of certain worms. In the case of the eggs of the frog it suffices to pierce the cortical layer with a needle, as Bataillon found in his beautiful experiments a year ago.^ The mech- anism by which development is caused is apparently the same in all these cases, namely, the destruction of the cortical layer of the eggs. This can be caused generally by certain chemical means which play a
^ This method does not work with the eggs of fish and is apparently aa limited in its applicability as the causation of development by mechanical agitation.
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role also in bacteriology; but it can also be caused in special cases by mechanical means, such as agitation or piercing of the cortical layer. It may be mentioned parenthetically that foreign blood sera have also a cytolytic effect, and I succeeded in causing membrane formation and in consequence the development of the sea-urchin egg by treating it with the blood of various animals, e. g., of cattle, or the rabbit.
Eecently Shearer has succeeded in Plymouth in causing a number of parthenogenetic plutei produced by my method to develop beyond the stage of metamorphosis, and Delage has reported that he raised two larvae of the sea-urchin produced by artificial parthenogenesis to the stage of sexual maturity. We may, therefore, state that the com- plete imitation of the developmental effect of the spermatozoon by cer- tain physico-chemical agencies has been accomplished.
I succeeded in showing that the spermatozoon causes the develop- ment of the sea-urchin egg in a way similar to that in my method of artificial parthenogenesis; namely, by carrying two substances into the egg, one of which acts like the butyric acid and induces the membrane formation, while the other acts like the treatment with a hypertonic solution and enables the full development of the larvae. In order to prove this for the sea-urchin egg foreign sperm, e. g., that of the star- fish, must be used. The sperm of the sea-urchin penetrates so rapidly into the sea-urchin egg that almost always both substances get into the egg. If, however, star-fish sperm is used for the fertilization of the sea-urchin egg, in a large number of cases, membrane formation occurs before the spermatozoon has found time to entirely penetrate into the egg. In consequence of the membrane formation the spermatozoon is thrown out. Such eggs behave as if only the membrane formation had been caused by some artificial agency, e. g., butyric acid. They begin to develop, but soon show signs of disintegration. If treated with a hypertonic solution they develop into larvae. In touching the egg contents the spermatozoon had a chance to give off a substance which liquefied the cortical layer and thereby caused the membrane formation by which the further entrance of the spermatozoon into the egg was prevented. If, however, the starfish sperm enters completely into the egg before the membrane formation begins, the spermatozoon carries also the second substance into the egg, the action of which corresponds to the treatment of the egg with the hypertonic solution. In this case the egg can undergo complete development into a larva.
F. Lillie has recently confirmed the same fact in the egg of a worm, Nereis. He mixed the sperm and eggs of Nereis and centrifuged the mass. In many cases the spermatozoa which had begun to penetrate into the egg were thrown off again. The consequence was that only a membrane formation resulted without the spermatozoon penetrating
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE ii
into the egg. This membrane formation led only to a beginning but not to a complete development. We may, therefore, conclude that the spermatozoon causes the development of the egg in a way similar to that which takes place in the case of artificial parthenogenesis. It carries first a substance into the egg which destroys the cortical layer of the egg in the same way as butyric acid does; and secondly a sub- stance which corresponds in its effect to the influence of the hypertonic solution in the sea-urchin egg after the membrane formation.
The question arises as to how the destruction of the cortical layer can cause the beginning of the development of the egg. This question leads us to the process of oxidation. Years ago I had found that the fertilized sea-urchin egg can only develop in the presence of free oxygen; if the oxygen is completely withdrawn the development stops, but begins again promptly as soon as oxygen is again admitted. From this and similar experiments I concluded that the spermatozoon causes the development by accelerating the oxidations in the egg. This con- clusion was confirmed by experiments by 0. Warburg and by Wasteneys and myself in which it was found that through the process of fertiliza- tion the velocity of oxidations in the egg is increased to four or six times its original value. Warburg was able to show that the mere causation of the membrane formation by the butyric acid treatment has the same accelerating effect upon the oxidations as fertilization.
What remains unknown at present is the way in which the destruc- tion of the cortical layer of the egg accelerates the oxidations. It is possible that the cortical layer acts like a solid crust and thus prevents the oxygen from reaching the surface of the egg or from penetrating into the latter sufficiently rapidly. The solution of these problems must be reserved for further investigation.
We, therefore, see that the process of the activation of the egg by the spermatozoon, which twelve years ago was shrouded in complete dark- ness, to-day is practically completely reduced to a physico-chemical explanation. Considering the youth of experimental biology we have a right to hope that what has been accomplished in this problem will occur in rapid succession in those problems which to-day still appear as riddles.
5. Nature of Life and Death
The nature of life and of death are questions which occupy the in- terest of the layman to a greater extent than possibly any other purely theoretical problem ; and we can well understand that humanity did not wait for experimental biology to furnish an answer. The answer as- sumed the anthropomorphic form characteristic of all explanations of nature in the prescientific period. Life was assumed to begin with the entrance of a " life principle " into the body ; that individual life be-
12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
gins with the egg was of course unknown to primitive or pre-scientific man. Death was assumed to be due to the departure of this " life prin- ciple " from the body.
Scientifically, however, individual life begins (in the case of the sea- urchin and possibly in general) with the acceleration of the rate of oxidation in the egg, and this acceleration begins after the destruction of its cortical layer. Life of warm blooded animals — man included — ends with the cessation of oxidation in the body. As soon as oxidations have ceased for some time the surface films of the cells, if they contain enough water and if the temperature is sufficiently high, become perme- able for bacteria, and the body is destroyed by microorganisms. The problem of the beginning and end of individual life is physico-chem- ically clear. It is, therefore, unwarranted to continue the statement that in addition to the acceleration of oxidations the beginning of individual life is determined by the entrance of a metaphysical " life principle " into the egg ; and that death is determined, aside from the cessation of oxidations, by the departure of this " principle " from the body. In the case of the evaporation of water we are satisfied with the explanation given by the kinetic theory of gases and do not demand that — to repeat a well-known jest of Huxley — the disappearance of the " aquosity " be also taken into consideration.
6. Heredity
It may be stated that the egg is the essential bearer of heredity. We can cause an egg to develop into a larva without sperm, but we can not cause a spermatozoon to develop into a larva without an egg. The spermatozoon can influence the form of the offspring only when the two forms are rather closely related. If the egg of a sea-urchin is fertilized with the sperm from a different species of sea-urchin the larval form has distinct paternal characters. If, however, the eggs of a sea-urchin are fertilized with the sperm of a more remote species, e. g., a star-fish, the result is a sea-urchin larva which possesses no paternal characters, as I found and as Godlewski, Ivupelwieser, Hagedoorn and Baltzer were able to confirm. This fact has some bearing upon the further in- vestigation of heredity, inasmuch as it shows that the egg is the main instrument of heredity, while apparently the spermatozoon is restricted in the transmission of characters to the offspring. If the difference between spermatozoon and egg exceeds a certain limit the hereditary effects of the spermatozoon cease and it acts merely as an activator to the egg.
As far as the transmission of paternal characters is concerned, we can say to-day that the view of those authors was correct who, with Boveri, localized this transmission not only in the cell nucleus, but in a
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 13
special constituent of the nucleus, the chromosomes. The proof for this was given by facts found along the lines of Mendelian investiga- tions. The essential law of Mendel, the law of segregation, can in its simplest form be expressed in the following way. If we cross two forms which differ in only one character every hybrid resulting from this union forms two kinds of sex-cells in equal numbers ; two kinds of eggs if it is a female, two kinds of spermatozoa if it is a male. The one kind corresponds to the pure paternal, the other to the pure maternal type. The investigation of the structure and behavior of the nucleus showed that the possibility for such a segregation of the sex-cells in a hybrid can easily be recognized during a given stage in the formation of the sex-cells, if the assumption is made that the chromosomes are the bear- ers of the paternal characters. The proof for the correctness of this view was furnished through the investigation of the heredity of those qualities which occur mainly in one sex ; e. g., color blindness which oc- curs preeminently in the male members of a family.
Nine years ago McClung published a paper which solved the prob- lem of sex determination, at least in its essential feature. Each animal has a definite number of chromosomes in its cell nucleus. Henking had found that in a certain form of insects (Pyrrhocoris) two kinds of spermatozoa exist which differ in the fact that the one possesses a nucleolus while the other does not. Montgomery afterwards showed that Henking's nucleolus was an accessory chromosome. McClung first ex- pressed the idea that this accessory chromosome was connected with the determination of sex. Considering the importance of this idea we may render it in his own words :
A most significant fact, and one upon which almost all investigators are united in opinion, is that the element is apportioned to but one half of the spermatozoa. Assuming it to be true that the chromatin is the important part of the cell in the matter of heredity, then it follows that we have two kinds of spermatozoa that differ from each other in a vital matter. We expect, therefore, to find in the offspring two sorts of individuals in approximately equal numbers, under normal conditions, that exhibit marked differences in structure. A careful consideration will suggest that nothing but sexual characters thus divides the members of a species into two well-defined groups, and we are logically forced to the conclusion that the peculiar chromosome has some bearing upon the arrangement.
I must here also point out a fact that does not seem to have the recognition it deserves; viz., that if there is a cross division of the chromosomes in the maturation mitoses, there must be two kinds of spermatozoa regardless of the presence of the accessory chromosome. It is thus possible that even in the absence of any specialized element a preponderant maleness would attach to one half of the spermatozoa, due to the "qualitative division of the tetrads."
The researches of the following years, especially the brilliant work of E. B. Wilson, Miss Stevens, T. H. Morgan and others, have amply confirmed the correctness of this ingenious idea and cleared up the problem of sex determination in its main features.
14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
According to McClung each animal forms two kinds of spermatozoa in equal numbers, which differ by one chromosome. One kind of spermatozoa produces male animals, the other female animals. The eggs are all equal in these animals. More recent investigations, espe- cially by E. B. Wilson, have shown that this view is correct for many animals.
While in many animals there are two kinds of spermatozoa and only one kind of eggs, in other animals two kinds of eggs and only one kind of spermatozoa are formed, e. g., sea-urchins and certain species of birds and of butterflies {Alraxas). In these animals the sex is predeter- mined in the egg and not in the spermatozoon. It is of interest that, according to Guyer, in the human being two kinds of spermatozoa exist and only one kind of eggs ; in man, therefore, sex is determined by the spermatozoon.
How is sex determination accomplished ? Let us take the case which according to Wilson is true for many insects and according to Guyer for human beings, namely, that there are two kinds of spermatozoa and one kind of egg. According to Wilson all unfertilized eggs contain in this case one so-called sex chromosome, the X-chromosome. There are two kinds of spermatozoa, one with and one without an X-chromosome. Given a sufficiently large number of eggs and of spermatozoa, one half of the egs will be fertilized by spermatozoa with and one half by sper- matozoa without an X-chromosome. Hence one half of the eggs will contain after fertilization two X-chromosomes each and one half only one X-chromosome each. The eggs containing only one X-chromosome give rise to males, those containing two X-chromosomes give rise to fe- males— as Wilson and others have proved. This seems to be a general law for those cases in which there are two kinds of spermatozoa and one kind of eggs.
These observations show why it is impossible to influence the sex of a developing embryo by external influences. If, for example, in the human a spermatozoon without an X-chromosome enters into an egg, the egg will give rise to a boy, but if a spermatozoon with an X-chromo- some gets into the egg the latter will give rise to a girl. Since always both kinds of spermatozoa are given off by the male it is a mere matter of chance whether a boy or a girl originates ; and it agrees with the law of probability that in a large population the number of boys and girls borne within a year is approximately the same.
These discoveries solved also a series of other difficulties. Certain types of twins originate from one egg after fertilization. Such twins have always the same sex, as we should expect since the cells of both twins have the same number of X-chromosomes,
In plant lice, bees and ants, the eggs may develop with and without
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 15
fertilization. It was known that from fertilized eggs in these animals only females develop^ males never. It was found that in these animals the eggs contain only one sex-chromosome; while in the male are found two kinds of spermatozoa, one with and one without a sex-chromosome. For Phylloxera and Aphides it has been proved with certainty by Morgan and others that the spermatozoa which contain no sex-chromo- some can not live, and the same is probably true for bees and ants. If, therefore, in these animals an egg is fertilized it is always done by a spermatozoon which contains an X-chromosome. The Qgg has, there- fore, after fertilization in these animals always two Z-chromosomes and from such eggs only females can arise.
It had been known for a long time that in bees and ants the un- fertilized eggs can also develop, but such eggs give rise to males only. This is due to the fact that the eggs of these animals contain only one JT-chromosome and from eggs with only one chromosome only males can arise (at least in the case of animals in which the male is heterozy- gous for sex).
The problem of sex determination has, therefore, found a simple so- lution, and simultaneously Mendel's law of segregation finds also its solution.
In many insects and in man the cells of the female have two sex- chromosomes. In a certain stage of the history of the egg one half of the chromosomes leaves the egg (in the form of the " polar-body ") and the egg keeps only half the number of chromosomes. Each egg, there- fore, retains only one X or sex-chromosome. In the male the cells have from the beginning only one X-chromosome and each primordial spermatozoon divides into two new (in reality into two pairs of) sper- matozoa, one of which contains an X-ehromosome while the other is without such a chromosome. What can be observed here directly in the male animal takes place in every hybrid : during the critical, so- called maturation division of the sexual cell in the hybrid a division of the chromosomes occurs whereby only one half of the sex cells receive the hereditary substance in regard to which the two original pure forms differ.
That this is not a mere assumption can be shown in those cases in which the hereditary character appears only, or preeminently, in one sex as, e. g., color blindness which appears mostly in the male. If a color-blind individual is mated with an individual with normal color vision the heredity of color blindness in the next two generations corre- sponds quantitatively with what we must expect on the assumption that the chemical substances determining color vision are contained in the sex-chromosomes. In the color-blind individual something is lacking which can be found in the individual with normal color perception. The factor for color vision is obviously transmitted through the sex-
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chromosome. In the next generation color blindness can not appear since each fertilized egg contains the factor for color perception. In the second generation, however, the theory demands that one half of the males should be color blind. In man these conditions can not al- ways be verified numerically since the number of children is too small to yield the conditions to be expected according to the calculus of prob- ability. T. H. Morgan has found in a fly (Drosophila) a number of similar sex-limited characters, which behave like color blindness, e. g., lack of pigment in the eyes. These flies have normally red eyes. Mor- gan has observed a mutation with white eyes, which occurs in the male. When he crossed a white-eyed with a red-eyed female all flies of the first generation were red-eyed ; since all flies had the factor for pigment in their sex-cells; in the second generation all females and exactly one half of the males had red eyes, the other half of the males, however, white eyes, as the theory demands.
From these and numerous similar breeding experiments of Correns, Doncaster, and especially of Morgan, we may conclude with certainty that the sex-chromosomes are the bearers of those hereditary char- acters which appear preeminently in one sex. We say preeminently since theoretically we can predict cases in which color blindness or white eyes must appear also in the female. Breeding experiments have shown that this theoretical prediction is justified. The riddle of Mendel's law of segregation finds its solution by these experiments and incidentally also the problem of the determination of sex which is only a special case of the law of segregation, as Mendel already intimated.
The main task which is left here for science to accomplish is the determination of the chemical substances in the chromosomes which are responsible for the hereditary transmission of a quality, and the deter- mination of the mechanism by which these substances give rise to the hereditary character. Here the ground has already been broken. It is known that for the formation of a certain black pigment the coopera- tion of a substance — tyrosin — and of a ferment of oxidation — tyrosinase — is required. The hereditary transmission of the black color through the male animal must occur by substances carried in the chromosome which determine the formation of tyrosin or tyrosinase or of both. We may, therefore, say that the solution of the riddle of heredity has suc- ceeded to the extent that all further development will take place purely in cytological and physico-chemical terms.
While until twelve years ago the field of heredity was the stamping ground for the rhetorician and metaphysician it is to-day perhaps the most exact and rationalistic part of biology, where facts can not only be predicted qualitatively, but also quantitatively.
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 17
7. The Harmonious Chaeactee of the Organisms
It is not possible to prove in a short address that all life phenomena will yield to a physico-chemical analysis. We have selected only the phenomena of fertilization and heredity, since these phenomena are specific for living organisms and without analogues in inanimate na- ture; and if we can convince ourselves that these processes can be ex- plained physico-chemically we may safely expect the same of such processes for which there exist a priori analogies in inanimate nature, as, e. g., for absorption and secretion.
"We must, however, settle a question which offers itself not only to the layman but also to every biologist, namely, how we shall conceive that wonderful " adaptation of each part to the whole " by which an organism becomes possible. In the answer of this question the meta- physician finds an opportunity to put above the purely chemical and physical processes something specific which is characteristic of life only : the " Zielstrebigkeit," the " harmony " of the phenomena, or the " dominants " of Eeinke and similar things.
With all due personal respect for the authors of such terms I am of the opinion that we are dealing here, as in all cases of metaphysics, with a play on words. That a part is so constructed that it serves the " whole " is only an unclear expression for the fact that a species is only able to live — or to use Roux's expression — is only durable, if it is pro- vided with the automatic mechanism for self-preservation and repro- duction. If, for instance, warm-blooded animals should originate with- out a circulation they could not remain alive, and this is the reason why we never find such forms. The phenomena of " adaptation " cause only apparent difficulties since we rarely or never become aware of the numerous faultily constructed organisms which appear in nature. I will illustrate by a concrete example that the number of species which we observe is only an infinitely small fraction of those which can origi- nate and possibly not rarely do originate, but which we never see since their organization does not allow them to exist long. Moenkhaus found ten years ago that it is possible to fertilize the egg of each marine bony fish with the sperm of practically any other marine bony fish. His embryos apparently lived only a very short time. This year I suc- ceeded in keeping such hybrid embryos between distantly related bony fish alive for over a month. It is, therefore, clear that it is possible to cross practically any marine teleost with any other.
The number of teleosts at present in existence is about 10,000. If we accomplish all possible hybridization 100,000,000 different crosses will result. Of these teleosts only a very small proportion, namely about one one-hundredth of one per cent., can live. It turned out in my ex- periments that the heterogeneous hybrids between bony fishes formed
VOL. LXXX. — 2.
i8 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
eyes, brains, ears, fins and pulsating hearts, blood and blood vessels, but could live only a limited time because no blood circulation was estab- lished at all — in spite of the fact that the heart beat for weeks — or that the circulation, if it was established at all, did not last long.
What prevented these heterogeneous fish embryos from reaching the adult stage ? The lack of the proper " dominants " ? Scarcely. I suc- ceeded in producing the same type of faulty embryos in the pure breeds of a bony fish (Fundulus heterocUtus) by raising the eggs in 50 c.c. of sea-water to which was added 2 c.c. one one-hundredth per cent. NaCN", The latter substance retards the velocity of oxidations and I obtained embryos which were in all details identical with the embryos produced by crossing the eggs of the same fish with the sperm of remote teleosts, e. g., Ctenolabrus or Menidia. These embryos, which lived about a month, showed the peculiarity of possessing a beating heart and blood, but no circulation. This suggests the idea that heterogeneous embryos show a lack of " adaptation " and durability for the reason that in con- sequence of the chemical difference between heterogeneous sperm and egg the chemical processes in the fertilized egg are abnormal.
The possibility of hybridization goes much further than we have thus far assumed. We can cause the eggs of echinoderms to develop with the sperm of very distant forms, even mollusks and worms (Kupel- wieser) ; but such hybridizations never lead to the formation of durable organisms. ^ '
It is, therefore, no exaggeration to state that the number of species existing to-day is only an infinitely small fraction of those which can and possibly occasionally do originate, but which escape our notice be- cause they can not live and reproduce. Only that limited fraction of species can exist which possesses no coarse disharmonies in its auto- matic mechanism of preservation and reproduction. Disharmonies and faulty attempts in nature are the rule, the harmonically developed sys- tems the rare exception. But since we only perceive the latter we gain the erroneous impression that the " adaptation of the parts to the plan of the whole " is a general and specific characteristic of animate nature, whereby the latter differs from inanimate nature.
If the structure and the mechanism of the atoms were known to us we should probably also get an insight into a world of wonderful har- monies and apparent adaptations of the parts to the whole. But in this case we should quickly understand that the chemical elements are only the few durable systems among a large number of possible but not durable combinations. Nobody doubts that the durable chemical ele- ments are only a product of blind forces. There is no reason for con- ceiving otherwise the durable systems in living nature.
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 19
8. The Contents of Life
The contents of life from the cradle to the bier are wishes and hopes, efforts and struggles and unfortunately also disappointments and suf- fering. And this inner life should be amenable to a physico-chemical analysis? In spite of the gap which separates us to-day from such an aim I believe that it is attainable. As long as a life phenomenon has not yet found a physico-chemical explanation it usually appears inex- plicable. If the veil is once lifted we are always surprised that we did not guess from the first what was behind it.
That in the case of our inner life a physico-chemical explanation is not beyond the realm of possibility is proved by the fact that it is already possible for us to explain cases of simple manifestations of animal instinct and will on a physico-chemical basis ; namely, the phe- nomena which I have discussed in former papers under the name of animal tropisms. As the most simple example we may mention the tendency of certain animals to fly or creep to the light. We are deal- ing in this case with the manifestation of an instinct or impulse which the animals can not resist. It appears as if this blind instinct which these animals must follow, although it may cost them their life might be explained by the same law of Bunsen and Eoscoe, which explains the photo-chemical effects in inanimate nature. This law states that within wide limits the photo-chemical effect equals the product of the intensity of light into the duration of illumination. It is not possible to enter here into all the details of the reactions of these animals to light, we only wish to point out in which way the light instinct of the animals may possibly be connected with the Bunsen-Roscoe law.
The positively heliotropic animals — i. e., the animals which go instinctively to a source of light — have in their eyes (and occasionally also in their skin) photosensitive substances which undergo chemical alterations by light. The products formed in this process influence the contraction of the muscles — mostly indirectly, through the central nervous system. If the animal is illuminated on one side only the mass of photochemical reaction products formed on that side in the unit of time is greater than on the opposite side. Consequently the development of energy in the symmetrical muscles on both sides of the body becomes unequal. As soon as the difference in the masses of the photochemical reaction products on both sides of the animal reaches a certain value the animal, as soon as it moves, is automatically forced to turn towards one side. As soon as it has turned so far that its plane of symmetry is in the direction of the rays, the symmetrical spots of its surface are struck by the light at the same angle and in this case the intensity of light and consequently the velocity of reaction of the photochemical processes on both sides of the animal become equal. There is no more reason for the animal to deviate from the motion in a
20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
straight line and the positively heliotropic animal will move in a straight line to the source of light. (It was assumed that in these experiments the animal is under the influence of only one source of light and positively heliotropic.)
In a series of experiments I have shown that the heliotropic reac- tions of animals are identical with the heliotropic reactions of plants. It was known that sessile heliotropic plants bend their stems to the source of light until the axis of symmetry of their tip is in the direction of the rays of light. I found the same phenomenon in sessile animals, e. g., certain hydroids and worms. Motile plant organs, e. g., the swarm spores of plants, move to the source of light (or if they are nega- tively heliotropic away from it) and the same is observed in motile animals. In plants only the more refrangible rays from green to blue have these heliotropic effects, while the red and yellow rays are little or less effective; and the same is true for the heliotropic reactions of animals.
It has been shown by Blaauw for the heliotropic curvatures of plants that the product of the intensity of a source of light into the time required to induce a heliotropic curvature is a constant; and the same result was obtained simultaneously by another botanist, Froschl, It is thus proved that the Bunsen-Roscoe law controls the heliotropic reactions of plants. The same fact had already been proved for the action of light on our retina.
The direct measurements in regard to the applicability of Bunsen's law to the phenomena of animal heliotropism have not yet been made. But a number of data point to the probability that the law holds good here also. The first of these facts is the identity of the light reactions of plants and animals. The second is at least a rough observation which harmonizes with the Bunsen-Roscoe law. As long as the inten- sity of light or the mass of photochemical substances at the surface of the animal is small, according to the law of Bunsen, it must take a comparatively long time until the animal is automatically oriented by the light, since according to this law the photochemical effect is equal to the product of the intensity of the light into the duration of illu- mination. If, however, the intensity of the light is strong or the active mass of the photochemical substance great, it will require only a very shoi't time until the difference in the mass of photochemical reaction products on both sides of the animal reaches the value which is neces- sary for the automatic turning to (or from) the light. The behavior of the animals agrees with this assumption. If the light is sufficiently strong the animals go in an almost straight line to the source of light; if the intensity of light (or the mass of photosensitive substances on the surface of the animal) is small the animals go in irregular lines, but at last they also land at the source of light, since the directing
THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 21
force is not entirely abolished. It will, however, be necessary to ascer- tain by direct measurements to what extent these phenomena in ani- mals are the expression of Bunsen-Eoscoe's law. But we may already safely state that the apparent will or instinct of these animals resolves itself into a modification of the action of the muscles through the in- fluence of light ; and for the metaphysical term " will " we may in these instances safely substitute the chemical term " photochemical action of light.''
Our wishes and hopes, disappointments and sufferings have their source in instincts which are comparable to the light instinct of the heliotropic animals. The need of and the struggle for food, the sexual instinct with its poetry and its chain of consequences, the maternal instincts with the felicity and the suffering caused by them, the instinct of workmanship and some other instincts are the roots from which our inner life develops. For some of these instincts the chemical basis is at least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that their analysis, from the mechanistic point of view, is only a question of time.
9. Ethics
If our existence is based on the play of blind forces and only a matter of chance ; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms — how can there be an ethics for us ? The answer is, that our instincts are the root of our ethics and that the instincts are just as hereditary as is the form of our body. We eat, drink and reproduce not because mankind has reached an agreement that this is desirable, but because, machine-like, we are compelled to do so. We are active, because we are compelled to be so by processes in our central nervous system; and as long as human beings are not economic slaves the instinct of successful work or of workmanship determines the direction of their action. The mother loves and cares for her children not because metaphysicians had the idea that this was desirable, but because the instinct of taking care of the young is inherited just as distinctly as the morphological characters of the female body. We seek and enjoy the fellowship of human beings because hereditary conditions compel us to do so. We struggle for justice and truth since we are instinctively compelled to see our fellow beings happy. Economic, social and political conditions or ignorance and superstition may warp and inhibit the inherited instincts and thus create a civilization with a faulty or low development of ethics. Individual mutants may arise in which one or the other desirable instinct is lost, just as individual mutants without pigment may arise in animals ; and the offspring of such mutants may, if numer- ous enough, lower the ethical status of a community. Not only is the mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics ; it seems the only conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source of ethics.
2 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE. II
By Dr. C. K. EDMUNDS
PRESIDENT OF CANTON CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
III. Alleged Anticipations of Modern Science
1. Introductory. — Some intimate students of Chinese literature and life, notably Dr. W. A. P. Martin, claim that in many cases Chinese philosophy has anticipated the doctrines of modern science. The same may be said of the ancient Greek thinkers, whose speculations have had a direct and large influence in the development of modern thought, such as the Chinese philosophers have not had. For it seems likely that the physical speculations of the Greeks, from which European science started, were a true native growth of the Greek mind and owed nothing to the lore of Egypt or of the east. (This is the opinion of Whewell as expressed in his " History of the Inductive Sciences.")
It is doubtless true that several of the guesses made by the ancients are in general accord with present theories as developed and supported by a wealth of observation, experimentation and inference. And it is true that the honors, if there be any, of having made such guesses, must be awarded in part to the Chinese as well as to the Greeks with this great difference, that in many cases the Greeks were true students of nature and checked their speculations by observation — a course which, though entertained by some Chinese philosophers, was not sufficiently appre- ciated by either them or their disciples to be put into practise.
The speculations to which we refer were developed during the glo- rious Sung dynasty, in the century a.d. 1020-1120, which stands pre- eminent among the forty centuries of Chinese recorded history as the age of philosophy. At the time when Europe was in darkness and the crusades were in full swing, the five famous philosophers — Chou, Chang, Cheng (two brothers) and Chu — were constructing the castle of faith and knowledge for their successors. It is from the writings of the last of these, the most famous of the five, that the foregoing quotations have been taken.
All five were Confucian scholars, but it seems likely that their mental activity was stimulated and directed by the speculations of Buddhist and Taoist writers. Their works derive importance from the fact that for 500 years, since the publication by imperial authority of the great " EHcyclopgedia of Philosophy," they have been the government standard, to which all aspirants for honors in the civil service examinations had to conform. They therefore represent the views of the educated men of
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 23
China to-day, not counting, of course, the few who thus far have been strongly influenced by western learning.
2. The Ether. — In the writings of these five worthies. Dr. Martin finds evidence (as exhibited in his " Lore of Cathay ") that the doctrine of an all-pervading medium was familiar to the Chinese a thousand years ago, possibly even in the " Book of Changes," 1100 B.C., and that it was a full-fledged doctrine in several writers of the eleventh century A.D., who ascribed to this ether all the properties at present claimed for it except its electric and magnetic manifestations.
Here are some of the passages which bear on this point :
Chang (in "Cheng Meng," or "Eight Discipline for Youth"): The immensity of space, though called the great void, is net void. It is filled with a subtle substance. In fact there is no such thing as a vacuum. . . . Within the immensity of space matter is alternately concentrated and dissipated, much as ice is congealed or dissolved in water. . . . The great void is filled with a pure or perfect fluid. Since it is perfectly fluid, it offers no obstruction to movement. There being no obstruction {i. e., nothing to bring about a change of state) a divine force converts the pure into the gross.
3. Wave Theory of Light. — In another place, according to Dr. Martin, we read : " The primal essence moved, and light was born ;" and he says that the idea of vibrations was also grasped. In this he sees a forecast of the modern undulatory theory of light.
4. Vortex Theory of Matter. — In the work of Chou Dr. Martin thinks we may discern the forerunner of the modern vortex theory of the constitution of matter. Chou devised a diagram of cosmogony, consisting of a ring, or circle, of uniform whiteness, representing the primitive medium surrounded by a ring partly dark, which shows the original substances difi^erentiated into the two forms or forces — yin and yang. Chu Hi, speaking of this diagram says : " It shows how the primitive forces grind back and forth like millstones, in opposite direc- tions, and the resulting detritus from their friction is what we call matter."
But when we read in the context of the two writers concerning these two principles — yin and yang — and follow them in their absurd ram- blings of fancy, it seems unwarrantable to suggest that the language of these selected sentences anticipates the idea of Lord Kelvin and leading present-day scientists.
5. Conservation of Energy. — Dr. Martin also claims that these Chinese thinkers apprehended with great clearness the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, though they failed to fortify it by systematic induction. In the writings of one of the Cheng brothers there is this passage : " Body in motion is force. Its contact with another is followed by a reaction or effect. This effect, in turn, acts as a force producing another effect, and so on without end." " Here," he adds, " is a vast subject for the ' student of philosophy.' " But alas ! Chinese " students
24 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
of philosophy " have not troubled themselves to verify this or any other
of the guesses of their predecessors. Chu remarks : " Heaven and earth,
with all they contain, are nothing but transformations of one primitive
force." And in another place, not quoted by Dr. Martin :
The primary matter in its evolutions hitherto, after one season of fullness has experienced one of decay; and after a period of decline it again flourishes, just as if things were going on in a circle. There never was a decay without a revival.
To be sure, here is the idea of transformation, but scarcely that of equivalence and conservation. Conservation implies quantitative rela- tions, and such are certainly not expressed here or in the high-spun theories of the context, just as they are lacking in the common affairs of the people. The action and reaction of impact are expressed, but the statement contains no hint of the principle of conservation of momentum. And besides there is evident confusion, perhaps in the translation only, between " force " and " energy."
Can any proper conception of the ether and of the conservation of energy be ascribed to a man (and he, the best of their philosophers) who in the same connection in which occur the other passages already given, writes:
Primary matter consists, in fact, of the four elements of metal, wood, water and fire, while the immaterial principle is no other than the four cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, prosperity and wisdom. The great extreme, a principle centered in nothing, and having an infinite extent, is the immaterial principle of the two powers, the four forms and the eight changes of nature; we can not say that it does not exist, and yet no form or coporeity can be ascribed to it. From this point is produced the one male and the female prin- ciple of nature, which are called the dual powers; the four forms and eight changes also proceed from this, all according to a certain natural order, irre- spective of human strength in its arrangement. But from the time of Confucius no one has been able to get hold of this idea.
And we might add, nor is it likely any one ever will.
6. Evolution. — Dr. Martin suggests that the fundamental idea of evolution was entertained by early Chinese sages. He quotes from Mencius :
The study of nature has for its object to get at the causes of things. In causes the ground principle is advantage. [The italics are ours.] Though Heaven is high and sun and stars are far away, if we could find out the causes of their phenomena, we might sit still and calculate the solstice of a thousand years.
In this word, written 400 b.c.^ Dr. Martin seems to find an indica- tion that Mencius knew how to set about the study of nature, and though not going so far as to say that in the word "advantage" we have an anticipation of Darwin's principle, he believes that this obscure hint, if followed up, might have led to Darwin's doctrine. But alas f the author of the quotation and all his followers for these two thousand
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 25
years " sat still," and so robbed themselves of the glory that might have been theirs !
7. The Defect. — It may be admitted that Chinese philosophers entertained some general ideas concerning an all-pervading medium, that they assumed an original unity of matter in all their cosmological speculations, that they had clear ideas on mechanical action and reaction, and very crude ones concerning the transformations of energy, which vaguely suggest those held to-day by the foremost investigators. But we see no just grounds for believing that they, or the Greeks, either, held any ideas comparable with the modern doctrines of vortex motion in the ether, of the conservation of energy, or of biological or cosmo- logical evolution, for it does not seem to us that in the case of either the Greeks or the Chinese should their vague guesses be regarded as true anticipation of modern science. The method of modern science is its distinguishing characteristic, and this was almost completely lacking among the Chinese, and to a less extent among the Greeks also. There is a vast chasm between rampant imagination and scientific imagina- tion, starting with observed facts and following paths that lead to re- sults which can be directly or indirectly verified.
It is not enough to find in an ancient writer a few or even a consid- erable number of sentences seemingly anticipatory of modern thought. Nor must we neglect the hundreds of other ideas embodied in the con- text which distinctly are not in accord with modern science. We must observe the scope and design of the writer ; inquire into his full aim and end in that book, or section, or paragraph, which will help to explain particular sentences. In particular propositions the sense of an author may sometimes be known by the inference which he draws from them himself; and all those meanings must be excluded from our interpreta- tion of what was in his mind, which will not allow of that inference. Yet even in them we must take heed, lest we mistake an alliision for an inference, which is often introduced in almost the same manner. We must carefully guard against " reading into " an ancient writing the modern connotation of the term employed centuries ago, and that too as translated by means of a very dissimilar language in its present-day equivalents.
Too often these Chinese philosophers (as did the Greeks) assumed innate tendency as the basis of their crude and vague speculations. But innate tendencies are not looked upon with as much favor in the philosophy of to-day as in that of past ages, and suggestions so inca- pable of verification have little or no value as scientific hypotheses.
However interesting and worthy of notice the results of this guess- work may be as representing the philosophical creed of China, they are in the present connection simply a mass of cosmological conjectures into the details of which it would be unprofitable to follow.
26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
IV. Causes of China's Backwaedness
Some of the major causes of China's backwardness in science become apparent when we compare her philosophical method with that which has characterized modern western inquiry, and to set this com- parison in stronger relief let us glance at some of the salient aspects of modern scientific knowledge, both as to method and as to content.
Some Salient Aspects of Modern Scientific Knowledge. —
A. As to Method.
1. The inductive method of philosophical inquiry, supplemented at times by the deductive. The study of many particular cases and the process of drawing a general conclusion based on observation, and the extension of the general principle thus deduced to individual cases not actually observed. Aristotle developed inductive logic, but William Gilbert of Colchester, the founder of the science of electricity and magnetism, first successfully applied the principles of inductive philos- ophy which later received such wide development under Francis Bacon. The ampliative inference of Gilbert and Bacon is to be distinguished as philosophical or real induction, in contradistinction to formal or logical induction. Philosophical induction has been the guiding star of all modern scientific effort and is responsible in no small measure for the remarkable progress thus far achieved. To-day the countersign of science is " method."
2. The spirit of accuracy in observation and the constant effort finally to express all observations in terms of the three fundamentals — length, mass and time. The coordinated and careful regulation of standards of measurement by all civilized governments under the guid- ance of leading physicists. Modern science is synonymous with " accuracy."
3. The development and wide application of the very powerful instrument of mathematical analysis, by which otherwise impassable fields of research are clearly traversed and made to yield their quota to our general theory of natural phenomena. The electro-magnetic theory of radiation in all its details is a most striking example.
B. As to Content.
1. Extension of the universe in space by the researches of the telescope, and of the microscope as well.
2. An all-pervading medium by which radiation, as manifested by either its chemical, optical, thermal or electric and magnetic effects, is propagated.
3. Extension of the universe in time, made necessary by observa- tions in physics as to the rate of cooling of the earth, combined with observations as to the physical condition and evolution of the stars; in geology as to the time required for the formation of the strata of the
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 27
earth's crust ; and in biology as to the evolutionary development of life.
4. The unity of the universe, (a) The doctrine of the conservation of energy as based upon quantitative investigation of energy transfor- mations and the exact determination of equivalence factors. (&) The doctrine of evolution as based on a wealth of observation in astronomy, geology, biology, psychology, and the ethical and religious development of man. (c) The suggested unity of matter resulting from recent investigations of discharge of electricity through gases and the prop- erties of radioactive substances.
On the other hand, let us glance at
Some of the Salient Features op the Chinese Conception of THE Universe. — ^A. As to Method.
1. Absence of the inductive method; prevalence of a priori deduc- tion from preconceived fantastic notions. Illustrations accepted as proof. Supposed analogy given highest weight.
2. Spirit of inaccuracy; in common affairs predominant; in system of weights and measures, where most needed for scientific progress, it almost defies description.
3. Lack of mathematical knowledge or method.
In the mere statement of these three characteristics we see at once three causes, or at least three related phases, of the general backward- ness of the Chinese in science, which sum up to " no method." Let us examine each of these sub-heads a little more in detail.
1. Alsence of the Inductive Method. — Chinese philosophers entered upon the task of physical speculation in a manner which showed the vigor and confidence of the questioning spirit, but no appreciation of the slow and patient process by which answers to nature's riddles are secured. They tried to discover the origin and principle of the universe rather by vague suggestions and casual analogies than by any course of reasoning that would bear examination. The first students wished, as do many to-day, to divine at a single glance or guess the whole import of nature's great book.
Western teachers of Chinese students are constantly impressed with their readiness to argue by illustration and to accept a single illustration as proof ; not that they consider that a single exception to a rule invali- dates its generality, but that from a single case a general law can be deduced. This is well shown by the following reply which was made by a college freshman in his geometry examination to the question : " What is a locus ?" the class having spent a due proportion of the term on loci problems. He was by no means an unskillful logician from the Chinese point of view, though he may have lacked geometrical percep- tion, when he answered " A locus is a straight line all the points of which are equally distant from the two sides." For he was simply
2 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
attempting to put in generalized form the first case of a locus which the class had studied, viz., that the perpendicular bisector of a straight line is the locus of all points (in the plane of the two lines) equally distant from the extremities of that line.
The method of the Chinese philosophers was a priori, and it seems- that they adopted this course, not through ignorance of the experimental method, but from choice. The maxim of Confucius that "knowledge comes from the study of things " could not be more out of place than it is in his pages. The Chinese claim that their sage wrote a treatise on the experimental study of nature, but that it was lost; and thus they explain the backwardness of their country in experimental sciences.
Practical as the Chinese confessedly are, it is rather remarkable that in the study of nature their philosophers have made practically no use of the inductive method, though it appears that some of them at least had glimmers of its virtue as early as five hundred years before Gilbert and Bacon. In the writings of the brothers Cheng there is the follow- ing question and answer :
One asked whether, to arrive at a knowledge of nature, it is necessary to investigate each particular object; or may not some one thing be seized upon from which the knowledge of many things may be derived.
The master replied : " A comprehensive knowledge of nature is not so easily acquired. You must examine one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and when you have accumulated a store of facts, your knowledge will burst its shell and come forth into fuller light, connecting all the particulars by general laws ! ' '
"We say they had glimmers of the virtue of the inductive method, for
it is hardly to be asserted that a philosopher really appreciated a method
which neither he nor his disciples practised, but merely spoke of once.
Contrast with the quotation just given this saying of Chang, the second
of the five great thinkers of the Sung dynasty:
To know nature, you must first know Heaven. If you have pushed your science so far as to know Heaven, then you are at the source of all things. Knowing their evolution you can tell what ought to be, and what ought not to be, without waiting for any one to inform you.
Between these two dicta we see the parting of the ways — one lead- ing only to a maze of hazy unverified and unverifiable speculations, the other destined to bring any philosopher who followed it into the presence of valid generalizations based on observation; and we see the sages of China choosing the wrong pathway, vainly seeking a short cut to universal knowledge by following what they considered by the light of inner reasoning to be the order of nature, instead of laboriously study- ing one thing at a time in order to connect " all the particulars by geaeral laws." Had her early thinkers taken the suggestion of the Chengs as their guiding star, China might to-day be the dean, instead of the most backward pupil in the school of science.
2. Spirit of Inaccuracy. — There is no more vexing factor in the life
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 29
of a foreigner than the utter lack of accuracy among the Chinese in most matters involving numerical relations. The ordinary troubles that one has with careless and even dishonest workmen and contractors are enhanced manyfold by reason of the discrepancies between the various measures used for different purposes though called by the same name. The method by which the units were adopted and fixed is lost in anti- quity, and the variations in the measures now used destroy any claim that there ever was a true standard recognized in any such way as the standard yard and meter are recognized and employed by western peo- ples to-day. It is extremely hard to secure any adequate and consistent information concerning the weights and measures actually in use.
For instance, the chih or unit of length differs according to the prov- ince and the prefecture, the city and the ward, the craft and the usage. There are in the " Chinese Commercial Guide " over a hundred different values of the chih as actually in use. Some of these are doubtless derived from ancient official chih, but the majority seem rather to be the caprice of custom. The variations are by no means small, the extreme values differing by more than 6 inches in a unit of approximately 14 inches on the average. In Shanghai for instance, the carpenter's rule is 11.14 inches long, whereas the mason's rule is as short as 10.9 inches, so that in a building 100 ft. long, if this difference were not realized by the architect and he furnished the same specifica- tions in Chinese measure to masons and carpenters, the frame of the house would overhang the stone foundations by two feet.
The distance between two points A and B, according to Chinese representation, depends not merely on the geometrical factor, but on others that determine the relative facility of travel between these points. It is further from A to B than from 5 to J., if 5 is upstream from A on a river, or at a greater elevation on a hill road. It is further between A and B at night or when raining than it is by day or when clear. While of course the practical philosophy of this way of regarding dis- tance is evident, it still is true that such failure to separate these factors from the geometrical factor in the form of statement operates to retard appreciation of accurate statement and accurate thinking.
Paper may be sold by the hundred sheets and yet by a desire to keep the stated cost per hundred uniform in spite of variations in quality, the dealer will " call " a less number of sheets a hundred sheets, so that when you request your servant to buy a hundred sheets of a certain paper, he returns with eighty and insists that " in that kind of paper a hundred sheets are only eighty!"
Although a first impression of China and the Chinese may be that of deadening uniformity, it takes but a little closer observation to show that this is just the opposite of the truth. Along with the manifold divergencies in speech and customs, which play a paramount part in the
30 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
life of the people, and which by a common saying do not run uniform for ten U together, there is a like diversity in those standards of quantity upon the absolute invariability of vi^hich so much of the comfort of life and the entire advance of science in western lands depend. So far from suffering any inconvenience in the existence of a double standard of any kind, the oriental seems keenly to enjoy it, and two kinds of weights, or two kinds of measures seem to him natural and normal, and modern education is only just beginning to open his eyes to the inherent objections.
The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on such a different line of assumptions from those to which we are accustomed, that they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the occidental to ascertain everything with unerring accuracy. Curiously enough, con- comitant with the early development of their system of weights and measures — a decimal system for the most part — the Chinese have become fixed in the habit of reckoning by tens, and frequently refuse to make a statement of number nearer to the truth than a multiple of ten. An old man is " seventy or eighty years of age," when you know for a certainty that he was seventy only a year ago. A few people are " ten or twenty," a " few tens," or perhaps " ever so many tens." The same vagueness runs in all their statements, and for greater accuracy than this the Chinese do not care, except when you are paying them money.
The first generation of Chinese chemists will probably lose " a few tens " of its number as a result of the process of mixing a " few tens of grains " of something with " several tens of grains " of something else, the consequence being an unanticipated explosion.
The Chinese are as capable of learning minute accuracy in all things as any nation ever was — nay, more so, for they are endowed with infinite patience, but what we are here remarking is that as at present constituted they are entirely free from the quality of accuracy and that they do not know what it means.
Under such circumstances it is not surprising that so little real progress has been made in experimental science.
3. Lack of Mathematical Knowledge. — Although the study of arithmetic attracted attention among the Chinese from early times and numerous treatises are extant, and Hindu processes in algebra have long been known to them, yet these branches even down to the end of the Ming dynasty (a.d. 1664) made only slow progress. Trigonometry was introduced by the early Jesuit missionaries and since foreigners have begun to teach western science the development in these elementary branches of mathematics has been fairly rapid. But still the knowl- edge of mathematics is very small even among learned men; the cum- bersome notation and the little aid such studies gave in the old-style examinations doubtless discouraged men from pursuing what they had
SCIENCE AMONG TEE CHINESE 31
no taste for as a people. No such instrument as modern mathematical analysis, or even their stock of algebraic notions, has ever been used by Chinese philosophers or even conceived of as an instrument of research in their attempts to solve nature's riddles.
Besides the failure to adopt an inductive method of inquiry, the spirit of inaccuracy, and the lack of mathematical genius or training, there are other potent causes of China's scientific backwardness as com- pared with European nations, chief among which has been the character of the language and the method of instruction.
4. The Language. — Meager as our knowledge of the language is, we have yet had sufficient direct and indirect contact with the people to be convinced that the lack of inflection which would enable number, tense, gender and mood to be briefly expressed, operates to produce ambiguity and hence inaccuracy in the very places where definiteness may be most needed. To be precise requires a clumsy use of words and thus the character of the language has inhibited precise statements and so precluded accurate thinking, without which there can be no proper science. On the other hand, the European tongues existed in a highly inflected state as derived from the more ancient Greek and Latin, and hence by their very character aided in the conquest of nature by affording clearness and precision in the expression of thought, and thus fostered the validity of the conclusions reached. But the Chinese mind has been hampered by a language the most tedious and inflexible, and has been wearied with a literature abounding in unsatisfactory theorizings.
The non-alphabetical character of the language prevents the assimi- lation of new terms from European tongues and makes the introduction of modern scientific terminology and thought extremely difiicult. To attempt to translate even where possible means cumbersomeness and circumlocution ; to try to represent the new term phonetically by using Chinese characters that sound nearly the same — means that additional characters must be added to signify that phonetic value alone is in- tended, otherwise the apparent " meaning will be meaningless " and even if this sign is added, there is no hint of the real meaning of the term thus represented. In many cases the best that can be done is but a rough approximation, since there are many sounds in European tongues entirely unknown to the Chinese and difiicult for them to acquire. About the only safe method in many cases is to introduce the foreign word as such in its own alphabetical form in the midst of the Chinese context — and thus necessitate the learning of it as a new " character " written on an entirely strange system.
5. The System of Education.^ — (a) The spirit of inquiry has been
^ See "The Content of Chinese Education," The Popular Science Monthly, January, 1906, and "The Passing of China's Ancient System of Literary Examinations," The Popular Science Monthly, February, 1906.
32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
quenched by adherence to the notions of the ancients as containing all that could be learned. Yet even the knowledge of astronomy, for instance, which is contained in their books, has not been taught.
(&) They have set no value on abstract science, apart from some obvious and immediate end of utility. There has been no cultivation of knowledge for its own sake among the Chinese ; their minds have not been broadened by the collection and investigation of facts; they have had few books, if any, on whose statements exact reliance could be placed.
(c) Political preferment was hitherto based on attainments in literature and politics; a knowledge of science was not used as a cri- terion and hence was not cultivated.
Thus throughout long ages the mind of China has been held in a false way, because no man of superior enlightenment arose to counteract the prevailing practise of putting thoughts in the place of things and facts, and it is likely that even had such a man arisen he would not have been able to counteract the attraction which drew all the vigorous and inquiring minds of the nation into the literary examinations. Hard labor then as now absorbed the energy and time of the masses while strife after official honors has consumed the talents of the learned.
6. The Influence of Astrologers and Fortune-tellers, Oeomancers, etc., and the Attitude of the Officials. — The curious and intimate con- nection between geomancy, horoscopy and astrology, which the Chinese presuppose, has had a powerful influence, just as it had in former times in Europe, in maintaining their errors, because of its bearing on every man's luck.
Even when aided in no small measure by Europeans, especially by the Jesuit missionaries, the Chinese have seemed unable to advance in astronomy when left to themselves, and still cling to superstitions against every evidence. The speculations of their philosophers by their curious system of elementary correspondencies have led them away from carefully recording facts and processes, and they have gone on, as Williams says, " like a squirrel in a cage, making no progress toward real knowledge."
Even when more enlightened concepts of the realm of nature have been at hand and their acceptance even urged, Chinese officials have opposed their spread among the common people. There is not even yet an adequate government effort at popular education. The chief aim is still, as under the old examination system, the training of future officials and government servants. Europeans were employed for many years in compiling the calendar, but they were not allowed to interfere in the astrological part. The Chinese government apparently has deemed and still deems it necessary to uphold ancient superstitions, in order thereby to influence its own security and strengthen the reverence due it.
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 33
V. The Outlook
1. Tlie language difficulty is being struggled with, style is being simplified, punctuation lias been introduced. The language is growing and becoming clearer in the hands of modern trained Chinese. The development of the language so as to be able adequately to express the content of modern knowledge presents a most tremendous problem, which only native scholars highly trained in modern thought and equally familiar with their native tongue and its previous development can solve. It will take time, but this difficulty will ultimately be over- come. It is, however, an even greater problem than would have been presented had all the content of modern knowledge knocked at the door of eleventh-century English and demanded immediate expression. The unification of the language of the Empire as foreshadowed by the present determination to make Mandarin universally known will of course aid in this development. So long as this language difficulty remains so largely unsolved, it will be necessary to conduct the higher grades of instruction in the sciences with English as the medium — at least for those who are themselves to be leaders in this renaissance. To have a share in the preparation of men who will solve this problem is about as far as the foreigner can hope to go.
2. A more widespread contact with translations of western books is slowly but surely bringing the reading Chinese into a fuller apprecia- tion of western or more scientific thinking. Their increasing familiar- ity with the inventions and methods of the west is undermining their superstition, as is also the spread of Christian theology. Eecently we came across two very amusing indications of the difficulties involved in such an awakening among the common people — one in Shantung and one in Hunan, both with regard to the telegraph.
In Shantung an old farmer was seen contemplating the telegraph wire as it wended its crooked way across his fields. His neighbor remarked that the men who could devise and make use of such a line for the transmission of intelligence could do anything, but the old man replied that he did not think it was worth very much, because he had sat for some weeks watching the wire closely and he had not yet seen anything go by.
In Hunan, in traversing the main high road from Heng Chow to Yung Chow, we noticed a great number of worn-out straw sandals of carrying coolies, tied in pairs, hanging over the telegraph wire at many places along the line. At one place between poles, there were at least a dozen pairs, and on inquiring of the coolies what the meaning was, we learned that since the coolies were paid by the journey it was very advantageous for them to be swift of foot, and so when their sandals were worn out with much travel, if they succeeded in tossing a pair
VOL. LXXX. - 3.
34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
so as to hang from the telegraph wire^ they would have the good luck to be as swift of foot as was the electric message in its transmission.
3. Because of its contact with the west in trade, religion and educa- tion, and chiefly under the influence of mission schools the Chinese government has altered its educational policy, and the changes in the method of instruction and the system of education are for the most part tending to develop a spirit of inquiry and an appreciation of the inductive method, which will after a while begin to yield due fruit. When the influence of returned students who have been adequately trained in western countries and that of the graduates from first-class mission and government colleges becomes more potent, we can expect to see a much more rapid development of the educational system, but here again the magnitude of the undertaking and the difficulties as to efficient teaching force and adequate resources are such, that only natives can handle the ultimate solution. We teachers from abroad can hardly expect to do more than to give the impulse and to help in the preparation of the vanguard of such an advance.
4. When special and general education has proceeded far enough to provide the trained men needed to make the various adjustments involved in the tremendously complex and many-sided renaissance of this nation and to have provided the background of an enlightened people, there will of a surety be found among Chinese students many who will desire to follow the torch of learning and of truth for its own sake, some of whom, we believe, will attain a high degree of analytical power and experimental skill, for the Chinese after all are capable of exact and careful thought under right conditions, and moreover possess unusual patience and manual skill, so that in the long run we think they may be distinguished in regard to scientific attainments pretty much as the Germans have been for the last century. There are to-day in some of the universities of America and Europe Chinese students who in laboratory work in physics and other natural sciences are dis- tinguishing themselves even in comparison with western students. The Chinese have a power of application and patience and a capacity for detail that is destined to bring success in scientific inquiry when once they get the background, adopt the method and make the start.
5. The irresistible progress destined to be made by western science in the Chinese empire will surely undermine Chinese faith in the " Book of Changes," which is at the base of Chinese philosophy. What- ever is permanently true will remain in imperishable blocks, but the structure as a whole will fall in ruins, with Chinese ideals pitilessly and irrevocably shattered. At this critical period of the disintegration of outworn forces, what new moral and spiritual ideas are to replace the old in order that the new state of these people may not be worse than the first?
SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 35
Mere education in the science of the west, mere contact with west- ern civilization, commerce, railways, telegraphs, mines, etc., can not be expected and are not calculated to regenerate China, because they have no direct moral or spiritual value, and the Chinese seem never to have been profoundly moved by other than moral and spiritual forces.
Education which deals only with coordinated physical or mental facts, conducted however thoroughly, does not prove adequate for the regulation of the conduct of mankind. It is so chiefly intellectual, that it leaves man's highest nature unsatisfied and almost untouched; therefore it is imperative in the present intellectual and material awakening that the more subtle forces which will profoundly afiect the soul of the race should be fostered side by side with these others, and that full advantage be taken of the critical state presented by this transition, in order to gain for Christianity its rightful place among the educated men of the rising generation.
At the same time care must be taken to avoid repetition of the unwarranted conflict between science and religion. Our instruction must be such that these two departments are not regarded as antago- nistic, but as supplementary, not only in affecting daily life and conduct, but supplementary also as revelations of the character and purposes of God. We must also avoid the tendency to impose a system which is the outgrowth of western civilization without due regard for the oriental character and mode of thinking.
The wide diffusion of Christianity in its best form will not sud- denly introduce the millennium into China, for all intermediate stages must be passed through before the goal is reached, but it will for the first time in Chinese history, realize the motto of the ancient Tang repeated so impressively in these latter days by Chang Chi Tung: " Eenovate, renovate the people." Thus alone can the empire be adapted to the altered conditions brought about by the impact of western thought. Christianity has been tried as yet upon a small scale only, but has already brought forth fruit after its kind. When it shall have been thoroughly tested and have had opportunity to develop its potentialities in a manner specially adapted to the situation, it will give to China intellectually, morally and spiritually the long sought for elixir of a new life.
36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
NOTES ON NOEWEGIAN INDUSTRY
By Professor JAS. LEWIS HOWE
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNI-VTEESITY
THE kingdom of Norway occupies about one third of the Scandi- navian j^eninsula, and covers approximately 100,000 square miles of territory. From Vardo, its most northern point, to Lindesnas on the extreme southern coast is 1,100 miles, 400 miles of this line being north of the Arctic circle. The northern portion of Norway is very narrow. A strip of Russian Finland extends westward to within sixty miles of the Atlantic coast, and to within twenty miles of tide- water on Bals-fjord. Mo, at the head of the Ranen-fjord near the Arctic circle, is but twenty miles from the Swedish frontier. At Trondhjem Norway has a width of eighty miles, but from here south- ward it rapidly widens, till north of Bergen it reaches its extreme breadth of about 250 miles.
The surface of Norway is for the most part barren highland, ex- cept in the south largely covered with great snow-fields till late sum- mer, and much of it uninhabitable. The whole coast line is deeply indented by fjords, each with its many branches, all of deep water, and except in the extreme north rarely covered with ice. Into these fjords descend valleys, generally short and narrow, with precipitous sides. A few important valleys, generally in the south, are longer and broader, with gentler slopes. Each valley has its stream, fed from the upland snow, and often widening into a long, narrow lake. Along the coast are countless rocky islands, known as the Skjaergaard, which so fringe the shore that it is possible for a steamer to pass from Vardo to Kristiania with but few occasions to traverse the open sea. Norway thus resembles a chain of mountains with deeply dissected valleys, which has been sunk many himdred feet into the ocean. Such indeed may be considered the bare outline of a part of its geological history. In the north, Sweden is the more gradual eastern slope of this moun- tain chain.
The history of Norway has been largely determined by its physiog- raphy in the past, and we can not doubt that the same will be true in the future. The only habitable portions of the country being the nar- row shores of the fjords and the restricted valleys, the pasture land being greatly limited and the arable land yet more so, the population was sparse and scattered, and few cities of any considerable size arose. To-day Norway has less than two and a half million inhabitants; of these about 230,000 are in Kristiania, 80,000 in Bergen, while Trond-
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
37
Fig. 1. Norwegian Uplands in Summer. Snow fences ou the Bergen-Kristiania railroad.
hjem and Stavanger are the only other cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants, and only eight more have over 10,000.
Farming and grazing have always been the chief industries of Nor- way and at present more than half the population are so engaged. In the south, where the valleys are broader, general farming is practised, but in the north the life of the farmer is hard. Here the only crops are potatoes and barley, and these are cultivated in the bits of soil oil the rocky mountain sides, even far north of the Arctic circle, indeed, it is said that the best potatoes are raised on Ando, one of the Vesteraalen Islands, at latitude 69°. Cattle are pastured in summer as far up the mountains as grass can he found, while every wisp of hay is gathered for winter use, not only on the lower levels, but among rocks and on slopes so steep that cattle could not find a foothold. Most of the calves are shipped, as comparatively few can be carried through the winter on the meager sustenance. Sheep and goats are raised but in small numbers.
Next to farming the chief industry of Norway is fishing, and in winter all the farmers living on the fjords become fishermen. The great center of the fishing industry is the Lofoten Islands, on the west coast, north of the Arctic circle. Here in winter and early spring as- semble upwards of 40,000 fishermen from all of the fjords of western Norway, even from below Bergen. The fishing is chiefly in Vest-fjord, the broad, open body of water between the Lofotens and the mainland, for here the cod swarm in immense numbers. The fishermen scatter
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 2. Norwegian Uplands in Summer. Snow field near Djupvashvitten. " In many places the snow has not disappeared by the end of summer, and thus furnishes a continual supply of water."
themselves in rude huts along the shore, and when the fish arrive they • are notified by telephone. A season's catch is often valued at nearly $2,000,000. The fish are brought on shore and dried; the heads and backbones are ground for fertilizer, or boiled with hay for cattle food; the livers are tried for cod-liver oil. This fishing, like that of the New- foundland Banks, is attended with great loss of life. Brought up in such a school, it is not surprising that so many Norwegians are sailors and that Norway ranks next to England and the United States in mari- time commerce, nor that Norwegian masters command vessels in all parts of the world, from the whalers of Japan to the fruiters on our own east coast. In addition to the cod fisheries, the herring fisheries occupy many men, while a smaller number fish for salmon, salmon- trout, and market sea-fish, as well as lobsters.
The third great industry of Norway is that connected Avith timber. While the highlands are barren, the lower slopes, even far to the north, are densely wooded. The most important woods are pine and spruce, and in the more northern portions birch is abundant, indeed far be- vond the line of conifers the white birch continues, until it becomes at last so stunted that it is hardly more than a bush, and we are above the tree-line. The fashion of building houses is evidence of the wealth of timber. In the north all houses are built of logs, hewn smooth on two sides and hollowed on tlfe lower side to fit the unhewn, rounded top, thus avoiding a crack. At the corners and where the partitions meet the walls, the logs are carefully dovetailed together, so that the
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
39
Fig. 3. Waterfall on Hundvik-fjoed. The steep walls of the fjords are often lined with such waterfalls.
houses present a very neat appearance. The roofs may be of slabs, shingles, slate, some of the latter being rather great flags of mica-schist, and in the poorer and older houses of turf. This turf often grows in a very flourishing manner, so that quite a crop of hay could be gathered from the roof. Farther south the houses are generally of the same type, but in the place of logs plank are used, from three to four inches in thickness. After my attention had been called to this point, I kept a lookout for ordinary boards, but the thinnest I saw were by actual measurement two and a half inches thick. From this almost wasteful use of lumber as it would seem to us, it follows that all Norwegian houses are very substantially built and one would imagine that they would be of rather slow-burning construction. The contrary seems to be the ease, for almost every town of any size has been repeatedly de- vastated by fire, so that old houses are by no means common, indeed most iSTorwegian cities have a decidedly modern appearance. The city of Bergen has a number of broad avenues, purposely kept open to pre- vent the spread of fires. It should be added that stone and brick are rapidly replacing wood in the larger cities, much reducing the fire risk. While large amounts of timber are used for building and still larger quantities are exported, by far the largest amount is used for wood- pulp. Here comes into use Norway's enormous water-power, for the so-called mechanical pulp is most largely manufactured. All over southern Norway are these pulp mills, where the wood is disintegrated by rough stones, much like an ordinary mill-stone. The pulp is
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 4. Falls and Power House of Teondiijeji Electric Works. Only a portion of the power of this stream is at present used.
thoroughly macerated by water and pressed into sheets, which are sold to the paper manufacturers of England. America and the continent. The logs are floated down to the mills in enormous quantities and the frequent lakes along the river courses serve as storehouses for the logs till used. One may often see acres of water thus covered with logs.
The one great drawback to manufacturing industry in Norway is the lack of all fuel except wood and peat. There is a little deposit of coal in one of the Vesteraalen Islands, but it is difficult to work and very little mined. On the coast it is of course possible to import coal, but this is hardly used outside of the larger cities. The ordinary fuel everywhere is wood, but this is naturally hardly applicable to indus- tries. But if Norway is badly off for fuel, she is unique in her water- power. Doubtless the water-power of America surpasses that of Nor- way, but here it is scattered from Maine to Georgia, and from Idaho to Texas. In Norway it is everywhere, from Kristiania to North Cape. In winter the whole highland of Norway, and this includes the largest proportion of her area, is covered with deep snow. This melts very gradually and in many places has not disappeared by the end of sum- mer. There is thus a continual supply of water, from elevations of six thousand feet down to nearly sea level. This water has a very short dis- tance to go before reaching the sea, and few of the rivers are navigable for any considerable length. The many lakes found in their courses serve as inexhaustible storage reservoirs, while the short stretches of river connecting the lakes generally have a very steep fall. Norway thus abounds in waterfalls, the water often descending a thousand feet
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
41
Fig. 5. ViDE-DAL : a Typical Valley. Fifty waterfalls were counted within two miles of the spot from which the picture was taken. The valley stream flows into a lake, one end of which Is visible, and which is only 90 feet above tidewater.
or more in one or a few leaps. Her water power is thus Norway's great- est natural resource, compensating for her paucity of mineral wealth and lack of fuel. Upon this water-power is Norway's dependence for her industrial development.
In the early days on every farm might be seen little water mills for grinding grain and for mechanical purposes. At a comparatively re- cent date came the pulp mills and electric ligiit and power plants. To the ordinary traveler it would seem that Scandinavia leads the world to-day in applied electricity. It is well known that Stockholm is better supplied with telephones than any other city of the world, having one instrument for every six of its inhabitant-^. One can send a telegram anywhere in these countries for thirteen cents. Even in the far north electric lights are generally used, and the fixtures and service leave nothing to be desired.. Kiruna, a mining town north of the Arctic cir- cle, has an electric railroad.
The larger possibilities of electric industries Jire now being recog- nized in Norway, and capital is being rapidly supplied by the wealthier countries of Europe. Unless the restrictions placed upon industry liy a government strongly tinctured by socialistic ideas shall prevent, Nor- way will in the near future become one of the greatest, if not the great- est, industrial center of Europe. In possibilities it yields only to America. At present there are about twelve electric industries already in operation in Norway and several more are nearly ready to begin work. These include such diversified manufactures as aluminum, sodium, zinc.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Pig. 6. Odde : Cakbid and Cyanamid Works. A beautiful secluded nook at the head of Sor-fjord has been transformed into an industrial center, with an ever-present pall of smoke.
pig iron and steel, calcium carbid and cyanamid, nitrates and nitrites. Two lines of this development I have recently had the opportunity of studying rather carefully, and these will be described somewhat in de- tail.i
The first is the manufacture of calcium cyanamid. The history of this substance, which bids fair to become an important article of com- merce, may be worth briefly recounting. In 1836 Sir Humphry Davy in pre'paring metallic potassium, obtained a substance containing cal- cium and carbon, which gave off a badly smelling gas when placed in water. A quarter of a century later Woehler obtained the same sub- stance by fusing a calcium-zinc alloy with coal, and he recognized the gas which was evolved when this was put in water, as acetylene. In 1890 Winckler found that by reducing calcium carbonate by magnesium the same substance could be formed, and four years later Moissan pre- pared the substance, now recognized as calcium carbid, in quantity, by reducing limestone with coke in the electric furnace, thus founding the great carbid and acetylene industry of the present. Since the great development of the extraction of gold from poor ores by potassium cyanid, every effort has been made to prepare cyanid more economically, and in 1904 it was found that barium cyanid, the analog of calcium
' For much of the data regarding these plants I must express my indebted- ness to the courtesy of Mr. G. "W. Sinclair, of the Northwestern Cyanamide Company of Odda, and of Mr. A. Scott-Hansen, of the Norsk Hydro-Elektrisk Kvaelstofaktieselskab of Kristiania. For any comments I am alone responsible.
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
43
Fig. 7. Tyssa : The Power Plant fob the Odde Cakbid and Ctanamid Woeks. The water is brought down 1,450 feet in these two pipes, furnishing 22,000 horse- power.
carbid, when heated in an atmosphere of nitrogen, absorbed the latter forming barium cyanid. But barium cyanid is expensive, so that the same experiment was carried out on the cheaper calcium carbid, now an article of commerce, in hope that calcium cyanid would be formed. Nitrogen was indeed absorbed, but half the carbon of the carbid was lost in the process, giving not calcium cyanid, but calcium cyanamid, which contains for each atom of calcium two atoms of nitrogen but only one of carbon. A study of this new substance revealed the fact that when put in water it was decomposed and all its nitrogen given off as ammonia. Now with the inadequate supply of ammonia from gas- works and the decreasing supply of nitrate from Chili, the world has been staring a fertilizer famine in the face, and every effort has been made to devise some way of combining the nitrogen of the atmos- phere for the use of growing crops. Here in this new discovery was a possibility of manufacturing ammonia, needing for raw materials only limestone, coal and air, all cheap, and an electric furnace. The last could be only economically used when the electricity was furnished by water.
A few years ago a calcium carbid plant was established at Odda at the head of the Sor-f jord, one of the most beautiful branches of the Hardanger-fjord. To turn the carbid into cyanamid merely requires heating in an atmosphere of nitrogen, and nitrogen composes four- fifths of the air. But the problem of separating the oxygen and nitro- gen of the air is by no means easy of solution on a large scale. Suffice
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Pig. 8. Notodden. Portion of the Saltpeter Works near Notodden.
it to say that it is now accomplished industrially and it was my privi- lege to see the working of the whole process at Odda. The air is first liquified as in ordinary liquid-air machines, and then the constituent gases separated by rectification, using much the same process as that by which alcohol is separated from water. The difficulty of the process depends upon the low temperatures necessary. Oxygen boils at — 182° and nitrogen at — 194° Centrigrade. The air must of course be com- pletely freed from moisture and also from carbon dioxid, for at the temperatures used both are solids and would clog the pipes. All the difficulties have been successfully overcome and from the stills the nitrogen is boiled off in an almost pure condition. Delicate tests in the laboratory show that on the average not over 0.2 per cent, of oxygen is present. The commercial weakness of the process is the fact that there is no use for the fairly pure oxygen which is left, which in many places would be very valuable and probably pay the whole cost of operating. The calcium carbid is ground and exposed for two days in an atmos- phere of the pure nitrogen. While the absorption of nitrogen is an exothermic reaction, it must be started and supported in the initial stages by a supply of heat from some external source, and for this elec- tric heating with carbon anodes is used. The resultant mass is a fairly pure cyanamid, with uniform nitrogen content of 20 per cent. From the cyanamid ammonia is easily obtained by the action of water, and this being absorbed by sulfuric acid gives the ammonium sulfate so ex- tensively used as a fertilizer. At present the sulfuric acid for this ab- sorption must be imported, but an electric zinc smelter is in process of
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
45
Fig. 9. Hitterdal-kykke. This church, which is built of wood, has stood in this smiling valley for neai-ly 700 years. Note that the bell tower is across the road from the church.
construction which will furnish sulfuric acid as a by-product. In many cases it has proved simpler to use the cyanamid itself directly as a fer- tilizer, letting the moisture of the soil convert it into ammonia as needed. On many soils the nitrogen of the cyanamid is found to be equally efficient with that of ammonia or of nitrate, while on other soils it has less value. Its use has, however, become established and we may look for the installation of cyanamid plants in many places where water-power is cheap. A plant on the Canadian side at ISTiagara Palls is already in successful operation.
A word regarding the power of the Odda plant may not be amiss, as it illustrates the resources of Norway in this line. The power plant is at Tyssa, some four miles distant from the cyanamid works. The water is brought down to the dynamos in two pipes of rolled steel 1^ inches thick and about two meters in diameter, with a fall of 1,450 feet, de- veloping 22,000 horse-power for the cyanamid and carbid works. This is shortly to l:)e increased by raising the level of the water supply, and it is said that there will be a development of 125,000 horse-power. The current is transmitted from the power house at 11,400 volts and is stepped down to 75 volts for th^ cyanamid manufacture and to 400 volts for the liquid air plant.
Another, and even more important effort to solve the problem of manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer from the atmosphere has been the at- tempt to convert the nitrogen of the air into saltpeter. It has long been known that when an electric discharge is passed through air, the
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 10. RJUKAN-Fos Uppee Powee House. " The water is brought down in ten pipes, each unit to furnish 14,000 horse-power."
nitrogen and oxygen combine to form nitric oxid. This unites directly with more oxygen forming nitrogen dioxid, which when dissolved in water gives a mixture of nitric and nitrous acids. A very high tem- perature is necessary to cause the first union of nitrogen and oxygen, and at this temperature equilibrium is established wlien less than two per cent, of the nitrogen is oxidized. At a somewhat lower tempera- ture the nitric oxid is decomposed into nitrogen and oxygen, so that it is no simple matter to cool this nitric oxid from the temperature at which it is formed, without having it completely decomposed in the process. This has, however, now been successfully accomplished at Notodden, where I was given an opportunity of inspecting the plant. A peculiar form of electric furnace is used, in which a flaming arc is driven back and forth along copper electrodes by electro-magnets. Through this arc air is blown, and in its passage a small proportion is converted into nitric oxid. It passes so quickly that very little of that which has been formed is decomposed, but on the contrary it is by tlie excess of air present converted into the dioxid.
The gases coming from the furnaces are cooled by passing through pipes in boilers, and thus incidentally furnish more steam than is needed for the whole plant, completely eliminating the item of coal, usually such an important part of the cost of manufacture in all in- dustrial plants. The gases are then passed up large towers filled with broken quartz, down which water trickles. The oxid of nitrogen is ab- sorbed, furnishing a dilute nitric acid. This is then pumped to large
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY
47
Fig. 11. RJUKAN-FOS Saltpeter Wokks. Looking down the valley. From this stream " within a few years 26U,000 horse-power will be available, all to be used for nitrate manufacture."
tanks where it is neutralized with limestone, forming calcium nitrate or lime-saltpeter. The solution is evaporated and the resulting nitrate fused. It is either run in a melted condition into sheet-iron drums or into large tanks where it solidifies. The drums are sealed and are ready for shipment. The nitrate which has solidified in tanks is broken up, ground and shipped in air-tight barrels. It is guaranteed to con- tain 13 per cent, nitrogen, but generally runs somewhat higher. The market is of course unlimited, except as far as it is in competition with Chili saltpeter and with ammonium sulfate. It has been found pos- sible to compete with Chili saltpeter even on the Pacific coast. The greatest difficulty which would seem to militate against the artificial product, is that it is very hygroscopic, or rather, deliquescent. This difficulty seems to be practically overcome by shipping the product in excellent wooden barrels manufactured by the works themselves. Ex- perience and experiments have proved that the nitrate shipped in this manner keeps as long as it is practically found necessary. In many soils the presence of the lime rather than soda in the fertilizer is a dis- tinct advantage.
Another product of the same factory is ammonium nitrate, for which there is a large market in the manufacture of explosives. For this the nitric acid is neutralized with ammonia (imported at present from England) and the solution evaporated to crystallization in vacuum pans, very similar to those used in sugar factories. The nrod-
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 12. RjUKAN-FOS Saltpeter Works. The water is carried from ttie upper power house to the lower through a tunnel just within the walls of the cliff. The current from both power houses will be brought to this building, in which will be utilized more electric power than any single plant in the w^.Id.
net must be sold under a guarantee of 99.5 per cent- purity, but all the recent shipments I was told were 99.98 per cent. pure. Sodium nitrite is also manufactured, which is very extensively used in the color-works of Germany, and apparatus is being installed to immediately increase the amount produced.
At present in this plant 40,000 horse power are used, brought down from the Svaelgfos on the Tinelv, while farther down the same stream and in the outskirts of Notodden the Tinfos, with a fall of 65 feet, is utilized for pulp mills. Between these two falls on the Tinelv is another, the Lienfos, and here a dam is nearly completed which will furnish an additional 15,000 horse power to the Notodden works.
As soon as the success of the nitrate factory at Notodden was as- sured measures were taken to utilize the water of the Rjukanfos, higher up on the same watershed. This fall, though rather inacces- sible, has long been considered one of the finest in N'orway. The water plunges down more than 1,600 feet, almost 800 feet of this being in a single drop. Below the fall the stream is a mass of rapids for several miles before it reaches the beautiful Tinsjo, a " finger lake," some twenty miles long and perhaps two broad in its widest portion.
The engineering problem at the Rjukanfos was by no means simple, but is being solved by bringing the water down in two steps. From the top of the fall the water is carried in a tunnel and by open canal to a point above the upper works, which are near the foot of the fall, but
NOTES ON NORWEGIAN INDUSTRY 49
not on as low a level. To these works the water is brought down in ten pipes, each unit to furnish 14,000 horse power. After being utilized here the water is to be carried through a tunnel in the side of the mountain walls for about four miles, where it is again dropped, this time to the bottom of the valley. In the lower works 120,000 horse power will be obtained. Judging by the progress already made it would seem probable that within a few years the full 260,000 horse power will be available, all to be used for nitrate manufacture. The Tinelv drains an area of more than a thousand square miles of high- land. One lake alone near its head waters has an area of fifteen square miles and an elevation of nearly 3,000 feet, while the water of Tinsjo which is below the Ejukanfos, drops 550 feet in reaching ISTotodden.
The development has been largely carried on by a Scandinavian- French company and by the Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik, the great dyestuff manufacturers of Germany. These two companies have now combined their forces and each has a half interest in the Rjukan plant. A railroad has been built from Notodden to the foot of Tinsjo, and another from the head of the lake to the Rjukan works. A steam ferry-boat conveys freight trains the length of the lake and a larger one is now building by means of which all trains will go through with- out change from Notodden to Saaheim, where the lower Ejukan works are situated. It is said to be rather a cross for the owners of the rail- road to run passenger trains, but this the government compels them to do. A busy town has sprung up at Saaheim and here, as at most in- dustrial towns in Scandinavia, the workmen are well housed. Every house has a garden where not only vegetables, but also flowers are culti- vated with great care. When I was there the poppies and dahlias were in magnificent bloom. In every window, and this is practically true all over Norway, were pots of flowers and Nottingham lace curtains. Notodden, on the other hand, resembled a western mining camp. It has the reputation of being the toughest place in Norway, and though pro- hibition is legally enforced, there is said to be a large amount of drunkenness. I must add, however, that during two months travel in Scandinavia I saw but three drunken men, one in Stockholm, one at Gellivare in northern Sweden, and the third in Notodden. It is safe to predict that this region of northern Telemarken, which includes the watershed of the Tinelv, will become one of the most important cen- ters of electric industry in the world, though there may be a question as to whether Norway will be able to furnish sufficient labor for the increasing development. The Norwegians are by tradition and habit farmers and fishermen and it remains to be seen how effectively they can be transformed into industrial labor. Nitrate factories will nat- urally spring up elsewhere, since it is an industry, remarkable in that
VOL. LXXX. — 4.
so THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
the demand for the product is actually unlimited, while the raw materi- als cost almost nothing, limestone being the only expense, and no fuel is required. Any place where water-power is cheap and limestone can be obtained is suitable for a nitrate factory. With increasing supply the price of nitrate will of course drop, which will be a boon to the farmers. As there is unlimited water-power in Norway, and the in- dustry is already established there, that land will have a great advantage in future competition.
As regards mineral resources, for a land of mountains Norway seems to be exceedingly poor. At Kongsberg are silver mines which have been worked for nearly three centuries, but the output is now com- paratively small. They are more celebrated for the fact that the ore consists largely of native silver and some of the specimens, especially those taken out at earlier periods, are magnificent. The work in these mines seems to be kept up at present, not so much from productiveness or profit, as for the purpose of furnishing employment to the families of those who have been brought up in the mines.
In various parts of Norway copper is found and has been worked from time to time, but the deposits have thus far proved poor and limited in extent, and none of the mines have been commercial suc- cesses. The same may be said of the few deposits of coal and iron. It seems possible, however, that Norway may find an unlooked-for value in some of her deposits of minerals of rare elements, for which at any time there may be a great demand. Among her older rocks have al- ready been discovered many minerals of great scientific interest, in- cluding Broeggerite, the most radio-active of known minerals. Never- theless, it is to her unrivaled water-power that Norway must primarily look for her industrial development.
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS IN PURE SCIENCE 51
THE DUTIES TO THE PUBLIC OF EESEARCH INSTITU- TIONS IN PURE SCIENCE
Bx Peofbssor WM. E. RITTER
SCIENTIFIC DIEECTOK OF THE SAN DIEGO MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION
THOSE most familiar with the Marine Biological Station of San Diego must have recognized that while up to the present moment it has devoted itself almost exclusively to research, an undoubted tend- ency has been manifested to depart from the strait and narrow way. Elementary instruction was given to young people several summers; an aquarium and museum open to the public free of charge were main- tained a number of years; from time to time popular lectures and demonstrations have been given by the investigators connected with the laboratory; recently relations have been entered into with the Cali- fornia State Game and Fish Commission and with the United States Bureau of Soils for the investigation of industrial problems pertaining to the sea; and in various less obvious ways efforts have been made to be of service outside the realm of exclusive research.
It seems desirable to place on record more fully than has hitherto been done the ideas held by the scientific director touching the duties to the public of institutions for research in science generally and of this station particularly.^
As a point of departure for what is to be said we take the assertion that " Science for its own sake " as frequently understood is a false and unrealizable ideal. Science " for its own sake," art " for its own sake," wealth or anything else " for its own sake," if held without fundamental qualification, bears the germs of its own degradation if not of its death. Science can no more live " to itself alone " than can a human being. The fallacy prevalent here is in reasoning that because science and because art each has an exalted intrinsic nature and worth, it therefore has a nature and worth quite apart from its relation to other things and to men. Somehow it seems difficult to grasp the truth that the worth of science is in deepest essence partly intrinsic or resident, and partly extrinsic and relative. However, that its essential worth is thus two- fold becomes obvious upon reflection. On the one hand science has a nature of its very own, an absolute nature. It is not anything else whatever. It is not religion, it is not philosophy, it is not art of any kind, it is not mathematics, it is not commerce. At the same time,
* Indeed this little essay is in the first instance an administrative document addressed to the patrons and board of managers of the station.
52 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
equally true is it that science never has existed, nor can it be conceived as existing wholly apart from the world of other interests. For in- stance, science simply could not be without objects of nature to operate on, and appliances such as instruments and chemicals and literature to work with. And more interesting still from the standpoint of method, verification and confirmation (almost always by more than one worker) are entirely essential to science. Science is as certainly communal as it is individual.
The communal functions of science on the material side are suffi- ciently recognized in what is known as modern civilization. The incal- culable worth of " applied science," commonly so-called, for human life under this type of culture is questioned to only a negligible extent. There is no need of either exposition or apologetic on behalf of this aspect of science.
Not so with science in its relation to the higher, the spiritual, life of men. Looked at from this standpoint it is truly surprising that the value attached to science should be so largely that of physical utility. To be sure, there is a rather general recognition that science, or certain aspects of it, are valuable for mental discipline, especially of the powers of observation. It is allowed, too, that science has an important func- tion in delivering men from superstition. Beyond this little is claimed for science as a contributor to the higher needs and life of humanity. All along the line, educators, publicists, clergymen, politicians, journal- ists and, surprisingly, scientific men themselves, appear to take it for granted that the office of science is primarily to minister to man's bodily needs, and secondarily to sharpen his wits. If anything beyond this comes from it, so current opinion holds, this is quite incidental and secondary.
My belief is that science must justify its right to live and flourish, not alone by its ministrations to physical well-being, but also to the higher and highest reaches of man's nature. While 1 do not for a moment subscribe to the view held by a few, that science is everything, that by and by it will supplant religion, philosophy, ethics, art and the rest, I am fully persuaded that as civilization advances it must become ever more and more an underpinning and ally of all these.
The distinction between an institution of applied science and one of pure science might be stated thus: The former is one the primary aim of which is to use certain more or less well-established truths and principles of science to the answering of man's needs and desires in certain well-defined directions. For example, the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture is for the purpose of applying chemistry, physics and geology to the end of increasing the productivity of the land of the United States. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is for the "perfection of physicians in tropical
BE SEARCH INSTITUTIONS IN PURE SCIENCE 53
hygiene " and for " investigations in tropical diseases." An institution of pure science, on the other hand, should be one the primary aim of which is to extend the bounds of man's knowledge of nature in a speci- fied field, and to show something of the significance of the new knowl- edge for the higher life of mankind. To be more definite, an institu- tion of research in biology or in astronomy could justify its existence, in a democratic country like ours, only by making considerable addi- tions to knowledge atid then hy showing in language comprehensible to the generally hut non-technicaUy educated members of the community, something of the meaning of this Jcnowlcdge for human beings in both the physical and the spiritual aspects of their natures.^
I now mention certain biological discoveries and generalizations which have, as I believe, very great importance to civilized men but which are by no means as widely known as they ought to be and might be, and which can become thus known only through the efforts of profes- sional biologists.
The significance of omne vivum ex vivo (all life from preceding life) not only for philosophic biology, but for the attitude of thoughtful people generally toward the problems of practical living, should be more clearly and firmly grasped than it has been. That the dictum is solely an expression of the summed-up results of technical science and prac- tical experience, that so far it has not encountered the crucial " one exception " and hence ranks with gravitation as one of the best estab- lished of nature's laws, and that its unescapable implication is that the succession of living beings in nature was without beginning, that is to say, has come from an infinite past, are matters readily susceptible of popular presentation and may be counted on to greatly interest many people were the subject to be presented by the biologist who himself had fully grasped the problems and clearly seen their significance for human life and conduct.
The generalization, based on an enormous range of observations, that all organisms, including human beings, are subject in all aspects of their natures to the principles of evolution, needs to be and may be far more widely and firmly implanted in popular intelligence than it is; and its bearings on general ideas of progress, social and other, and on popular estimates of perfection and imperfection, are very im- portant.
* The soundness of this view is dependent upon the soundness of two assump- tions which can not be argued here, but which may be briefly stated: (1) The person of average natural endowment and education in the United States is capable of understanding the most essential things in any scientific discovery that has ever been made or is likely to be made for many years to come. (2) It does "matter" enormously not only to the individuals, but to the nation as a whole, whether or not those who are capable of this much understanding have an opportunity to get it.
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That biology has been forced, through its own advances, to recognize the struggle-survival doctrine, upon which she earlier staked so much as the cause of evolution, is really of very subordinate importance in this way, needs to be set forth to the general public far more emphatic- ally and convincingly than it has been. Undoubtedly this strictly bio- logical doctrine has been used to justify much cruel, destructive prac- tise, particularly in the industrial world, and now that biology herself has found the doctrine to be so largely erroneous, it would seem the bounden duty of biology to rectify as far as may be the harm that has been done.
The conception of " the reign of law " in the organic world ought to be much more widely and concretely established than it is in the public mind. Under stress of the necessity of dethroning notions of supernaturalism from living nature, biologists have up to now been so occupied with explaining phenomena in terms of natural causation that the orderliness of organic phenomena has had to take a back seat both in research and in speculation.
The well-established truth that apparently all organic beings have in nearl}^, if not quite, all their parts and functions, capacities far be- yond those needed for ordinary life, frequently far beyond what are ever used, except under very unusual circumstances, is of great significance for a general theory of life. But being a comparatively recent dis- covery, and standing in sharp contradiction to the widely prevalent views about the " economy of nature," and the utilitarianism of the Darwinian theory of natural selection, it has as yet found little place in either the learned or the popular theories of life. The general enlightenment needed on this matter might come partly from teachers, secular and religious, partly from psychologists, but most basally from biologists.
The conception of the organism as a whole that has been forcing itself into biology, particularly from the side of embryology, is destined to have a far-reaching, elevating influence on general beliefs, attitudes and practises. There is no likelihood that the idea will be brought into the full light of day unless biologists are the prime movers in bringing it there. Poets and poetical humanists in all ages have had much to say about " the whole man " ; but the idea appears never to have germinated to the extent of greatly influencing the every-day lives of ordinary mortals. Biologists must be the original culturists here as they have been in so many other realms of things germinal.
The hypothesis that all phenomena of organic beings, including those pertaining to the very highest aspects of human nature, are cor- related with chemico-physical phenomena, though not yet rigorously demonstrated in most of the subtler psycliic and esthetic provinces, is securely established over so wide a range of life phenomena and has
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS IN PURE SCIENCE 55
thus far so well withstood rigorous efforts of disproof, that without doubt it has already greatly influenced general thought and attitude toward the deep problems of human life, and will more and more influ- ence them. In a matter so vital, and one about which general intelli- gence is bound to be so widely astir for such information as can be had, it is of the greatest moment that information from the best sources should be readily available.
The laws of heredity, particularly those discovered by Mendel, have been tested to such an extent as to make them of positive moment to hu- man life. The eugenics idea, started in England by Sir Francis Galton, aims at a practical application of the known principles of inheritance to the good of the human race. In view of the wide theoretic interest attached to these laws, and to the possible good that may come from their application to the propagation of man himself, the intelligent, thoughtful members of the community could undoubtedly be far better instructed than they are. Not only the possibilities, but the limitations of eugenics as a practical program ought to be and might be presented in simple readable language.
That imperium in imperio of human concerns, the problem of the relation between the sexes, is calling almost frantically to the biologist for help at certain points where, it is coming to be seen, he alone can help. A few investigators are doing splendid things in this domain, though what has been done is but as molecule to mountain relative to what remains undone.
Finally, without a doubt, innumerable bald, unphilosophized facts of living nature ihat would entertain and instruct, and consequently Iceenly interest thousands upon thousands of generally intelligent per- sons, are buried in the technical language of biological narration and description beyond the possibility of extraction for such purposes except at the hands of biologists themselves. Now many, perhaps not all, pro- fessional biologists are abundantly endowed by nature with the ability to do this extracting and preparing for general consumption. Acquir- ing the knack to do it is dependent first and foremost on being con- vinced that it ought to be done. The fact that many biologists develop splendidly the talent for graphic art in response to the need of illus- trating the organisms and organs with which they deal, is proof posi- tive that the art instinct is not wanting in them; and there is every reason to believe that this instinct would come out as literary skill here and there, as well as in the form of skill in delineation, were the need felt as keenly in the one case as in the other.
Assuming the contention to be sound that biological knowledge ought to be more widely disseminated than it is, and that so far as con- cerns the capabilities and desires of people such dissemination is pos- sible, the familiar question arises, " What are you going to do about it ? ''
56 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
" The Schools ! " Nine out of ten, I suppose, of those who would assent to my contention, would turn automatically in this direction.
To forestall doubt about my just appraisement of the school, the college, the university, in educating the young, I refer to an article ("Feeling in the Interpretation of Nature," The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1911) in which I have taken the ground that these instruments ought to and could do vastly more than they do toward making the people appreciative of and intelligent toward nature. Here I would insist that no matter how efficiently and broadly the tasks of institutional instruction might be performed, they would still have to be extensively supplemented before the real saving power of knowledge could be realized. This supplementing would have to be done in two places particularly: In the home, for young children before school age is reached; and for grown-ups after the school period is passed.
Our eyes must be opened in some way to the fact that education, taken in the full sweep of its meaning, is too life-and-death a matter for us as a nation to be left to the formalities of the schoolroom, the university lecture hall and the laboratory, even though these be excellent beyond the possibility of improvement. This truth is being forced upon us at a few points. As one instance, it is becoming clear that wider instruction on sex matters is imperative, and that parents and the home primarily, and the school secondarily, must be looked to for the broader, better knowledge. Again the simply incalculable power of the press and the speaker's platform for educating and influencing the voting part of the population are recognized and resorted to upon oc- casion.
I may now state my views summarily: Biological science, as now developed, contains numerous facts and generalizations of very great moment to the higher intellectual and spiritual life of the people gen- erally. The essence of these can be stated in language readily com- prehensive to persons of average intelligence and education. Most, if not all, the facts and generalizations are of such nature as to make their strongest appeal to the majority of people only from their bear- ings on problems of personal experience, so that in the nature of the case they can be of living interest and significance to such persons only after the period of formal schooling is past and the business of actual living is on. Instruction concerning them must, consequently, be given by other means than the school. Some of the most important instru- mentalities for such instruction are the botanical and zoological garden, the natural history museum, the aquarium, the library, the lecture plat- form and, in some ways most important of all, the public press.
And now for the culminating point: In the main the instruction given through all these instrumentalities must be by professional biol- ogists. It will never be done well, that is, in a manner at the same
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS IN PURE SCIENCE 57
time vivacious, convincing, and dependable, by persons who have merely " read up " on biology with nothing but an elementary training to start from. Only persons constantly occupied with the first-hand gath- ering of data, with the making and testing of hypotheses, and with the submitting of results and conclusions to fellow workers for criticism and verification, can do the safest teaching in these ways.
Here comes not only the opportunity but the obligation of those whose vocation is in research institutions. The university teacher may generally be considered to have done his share when in addition to his research work he has instructed his regular classes. Those, on the other hand, whose lots are cast in institutions of research, being re- lieved of the round of duties incident to the university professorship, would seem to be marked as the ones to use such instruments of gen- eral education as are most suitable for reaching the great public outside the schools and colleges. The press, as already said, is probably the most available and powerful of all such instrumentalities.
I would not be understood to mean that every person regularly em- ployed by institutions of research in non-industrial science should be held responsible for a certain amount of popular writing or lecturing or arranging of collections or the like. Such an idea put into practise would undoubtedly carry disaster in its train not alone to the institu- tions, but to the cause designed to be promoted. My view is that these institutions, as institutions, ought to hold themselves obliged, from time to time, to give out in a form readily accessible to and compre- hensible by the rank and file, the results of their most significant achievements. Indeed, I am willing to go a step farther and say that such institutions might well be held to something of the sort by their boards of administration. I am persuaded that such a course would be, in the long run, not only not obstructive, but actually promotive, of the work of investigation itself.
It is true something in this way is being done by some, possibly all, of the research foundations of the country. But in very few, if any, so far as I can judge, is the doing accepted as a weighty obligation and as a set policy. So it happens that what is done is an exceedingly small fraction of what ought to be and might be done.
Under its present management the Marine Biological Station of San Diego holds duties in this direction to be as incumbent upon it as are those of making discoveries about the Pacific Ocean and the things that live in it.
58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
SMALL COLLEGES
By Pkofessoe JOHN J. STEVENSON
NEW yOBK UNIVEKSITY
A COLLEGE-MATE recently indulged in wholesale denunciation of present conditions in American colleges; classes have grown so large that teaching is done mostly by instructors or assistant pro- fessors and students are drilled no longer by men of mature intellect; the intimacy between professors and students, which was the glory of the old college, has disappeared and with it has disappeared also the fatherly interest formerly shown by professors; the output of colleges is inferior in quality; there is no hope of improvement except in return to the small college of our youth.
As the one who drew this indictment had not been inside of college walls since graduation, his sorrow, like his knowledge, depended solely upon information and belief. He had forgotten that, more than half a century ago, when even Harvard and Yale were " small," some of our professors declaimed in similar fashion against those overgrown concerns and extolled the smaller college in which tutors were unknown and students met only professors. The dissertation has been delivered continuously during the intervening years, but its frequent appearance in print is of recent date and is due to the exigencies of so-called col- leges which have sprung up like mushrooms all over the newer portions of our land.
The lack of frankness in use of the term " professor " is as pain- fully evident as it was fifty years ago. The colleges of that time, with few exceptions, had only professors, no matter how large the classes might be ; but the term signified no more as to age, experience or quali- fications than it does in the modern " small college." When the writer entered New York University in 1858, the college faculty consisted of nine professors, including John W. Draper, E. A. Johnson, Elias Loomis, Howard Crosby, S. E. B. Morse, Benj. N". Martin and others almost equally eminent — all except two less than fifty years old. Only three of the nine were more than twenty-seven years old when appointed to full professorships in the university and several of them received that appointment when only twenty-three. One of the others had been professor for eight years in another college and was only thirty-two when he came to New York. The same conditions prevailed elsewhere, all colleges having some very young men occupying important chairs,
SMALL COLLEGES 59
They prevail to-day in the " small colleges," for students' year books, with half-tone portraits of the faculty, prove that youthful professors abound. But the conditions have changed in the larger colleges, for they have recognized not only the need of a higher standard, but also the necessity for subdivision of the classes to give opportunity for better teaching. In those one finds a head professor with others known as instructors or assistant professors. The age of these associates averages not far from thirty years and, for the most part, they are men of experi- ence in their work. In the " small college " on the contrary, all alike are professors, be they elderly men or callow youth. It is difficult to understand how a young man as professor in a small college can be more efficient as teacher or guide than he would be if called instructor or assistant professor in a large college. Perhaps there may be some- thing in the atmosphere which hastens maturity and renders experience unnecessary.
It is very true that in the larger colleges, as indeed in some of the " small colleges," the fatherly president has been replaced by a business president, whose duties as administrator prevent him from coming into close contact with the students and lessen his efficiency as head of the educational work — and one can not help regretting that this new officer has retained the old title, since the duties are so different. Yet the old officer remains, at least in the larger colleges, though under a different name. A university is not a mass of several thousand students; it is made up of small units or schools, each of which has its dean, who deals with the students directly as did the old-time president. In many institutions, the guardianship is still closer than formerly, each student being placed in direct relation to some member of the faculty, who is required to look after him. Arrangements for personal supervision and opportunities for association with teachers are many times better than they were of old. The supposition that in ante-bellum days there was any genuine intimacy between professors and students does not accord with the facts. The two bodies were in opposing camps and the time of faculty meetings was consumed largely in discussion of discipline cases — a condition wholly unknown now in the stronger colleges.
The " old inhabitant " remembers some severe storms of his youth and asserts that the climate has changed because old-fashioned winters are so rare. The " old boy " remembers some sympathetic professor, who loved boys because they were boys, and thinks of him as the type of his time. The one forgets the more numerous mild winters, the other forgets the more numerous indifferent professors ; each remembers only that which made the deeper impression and each is surprised, almost indignant, when the record proves his memory defective. Facul- ties in the olden time were like faculties now; what change there is is
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for the better. In the old faculty, there was always some one to whom troubled students could go, knowing that he would give the best he had of advice and sympathy ; and that man is present in every faculty to-day. Eeasoning a priori, the number of such men should be greater now. The college professor of a half century ago was apt to be a recluse, not a man of affairs. Too often, especially in the smaller colleges, he had become teacher late in life, having been more or less unsuccessful in another profession, which, naturally, he regarded as of higher grade than teaching. That type has not disappeared; but the college pro- fessor of the last three decades has had, for the most part, special prepa- ration for his work; teaching is, for him, the noblest of professions; except in a few departments, he is a man of the world, not enclosed in a world of his own creation. With wider opportunities, he understands his fellows and can keep in touch with younger men. On the other hand, the student's life is broader, he is no longer regarded as some- thing apart from his kind and he is better able to appreciate his oppor- tunities— even though not always inclined to avail himself of them.
It is true that the output of our colleges in recent years does not give promise of equalling in average quality that of fifty years ago. The vast increase in number of students has not been in the best inter- ests of true education; too many are seeking neither knowledge nor training ; too many others are unfitted by native limitations or by early surroundings ; they merely limp through the course and by dint of hard labor gain little more than the minimum demanded. It would be well for our colleges, well for the men themselves, if a great part of those now on college rolls should drop out and have no successors of their kind. The lowering of the standard in some quarters and the de- creasing average of the output are due to their presence.
But those uttering the current laments respecting inferiority of output rarely consider matters of this sort; actual conditions have little of interest for them and they look far afield. The lack of frankness is nowhere more apparent than in the type of argument used to enforce the assertion that large colleges do not show results equalling those of the smaller ones. One would be justified in using a harsher term than " lack of frankness." Many advocates of present-day " small colleges,'' with 60 to 90 per cent, of their enrollment taking non-collegiate studies, are not content to say that their work is very good ; they maintain that, if one may judge the tree by its fruit, their work is far better than that done by the larger colleges. In an address delivered several years ago at the inauguration of a college president, the speaker said that of the fifteen college graduates, chosen to the presidency of the United States, two thirds came from small colleges; that of seventeen graduates from fifteen colleges, who attained distinction in congress from 1870 to 1885,
SMALL COLLEGES 6i
only two were graduates of large colleges ; while nearly ninety per cent. of the distinguished men in congress from 1870 to 1895 were furnished by the small colleges, which in addition have provided many of the most prominent men in the cabinet and other departments of the government. This is a thoroughly typical argument and is an admirable example of non sequHur, but it is effective, being easily comprehended by the most indolent intellect. One miglit take exception to it throughout on the ground that there are directions other than politics along which men achieve success, and that a training which induces men to seek political preferment as the summum honum is hardly to be commended ; but this would be merely a reflection on the speaker and not criticism of his argument.
The statement is partially true as to fact and wholly false as to implication. When tlie men referred to were graduated every Amer- ican college was small; even Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia were small, and two of them had fewer students than are claimed by some colleges whose presidents are bombarding the generously inclined with letters, circulars and speeches denouncing the evils of great uni- versities ; on the other hand, even the smallest colleges of the older days had more genuine college students than can be found in two thirds of the mendicant concerns to-day. The statement is imperfect in that it is a suppression of the truth. Geographical considerations enter into the choice of presidents, congressmen and cabinet officers. Polit- ical parties do not go to the eastern border alone for candidates; not every office seeker in the central and western part of this country could attend the older colleges of the east. If among the candidates there were men with college degrees, they were necessarily men from the local schools.
But exception must be taken to the lists as usually given. Selecting men from colleges which since the war have become great, and com- paring them with those from colleges which, for various reasons, have remained small may be ingenious, but no stretching of courtesy could make it ingenuous. Yet even with that, the larger colleges do not suffer. No one would consider accidental or compromise presidents, such as Polk, Pierce, Hayes, Buchanan and some others as in any sense comparable with the Adamses, Madison, Roosevelt or Taft.^ More, the mode of comparison makes use of ancient history as though it were that of recent times. No conclusions are to be drawn from lists of men prior to 1895, for present conditions did not exist in their college days.
^ Jefferson is not included, because, through bad location and the mishaps of the Civil War, his college remained small; he is often listed as proving the superiority of the small college, though at the time of his graduation William and Mary rivalled Harvard in public esteem.
62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
In any event the mode of comparison is absurd. It can be used, it has been used to prove that college training is without advantage, for down to twenty years ago, the vast majority of prominent men had never attended college. The remarkable increase in college students has come within three decades: recent gi-aduates still labor under the burden of contemporary criticism.
But a more serious matter remains. The use of the term " small college " is a mere play on words for the clamorous small colleges of to-day are in no sense the successors of the small colleges of long ago. Dartmouth, Amherst and Williams in New England, Union in New York and Jefferson in Pennsylvania are often held before the admiring listener as prototypes of the small college; yet each of them had grad- uated classes of 40, 60 or even more in years prior to the civil war. There were other, smaller colleges with 100 or less students which equalled the larger in grade; but the 100 or less students included only those studying the regular course, the list did not include children in elementary work. All those older colleges had a narrow curriculum, but it was definite ; the faculties were small, but they were competent to do the required work. It is certain that the modest ante-bellum colleges in some cases showed great results — but only where proper material was provided. There were many little colleges whose faculties were as earnest and as faithful as the best, yet one finds among their graduates very few who became even modestly prominent in any calling or pro- fession; the reason being that they had not a strong type of people as constituency. Not the size of the college, but the type of students was responsible for the result. Colleges situated amid sturdy communities have long lists of men eminent in every kind of work. The men were there before they went to college; the elements of success were innate; no training, no education can impart them. Dartmouth and Jefferson, large for those days. Center of Kentucky and Bowdoin of Maine, small colleges of those days, are typical. The reader will think at once of others, similar in type.
As has been said, a very great proportion of the present-day schools, glorying in the title of small colleges, have little resemblance to those of earlier days. True, they are burdened with unremittent financial stringency and the requirements are modest — ^but with these the like- ness ends. The curriculum in the old colleges was narrow, but it was compulsory, and its definite aim was to prepare men for undertaking professional study. Too many of the newer colleges, while pretending to be legitimate successors of the older, offer a curriculum of amazing range, music, art, pedagogy, semi-professional studies and elective courses in college work. In looking over the announcements, one is apt at times to imagine that at last he has found the ideal institution
SMALL COLLEGES 63
in which instruction can be obtained in almost every subject under the sun. When he looks at the student-roll, he is surprised that so few have been attracted by a feast which promises to be so refreshing. But when he examines the list of teachers, surprise vanishes. If those teachers are competent, mentally and physically, to perform the task assigned in the announcements, it is no longer necessary to hark back three centuries to find a world's prodigy in the admirable Crichton; our land is full of them. These academy-colleges have little in common with the modest colleges of sixty years ago; those were substantial, these are superficial; they can not do well what they promise, for they are without equipment, and much of what they offer has no place in college work.
The conditions are made clear in an official report presented by the supervising board of a leading denomination, which, with rare frank- ness, gives complete statistics of all its beneficiaries. This board, dur- ing several years, has been trying to raise the standard and to eliminate from its list all institutions whose claims to the title of college are based chiefly upon the charter. In some cases it has combined schools, reducing one or more to the academy grade and reserving college rights to but one of the group; in several cases it has refused aid except on condition that no degrees be granted and that the so-called college accept rank as an academy of sophomore or, where the equipment is good, of junior grade. But its pathway is strewn with thorns, for local pride, local denominational jealousies and man's desire for post-mortem glory have enabled some merely town schools to accumulate a great amount of property ; the danger of legal complications prevents applica- tion of the proper remedy. Yet in spite of the board's efforts, almost one half of the colleges report less than fifty students taking " college courses," and the number taking such courses is from .008 to 40 per cent, of the total enrollment, the higher percentage being in the smaller schools. The owners of these schools point with pride to the fact that a great proportion of their graduates enter the ministry, which they think justifies their existence. It might be well to ascertain what they have done in the way of educating those men, beyond granting them diplomas. They usually proclaim loudly their firm adherence to the old-fashioned classical course — perhaps because the equipment is inex- pensive— but the writer has read in a letter from the president of a great theological seminary, that the most serious burden to his faculty is the imperfect knowledge of Greek shown by the students — all of whom are college graduates. The presidents of some of these schools plead that a college with 200 or more students has proved its right to generous support; but they include in that number all preparatory students and those receiving music and drawing lessons as well as
64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
children taking elementary studies. One can only wish Godspeed to any denominational board which endeavors to bring order out of such chaos.
The vicious conditions found in large universities exist in smaller colleges, where they are fraught with more of danger. Students' year books tell of football, baseball and other teams ; the athletic field is all- important and the official announcements in some cases dwell on its extent and attractiveness with greater gusto than is expended on de- scription of the curriculum — possibly because a man prefers to write the truth. In the small college as in the large physical culture is acquired by proxies — the teams, which are supported under social compulsion. In some, the wandering glee club is present and the inter-collegiate contest is familiar throughout. Most of these " col- leges " are coeducational and the number of male students is small, so that the proportion affected injuriously by these advertising schemes is much greater than in the larger colleges. The claim, so often asserted in circulars and advertisements, that the country village is free from vice, whereas that stalks openly in a city, is not in accord with fact. The writer has been professor in both country and city and he knows that there is little difference in this respect; but what difference there may be is in favor of the city as the safer place for the average boy.
Yet the longing, so often expressed by old graduates whose sons are now in college, has much to justify it. There is a wide-spread conviction that the educational condition is lamentably bad. But the longing is not for return to the old college with its lack of equipment; it is for return to the definiteness of the old curriculum, for escape from the aimlessness of the present curriculum. The university has been engrafted upon the college, while the ambition of high-school officials has diverted those schools from their true aim so that they encroach upon the college. Between university and high school, the college or mental gymnasium is threatened with extinction.
The university method of broad selection or of specialization in narrow groups is not for boys without stern intellectual drill. As matters now stand, a lad, crammed to pass an entrance examination, but untrained in the art of thinking, is thrown into university condi- tions to choose his courses, though neither he nor, in most cases, his parents are competent to determine the selection. The university and the college should be differentiated and the old-time method should be revived. In that, training was the main purpose; it was not, as now, secondary to athletics or tertiary to increased numbers. This is not to say that the narrow curriculum should be revived. That was designed to meet the supposed needs of men looking forward to the
SMALL COLLEGES 65
Christian ministry ; it neglected an important side of the intellect, gave an imperfect cultnre and left the man with a false conception of his acquirements. The curriculum sliould be designed to accord with modern conditions, should deal more with what is around us and less with mere abstractions; more with matters exercising the power of reason and less with such petty niceties as linguistic problems. Such a course of study, recognizing the many-sidedness of the intellect and compulsory throughout, would be the ideal gymnasium in which to prepare a young man for undertaking professional studies or for assuming the responsibilities of business life.
This work can be done only in a large college equipped with real libraries and laboratories, where the man may study under real pro- fessors, not jaded by teaching elementary subjects to academy pupils; where there is no mingling of college students and preparatory pupils in the classroom or on the campus; where the child who can do little more than read will not be " in college." A restricted, stringent cur- riculum would repel the slothful and indifEerent, and fewer teachers would be required. Living salaries could be paid even with present endowments and the proverbial apprenticeship to poverty would not be necessary to enable a professor to live on his pay. The universities should confine themselves to graduate work. They should admit to their professional schools only those who have a college degree, earned not in correspondence schools or in college annexes, but by actual attendance at an institution maintaining the required standard. The country is not suffering from a famine of lawyers, physicians or even of clergymen, and the time is ripe for raising the requirements in all professional schools.
It is true that this procedure would have serious consequences. A not inconsiderable number of " small colleges " would find their degrees without value; they would lose their hold on the innocent people who have wasted money on them and their requiem would not be delayed. There would not be enough graduates to fill the numerous professional schools and only the best equipped would survive. But there is reason to believe that in each case the public grief would be neither widespread nor inconsolable.
VOL. LXXX. — 5.
66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILK SUPPLIES
By p. G. HEINBMANN, Ph.D. the university of chicago
MILK and various dairy products have been used by the human race for ages. There is evidence to show that at least 50,000 years have elapsed, probably a much longer period, since man began to use cow's milk for his own purposes. Savages who have no historical records consume milk — sweet, sour and fermented — to a large extent and have made use of the preservative properties of sour milk for keep- ing meat from putrefaction. The scriptures mention the fact that milk, sour milk and butter were common articles of food among the Hebrews. The ancient Greeks and Romans used milk and cheese and among the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon, German and Scandinavian tribes the dairy herd was an important asset.
Perhaps the antiquity of the dairy industry is responsible for the extreme conservatism practised. The methods of taking and handling the raw material — milk — remain primitive to this day. Although form- ing one of the most important and universal articles of food, of special value in the feeding of infants, little progress has been made in that part of the production of dairy products, which is the controlling one from the public health standpoint, namely, the process of gathering the milk and its treatment before it reaches the consumer, the dairy or the creamery.
The sciences of hygiene and bacteriology are of relatively recent origin and with them came the knowledge that wholesomeness of food as well as sanitary environment is for the most part a matter of cleanli- ness. Now, few things are farther from cleanliness than the ordinary manner of milk production. Even if we admit that " pigs is pigs," milk is not always the same, and milks from different sources may vary enormously. Who has not seen a barn, where cows, horses and pigs are stalled under the same roof? Filth, cobwebs, dust, manure are allowed to accumulate and at long intervals are shoveled to a place, which is not far from the barn, where they dry out and are blown in the form of dust into the barns. Ventilation in the barn is absent, screens to keep out the disease-carrying flies are rare, light is admitted by small windows and the cows are permitted to rest in their own filth, which covers the hide, dries and is brushed or shaken into the milk wlien this is drawn from the udder. The modern cow is covered with filth and the owners ridicule the suggestion that cows deserve more care than
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILK SUPPLIES
67
Photogkaph 1
horses. The cow, which furnishes the most vahiable food for the human race, is thus neglected, while the horse, which is used for work only, is kept in good condition. Even from financial considerations should cows receive great care.
And what is the condition of cleanliness of those who attend to the milking? Do they change their clothes for- clean ones before milking? Do they wash their hands ? Far from it. Any suit of clothes, covered in some cases by dirty overalls, is good enough for tending the cow. The hands are not washed and just before milking are wetted with milk, water or even with saliva. Thus the dirt is washed from the udder into the milk. The virus of contagious diseases is sometimes carried from
Photograph 2
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
rHOTOGRAni 3
the niilker to the milk and epidemics of serious nature are thus started. Not least in importance is the universal presence of flies in cow barns. Flies may act as carriers of disease germs and should be kept out of barns as much as possible. It is true, that when entering barns the cows are bound to carrj^ some flies with them, but by careful screening and by cleanliness of the floors and walls the number can be reduced to a minimum.
Such is the food we consume every day, such is the food which we depend upon for bringing up our babies, if the mother is unable or unwilling to nurse her offspring. A careful mother will clean the bottle, which serves to carry the food for the baby. The farmer thinks his duty is done if he washes the milk pails and other utensils with ordinary cold water. The water is sometimes obtained from wells situated in dangerous proximity to the outhouse, or from streams which carry sew- age from neighboring farms or settlements. After washing the re- ceiving pails in a careless manner there is enough milk left in them to cause disagreeable odors, but, nevertheless, the fresh milk is drawn into these vessels.
Milk is destined by nature to feed the young of mammals. They suck it directly from the teats and the danger of dirt being taken with the milk is comparatively small. But we take the milk from the cow under artificial conditions and have to use precautions and safeguards to prevent dirt from being mixed with the milk. The " cowey taste" sometimes innocently supposed to be characteristic of fresh milk, is due to nothing but cow manure, Avhich has been suspended and become part of the milk during the process of milking. It has been estimated that the population of large cities consume hundreds of pounds of cow manure daily with milk.
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILK SUPPLIES
69
What does the farmer do with the milk after his cans have been filled ? In many cases tlie cans have no covers and instances are known where open cans are kept over night in filthy barns. Odors are taken up readily by milk and chickens and other fowl find comfortable places for roosting on the cans. The amount of milk sold that contains little or no filth is small. Sucli milk is necessarily higher priced than ordi- nary milk, as many precautions have to be observed to produce it. It is higher priced, however, only in a sense. By paying more for each quart we get a pure article with full food value, and have a reasonable as- surance that no diseases are communicated that way. Thus there is really a saving, as diseases are always expensive.
How is it feasible to procure milk which is satisfactory from the standpoint of the sanitarian ? The principal thing is that the consumer demand a good product and he must know what constitutes good milk. It is relatively easy to discover rotten eggs, decayed meat and vegetables, because these are betrayed by the odor. Milk, however, does not putrefy in the way eggs and meat do, and even the taste is apt to be misleading. Chemical and chiefly bacteriological tests are the only safe guides to the dectection of poor milk. For it must be remembered that fresh clean milk, which contains few bacteria and is safeguarded against their entrance, will not spoil for many weeks. It decomposed more or less rapidly in proportion to the numbers of bacteria present, and bacteria enter milk chiefly with dust, dirt and through the agency of flies. The problem then is to prevent bacteria as much as possible from gaining access to milk and this object can be attained only by scrupulous cleanliness.
The enormous mortality of infants is thought to be largely due to poor milk. In some localities a successful battle has been fought and is
Photograph 4
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
being fouglit against poor niilk^ iu many instances with gratifying re- sults. A reduction of infant mortality is usually noted when the public milk supply is improved. Laudable efforts are being made by health authorities in various cities in this country by introducing ordinances, forbidding the selling of milk derived from tuberculous cows, unless the milk is pasteurized. It will, however, require the intelligent and active support of consumers to make these efforts successful.
Photograph 5
Milk is secreted from the mammary glands in a sterile condition, that is to say, germs are totall}^ absent. When the milk is discharged from the glands and enters into the cistern — the large reservoir — of the udder, some bacteria gain access; these having invaded the udder from the outside through the teat duct, a small canal in the teats through which the milk is withdrawn. The number of germs entering here is relatively small, however. The large numbers usually found in market milk enter during the process of milking and are the result of multipli- cation during transportation and storage, unless the milk is kept at a temperature below 40° F. ISTo matter how careful the milker may be, some germs are bound to enter. It is therefore necessary to cool the milk rapidly after milking and keep it cold until consumed. We have then to consider chiefly two points in the production and handling of milk, first cleanliness in all manipulations and cleanliness of all utensils, and second rapid cooling and storage or transportation at low tem- peratures.
Milk is the natural food for all mammals and each species of mam- mal produces a milk of such composition as is most suitable for the young of the species. The- composition of cat's milk differs from that of
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILE SUPPLIES
71
cows, dogs or man's. Some animals produce milk which contains ten times as much fat as is contained in cow's milk. Thus we find proper adaptation in nature of the only suitable food for young mammals. Again, the composition varies in individuals of the same species or race, and during the period of lactation. As the young grow older the con- centration of the milk increases. When the calf begins to suck its mother's milk the milk is of thinner consistency than after the calf is several weeks old. It is evident from this fact that, when we substitute cow's milk for human milk as food for infants, the relative increase of milk components is not proportionate to the growth of the infant, but to the growth of the calf. It is, therefore, preferable to feed infants with mixed milk from a herd of cows rather than from an individual
PHOTOOnAPII C
cow. In a herd we have cows in various stages of lactation and the mixture of milk results in a uniform product, which can be modified if this is desired. Practical experience has proved that the composition of milk obtained from a herd runs nearly the same from day to day.
It is well known that there are differences in composition between cow's milk and human milk. In human milk there is more butter fat and more milksugar. The nitrogenous part, that is, the part which is necessary to replace the cells of the body and enable development to take a normal course, is about half the amount in human milk as compared with cow's milk. The quality of these components is also different in the two kinds of milk. The protein of cow's milk consists chiefly of two parts, one is casein, the other lactalbumin. The latter is more readily digested than the former, but is present in small proportion. Human milk contains less casein and more lactalbumin than cow's milk, and
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
consequently is more suitable for the food of infants. The fat in human milk is more finely distributed than in cow's milk, which also enhances digestion. Jersey cows furnish milk with a fat content nearly the same as human milk, but the fat globules are larger, and therefore Jersey milk is not as suitable for infants as milk from Shorthorns or Holsteins. The latter breeds produce milk with less fat than Jersey cows, but the globules are smaller.
It is obvious that human milk is the only perfect food for infants. If it is necessary to find a substitute we must be careful to select milk from cows whose product comes as near to human milk as possible. Here again it must be emphasized that mixed milk from a herd consist- ing of cows of different breeds, and in different stages of lactation, is the best milk to use. It is true that infants can adapt themselves to the use of a different milk from the one designed for them by nature, and it is fortunate that this is so. Cow's milk is the only available substitute for human milk. In some countries goat's milk is used, but this offers no advantages, and some disadvantages. Mare's milk or ass's milk is nearer in composition to human milk than other milks, but is difficult to obtain. Cow's milk serves the purpose very well, if it is derived from a mixed herd and obtained under cleanly conditions.
The essential points in producing healthful milk are to observe cleanliness in the process and to cool the milk rapidly and keep it cold. The result of a tendency to comply with these demands has been the establishment of dairies where milk is produced on scientific principles. The cows must be fed with wholesome fodder, must be kept clean and be in perfect health. Tuberculosis is detected by the most rigid test known, the application of tuberculin. This method shows the presence
Photogeaph 7
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILK SUPPLIES
73
of tuberculosis even iu initial stages. The stables are constructed with cement floors^, with plenty of windows to admit light^ and with efEective designs for ventilation. Accompanying photographs, taken in model dairies, will illustrate the points under discussion. Photograph 1 shows one side of a sanitary barn with properly constructed windows, which open from the top and admit fresh air, and a carrier to remove the manure. A carrier of similar nature is vised for bringing in the food, as shown in photograph 2. By the use of the?e carriers the handling of food and refuse is reduced to a minimum, and the raising of dust largely avoided. Photograph 3 shows stanchions of approved style, which allow the animals to be comfortable without being cumbersome. They are made of iron pipe, painted and easily kept clean. Photo- graph 4 shows the center aisle. The cows face each other to encourage cheerfulness. The mangers are also made of cement. Photograph 5 shows washstands, which should be present in all cow barns. The milkers wash their hands frequently so that the dirt from their hands is not mixed with the milk. The milkers should wear clean white suits, as is shown in photographs 6 and 7. The outlets of foul air and the tilting windows are shown to advantage in photograph 8.
In sanitary dairies the milk is transported to a special room in which it is cooled and bottled. In photogi'aph 9 a cooling apparatus is seen above the collecting tank and on the left-hand side of the same picture is seen a machine which places the pulp caps on bottles.
Market milk contains hundreds of thousands of bacteria per cubic centimeter, sometimes even millions. When only such milk is obtain- able it should be pasteurized. Pasteurization is a process by which milk is heated to 140° F. for thirty minutes. This treatment kills about
Photograph 8
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
99 per cent, of all bacteria and makes the milk safe. Especially is pasteurization desirable when there is danger of disease germs entering the milk. Siich disease germs may enter from the hands or clothes of employees in the dairy, also in certain cases from diseased cows. Pas- teurization has many advocates and many opponents. Without going into a detailed discussion of the arguments, it may be stated that the process is gaining favor with sanitarians and recent scientific research has shown that the disadvantages claimed against pasteurization are Epidemics of typhoid fever, of dysentery, of diphtheria, of
groundless
Photograph 9
scarlet fever have been spread by milk in many instances and we know with certainty that the germs causing these diseases are surely killed by efficient pasteurization. It remains with l:)oards of health to control pasteurization, so as to insure its efficiency. For this purpose the milk should be examined before and after pasteurization. If the milk is obtained from careless producers, it should not be permitted to be used under any conditions. If the producer can show fair conditions the milk should be pasteurized.
If, however, milk is produced with the refinements outlined above, pasteurization becomes superfluous. Many dairies produce milk with less than 10,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, some as low as 1,000. By extreme care and intelligent supervision such milk is not much more expensive than ordinary market milk and the outcome of the war waged against poor milk svipplies will probably bring such milk within the reach of every one. This milk is generally known as certified milk, because it is certified to by a body of responsible medical men, who employ experts to examine tlie-milk at stated intervals and inspect the
THE PROBLEM OF CITY MILK SUPPLIES 75
dairies, so as to insure safe methods of production. The conditions expected from the producer are rigorous, and consequently this certified milk costs more to produce than other milk. Unfortunately most of the dairies producing this excellent milk are heavily capitalized, but in some instances milk which is above reproach is produced at dairies with investments of $1,500 to $2,000. The essential point is efficient and constant supervision.
On the whole the solution of the problem of city milk supplies lies largely with the consumer. Tlie consumer must be willing to pay a careful dairyman for his work and investment and when we remember that a quart of milk contains as much food, and readily assimilable food, as a pound of beef, and if we compare the cost of the two articles, we can not but admit that milk is a cheap food and a safe food if produced and marketed under proper precautions.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
A FLASH OF LIGHTNING
By Professor FRANCIS E. NIPHER
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS
IT is customary to classify lightning discharges into at least two classes. This classification is based on the appearance of the flash. One kind of lightning is called forked lightning and the other sheet lightning. There has been some discussion concerning sheet lightning, it being claimed by some that it is merely an illumination due to a discharge which is hidden from view.
The real fact appears to be that both ends of a lightning flash are usually hidden from view within the two clouds. One of these clouds contains falling drops of water which are overcharged with the negative corpuscles which atoms of all kinds of matter contain when in normal condition. The other cloud contains drops which have less than the normal charge. This cloud has always been said to be positively charged.
The writer has sought to obtain photographic evidence of the con- ditions within these two clouds, at the instant when the discharge
Pig. 1. The Overcharged Cloud. An inflow of the negative fluid to the main discharge channel, whose end is seen at the middle of the plate.
A FLASH OF JJiJflTNING
77
Fig. 2. The Outflow into the Cloud which has less than its Normal Chaege.
occurs. This evidence is presented in tlie figures, which are reproduced from photographic plates.
Fig. 1 represents in cross-section the cloud which is overcharged with the negative fluid. The cross-section is at right angles to the end of the long flash which connects the two clouds. The discharge lines on this plate resemble a system of rivers and tributaries, which penetrate the cloud. These drainage lines elongate up stream. Some of them are sharply defined. Others, for reasons which will be ex- plained, are seen only in shadowy outline.
Before the flash occurred, the falling drops, which were all highly charged, repelled each other. After the discharge those drops which happened to lie in the path of some one of these tributary discharge lincb, have lost their overcharge. There is then an attraction between such drops and those which were slightly outside of these drainage lines, and which are therefore still overcharged. These two groups of drops are intimately commingled, as is shown by the intricate nature of the system of drainage channels. As they continue their fall to earth, they coalesce, and a brief dash of unusually large drops of rain is observed.
The discharge pours through the long hole in the air, in which the conditions are like those which exist in a vacuum tube. The conditions which exist in the cloud at the other end of the flash are shown in Fig. 2.
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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 3. An Inflow as in Fig. 1.
Fig. 4. An Outflow as in Fig. 2.
A FLASH OF LIGHTNING 79
Here we have a representation of the outflow into tlie cloud which has less than its normal charge. The flash here difl^upcs into the cloud, and the outer portions of the flash might well be called sheet lightning. The conditions which would bring about the brief dash of large rain- drops do not appear to exist at this end of the lightning flash.
Figs. 3 and 4 are similar to Figs. 1 and 2, the discharge being some- what more violent, or greater in quantity'. In Fig. 3, it may be seen that the inflow in some eases begins at isolated points, and progresses inwardly towards inflow lines which are elongating in a direction opposite to that in which the flow is taking place.
If these discharge figures are to be described in the language of the two-fluid theory, Figs. 1 and 3 must be called an outward positive dis- charge. Figs. 2 and 4 must be called an outward negative discharge. We must say that the outward negative discharge shown in Figs. 2 and 4 came from the cloud represented in Figs. 1 and 3, and that the out- ward positive discharge, shown in Figs. 1 and 3, came from the cloud represented in Figs. 2 and 4.
Such an explanation seems so essentially absurd in the presence of these photographic plates, that it will not be urged.
In conclusion, however, a confession must be made. The lightning discharge here described was artificially produced. A plate-glass machine, with metal conductors terminating in pin-heads took tlie place of the long flash of lightning. The pin-heads rested upon the centers of the two photographic films, the plates resting on large sheets of glass. There were small spark-gaps of about half an inch in each line, at the machine terminals. A single spark across these gaps pro- duced a glow over the films around the pin-heads. In order to bring some of the discharge lines down into close proximity to the films, so that they would be sharply defined, copper plates were placed under each photographic plate below the sheet of glass. These copper plates were grounded or, what produces the same result, they were connected with each other. Xo trace of the discharge can be detected until the photographic plate is developed. With this confession, and with an apology for having misled the reader, the question may be asked, can any one look at Figs. 1 and 3 and believe that they are produced by an outward discharge of positive electricity? These plates tell their own story. They represent an inflow of negative corpuscles, along drainage channels.
Some of the lines are not sharply defined. They are too far above the film. They all present a shadowy appearance, if the condenser action of the copper plates is eliminated.
8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
COLLECTING ON A COEAL EEEF
By Professor VERNON L. KELLOGG
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
ONCE every three weeks a 6,000-ton steamer leaves San Francisco for Sydney. Yon sail with it six days from gray and cold water to warm and blue, and touch at Honolulu. They let you off for tiffin with poi " cocktails " in a hotel hanging over the sliding snrf on won- drous Waikiki. You make the swift drive up the showery Nuuanu Valley past the tombs of tlie Kamehamehas and the flower gardens of the hi sellers, to the Pali, where you look over the ridge of the island and see the ocean on the other shore. Then you come back and reem- bark. Six days more — due south these days and the water all blue and the days all warm and the equator crossed on the fourth day — and you whistle hoarsely in front of a lone mountain towering out of the tropic ocean. Then, as you have knocked, you move slowly in at the open door of a great water-filled bowl, which is simply the yawning crater of a dead volcano that makes all there is of Tutuila, a microscopic island appanage of these imperial United States.
The sides of this Iwwl, which are the inner faces of the crater, lift swiftly for two thousand feet above the water, and are all clothed and made soft by the velvet-seeming tropic bush that clings to every climb- ing yard. Around the water's edge runs a narrow strip of gleaming coral sand, and here are the toadstool native house and the white gov- ernment buildings of the port village, Pago-Pago. Here too are the dense, dark-green heads of l)read-fruit trees and the gently curving, lazily swaying, slender trunks of cocoanut palms holding up their heavy feather-duster tops. And along this beach stroll the loafing, chattering, friendly Samoans with their naked shoulders shining with fresh anoint- ment of odorous cocoanut oil and loins encircled with the gaudiest of lava-lava. For this is steamer da}^, and there are unsophisticated, globe- trotting, amateur antiquarians to be sold ancient war clubs to, — clubs hastily whittled out and dented and smoke-blackened since our hoarse whistle sounded before the crater's gate.
But for our coral-reef collecting we are going to the larger German island, TJpolu, with its harbor town Apia, made memorable by the great hurricane of '95 which turned warring factions of English, German and American sailors on warships and Samoan braves on shore into common savers of one another's lives. The children of nature showed their God-head in that terrible day and night, and the republican presi-
COLLECTING ON A CORAL REEF 8i
dent of eighty millions of people did no more than recognize the brotherhood of man when he sent Seeumanu, sturdy, half-naked chief of a few hundred brown barbarians, the gift of a rich boat to commemo- rate the day of revelation.
Now Upolu, whereon sits Apia, is about eighty-five miles away from Pago-Pago on Tutuila where the American steamers touch, and so we must descend from the high decks of our 6,000-ton Sydney packet to the spray-wet planks of the Kawau, inter-island messenger and carry-all. I had long had my misgivings about these last eighty-five miles of our ocean voyaging from San Francisco to the Samoan reefs. And these misgivings were not abated when I ventured to ask the captain of the Ventura something of the figures, as to tonnage and knots, of his little ocean sister, the Kawau. Quietly and unexplosively he expecto- rated over the gunwale of the upper deck where we stood.
" Sir, if the Kawau were alongside I could spit into her funnel from here," said he. Inelegant, perhaps, but sufficiently expressive to give me forthwith a symptom.
It was even so. Thirty-five is the Kawau's tonnage figure. The boats that the bare-legged Paris children sail in the round pool of the Tuileries gardens look larger and roomier to me than the Kawau as I recall these two types of vessels now. But our reef lay eighty-five miles away across the heaving swells of a trade-wind irritated ocean. And the Kawau was the only boat going our way. So we transshipped. Boxes and bags went into a tiny cavity amidships called cabin. We sprawled faa Samoa (native-wise) on the salt-encrusted deck. My own seat was a coil of tarry rope on the stern grating. As the swift tropic twilight fell we issued from the harbor's mouth and rode full tilt against the first great swell. All night were we a-Jousting. "We had, from the start, hardly any symptoms. It all looked too dangerous to waste time or handicap oneself with seasickness. The soft tropic night wore on, while we momentarily expected the apparently certain overwhelming. Far in the middle of the long dark hours, as we slid about on the slippery deck, face to the strange new star pictures of the southern sky, the captain came aft, surrendering the wheel to a native roust-abou — ah, quartermaster, and, opening a microscopic cellular deck-closet, went in, leaving the little door ajar. Soon streamed out a fitful light and the extraordinary sounds of a cheap gramophone, singing " Lead, Kindly Light " ! Even the captain had apparently lost all hope !
With the first soft gray light of morning we stared hard to port where land should lie. Soon the lifting shores of Upolu took form. We nosed through a narrow opening in the fringing reef and hove-to in a shallow bay bordered shoreward by a flat crescent of white sand beach. Along this beach we could pick out, in the swiftly growing light, the low white houses of Apia. Behind the houses was the dense green mass
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of the tropic bush sloping upward and broken here and there by the towering even lines of the great cocoanut plantations. Still higher rose the volcanic ridge and peaks that make the roof of the island. The nearer of these forest-covered peaks, lying immediately behind Apia, is Mount Vaea, Stevenson's mountain. On a shoulder of this dark green mountain is Stevenson's grave, with its low, flat tomb like those of the Samoan chieftains. And under this grave-crowned shoulder, lying beautifully in a little open space amid tall trees, is Vailima, the house of the five streams. There are no longer five streams there, but only two, which come trickling down the long hill slopes to pour their slender threads of fresh water into Apia harbor.
A bustling German customs house officer clambered aboard and we went through the formalities of civilized travel. They were less irri- tating than usual, and soon we were free to choose among the eager naked-backed boatmen that clamored in the water about us like sea gulls quarreling over ship's refuse. Waiula, old grizzle-haired, strong- faced, sinewy-armed Waiula, claimed us by virtue of his special insist- ence and our natural deference to age. We rowed in past the great rusted hulk of the German warship Adler, lying beached on the reefs, conspicuous relict and reminder of the awful hurricane, and made our way, sleepy-eyed, exhausted and despondent to a two-story frame build- ing on the beach, conspicuously labeled " Tivoli Hotel." Here we sat, silent and helpless, until coffee could be made. With coffee and break- fast and a morning nap, the world was new again and we turned our eager attention to the problem before us, that of getting acquainted with the life of the coral reefs.
The islands of the Pacific are of two types ; either all made of coral, or mostly made of volcano with fringing coral reef. Indeed the " all coral" islands are only so on top, for they are simply volcanoes whose summits do not project above the water's surface, but do come near enough it to support a persistent coral growth. This builds up on its volcanic support an atoll or islet rising a few yards above the ocean level. The more striking and beautiful islands are volcanic peaks which lift their great masses for four or five, seven or eight, even for thirteen or fourteen, thousand feet above the water. Most of these volcanoes are dead, but some are alive, as Mauna Loa on Hawaii and the recently re- opened and still flaming volcano on Savaii of the Samoan group. But practically every volcano island has its coral reefs, either fringing or barrier or both. Like a ring of Saturn the flat-topped band encircles the volcano's waist at the ocean surface, and in the shallow waters and innumerable pools on the reef the naturalist finds a rich collecting ground. We paid close attention to the tides, and every day the ebb would find us working on the half-exposed reef, prying into crevices, breaking up dead coral masses, wading the green water, and ever scrap-
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ing intimate acquaintance with uncouth crawling things of the sea, made visible for an hour in their shallow prison pools. Not all un- couth, either, for of marvels of color and pattern, bizarre and beautiful, there was never lack.
In echinoderms, that is, star fishes, brittle stars, sea-urchins and sea cucumbers, the Samoan reef is very rich. I think we took some two dozen species. An abundant star fish is ultramarine blue, with slender, smooth-surfaced rays. A curious large, reddish-brown, ugly-seeming kind has heavy coarse spines an inch or more long, scattered over it, and these spines sting. Many specimens of the brilliant blue star fish were found with arms slightly or badly mutilated, but all regenerating. I have some specimens by me now which show that even a part of a single arm can regenerate all the rest of the body, that is, a new disc and four new arms besides the remainder of the single mutilated arm.
Of slender-rayed brittle stars there are brown and green and mottled sorts, some with white cross bands on each arm, and all with the fragile arms breaking away with the least roughness in handling. Often merely the contact with the preserving fluids seems to be sufficient for a general epidemic of arm-shattering. Among the sea urchins a kind with very slender, long, almost needle-like spines is abundant. These spines are not only sharp, but stinging, and often a warning tingle told the exploring hand in crevice or pool bottom of the presence of this well-protected little urchin. Another slender-spined sort has white bands around each spine, so that the thickly beset body is black-and- white barred. A larger kind has its heavy spines each encircled by two or three rings at small distances apart. Still a larger species shows heavy, thick, blunt spines much like miniature baseball bats.
We were not the only sea-urchin collectors on the reef. With each low tide would come forth a score or more of natives, mostly half-clad women and children, who would wade about in the shallow water of the reef and among the scattered pools collecting choice tit-bits for an eve- ning feast. Among these morsels a certain sea-urchin seemed to be favorite. Often the collectors could not restrain their appetites and would crack open the brittle tests, and suck out and swallow raw some choice inner part.
The sea-cucumbers were very abundant; they lay scattered over the whole reef top, in some places one to every square foot. A large green- ish-black form about ten inches long, with four-sided body, and un- usually firm body wall with short blunt tubercles ; a soft-skinned dark- brown form about six inches long when not extended, but capable of great extension, found between tide lines under stones; and a small spotted brown and white kind three to four inches long, were the three most abundant species; but several other kinds were common, among them a small black knobby sort, the real beche de mer of the Samoans.
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Collecting sea-cucumbers is easy, but preserving them is not. Rough handling of any sort and above all the plunge into the preserving fluid inevitably caused the cucumbers to eject from the mouth opening a con- siderable portion of their insides, comprising most of the esophagus, stomach and intestines. This extraordinary behavior tended both to ruin the specimens and to make a rather messy lot of preserved ma- terial. Occasionally not only cucumber stomach would come out, but also an active and astonished little live fish. This fish, called Fierasfer, seems to have adopted for more or less permanent home the inside of sea-cucumbers. It is a slender, active, bright-eyed little creature which has certainly displayed an extraordinary cleverness in the life-and- death game of hide and seek with its enemies.
Octopuses and squids came to be familiar acquaintances in the reef pools. None of these were large, the pulpy, sack-like body of the larg- est octopus found being perhaps not more than a foot long, with arms of twice that length, but with its staring eyes and hooked beak and sucker- armed tentacles even a small octopus looks very ferocious and capable of making serious trouble. The squids with their power of ejecting a dark fluid, discoloring all the water in the pool so that nothing could be seen in it, had the further protection of concealment. We scientific collect- ors were hard pressed in our search for octopuses by the food-hunting natives. These devil-fish are much sought for by natives and are re- puted to taste, when cooked, much like chicken. The most effective way of rendering the octopus harmless and helpless in its collector's hands is that of turning it inside out, which is a means regularly practised by the natives. It seems to require, however, a particular knack which we never learned.
There were, of course, hosts of crabs, little crabs, middle-sized crabs and big crabs; red and green and polka-dotted. Eather frightening at first were the active, foot-long Squillas with sharp knife-blade claws. Even more terrifying was a specimen (brought to us by a native) of the great cocoanut crab, Birgus. These tough customers have a body seven or eight inches across, and great long strong legs extending a foot on either side. Their shell was of the hardest and their grasping claws of the strongest. They spend most of their time in the cocoanut plan- tations, feeding upon the fallen nuts. Just how they get at the tender meat inside the cocoanut shell is more or less a question. The natives tell you that the great crab climbs a cocoanut tree, snips off a cocoanut, thus letting it fall heavily three or four score of feet to the ground. It perchance falls on a stone, but even if not it is likely to be broken, any- way. The crab, descending, then tears open the cracked shell and scoops out the rich food. Perhaps this extraordinary crab does this thing. We never saw it. But that it feeds upon cocoanuts is quite cer-
COLLECTING ON A CORAL REEF 85
tain. Its flesh is much prized for salad and has a distinct flavor of the nut.
Of the multitude of reef-inhabiting shells and their variety one can not even venture to speak. The natives use many of the smaller gas- teropod shells in making necklaces. Often these little shells are strung alternately with red or yellow seeds. The many cowries attract atten- tion, particularly a small white one with light-brown black-bordered ellipse which is the most abundant shell on the reefs. A large fluted shell, called by the Samoans faigua, is not uncommon, and its flesh is eaten raw by the natives. Many of the shells housed active little hermit crabs, and as we worked about the pools there was a continuous rapid scuttling about of these strangely tenanted houses.
Less familiar animals were the various marine worms, brilliantly colored nudibranchs and the unsavory looking fleshy masses of large pteropods. One of these salt-water worms looked almost exactly like the familiar fuzzy brown caterpillar of the Isabella moth that scurries about across our sidewalks and pathways in winter time. The most extraordinary, as well as the most famous, worm of the Samoan reefs is that curious creature called the palolo, which with a certain phase of the moon in November of each year appears in myriads in the shallow reef waters and is gathered with feverish haste by the natives as the choicest food of the whole year's finding. To be accurate, they are not the worms themselves which thus appear, but only certain parts of the worm body, the egg-producing parts, which break off from the rest of the worm, lying in crevices in the reef far below the water's surface. Mayer has recently described the similar habits of an Atlantic palolo common on the Dry Tortugas.
As for the " coral insects " themselves, they have been so often pic- tured and so much written about, that their graceful shapes and mar- velous colors are familiar to all readers. As a matter of fact, we saw curiously little of live coral, and that which we saw was by no means brilliantly colored. The live zone of a coral reef is that part on its outer or seaward margin where the surf is always breaking and the water is pure and clean. The great mass of the reef is composed of dead coral, the shattered, crushed and compacted lime skeletons of millions of dead individuals, and this rock mass, this limestone ledge, is of dirty grayish or brownish white with no beauty of color at all.
Where we did see all the marvel of color and pattern that one must find on a tropic coral reef, or be sadly disappointed, was in the deeper, larger pools near the seaward edge of the reef. Imagine all the most brilliantly colored and strangely patterned tropic butterflies that you have ever seen pinned up in dead rows in museum cases alive and dis- porting themselves in clear water ! You have before you then in your mind's eye no more extraordinary or beautiful sight than that actually
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afforded by the butterfly fishes of the pools of the tropic coral reefs. Eobin's egg blue and indigo, green and cadmium yellow, red, brown and softest rose, scarlet, crimson, magenta, lavender and royal purple, pink, salmon and tawny — all these colors laid on in dots and spots and splashes, in lines and bars and polygons, and you have the paints and the painting of the fish harlequins of the pools. Flashing back and forth, lurking under projecting stones, rushing into dead coral heads and coming reluctantly half paralyzed to the surface as we used the col- lector's favorite methods, this display of fantastically colored fish life was the most conspicuous feature of each day's seeing.
Off the reef in the deeper water were larger fishes and many of them too also extraordinarily colored and patterned. The parrot fishes with their blue and green ground color and their livid pink and salmon and rose markings were every-day prizes of our divers. The taking of the off-shore fish (in water from two to six fathoms deep) had an element of excitement in it. Small dynamite sticks were exploded in the water to stun the fish and make them easily captured by the naked divers. In one end of a small, wobbly canoe would stand a native with a dynamite stick in one hand and a slow-burning piece of wood, or better, a lighted cigar, in the other. Leaning down backward in the extreme other end of the canoe would be the naturalist ! When we reached a good position he would light the short fuse of the explosive and holding it almost to the last moment before explosion (much as a boy holds on to his big firecracker on Fourth of July mornings) he would hurl it overboard. The explosion would take place a few feet under water, and on the moment in would plunge the active divers from a second canoe. Alto- gether, in our short two months collecting, we took more than five hundred species of fishes from the reefs and shallow adjacent waters of the two Samoan islands. Of these fully one hundred are species hitherto unknown to naturalists.
Of the long, glowing days under the ardent southern sun; of the soft, odorous tropic nights ; of the f eastings and council meetings with the friendly, hospitable natives ; of our glimpses between working hours of the lotus-eating life that makes even the shortest stay in the tropics a fascinating memory and that leaves an ever-persistent longing ; of all this there is no space for even a word. We have only now to pack our boxes and specimen cases, to send a stirring petition to the Comman- dant at Pago-Pago to save us from another ocean trip in the Kawau by sending the American gunboat for us, and to make final transshipment to the great Sydney- San Francisco liner, to make an end of our sum- mer's work and play.
MENTAL DEFECTIVENESS 87
THE OEIGIN AND CONTEOL OF MENTAL DEFECTIVENESS
By Dr. CHAS. B. DAVENPORT
STATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION, CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON,
â– ^VTOT long ago I spoke to a company of physicians and lawyers on -^^ inheritance of certain types of imbecility, and exhibited some charts that showed that imbecility in a child is due to defects in the germ-plasm of both his parents. At the end of my remarks the chair- man pointed out that the facts presented merely deferred the origin of feeble-mindedness a generation or two and did not touch on its true cause. I find this idea wide-spread; the point raised consequently deserves further consideration: How did feeble-mindedness originate in the first instance?
Before we can answer the question as to the " cause " of feeble- mindedness it is desirable to get a clear definition of the term. As a matter of fact, very diverse definitions have been offered. An old legal formula is as follows : " He that shall be said to be a sot and idiot from his birth is such a person who can not coimt or number twenty pence, not tell who was his father or mother, nor how old he is, so it may appear that he hath no understanding or reason what shall be for his profit or what for his loss; but, if he have sufficient understanding to know and understand his letters, and to read by teaching or informa- tion, then it seems he is not an idiot." While this definition lacks in completeness and scope, it has a more philosophical basis than many that are more recent. Of late the Binet- Simon tests of mental grade have aroused new enthusiasm and have been thought to give an exact, quantitative measurement and definition of the different classes of mental backwardness. The method is simply that of establishing a series of mental standards (questions, exercises, mental feats and so on) for each year of school life, grading a given subject by these standards and finding the difference between the actual age of the subject and the standard age of the highest test passed by him. This method of defining feeble-mindedness seems to assume that there is a greater mental resemblance between two persons deficient three years than there is between one who is deficient three years and one who is deficient four years. And that, it seems to me, is fundamentally erro- neous. For the modern biologist is coming to rely less on the idea of races or groups and to realize that, in nature, we have only individuals, made up of collections of traits that are, for the most part, separately inheritable. Not individuals, but their transmittable characters, are
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the units of heredity. From this point of view we may say that feeble-minded persons are such as lack one or more mental traits that are socially important.
From this definition it follows that mental defectives differ quanti- tatively in the number of socially important traits that they lack and qualitatively in the kind of traits and the degree of their social impor- tance. Defectiveness in one important trait only may be called uni- def ectiveness ; in two traits^ di-defectiveness and so we may have tri- defectiveness up to multi-defectiveness. For example, cases are well known of number-defectiveness, attention-defectiveness, memory-defect- iveness, imagination-defectiveness, emotion-defectiveness, inhibition- defectiveness, moral-defectiveness, occurring quite without other de- fects. Well-known unit defects are word-blindness, figure-blindness, word-deafness, tone-deafness and color-blindness. Any of the defects may occur isolated or two or more of them together in one individual. Such defectives are often not recognized as such, if the missing trait or traits have little social importance; but if gentleness gives way to cruelty or self-restraint to self-indulgence the uni-defective becomes a " moral imbecile," and such a moral imbecile may be good at his school work and bright and active in most ways. It is, however, the multi- defectives that constitute the main problem of the feeble-minded; for they are fairly common and are a constant drag on that school system which is not adapted to their capacities. Yet among such may be good mathematicians, musicians, mechanicians, etc. It is clear, then, that " feeble-mindedness " is not a simple trait, but a convenient group in which to put all of the socially inadequate.
Can we, in the midst of this heterogeneity find any general " cause " of defectiveness in its varied manifestations? It seems to me we can discover such a cause by attending to various features of defectiveness. First of all we have to recognize that these defects are in general hereditary. There are family strains with color-blindness, stuttering, word-blindness, number-blindness, tone-deafness, and so on. The deficiency of the uni-defective comes from a defect in the germ-plasm of one or both of his parents. In a multi-defective, likewise, all the absent traits are the result of corresponding defects in the germ-plasm of the parents. And if both parents be multi-defectives that combina- tion of germ-cells will be rare indeed that results in anything but a feeble-minded child.
And, secondly, it is to be observed that " defects " are not patholog- ical conditions; they are merely deviations from the normal condition of the adult. For every person shows these defects at some stage of his life and only gradually overcomes them. My nine-months-old son can not talk, nor dress himself, nor attend to his animal needs. He is
MENTAL DEFECTIVENESS 89
word-blind and figure-blind. He is cruel to the cat, appropriates to his own use the property of others, and insists vehemently upon having what he wants at whatever inconvenience to another. He is now a low-grade imbecile without moral ideas. He will prove himself not to be " feeble-minded " if, as he approaches puberty, all of these and the other socially important undeveloped conditions prove, under fair culture, capable of development up to the corresponding "normal" conditions. Defectiveness is thus a persistent infantile condition of one or more characteristics; a failure of certain socially important traits to develop.
Now there is a well-known biological principle that " ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny " — that the child in his development passes through the same series of physical and mental stages that the adults did in the successive generations of the race's development. So we may infer that man's remote ancestors did not go in their adult stage beyond the point where this infant-man is now. Indeed, the adult apes, nearest allies of our ancestors, show the same inability to talk, to dress, to regard property rights and to be gentle and considerate toward others that the infant shows. And we can not escape the conclusion that the gradual acquisition of social traits by the normal child follows much the same road as the evolution of social man from non-gregarious apes. But, there are men who never develop these social traits. And if we study the pedigrees of such men carefully (and many of them have been studied for six or seven generations) we trace back a con- tinuous trail of the defects until the conclusion is forced upon us that the defects of this germ plasm have surely come all the way down from man's ape-like ancestors, through 200 generations or more. This germ plasm that we are tracing remains relatively simple ; it has never gained (or only temporarily, at most) the one or the many character- istics whose absence we call, quite inadequately, defects. Feeble-mind- edness is, thus, an uninterrupted transmission from our animal an- cestry. It is not reversion; it is direct inheritance.
To summarize: Man is evolving and in that evolution he has lost some physical traits and gained some mental ones. But neither in their losses nor in their gains have all strains evolved to the same extent. Some races have lost the skin pigment, but others have made little progress in this direction. We are getting rid of our body coat of hair, but the Akkas of the Upper Nile and special smaller strains have a very hairy body, and so appendix and tail (coccyx) show variations that run in families. Likewise in the acquisition of mental traits, whole races differ in their ability to speak, to count, to foresee. The Ethiopian has no more need for thrift than the tropical monkey and has not acquired it. It is not surprising that there are strains, even
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such as have a white, hairless skin, that have never acquired an appre- ciation of cause and effect, of the importance of controlling the ses- passion, of the necessity of regarding the rights and feelings of others. The marvel is not that these strains still persist, but rather that they have been so nearly exterminated.
This brings us to the subject of the control of mental defectiveness. We see at once that there must have been at work, even in prehistoric times, a sort of natural control by the elimination of those incapable of meeting the ever-increasing complexities of " advancing civilization." As man spread to the north those strains that had not acquired the trait of hoarding for the winter mostly perished of cold and hunger; those strains that had not acquired the sense of property rights and tended to invade the stores of others were always in danger of being cut off. In England, less than a century ago, there were 323 classes of offences punishable by death. Under such rigid selection " de- fective " ancestral strains tended to be eliminated.
To-day, in our most highly civilized countries, the process of elim- ination of the unfit animal strains is largely reversed. We protect, in an institution, the members of a weak strain up to the period of repro- duction and then let them free upon the community and encourage them to leave a large progeny of " feeble-minded " ; which, in turn, protected from infantile mortality and carefully nurtured up to the reproductive period, are again set free to reproduce, and so the stupid work goes on of preserving and increasing our socially unfit strains.
But a reaction is setting in. The legislatures of six of the United States have already voted to permit the sterilization of defective per- sons. But it is doubtful if the " more advanced " public is altogether ready for such operations. A less drastic, but not less effective, method is the segregation of the defective strains during the entire reproductive period. However, the method is not so important, but in some way or other society must end these animalistic blood-lines or they will end society.
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THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, PARIS, FROM 1666 TO 1699
By Dr. EDWARD F. WILLIAMS
CHICAGO
THE account of the Paris Academy of Sciences, one of the five organizations which together form the French Institute, is found in its MemoireSj and in the history of the academy published in 1733 of which the portion written by du Hamel, the first secretary, was in Latin and covered the years from 1666 to 1679, This history was con- tinued in French by M. de Fontenelle, du Hamel's successor, to nearly the end of the year 1699. An edition of this history in five volumes was published in Holland in 1740, but those who wish for absolute accuracy should consult the Memoires published at Paris in 1740. Of these Memoires there were forty volumes. The history of the old academy, which covers very fully the period from its reorganization in 1699 to its abolition by the revolution written by L. F. Alfred Maury, a member of the institute, published in 1864 by