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Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899

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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899

Author: Various

Editor: William Jay Youmans


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, NOVEMBER 1899 ***

Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LVI NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900




COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

[Illustration: GEORGE M. STERNBERG.]




APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1899.




THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY.

BY FRANKLIN SMITH.


Much has been written of late about "the real problems of democracy."
According to some "thinkers," they consist of the invention of
ingenious devices to prevent caucus frauds and the purchase of votes,
to check the passage of special laws as well as too many laws, and
to infuse into decent people an ardent desire to participate in
the wrangles of politics. According to others, they consist of the
invention of equally ingenious devices to compel corporations to manage
their business in accordance with Christian principles, to transform
the so-called natural monopolies into either State or municipal
monopolies, and to effect, by means of the power of taxation, a more
equitable distribution of wealth. According to still others, they
consist of the invention of no less ingenious devices to force people
to be temperate, to observe humanity toward children and animals, and
to read and study what will make them model citizens. It is innocently
and touchingly believed that with the solution of these problems, by
the application of the authority that society has over the individual,
"the social conscience" will be awakened. But such a belief can not
be realized. It has its origin in a conception of democracy that has
no foundation either in history or science. What are supposed to be
the real problems of democracy are only the problems of despotism--the
problems to which every tyrant from time immemorial has addressed
himself, to the moral and industrial ruin of his subjects.

If democracy be conceived not as a form of political government under
the _régime_ of universal suffrage, but as a condition of freedom under
moral control, permitting every man to do as he likes, so long as he
does not trench upon the equal right of every other man, deliverance
from the sophistries and absurdities of current social and political
discussion becomes easy and inevitable. Its real problems cease to
be an endless succession of political devices that stimulate cunning
and evasion, and countless encroachments upon individual freedom that
stir up contention and ill feeling. Instead of being innumerable and
complex, defying the solvent power of the greatest intellects and the
efforts of the most enthusiastic philanthropists, they become few and
simple. While their proper solution is beset with difficulties, these
difficulties are not as hopeless as the framing of a statute to produce
a growth of virtue in a depraved heart. Indeed, no such task has ever
been accomplished, and every effort in that direction has been worse
than futile. It has encouraged the growth of all the savage traits that
ages of conflict have stamped so profoundly in the nervous system of
the race. But let it be understood that the real problems of democracy
are the problems of self-support and self-control, the problems that
appeared with the appearance of human life, and that their sole
solution is to be found in the application of precisely the same
methods with which Nature disciplines the meanest of her creatures,
then we may expect a measure of success from the efforts of social
and political reformers; for freedom of thought and action, coupled
with the punishment that comes from a failure to comply with the laws
of life and the conditions of existence, creates an internal control
far more potent than any law. It impels men to depend upon their own
efforts to gain a livelihood; it inspires them with a respect for the
right of others to do the same.

Simple and commonplace as the traits of self-support and self-control
may seem, they are of transcendent importance. Every other trait sinks
into insignificance. The society whose members have learned to care for
themselves and to control themselves has no further moral or economic
conquests to make. It will be in the happy condition dreamed of by all
poets, philosophers, and philanthropists. There will be no destitution,
for each person, being able to maintain himself and his family, will
have no occasion, except in a case of a sudden and an unforeseen
misfortune, to look to his friends and neighbors for aid. But in thus
maintaining himself--that is, in pursuing the occupation best adapted
to his ability and most congenial to his taste--he will contribute
in the largest degree to the happiness of the other members of the
community. While they are pursuing the occupations best adapted to
their ability and most congenial to their tastes, they will be able to
obtain from him, as he will be able to obtain from them, those things
that both need to supplement the products of their own industry. Since
each will be left in full possession of all the fruits of his own toil,
he will be at liberty to make just such use of them as will contribute
most to his happiness, thus permitting the realization, in the only
practicable way, of Bentham's principle of "the greatest happiness
of the greatest number." Since all of them will be free to make such
contracts as they believe will be most advantageous to them, exchanging
what they are willing to part with for what some one else is willing
to give in return, there will prevail the only equitable distribution
of the returns from labor and capital. No one will receive more and no
one less than he is entitled to. Thus will benefit be in proportion to
merit, and the most scrupulous justice be satisfied.

But this _régime_ of equity in the distribution of property implies, as
I have already said, the possession of a high degree of self-control.
Not only must all persons have such a keen sense of their own rights
as will never permit them to submit to infringement, but they must
have such a keen sense of the rights of others that they will not be
guilty themselves of infringement. Not only will they refrain from the
commission of those acts of aggression whose ill effects are immediate
and obvious; they will refrain from those acts whose ill effects are
remote and obscure. Although they will not, for example, deceive or
steal or commit personal assaults, they will not urge the adoption of
a policy that will injure the unknown members of other communities,
like the Welsh tin-plate makers and the Vienna pearl-button makers that
the McKinley Bill deprived of employment. Realizing the vice of the
plea of the opponents of international copyright that cheap literature
for a people is better than scrupulous honesty, they will not refuse
to foreign authors the same protection to property that they demand.
They will not, finally, allow themselves to take by compulsion or by
persuasion the property of neighbors to be used to alleviate suffering
or to disseminate knowledge in a way to weaken the moral and physical
strength of their fellows. But the possession of a sense of justice
so scrupulous assumes the possession of a fellow-feeling so vivid
that it will allow no man to refuse all needful aid to the victims of
misfortune. As suffering to others will mean suffering to himself,
he will be as powerfully moved to go to their rescue as he would to
protect himself against the same misfortune. Indeed, he will be moved,
as all others will be moved, to undertake without compulsion all the
benevolent work, be it charitable or educational, that may be necessary
to aid those persons less fortunate than himself to obtain the greatest
possible satisfaction out of life.

But the methods of social reform now in greatest vogue do not
contribute to the realization of any such millennium. They are a
flagrant violation of the laws of life and the conditions of existence.
They make difficult, if not impossible, the establishment of the moral
government of a democracy that insures every man and woman not only
freedom but also sustentation and protection. In disregard of the
principles of biology, which demand that benefit shall be in proportion
to merit, the feeble members of society are fostered at the expense
of the strong. Setting at defiance the principles of psychology,
which insist upon the cultivation of the clearest perception of the
inseparable relation of cause and effect and the equally inseparable
relation of aggression and punishment, honest people are turned into
thieves and murderers, and thieves and murderers are taught to believe
that no retribution awaits the commission of the foulest crime.
Scornful of the principles of sociology, which teach in the plainest
way that the institutions of feudalism are the products of war and can
serve no other purpose than the promotion of aggression, a deliberate
effort, born of the astonishing belief that they can be transformed
into the agencies of progress, is made in time of peace to restore them
to life.

To the American Philistine nothing is more indicative of the marvelous
moral superiority of this age and country than the rapid increase
in the public expenditures for enterprises "to benefit the people."
Particularly enamored is he of the showy statistics of hospitals,
asylums, reformatories, and other so-called charitable institutions
supported by public taxation. "How unselfish we are!" he exclaims,
swelling with pride as he points to them. "In what other age or in what
other country has so much been done for the poor and unfortunate?"
Naught shall ever be said by me against the desire to help others.
The fellow-feeling that thrives upon the aid rendered to the sick and
destitute I believe to be the most precious gift of civilization.
Upon its growth depends the further moral advancement of the race. As
I have already intimated, only as human beings are able to represent
to themselves vividly the sufferings of others will they be moved to
desist from the conduct that contributes to those sufferings. But the
system of public charity that prevails in this country is not charity
at all; it is a system of forcible public largesses, as odious and
demoralizing as the one that contributed so powerfully to the downfall
of Athens and Rome. By it money is extorted from the taxpayer with as
little justification as the crime of the highwayman, and expended by
politicians with as little love as he of their fellows. What is the
result? Precisely what might be expected. He is infuriated because of
the growing burden of his taxes. Instead of being made more humane and
sympathetic with every dollar he gives under compulsion to the poor and
suffering, he becomes more hard-hearted and bitter toward his fellows.
The notion that society, as organized at present, is reducing him to
poverty and degradation takes possession of him. He becomes an agitator
for violent reforms that will only render his condition worse. At the
same time the people he aids come to regard him simply as a person
under obligations to care for them. They feel no more gratitude toward
him than the wolf toward the victim of its hunger and ferocity.

Akin to public charity are all those public enterprises undertaken to
ameliorate the condition of the poor--parks, model tenement houses, art
galleries, free concerts, free baths, and relief works of all kinds. To
these I must add all those Federal, State, and municipal enterprises,
such as the post office with the proposed savings attachment, a State
system of highways and waterways, municipal water, gas and electric
works, etc., that are supposed to be of inestimable advantage to the
same worthy class. These likewise fill the heart of the American
Philistine with immense satisfaction. Although he finds, by his study
of pleasing romances on municipal government in Europe, that we have
yet to take some further steps before we fall as completely as the
inhabitants of Paris and Berlin into the hands of municipal despotism,
he is convinced that we have made gratifying headway, and that the
outlook for complete subjection to that despotism is encouraging. But
it should be remembered that splendid public libraries and public
baths, and extensive and expensive systems of highways and municipal
improvements, built under a modified form of the old _corvée_, are
no measure of the fellow-feeling and enlightenment of a community.
On the contrary, they indicate a pitiful incapacity to appreciate
the rights of others, and are, therefore, a measure rather of the
low degree of civilization. It should be remembered also, especially
by the impoverished victims of the delusions of the legislative
philanthropist, that there is no expenditure that yields a smaller
return in the long run than public expenditure; that however honest the
belief that public officials will do their duty as conscientiously and
efficiently as private individuals, history has yet to record the fact
of any bureaucracy; that however profound the conviction that the cost
of these "public blessings" comes out of the pockets of the rich and is
on that account particularly justifiable, it comes largely out of the
pockets of the poor; and that by the amount abstracted from the income
of labor and capital by that amount is the sum divided between labor
and capital reduced.

"But," interposes the optimist, "have the Americans not their great
public-school system, unrivaled in the world, to check and finally
to end the evils that appear thus far to be inseparably connected
with popular government? Is there any truth more firmly established
than that it is the bulwark of American institutions, and that if we
maintain it as it should be maintained they will be able to weather any
storm that may threaten?" Precisely the same argument has been urged
time out of mind in behalf of an ecclesiastical system supported at
the expense of the taxpayer. Good men without number have believed,
and have fought to maintain their belief, that only by the continuance
of this form of aggression could society be saved from corruption and
barbarism. Even in England to-day, where freedom and civilization
have made their most brilliant conquests, this absurd contention
is made to bolster up the rotten and tottering union of Church and
state, and to justify the seizure of the property of taxpayers to
support a particular form of ecclesiastical instruction. But no fact
of history has received demonstrations more numerous and conclusive
than that such instruction, whether Protestant or Catholic, Buddhist
or Mohammedan, in the presence of the demoralizing forces of militant
activities, is as impotent as the revolutions of the prayer wheel of
a pious Hindu. To whatever country or people or age we may turn, we
find that the spirit of the warrior tramples the spirit of the saint
in the dust. Despite the lofty teachings of Socrates and Plato, the
Athenians degenerated until the name of the Greek became synonymous
with that of the blackest knave. With the noble examples and precepts
of the Stoics in constant view, the Romans became beastlier than any
beast. All through the middle ages and down to the present century
the armies of ecclesiastics, the vast libraries of theology, and the
myriads of homilies and prayers were impotent to prevent the social
degradation that inundated the world with the outbreak of every great
conflict. Take, for example, a page from the history of Spain. At the
time of Philip II, who tried to make his people as rigid as monks, that
country had no rival in its fanatical devotion to the Church, or its
slavish observance of the forms of religion. Yet its moral as well as
its intellectual and industrial life was sinking to the lowest level.
Official corruption was rampant. The most shameless sexual laxity
pervaded all ranks. The name of Spanish women, who had "in previous
times been modest, almost austere and Oriental in their deportment,"
became a byword and a reproach throughout the world. "The ladies are
naturally shameless," says Camille Borghese, the Pope's delegate
to Madrid in 1593, "and even in the streets go up and address men
unknown to them, looking upon it as a kind of heresy to be properly
introduced. They admit all sorts of men to their conversation, and
are not in the least scandalized at the most improper proposals being
made to them." To see how ecclesiastics themselves fall a prey to the
ethics of militant activities, becoming as heartless and debauched as
any other class, take a page from Italian history at the time of Pope
Alexander VI. "Crimes grosser than Scythian," says a pious Catholic who
visited Rome, "acts of treachery worse than Carthaginian, are committed
without disguise in the Vatican itself under the eyes of the Pope.
There are rapines, murders, incests, debaucheries, cruelties exceeding
those of the Neros and Caligulas." Similar pages from the history of
every other country in Europe given up to war, including Protestant
England, might be quoted.

But what is true of ecclesiastical effort in the presence of militant
activities is true of pedagogic effort in the presence of political
activities. For more than half a century the public-school system
in its existing form has been in full and energetic operation. The
money devoted to it every year now reaches the enormous total of one
hundred and eighty million dollars. Simultaneously an unprecedented
extension of secondary education has occurred. Since the war, colleges
and universities, supported in whole or in part at the public expense,
have been established in more than half of the States and Territories
of the Union. To these must be added the phenomenal growth of normal
schools, high schools, and academies, and of the equipment of the
educational institutions already in existence. Yet, as a result, are
the American people more moral than they were half a century ago? Have
American institutions--that is, the institutions based upon the freedom
of the individual--been made more secure? I venture to answer both
questions with an emphatic negative. The construction and operation
of the greatest machine of pedagogy recorded in history has been
absolutely impotent to stem the rising tide of political corruption
and social degeneration. If there are skeptics that doubt the truth
of this indictment let them study the criminal history of the day
that records the annual commission of more than six thousand suicides
and more than ten thousand homicides, and the embezzlement of more
than eleven million dollars. Let them study the lying pleas of the
commercial interests of the country that demand protection against "the
pauper labor of Europe," and thus commit a shameless aggression upon
the pauper labor of America. Let them study the records of the deeds
of intolerance and violence committed upon workingmen that refuse to
exchange their personal liberty for membership of a despotic labor
organization. Let them study the columns of the newspapers, crowded
with records of crime, salacious stories, and ignorant comment on
current questions and events that appeal to a population as unlettered
and base as themselves. Let them study, finally, the appalling
indictment of American political life, in a State where the native
blood still runs pure in the veins of the majority of the inhabitants,
that Mr. John Wanamaker framed in a great speech at the opening of
his memorable campaign in Lancaster against the most powerful and
most corrupt despotism that can be found outside of Russia or Turkey.
"In the fourth century of Rome, in the time of Emperor Theodosius,
Hellebichus was master of the forces," he said, endeavoring to describe
a condition of affairs that exists in a similar degree in every State
in the Union, "and Cæsarius was count of the offices. In the nineteenth
century, M. S. Quay is count of the offices, and W. A. Andrews, Prince
of Lexow, is master of forces in Pennsylvania, and we have to come
through the iron age and the silver age to the worst of all ages--the
degraded, evil age of conscienceless, debauched politics.... Profligacy
and extravagance and boss rule everywhere oppress the people. By the
multiplication of indictments your district attorney has multiplied
his fees far beyond the joint salaries of both your judges. The
administration of justice before the magistrates has degenerated
into organized raids on the county treasury.... Voters are corruptly
influenced or forcibly coerced to do the bidding of the bosses, and
thus force the fetters of political vassalage on the freemen of the
old guard. School directors, supervisors, and magistrates, and the
whole machinery of local government, are involved and dominated by this
accursed system."

But Mr. Wanamaker might have added that the whole social and industrial
life of the country is involved and dominated by the same system. It
is a well-established law of social science that the evil effects
of a dominant activity are not confined to the persons engaged
in it. Like a contagion, they spread to every part of the social
organization, and poison the life farthest removed from their origin.
Yet the public-school system, so impotent to save us from social and
political degradation and still such an object of unbounded pride and
adulation, is, as Mr. Wanamaker, all unconscious of the implication of
his scathing criticism, points out in so many words, an integral part
of the vast and complex machinery that political despotism has seized
upon to plunder and enslave the American people. As in the case of
every other extension of the duties of government beyond the limits
of the preservation of order and the enforcement of justice, it is an
aggression upon the rights of the individual, and, as in the case of
every other aggression, contributes powerfully to the decay of national
character and free institutions. It adds thousands upon thousands to
the constantly growing army of tax eaters that are impoverishing the
people still striving against heavy odds to gain an honest livelihood.
It places in the hands of the political despots now ruling the country,
without the responsibility that the most odious monarchs have to bear,
a revenue and an army of mercenaries that make more and more difficult
emancipation from their shackles. It is doing more than anything else
except the post-office department to teach people that there is no
connection between merit and benefit; that they have the right to look
to the State rather than to themselves for maintenance; that they
are under no obligations to see that they do not take from others,
in the form of salaries not earned nor intended to be earned, what
does not belong to them. In the face of this wholesale destruction of
fellow-feeling such as occurred in France under the old _régime_ and is
occurring to-day in Italy and Spain, and the inculcation of the ethics
of militant activities, such as may be observed in these countries as
well as elsewhere in Europe, is it any wonder that the mind-stuffing
that goes on in the public schools has no more effect upon the morals
of the American people than the creeds and prayers of the mediæval
ecclesiastics that joined in wars and the spoliation of oppressed
populations throughout Europe?

Since the path that all people under popular government as well
as under forms more despotic are pursuing so energetically and
hopefully leads to the certain destruction of the foundations of
civilization, what is the path that social science points out? What
must they do to prevent the extinction of the priceless acquisition
of fellow-feeling, now vanishing so rapidly before the most unselfish
efforts to promote it? The supposition is that the social teachings
of the philosophy of evolution have no answer to these questions.
Believing that they inculcate the hideous _laissez-faire_ doctrine of
"each for himself and the devil take the hindmost," so characteristic
of human relations among all classes of people in this country, the
victims of this supposition have repudiated them. But I propose to
show that they are the only teachings that give the slightest promise
of social amelioration. Although they are ignorantly stigmatized as
individualistic, and therefore necessarily selfish and inconsiderate
of the welfare of others, they are in reality socialistic in the best
sense of the word--that is, they enjoin voluntary, not coercive,
co-operation, and insure the noblest humanity and the most perfect
civilization, moral as well as material, that can be attained.

Why a society organized upon the individualistic instead of the
socialistic basis will realize every achievement admits of easy
explanation. A man dependent upon himself is forced by the struggle
for existence to exercise every faculty he possesses or can possibly
develop to save himself and his progeny from extinction. Under
such pitiless and irresistible pressure he acquires the highest
physical and intellectual strength. Thus equipped with weapons
absolutely indispensable in any state of society, whether civilized
or uncivilized, he is prepared for the conquest of the world. He
gains also the physical and moral courage needful to cope with the
difficulties that terrify and paralyze the people that have not been
subjected to the same rigid discipline. Energetic and self-reliant, he
assails them with no thought of failure. If, however, he meets with
reverses, he renews the attack, and repeats it until success finally
comes to reward his efforts. Such prolonged struggles give steadiness
and solidity to his character that do not permit him to abandon himself
to trifles or to yield easily, if at all, to excitement and panic. He
never falls a victim to Reigns of Terror. The more trying the times,
the more self-possessed, clear-headed, and capable of grappling with
the situation he becomes, and soon rises superior to it. With every
triumph over difficulties there never fails to come the joy that
more than balances the pain and suffering endured. But the pain and
suffering are as precious as the joy of triumph. Indelibly registered
in the nervous system, they enable their victim to feel as others feel
passing through the same experience, and this fellow-feeling prompts
him to render them the assistance they may need. In this way be becomes
a philanthropist. Possessed of the abundant means that the success of
his enterprises has placed in his hands, he is in a position to help
them to a degree not within the reach nor the desires of the member of
the society organized upon the socialistic basis.

In the briefest appeal to history may be found the amplest support
for these deductions from the principles of social science. Wherever
the individual has been given the largest freedom to do whatever he
pleases, as long as he does not trench upon the equal freedom of
others, there we witness all those achievements and discover all
those traits that indicate an advanced state of social progress.
The people are the most energetic, the most resourceful, the most
prosperous, the most considerate and humane, the most anxious, and the
most competent to care for their less fortunate fellows. On the other
hand, wherever the individual has been most repressed, deterred by
custom or legislation from making the most of himself in every way,
there are to be observed social immobility or retrogression and all
the hateful traits that belong to barbarians. The people are inert,
slavish, cruel, and superstitious. In the ancient world one type
of society is represented by the Egyptians and Assyrians, and the
other by the Greeks and Romans. In the modern world all the Oriental
peoples, particularly the Hindus and Chinese, represent the former, and
the Occidental peoples, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, represent the
latter. So superior, in fact, are the Anglo-Saxons because of their
observance of the sacred and fruitful principle of individual freedom
that they control the most desirable parts of the earth's surface. If
not checked by the practice of a philosophy that has destroyed all
the great peoples of antiquity and paralyzed their competitors in the
establishment of colonies in the New as well as the Old World, there is
no reason to doubt that the time will eventually come when, like the
Romans, there will be no other rule than theirs in all the choicest
parts of the globe.

It is the immense material superiority of the Anglo-Saxon peoples
over all other nations that first arrests attention. No people in
Europe possess the capital or conduct the enterprises that the
English and Americans do. They have more railroads, more steamships,
more factories, more foundries, more warehouses, more of everything
that requires wealth and energy than their rivals. Though the fact
evokes the sneers of the Ruskins and Carlyles, these enterprises are
the indispensable agents of civilization. They have done more for
civilization, for the union of distant peoples, and the development of
fellow-feeling--for all that makes life worth living--than all the art,
literature, and theology ever produced. Without industry and commerce,
which these devotees of "the higher life" never weary of deprecating,
how would the inhabitants of the Italian republics have achieved the
intellectual and artistic conquests that make them the admiration of
every historian? The Stones of Venice could not have been written. The
artists could not have lived that enabled Vassari to hand his name
down to posterity. The new learning would have been a flower planted
in a barren soil, and even before it had come to bud it would have
fallen withered. May we not, therefore, expect that in like manner the
wealth and freedom of the Anglo-Saxon race will bring forth fruits
that shall not evoke scorn and contempt? Already their achievements
in every field except painting, sculpture, and architecture eclipse
those of their rivals. Not excepting the literature of the Greeks,
is any so rich, varied, powerful, and voluminous as theirs? If they
have no Cæsar or Napoleon, they have a long list of men that have been
of infinitely greater use to civilization than those two products of
militant barbarism. If judged by practical results, they are without
rivals in the work of education. By their inventions and their
applications of the discoveries of science they have distanced all
competitors in the race for industrial and commercial supremacy. In
the work of philanthropy no people has done as much as they. The volume
of their personal effort and pecuniary contributions to ameliorate
the condition of the poor and unfortunate are without parallel in the
annals of charity. Yet Professor Ely, echoing the opinion of Charles
Booth and other misguided philanthropists, has the assurance to tell us
that "individualism has broken down." It is the social philosophy that
they are trying to thrust upon the world again that stands hopelessly
condemned before the remorseless tribunal of universal experience.

In the light thus obtained from science and history, the duty of the
American people toward the current social and political philosophy
and all the quack measures it proposes for the amelioration of the
condition of the unfortunate becomes clear and urgent. It is to
pursue without equivocation or deviation the policy of larger and
larger freedom for the individual that has given the Anglo-Saxon his
superiority and present dominance in the world. To this end they should
oppose with all possible vigor every proposed extension of the duty
of the state that does not look to the preservation of order and the
enforcement of justice. Regarding it as an onslaught of the forces of
barbarism, they should make no compromise with it; they should fight it
until freedom has triumphed. The next duty is to conquer the freedom
they still lack. Here the battle must be for the suppression of the
system of protective tariffs, for the transfer to private enterprise
and beneficence, the duties of the post office, the public schools, and
all public charities, for the repeal of all laws in regulation of trade
and industry as well as those in regulation of habits and morals. As
an inspiration it should be remembered that the struggle is not only
for freedom but for honesty. For the truth can not be too loudly or
too often proclaimed that every law taking a dollar from a man without
his consent, or regulating his conduct not in accordance with his own
notions, but in accordance with those of his neighbors, contributes to
the education of a people in idleness and crime. The next duty is to
encourage on every hand an appeal to voluntary effort to accomplish
all tasks too great for the strength of the individual. Whether those
tasks be moral, industrial, or educational, voluntary co-operation
alone should assume them and carry them to a successful issue. The
government should have no more to do with them than it has to do with
the cultivation of wheat or the management of Sunday schools or the
suppression of backbiting. The last and final duty should be to cheapen
and, as fast as possible, to establish gratuitous justice. With the
great diminution of crime that would result from the observance of the
duties already mentioned there would be much less occasion than now
to appeal to the courts. But, whenever the occasion arises, it should
involve no cost to the person that feels that his rights have been
invaded.

Thus will be solved indirectly all the problems of democracy that
social and political reformers seek in vain to solve directly. With the
diminution of the duties of the state to the preservation of order and
the enforcement of justice will be effected a reform as important and
far reaching as the suppression of chronic warfare. When politicians
are deprived of the immense plunder now involved in political warfare,
it will not be necessary to devise futile plans for caucus reform, or
ballot reform, or convention reform, or charter reform, or legislative
reform. Having no more incentive to engage in their nefarious business
than the smugglers that the abolition of the infamous tariff laws
banished from Europe, they will disappear among the crowd of honest
toilers. The suppression of the robberies of the tax collectors and
tax eaters, who have become so vast an army in the United States,
will effect also a solution of all labor problems. A society that
permits every toiler to work for whomsoever he pleases and for whatever
he pleases, protecting him in the full enjoyment of all the fruits
of his labor, has done for him everything that can be done. It has
taught him self-support and self-control. In thus guaranteeing him
freedom of contract and putting an end to the plunder of a bureaucracy
and privileged classes of private individuals, the beneficiaries of
special legislation, it has effected the only equitable distribution
of property possible. At the same time it has accomplished a vastly
greater work. As I have shown, the indispensable condition of success
of all movements for moral reform is the suppression not only of
militant strife, but of political strife. While they prevail, all
ecclesiastical and pedagogic efforts to better the condition of society
must fail. Despite lectures, despite sermons and prayers, despite also
literature and art, the ethics controlling the conduct of men and women
will be those of war. But with the abolition of both forms of militant
strife it becomes an easy task to teach the ethics of peace, and to
establish a state of society that requires no other government than
that of conscience. All the forces of industrialism contribute to the
work and insure its success.

       *       *       *       *       *

"This thirst for shooting every rare or unwonted kind of bird," says
the author of an article in the London Saturday Review, "is accountable
for the disappearance of many interesting forms of life in the British
Islands."




AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY.

BY HERBERT STOTESBURY.


[Illustration: MICHAEL FOSTER, K. C. B., M. A., F. R. S., Trinity.
Professor of Physiology.]

Most minds in America, as in England, if they think about the
subject at all, impute to the two ancient centers of Anglo-Saxon
learning--Oxford and Cambridge--an unquestionable supremacy. A halo
of greatness surrounds these august institutions, none the less real
because to the American mind, at least, it is vague. Half the books
students at other institutions require in their various courses have
the names of eminent Cambridge or Oxford men upon the fly leaf.
Michael Foster's Physiology, Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, and Bryce's
American Commonwealth are recognized text-books wherever the subjects
of which they treat are studied; while Sir G. G. Stokes, Jebb, Lord
Acton, Caird, Max Müller, and Ray Lankester are as well known to
students of Leland Stanford or Princeton as they are to Englishmen.
One can scarcely read a work on English literature or open an English
novel which does not make some reference to one or other of the great
universities or their colleges, inseparably associated as they are
with English life and history, past and present. Our oldest college
owes its existence to John Harvard, of Emmanuel, Cambridge, and the
name of the mother university still clings to her transatlantic
offspring. The English institutions have become firmly associated in
the vulgar mind with all that is dignified, venerable, and thorough in
learning, but, beyond a vague sentiment of admiration, little adequate
knowledge on the subject is abroad. American or German universities are
organizations not very difficult to comprehend, and a vague knowledge
of them is perhaps sufficient. The understanding, however, of those
complicated academic communities, Oxford and Cambridge, is a matter of
intimate experience. They differ widely from their sister institutions
in other countries, and in attempting to give some conception of
their peculiarities the writer proposes to restrict himself chiefly
to Cambridge, because there are not very many striking differences
between the latter and Oxford, and because the scientific supremacy
of Cambridge is sufficiently established to render her an object of
greater interest to the readers of the Science Monthly.

[Illustration: The Right Hon. LORD ACTON, M. A., LL. D., Trinity.
Professor of Modern History.]

First of all, it must be borne in mind that throughout most of their
history these institutions have been closely related, not to the body
of the people, but to the aristocracy. This was not so much the case
at first, before the university became an aggregate of colleges. Then
a rather poor and humble class were enabled, through the small expense
involved, to acquire the rudiments of an education, and even to become
proficient in the scholastic dialectic. But ere long, and with the
gradual endowment of different colleges, the expenses of a student
became much greater, and, save where scholarships could be obtained,
it required some affluence before parents could afford to give their
sons an academic training. Hence, the more fortunate or aristocratic
classes came in time to contribute the large majority of the student
body. Those whose intellectual attainments were so unusual as to
constitute ways and means have never been debarred, but impecunious
mediocrity had and still has little place or opportunity. It is well to
remember, in addition, that the Church fostered these universities in
their infancy, that it deserves unqualified credit for having nursed
them through their early months, and that it continues to have some
considerable influence over the modern institutions. Finally, the
growth of Cambridge and Oxford has largely been occasioned by lack of
rivals in their own class. In this branch or that, other institutions
have become deservedly famous. Edinburgh has a high reputation in
moral science; Manchester is renowned for her physics, chemistry,
and engineering; and London for her medical schools. But Oxford and
Cambridge are strong in many branches. Financially powerful, they are
able to attract the majority of promising and eminent men, whence has
resulted that remarkable _coterie_ of unrivaled intellects through whom
the above-named universities are chiefly known to the outer and foreign
world. This characteristic has its opposite illustrated in the United
States, where the tendency is centrifugal, no one or two universities
or colleges having advantages so decided as inevitably to attract most
of the best minds, and where, in consequence, the best minds are found
scattered from California to Harvard and Pennsylvania.

[Illustration: J. J. THOMSON, M. A., F. R. S., Trinity. Professor of
Experimental Physics.]

The characteristic peculiar to Cambridge and Oxford, and which
distinguishes them not only from American but also from all other
universities in England and elsewhere, is the college system. Thus
Cambridge is a collection of eighteen colleges which, though nominally
united to form one institution, are really distinct, inasmuch as
each is a separate community with its own buildings and grounds, its
own resident students, its own lecturers, and Fellows--a community
which is supported by its own moneys without aid from the university
exchequer, and which in most matters legislates for itself. The
system is not unlike the American Union on a small scale, with its
cluster of governments and their relation to a supreme center. The
advantages of this scheme might theoretically be very great. With
each college handsomely endowed and, though managing its own affairs,
entering freely, in addition, into those relations of reciprocity
which make for the good of the whole, one can readily imagine an
ideal academic commonwealth. And while the present condition of the
university can scarcely be said to approximate very closely to such
an academic Utopia, it yet derives from its constitution numerous
obvious advantages which universities otherwise constituted would and
do undoubtedly lack. The chief evils besetting the university are
perhaps more adventitious than inherent; they are largely financial,
and arise from carrying the system of college individualism too far. A
description of the college and university organization may make this
apparent. By its endowment a college must support a certain number
of Fellows and scholars. The latter form a temporary body, while the
former are more or less permanent, and therefore upon them devolves the
management of the college. Business is usually done by a council chosen
from the Fellows, and the election of new Fellows to fill vacancies is
made by this select body. The head of a college is known as the master;
he is elected by the Fellows save in one or two cases, where his
appointment rests with the crown or with certain wealthy individuals.
He lives in the college lodge especially built for him, draws a salary
large in proportion to the wealth of his college, and exerts an
influence corresponding to his intelligence.

[Illustration: G. H. DARWIN, M. A., F. R. S., Trinity. Plumian
Professor of Astronomy.]

The Fellows are in most cases chosen from those men who have achieved
the greatest success in an honor course. At Cambridge College
individualism has progressed so far that the Fellows of, say, Magdalen
must be Magdalen men, the students of Queens', St Catherine's, or any
other being ineligible save for their own fellowships. Oxford obtains
perhaps better men on the whole by throwing open the fellowships of
each particular college to the graduates of all, thus producing a
wider competition. A fellowship until recently was tenable for life,
but it has been reduced to about six years, the Fellows as a whole,
however, retaining the power to extend the period of possession. And,
further, the holding of a college office for fifteen years in general
qualifies for the holding of a fellowship for life, and for a pension
as lecturer or tutor. Thus a man is able to devote himself to research
with little fear that at the latter end of his career he will lack the
means of support. It is perhaps not too much to say that the offices of
college dean, tutor, and lecturer are more perquisites than anything
else. They are meant to keep and attract men of ability and parts.
However, their existence reacts upon the student body by augmenting
the expenses of the latter out of proportion to the benefits to be
obtained. For instance, instead of utilizing one set of lecturers for
one class of subjects, which all students could attend for a small fee,
each of the larger colleges, at any rate, pays special lecturers, drawn
from its own Fellows, to speak upon the same subjects each to a mere
handful of men from their own college only. The tutor is another luxury
inherited from the middle ages and therefore retained, and one for
which the students have to pay dearly. The chief business of the tutor
is not to teach, but to "look after" a certain number of students who
are theoretically relegated to his charge. He looks up their lodgings
for them, pays their bills at the end of the term, gets them out of
scrapes, and draws a large salary. The tutorships seem to the writer
to be a good illustration of how an office necessary to one period
persists after that for which it was instituted has ceased to exist.
When the students of Oxford and Cambridge were many of them thirteen
and fourteen years of age, as in the fourteenth century, nurses were
doubtless necessary, but they are still retained when the greater
maturity of the students renders them not only unnecessary but at times
even an impertinence.

The dean is not, as with us, the head of a department; his functions
are not so many, his tasks far less onerous. It is before a college
dean that students are "hauled" for such offenses as irregularity at
chapel, returning to the college after 12 P. M., smoking in college
precincts, bringing dogs into the college grounds, and other villainous
offenses against regulations. A dean must also attend chapel. Some
colleges require two deans to struggle through these complicated and
laborious duties, though some possessing only a few dozen students
succeed in getting along with one.

The line of demarcation between the university and the colleges is
very distinct. The legislative influence of the former extends over a
comparatively restricted field. All professorial chairs and certain
lectureships belong to and are paid by the university; the latter
has the arranging of the curricula, the care of the laboratories,
the disposition of certain noncollegiate scholarships; but, broadly
speaking, its two functions are the examination of all students and the
conferring of degrees. The supreme legislative body is the senate,
and it is composed of all masters of arts, doctors, and bachelors
of divinity whose names still remain on the university books--that
is, who continue to pay certain fees into the university treasury.
In addition to the legislative body there is an executive head or
council of nineteen, including the chancellor--at present the Duke of
Devonshire--and the vice-chancellor. Both these bodies must govern
according to the statutes, no alteration in which can be effected
without recourse being had to Parliament. The senate is a peculiar
body, and on occasions becomes somewhat unwieldy. It consists at
present of some 6,800 members, of whom only 452 are in residence at
Cambridge. Upon ordinary occasions only these 452 vote upon questions
proposed by the council; but on occasions of great moment, as when
the question of granting university degrees to women came up, some
thousands or more of the nonresident members, who in many cases have
lost touch with the modern university and modern systems of education,
swarm to their alma mater, annihilate the champions of reform, and are
hailed by their brethren as the saviors of their university.

[Illustration: R. C. JEBB, Litt. D., M. P., Trinity. Regius Professor
of Greek.]

The university's exchequer is supplied partly by its endowment, but
chiefly by an assessment on the college incomes, a capitation tax on
all undergraduates, and the fees attending matriculation, examinations,
and the granting of degrees. The examinations are numerous. Every
student on entering is required to pass, or to claim exemption from,
an entrance examination. In either case he pays £3 to the university,
and upon admission to any honor course or "tripos" to qualify for
the degree of Bachelor of Arts £3 more is exacted. The income of the
university from these examination fees alone amounts to £9,400 per
annum, £4,600 of which goes to pay the examiners. In America this is
supposed to be a part of the professor's or instructor's duty, no
additional remuneration is allowed, and hence it does not become
necessary to make an additional tax upon the students' resources. The
conferring of degrees is also made a very profitable affair. Each
candidate for the degree of B. A. pays out £7 to the voracious 'varsity
chest, and upon proceeding to the M. A. a further contribution of £12
is requested. In this way the university makes about £12,000 a year,
and, as though this was not sufficient, she requires a matriculation
fee of £5 for every student who becomes a member. By this means another
annual £5,000 is obtained. It must be remembered that these fees are
entirely separate from the college fees. When the £5 matriculation for
the latter is taken into consideration and the £8 a term (at Trinity)
for lectures, two thirds of which the student does not attend, when it
is understood that all this and more does not include living expenses,
which are by no means slight, and that there are three terms instead of
two, as with us, it will be obvious that Cambridge adheres very closely
to the rule that to them only who have wealth shall her refining
influence be given. That the greatest universities in existence should
render it almost totally impossible for aught but the rich to obtain
the advantages of their unusual educational facilities jars with that
idea of democracy of learning which an American training is apt to
foster. But, as we shall point out later, an aristocracy of learning
may also have its uses.

[Illustration: HENRY SIDGWICK, Litt. D., Trinity. Knightbridge
Professor of Moral Philosophy.]

With all the revenues the university collects from colleges and
students, amounting in all to about £65,000, Cambridge still finds
herself poor. Some of the colleges, notably King's and Trinity,
are extremely wealthy, but the university remains, if not exactly
impecunious, at least on the ragged edge of financial difficulties.
The various regius and other professorships, inadequately endowed by
the munificence of the crown and of individuals, have each to be
augmented from the university chest. The continual repairing of the old
laboratories and scientific apparatus, the salaries to lecturers, to
proctors, bedells, and other officers, cause a continual drain on the
exchequer, which, with the rapidly growing need for larger laboratories
and newer apparatus, has finally resulted in an appeal to the country
for the sum of half a million pounds.

[Illustration: DONALD MACALISTER, M. A., M. D., St. Johns. Linacre
Lecturer of Physics.]

It has been seen that the drains on a student's pocket are very
considerable at Cambridge, owing to the number of perquisites showered
by the colleges on their Fellows, and it may appear that this state
of things is unjust and wrong. At present Oxford and Cambridge are
practically within the reach of only the moneyed population. According,
however, to a plausible and frequently repeated theory, it is not the
function of these universities to meet the educational needs of the
mediocre poor. The writer's critical attitude toward the financial
system in vogue at Cambridge is a proper one, only on the assumption
that a maximum of education to all classes alike at a minimum of
expense is the final cause and desideratum of a university's existence.
But if one assumes that Oxford and Cambridge exist for a different
purpose, that the chief end they propose to themselves is individual
research, and the advancement, not the promulgation, of learning, it
must be admitted that their system has little that is reprehensible.
According to this standpoint the students only exist by courtesy of
the dons (a name for the Fellows), who have a perfect right to impose
upon the students, in return for the condescension which is shown them,
what terms they see fit. And they argue that this view is the historic
one. The colleges were originally endowed solely for the benefit of
a certain limited number of Fellows and scholars. The undergraduate
body, as it at present exists, is a later growth, whose eventual
existence and the importance of which to the university was probably
not anticipated by the college founders. Starting with this, the
defenders of the present _régime_ would point out, in addition, that
there are other English institutions where the poorer classes may be
educated, that Cambridge and Oxford are not only not bound to take upon
themselves this task, but that they actually subserve a higher purpose
and one just as necessary to the development of English science and
letters and to the education of the English intellect by specializing
in another direction. The good of a philosopher's lifelong reflections,
they would say, is not always manifest, but the teachers who instruct
the nation's youth are themselves dependent for rational standpoints
upon the labor of the greater teacher, and they act as the instruments
of communication between the most learned and the unlettered. So Oxford
and Cambridge are the sources from whose fountains of wisdom and
culture flow streams supplying all the academic mills of Britain, which
in their turn are enabled to feed the inhabitants. It would be absurd,
they maintain, to insist that the streams and the mills could equally
well fulfill the same functions. Cambridge and Oxford instruct just so
far as so doing is compatible with what for them is the main end--the
furthering of various kinds of research and the offering of all sorts
of inducements in order to keep and attract the interested attention of
classical butterflies and scientific worms. How well they succeed in
this noble ambition is known throughout the civilized world.

Mr. G. H. Darwin, a son of Charles Darwin, has recently had occasion
to mention the enormous scientific output of Cambridge University.
After saying that the Royal Society is the Academy of Sciences in
England, and that in its publications appear accounts of all the
most important scientific discoveries in England and most of those
in Scotland, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, he goes on to state
that he examined the Transactions of this society for three years and
discovered that out of the 5,480 pages published in that time 2,418
were contributed by Cambridge men and 1,324 by residents.

In view of these facts, and despite the shortcomings of this university
as a teaching institution, it is to be hoped that private generosity
will answer her appeal for financial assistance. Her laboratories are
a mine of research, and it is in them and in the men who conduct them
that Cambridge is perhaps most to be admired.

[Illustration: SIR G. G. STOKES, Bart., M. A., LL. D., Sc. D., F. R.
S., Pembroke. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.]

The Cavendish Laboratory of Physics, where Clerk-Maxwell and afterward
Lord Rayleigh taught, and which is at present in the hand of their
able successor, J. J. Thomson, is a building of considerable size
and admirably fitted out, but the rapidly increasing number of young
physicists who are being allured by the working facilities of the
place, and by the fame of Professor Thomson, is rendering even this
splendidly equipped hall of science inadequate. The physiological
laboratories are many, they are completely furnished with appliances,
and a large number of students are there trained annually under the
supervision of one of England's most eminent living scientists,
Michael Foster, and his scarcely less able associates--Langley, Hardy,
and Gaskell. Chemistry, zoölogy, botany, anatomy, and geology have
each their well-appointed halls and masterly exponents. The names
MacAlister, Liveing, Dewar, Newton, Sedgwick, Marshall Ward, and Hughes
are not easily matched in any other one institution. Indeed, it is
when one stops to consider the intellects at Cambridge that it becomes
a dangerous matter to institute comparisons, and to say that this
discipline or that is most rich in eminent interpreters. In science,
at any rate, and in all branches of science, Cambridge stands alone.
Not even Oxford can be considered for a moment as in the same class
with her. And of all the sciences it is undoubtedly in mathematics
and astronomy that the supremacy of Cambridge is most pronounced. The
names of Profs. Sir G. G. Stokes and Sir R. S. Ball will be familiar to
every reader, while those of Profs. Forsythe and G. H. Darwin and Mr.
Baker will be familiar to all mathematicians. In classics Cambridge,
while not possessing a similar monopoly of almost all the talent,
still holds her own even with Oxford. Professors Jebb, Mayor, and
Ridgeway, and Drs. Verrall, Jackson, and Frazer constitute a group of
men second to none in the subjects of which they treat. Professor Jebb
is also one of the university's two representatives in Parliament.
In philosophy Cambridge has two men, Henry Sidgwick and James Ward,
the former of whom is perhaps by common consent the first living
authority on moral science, while the latter ranks among the first of
living psychologists. These men, while representing very different
philosophical standpoints, unite in opposition not only to the
Hegelian movement, which, led by Caird and Bradley of Oxford, Seth and
Stirling of Edinburgh, threatens the invasion of England, but also to
the Spencerian philosophy. The latter system has not many adherents at
either university, but the writer has been told by Professor Sully that
the ascendency of the neo-Hegelian and other systems is by no means
so pronounced elsewhere in England. The Spencerian biology, on the
contrary, has been largely defended at Cambridge, while Weismannism,
for the most part, is repudiated there and at Oxford.

The teaching at Cambridge, as at all universities, is of many grades.
In many subjects the lectures are not meant to give a student
sufficient material to get him through an examination, and a "coach"
becomes requisite, or at any rate is employed. This system of coaching
has attained large dimensions; its results are often good, but it
means an additional expense and seems an incentive to laziness, making
it unnecessary for a student to exert his own mental aggressiveness
or powers of application as he who fights his own battles must do.
The Socratic form of instruction, producing a more intimate and
unrestricted relation between instructor and student, and which is
largely in operation in the States, is little practiced in England.
In science the methods of instruction at Cambridge are ideal. That
practical acquaintance with the facts of Nature which Huxley and
Tyndall taught is the only true means of knowing Nature, is the key
according to which all biological and physical instruction at these
institutions is conducted.

[Illustration: JAMES WARD, Sc. D., Trinity. Professor of Mental
Philosophy and Logic.]

In the last half dozen years two radical steps have been taken by both
Oxford and Cambridge--steps leading, to many respectable minds, in
diametrically opposite directions. The step backward (in the writer's
view) occurred when the universities, after much excitement, defeated
with slaughter the proposition granting university degrees to women.
It was simply proposed that the students of Newnham and Girton, who
should successfully compete with male students in an honor course,
should have an equal right with the latter to receive the usual degrees
from their alma mater. After industrious inquiry among those who were
foremost in supporting and opposing this movement the writer has
unearthed no objection of weight against the change. "If the women
were granted degrees they would have votes in the senate," and "It
never has been done"--these are the two reasons most persistently
urged in defense of the conservative view; while justice and utility
alike appear to be for once, at any rate, unequivocally on the side
of the women. Prejudice defeated progress, and students celebrated
the auspicious occasion with bonfires. The step forward was taken
when the universities and their colleges decided to throw open their
gates to the graduates of other universities in England, America, and
elsewhere for the purpose of advanced study. But here, as in other
things, Cambridge leads the way, and Oxford follows falteringly. The
advanced students at Cambridge are treated like Cambridge men, they
have the status of Bachelors of Arts, and possess in most respects
the advantages, such as they are, of the latter; while at Oxford the
advanced students are a restricted class, with restricted advantages,
and their relation to the university is not that of the other
students. In Cambridge the movement which has resulted in the present
admirable condition of affairs was largely brought about by the zeal
and enterprise of Dr. Donald MacAlister, of St. John's College, the
University Lecturer in Therapeutics, a man of wide sympathies and
ability, and whose name is closely associated with this university's
metamorphosis into a more modern institution.




THE WONDERFUL CENTURY.[1]

A REVIEW BY W. K. BROOKS,

PROFESSOR OF ZOÖLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.


Every naturalist has in his heart a warm affection for the author of
the Malay Archipelago, and is glad to acknowledge with gratitude his
debt to this great explorer and thinker and teacher who gave us the law
of natural selection independently of Darwin. When the history of our
century is written, the foremost place among those who have guided the
thought of their generation and opened new fields for discovery will
assuredly be given to Wallace and Darwin.

[1] Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1899.

Few of the great men who have helped to make our century memorable
in the history of thought are witnesses of its end, and all who have
profited by the labors of Wallace will rejoice that he has been
permitted to stand on the threshold of a new century, and, reviewing
the past, to give us his impressions of the wonderful century.

We men of the nineteenth century, he says, have not been slow to praise
it. The wise and the foolish, the learned and the unlearned, the poet
and the pressman, the rich and the poor, alike swell the chorus of
admiration for the marvelous inventions and discoveries of our own age,
and especially for those innumerable applications of science which now
form part of our daily life, and which remind us every hour of our
immense superiority over our comparatively ignorant forefathers.

Our century, he tells us, has been characterized by a marvelous and
altogether unprecedented progress in the knowledge of the universe and
of its complex forces, and also in the application of that knowledge
to an infinite variety of purposes calculated, if properly utilized,
to supply all the wants of every human being and to add greatly to the
comforts, the enjoyments, and the refinements of life. The bounds of
human knowledge have been so far extended that new vistas have opened
to us in nearly all directions where it had been thought that we could
never penetrate, and the more we learn the more we seem capable of
learning in the ever-widening expanse of the universe. It may, he
says, be truly said of the men of science that they have become as
gods knowing good and evil, since they have been able not only to
utilize the most recondite powers of Nature in their service, but have
in many cases been able to discover the sources of much of the evil
that afflicts humanity, to abolish pain, to lengthen life, and to add
immensely to the intellectual as well as the physical enjoyments of our
race.

In order to get any adequate measure for comparison with the nineteenth
century we must take not any preceding century, but the whole preceding
epoch of human history. We must take into consideration not only the
changes effected in science, in the arts, in the possibilities of
human intercourse, and in the extension of our knowledge both of the
earth and of the whole visible universe, but the means our century has
furnished for future advancement.

Our author, who has borne such a distinguished part in the intellectual
progress of our century, shows clearly that in means for the discovery
of truth, for the extension of our control over Nature, and for the
alleviation of the ills that beset mankind, the inheritance of the
twentieth century from the nineteenth will be greater than our own
inheritance from all the centuries that have gone before.

Some may regret that, while only one third of Wallace's book is
devoted to the successes of the wonderful century, the author finds
the remaining two thirds none too much for the enumeration of some of
its most notable failures; but it is natural for one who has borne his
own distinguished part in all this marvelous progress to ask where the
century has fallen short of the enthusiastic hopes of its leaders, what
that it might have done it has failed to do, and what lies ready at
the hand of the workers who will begin the new century with this rich
inheritance of new thoughts, new methods, and new resources.

The more we realize the vast possibilities of human welfare which
science has given us the more, he says, must we recognize our total
failure to make any adequate use of them.

Along with this continuous progress in science, in the arts, and in
wealth-production, which has dazzled our imaginations to such an extent
that we can hardly admit the possibility of any serious evils having
accompanied or been caused by it, there has, he says, been many serious
failures--intellectual, social, and moral. Some of our great thinkers,
he says, have been so impressed by the terrible nature of these
failures that they have doubted whether the final result of the work
of the century has any balance of good over evil, of happiness over
misery, for mankind at large.

Wallace is no pessimist, but one who believes that the first step in
retrieving our failures is to perceive clearly where we have failed,
for he says there can be no doubt of the magnitude of the evils that
have grown up or persisted in the midst of all our triumphs over
natural forces and our unprecedented growth in wealth and luxury, and
he holds it not the least important part of his work to call attention
to some of these failures.

With ample knowledge of the sources of health, we allow and even
compel the bulk of our population to live and work under conditions
which greatly shorten life. In our mad race for wealth we have made
gold more sacred than human life; we have made life so hard for many
that suicide and insanity and crime are alike increasing. The struggle
for wealth has been accompanied by a reckless destruction of the
stored-up products of Nature, which is even more deplorable because
irretrievable. Not only have forest growths of many hundred years been
cleared away, often with disastrous consequences, but the whole of
the mineral treasures of the earth's surface, the slow productions of
long-past eras of time and geological change, have been and are still
being exhausted with reckless disregard of our duties to posterity and
solely in the interest of landlords and capitalists. With all our
labor-saving machinery and all our command over the forces of Nature,
the struggle for existence has become more fierce than ever before,
and year by year an ever-increasing proportion of our people sink into
paupers' graves.

When the brightness of future ages shall have dimmed the glamour of our
material progress he says that the judgment of history will surely be
that our ethical standard was low and that we were unworthy to possess
the great and beneficent powers that science had placed in our hands,
for, instead of devoting the highest powers of our greatest men to
remedy these evils, we see the governments of the most advanced nations
arming their people to the teeth and expending most of the wealth and
all the resources of their science in preparation for the destruction
of life, of property, and of happiness.

He reminds us that the first International Exhibition, in 1851,
fostered the hope that men would soon perceive that peace and
commercial intercourse are essential to national well-being. Poets and
statesmen joined in hailing the dawn of an era of peaceful industry,
and exposition following exposition taught the nations how much they
have to learn from each other and how much to give to each other for
the benefit and happiness of all.

Dueling, which had long prevailed, in spite of its absurdity and
harmfulness, as a means of settling disputes, was practically abolished
by the general diffusion of a spirit of intolerance of private war; and
as the same public opinion which condemns it should, if consistent,
also condemn war between nations, many thought they perceived the dawn
of a wiser policy between nations.

Yet so far are we from progress toward its abolition that the latter
half of the century has witnessed not the decay, but a revival of the
war spirit, and at its end we find all nations loaded with the burden
of increasing armies and navies.

The armies are continually being equipped with new and more deadly
weapons at a cost which strains the resources of even the most wealthy
nations and impoverishes the mass of the people by increasing burdens
of debt and taxation, and all this as a means of settling disputes
which have no sufficient cause and no relation whatever to the
well-being of the communities which engage in them.

The evils of war do not cease with the awful loss of life and
destruction of property which are their immediate results, since they
form the excuse for inordinate increase of armaments--an increase
which has been intensified by the application to war purposes of those
mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries which, properly used,
should bring peace and plenty to all, but which when seized upon by the
spirit of militarism directly lead to enmity among nations and to the
misery of the people.

The first steps in this military development were the adoption of a new
rifle by the Prussian army in 1846, the application of steam to ships
of war in 1840, and the use of armor for battle ships in 1859. The
remainder of the century has witnessed a mad race between the nations
to increase the death-dealing power of their weapons and to add to
the number and efficiency of their armies, while all the resources of
modern science have been utilized in order to add to the destructive
power of cannon and both the defensive and the offensive power of
ships. The inability of industrious laboring men to gain any due share
of the benefits of our progress in scientific knowledge is due, beyond
everything else, to the expense of withdrawing great armies of men
in the prime of life from productive labor, joined to the burden of
feeding and clothing them and of keeping weapons and ammunition, ships,
and fortifications in a state of readiness, of continually renewing
stores of all kinds, of pensions, and of all the laboring men who must,
besides making good the destruction caused by war, be withdrawn from
productive labor and be supported by others that they may support the
army.

And what a horrible mockery is this when viewed in the light of either
Christianity or advancing civilization! All the nations armed to the
teeth and watching stealthily for some occasion to use their vast
armaments for their own aggrandizement and for the injury of their
neighbors are Christian nations, but their Christian governments do not
exist for the good of the governed, still less for the good of humanity
or civilization, but for the aggrandizement and greed and lust of the
ruling classes.

The devastation caused by the tyrants and conquerors of the middle
ages and of antiquity has been reproduced in our times by the rush to
obtain wealth. Even the lust of conquest, in order to obtain slaves
and tribute and great estates, by means of which the ruling classes
could live in boundless luxury, so characteristic of the earlier
civilization, is reproduced in our time.

Witness the recent conduct of the nations of Europe toward Crete and
Greece, upholding the most terrible despotism in the world because each
hopes for a favorable opportunity to obtain some advantage, leading
ultimately to the largest share of the spoil.

Witness the struggles in Africa and Asia, where millions of foreign
people may be enslaved and bled for the benefit of their new rulers.

The whole world, says Wallace, is but a gambling table. Just as
gambling deteriorates and demoralizes the individual, so the greed
for dominion demoralizes governments. The welfare of the people is
little cared for, except so far as to make them submissive taxpayers,
enabling the ruling and moneyed classes to extend their sway over new
territories and to create well-paid places and exciting work for their
sons and relatives.

Hence, says Wallace, comes the force that ever urges on the increase
of armaments and the extension of empire. Great vested interests
are at stake, and ever-growing pressure is brought to bear upon the
too-willing governments in the name of the greatness of the country,
the extension of commerce, or the advance of civilization. This state
of things is not progress, but retrogression. It will be held by the
historian of the future to show that we of the nineteenth century were
morally and socially unfit to possess the enormous powers for good and
evil which the rapid advance of scientific discovery has given us,
that our boasted civilization was in many respects a mere superficial
veneer, and that our methods of government were not in accord with
either Christianity or civilization.

Comparing the conduct of these modern nations, who call themselves
Christian and civilized, with that of the Spanish conquerors of
the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, and making some allowances for
differences of race and public opinion, Wallace says there is not much
to choose between them.

Wealth and territory and native labor were the real objects in both
cases, and if the Spaniards were more cruel by nature and more reckless
in their methods the results were much the same. In both cases the
country was conquered and thereafter occupied and governed by the
conquerors frankly for their own ends, and with little regard for
the feelings or the well-being of the conquered. If the Spaniards
exterminated the natives of the West Indies, we, he says, have done the
same thing in Tasmania and about the same in temperate Australia. Their
belief that they were really serving God in converting the heathen,
even at the point of the sword, was a genuine belief, shared by priests
and conquerors alike--not a mere sham as ours is when we defend our
conduct by the plea of "introducing the blessings of civilization."

It is quite possible, says Wallace, that both the conquest of Mexico
and Peru by the Spaniards and our conquest of South Africa may have
been real steps in advance, essential to human progress, and helping on
the future reign of true civilization and the well-being of the human
race. But if so, we have been and are unconscious agents in hastening
the "far-off divine event." We deserve no credit for it. Our aims have
been for the most part sordid and selfish, and our rule has often
been largely influenced and often entirely directed by the necessity
of finding well-paid places for young men with influence, and also by
the constant demands for fresh markets by the influential class of
merchants and manufacturers.

More general diffusion of the conviction that while all share the
burdens of war, such good as comes from it is appropriated by the few,
will no doubt do much to discourage wars; but we must ask whether there
may not be another incentive to war which Wallace does not give due
weight--whether love of fighting may not have something to do with wars.

As we look backward over history we are forced to ask whether the greed
and selfishness of the wealthy and influential and those who hope to
gain are the only causes of war. We went to war with Spain because our
people in general demanded war. If we have been carried further than
we intended and are now fighting for objects which we did not foresee
and may not approve, this is no more than history might have led us to
expect. War with Spain was popular with nearly all our people a year
ago, and, while wise counsels might have stemmed this popular tide,
there can be no doubt that it existed, for the evil passions of the
human race are the real cause of wars.

The great problem of the twentieth century, as of all that have gone
before, is the development of the wise and prudent self-restraint which
represses natural passions and appetites for the sake of higher and
better ends.




SPIDER BITES AND "KISSING BUGS."[2]

BY L. O. HOWARD,

CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE.


On several occasions during the past ten years, and especially at
the Brooklyn meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in 1894, the writer has endeavored to show that most of
the newspaper stories of deaths from spider bite are either grossly
exaggerated or based upon misinformation. He has failed to thoroughly
substantiate a single case of death from a so-called spider bite,
and has concluded that there is only one spider in the United States
which is capable of inflicting a serious bite--viz., _Latrodectus
mactans_, a species belonging to a genus of world-wide distribution,
the other species of which have universally a bad reputation among the
peoples whose country they inhabit. In spite of these conclusions, the
accuracy of which has been tested with great care, there occur in the
newspapers every year stories of spider bites of great seriousness,
often resulting in death or the amputation of a limb. The details of
negative evidence and of lack of positive evidence need not be entered
upon here, except in so far as to state that in the great majority
of these cases the spider supposed to have inflicted the bite is not
even seen, while in almost no case is the spider seen to inflict the
bite; and it is a well-known fact that there are practically no spiders
in our more northern States which are able to pierce the human skin,
except upon a portion of the body where the skin is especially delicate
and which is seldom exposed. There arises, then, the probability that
there are other insects capable of piercing tough skin, the results of
whose bites may be more or less painful, the wounds being attributed
to spiders on account of the universally bad reputation which these
arthropods seem to have.

[2] A paper read before Section F of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science at the Columbus meeting in August, 1899.

[Illustration: DIFFERENT STAGES OF CONORHINUS SANGUISUGUS. Twice
natural size. (After Marlatt.)]

These sentences formed the introduction to a paper read by the writer
at a meeting of the Entomological Society of Washington, held June
1st last. I went on to state that some of these insects are rather
well known, as, for example, the blood-sucking cone-nose (_Conorhinus
sanguisugus_) and the two-spotted corsairs (_Rasatus thoracicus_ and
_R. biguttatus_), both of which occur, however, most numerously in the
South and West, and then spoke of _Melanotestis picipes_, a species
which had been especially called to my attention by Mr. Frank M.
Jones, of Wilmington, Del., who submitted the report of the attending
physician in a case of two punctures by this insect inflicted upon
the thumb and forefinger of a middle-aged man in Delaware. I further
reported upon occasional somewhat severe results from the bites[3] of
the old _Reduvius personatus_, now placed in the genus _Opsicostes_,
and stated that a smaller species, _Coriscus subcoleoptratus_, had
bitten me rather severely under circumstances similar to some of those
which have given rise in the past to spider-bite stories. In the
course of the discussion which followed the reading of this paper, Mr.
Schwarz stated that twice during the present spring he had been bitten
rather severely by _Melanotestis picipes_ which had entered his room,
probably attracted by light. He described it as the worst biter among
heteropterous insects with which he had had any experience, and said
he thought it was commoner than usual in Washington during the present
year.

[3] When the word "bite" is used in connection with these bugs, it must
be remembered that it is really a puncture made with the sharp beak or
proboscis (see illustration).

No account of this meeting was published, but within a few weeks
thereafter several persons suffering from swollen faces visited the
Emergency Hospital in Washington and complained that they had been
bitten by some insect while asleep; that they did not see the insect,
and could not describe it. This happened during one of the temporary
periods when newspaper men are most actively engaged in hunting for
items. There was a dearth of news. These swollen faces offered an
opportunity for a good story, and thus began the "kissing-bug" scare
which has grown to such extraordinary proportions. I have received
the following letter and clipping from Mr. J. F. McElhone, of the
Washington Post, in reply to a request for information regarding the
origin of this curious epidemic:

"WASHINGTON, D. C., _August 14, 1899_.

"_Dr. L. O. Howard, Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C._

"DEAR SIR: Attached please find clipping from the Washington Post of
June 20, 1899, being the first story that ever appeared in print, so
far as I can learn, of the depredations of the _Melanotestis picipes_,
better known now as the kissing bug. In my rounds as police reporter of
the Post, I noticed, for two or three days before writing this story,
that the register of the Emergency Hospital of this city contained
unusually frequent notes of 'bug-bite' cases. Investigating, on the
evening of June 19th I learned from the hospital physicians that a
noticeable number of patients were applying daily for treatment for
very red and extensive swellings, usually on the lips, and apparently
the result of an insect bite. This led to the writing of the story
attached.

"Very truly yours, "James F. McElhone."

[Illustration:

The Washington Post.

TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1899.

BITE OF A STRANGE BUG.

Several Patients Have Appeared at the Hospitals Very Badly Poisoned.

Lookout for the new bug. It is an insidious insect that bites without
causing pain and escapes unnoticed. But afterward the place where it
has bitten swells to ten times its normal size. The Emergency Hospital
has had several victims of this insect as patients lately and the
number is increasing. Application for treatment by other victims are
being made at other hospitals, and the matter threatens to become
something like a plague. None of those who have been bitten saw the
insect whose sting proves so disastrous. One old negro went to sleep
and woke up to find both his eyes nearly closed by the swelling from
his nose and cheeks, where the insect had alighted. The lips seems to
be the favorite point of attack.

William Smith, a newspaper agent, of 327 Trumbull street, went to the
Emergency last night with his upper lip swollen to many times its
natural size. The symptoms are in every case the same, and there is
indication of poisoning from an insect's bite. The matter is beginning
to interest the physicians, and every patient who comes in with the now
well-known marks is closely questioned as to the description of the
insect. No one has yet been found who has seen it. ]

It would be an interesting computation for one to figure out the amount
of newspaper space which was filled in the succeeding two months by
items and articles about the "kissing bug." Other Washington newspapers
took the matter up. The New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore papers
soon followed suit. The epidemic spread east to Boston and west to
California. By "epidemic" is meant the _newspaper_ epidemic, for every
insect bite where the biter was not at once recognized was attributed
to the popular and somewhat mysterious creature which had been given
such an attractive name, and there can be no doubt that some mosquito,
flea, and bedbug bites which had by accident resulted in a greater than
the usual severity were attributed to the prevailing osculatory insect.
In Washington professional beggars seized the opportunity, and went
around from door to door with bandaged faces and hands, complaining
that they were poor men and had been thrown out of work by the results
of "kissing-bug" stings! One beggar came to the writer's door and
offered, in support of his plea, a card supposed to be signed by the
head surgeon of the Emergency Hospital. In a small town in central
New York a man arrested on the charge of swindling entered the plea
that he was temporarily insane owing to the bite of the "kissing
bug." Entomologists all through the East were also much overworked
answering questions asked them about the mysterious creature. Men of
local entomological reputations were applied to by newspaper reporters,
by their friends, by people who knew them, in church, on the street,
and under all conceivable circumstances. Editorials were written about
it. Even the Scientific American published a two-column article on
the subject; and, while no international complications have resulted
as yet, the kissing bug, in its own way and in the short space of two
months, produced almost as much of a scare as did the San José scale in
its five years of Eastern excitement. Now, however, the newspapers have
had their fun, the necessary amount of space has been filled, and the
subject has assumed a castaneous hue, to Latinize the slang of a few
years back.

The experience has been a most interesting one. To the reader familiar
with the old accounts of the hysterical craze of south Europe,
based upon supposed tarantula bites, there can not fail to come the
suggestion that we have had in miniature and in modernized form,
aided largely by the newspapers, a hysterical craze of much the same
character. From the medical and psychological point of view this aspect
is interesting, and deserves investigation by competent persons.

As an entomologist, however, the writer confines himself to the actual
authors of the bites so far as he has been able to determine them. It
seems undoubtedly true that while there has been a great cry there
has been very little wool. It is undoubtedly true, also, that there
have been a certain number of bites by heteropterous insects, some
of which have resulted in considerable swelling. It seems true that
_Melanotestis picipes_ and _Opsicostes personatus_ have been more
numerous than usual this year, at least around Washington. They have
been captured in a number of instances while biting people, and have
been brought to the writer's office for determination in such a way
that there can be no doubt about the accuracy of this statement. As
the story went West, bites by _Conorhinus sanguisuga_ and _Rasatus
thoracicus_ were without doubt termed "kissing-bug" bites. With regard
to other cases, the writer has known of an instance where the mosquito
bite upon the lip of a sleeping child produced a very considerable
swelling. Therefore he argues that many of these reported cases may
have been nothing more than mosquito bites. With nervous and excitable
individuals the symptoms of any skin puncture become exaggerated not
only in the mind of the individual but in their actual characteristics,
and not only does this refer to cases of skin puncture but to certain
skin eruptions, and to some of those early summer skin troubles which
are known as strawberry rash, etc. It is in this aspect of the subject
that the resemblance to tarantulism comes in, and this is the result of
the hysterical wave, if it may be so termed.

Six different heteropterous insects were mentioned in the early part
of this article, and it will be appropriate to give each of them
some little detailed consideration, taking the species of Eastern
distribution first, since the scare had its origin in the East, and has
there perhaps been more fully exploited.

[Illustration: MELANOTESTIS ABDOMINALIS. Female at right; male at left,
with enlarged beak at side. Twice natural size. (Original.)]

[Illustration: HEAD AND PROBOSCIS OF CONORHINUS SANGUISUGUS. (After
Marlatt.)]

_Opsicostes personatus_, also known as _Reduvius personatus_, and which
has been termed the "cannibal bug," is a European species introduced
into this country at some unknown date, but possibly following close in
the wake of the bedbug. In Europe this species haunts houses for the
purpose of preying upon bedbugs. Riley, in his well-known article on
Poisonous Insects, published in Wood's Reference Handbook of Medical
Science, states that if a fly or another insect is offered to the
cannibal bug it is first touched with the antennæ, a sudden spring
follows, and at the same time the beak is thrust into the prey. The
young specimens are covered with a glutinous substance, to which
bits of dirt and dust adhere. They move deliberately, with a long
pause between each step, the step being taken in a jerky manner. The
distribution of the species, as given by Reuter in his Monograph of the
Genus _Reduvius_, is Europe to the middle of Sweden, Caucasia, Asia
Minor, Algeria, Madeira; North America, Canada, New York, Philadelphia,
Indiana; Tasmania, Australia--from which it appears that the insect is
already practically cosmopolitan, and in fact may almost be termed
a household insect. The collections of the United States National
Museum and of Messrs. Heidemann and Chittenden, of Washington, D. C.,
indicate the following localities for this species: Locust Hill, Va.;
Washington, D. C.; Baltimore, Md.; Ithaca, N. Y.; Cleveland, Ohio;
Keokuk, Iowa.

[Illustration: CORISCUS SUBCOLEOPTRATUS: _a_, wingless form; _b_,
winged form; _c_, proboscis. All twice natural size. (Original.)]

The bite of this species is said to be very painful, more so than that
of a bee, and to be followed by numbness (Lintner). One of the cases
brought to the writer's attention this summer was that of a Swedish
servant girl, in which the insect was caught, where the sting was
upon the neck, and was followed by considerable swelling. Le Conte,
in describing it under the synonymical name _Reduvius pungens_, gives
Georgia as the locality, and makes the following statement: "This
species is remarkable for the intense pain caused by its bite. I do not
know whether it ever willingly plunges its rostrum into any person, but
when caught or unskillfully handled it always stings. In this case the
pain is almost equal to that of the bite of a snake, and the swelling
and irritation which result from it will sometimes last for a week. In
very weak and irritable constitutions it may even prove fatal."[4]

[4] Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
vol. vii, p. 404, 1854-'55.

The second Eastern species is _Melanotestis picipes_. This and the
closely allied and possibly identical _M. abdominalis_ are not rare in
the United States, and have been found all along the Atlantic States,
in the West and South, and also in Mexico. They live underneath stones
and logs, and run swiftly. Both sexes of _M. picipes_ in the adult
are fully winged, but the female of _M. abdominalis_ is usually found
in the short-winged condition. Prof. P. R. Uhler writes (in litt.):
"_Melanotestis abdominalis_ is not rare in this section (Baltimore),
but the winged female is a great rarity. At the present time I have not
a specimen of the winged female in my collection. I have seen specimens
from the South, in North Carolina and Florida, but I do not remember
one from Maryland. I am satisfied that _M. picipes_ is distinct from
_M. abdominalis_. I have not known the two species to unite sexually,
but I have seen them both united to their proper consorts. Both species
are sometimes found under the same flat stone or log, and they both
hibernate in our valleys beneath stones and rubbish in loamy soils."
Specimens in Washington collections show the following localities
for _M. abdominalis_: Baltimore, Md.; Washington, D. C.; Wilmington,
Del.; New Jersey; Long Island; Fort Bliss, Texas; Louisiana; and
Keokuk, Iowa;, and for _M. picipes_, Washington, D. C.; Roslyn, Va.;
Baltimore, Md.; Derby, Conn.; Long Island; a series labeled New Jersey;
Wilmington, Del.; Keokuk, Iowa; Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio;
Louisiana; Jackson, Miss.; Barton County, Mo.; Fort Bliss, Texas; San
Antonio, Texas; Crescent City, Fla.; Holland, S. C.

This insect has been mentioned several times in entomological
literature. The first reference to its bite probably was made by
Townend Glover in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture
for 1875 (page 130). In Maryland, he states, _M. picipes_ is found
under stones, moss, logs of wood, etc., and is capable of inflicting a
severe wound with its rostrum or piercer. In 1888 Dr. Lintner, in his
Fourth Report as State Entomologist of New York (page 110), quotes from
a correspondent in Natchez, Miss., concerning this insect: "I send a
specimen of a fly not known to us here. A few days ago it punctured the
finger of my wife, inflicting a painful sting. The swelling was rapid,
and for several days the wound was quite annoying." Until recent years
this insect has not been known to the writer as occurring in houses
with any degree of frequency. In May, 1895, however, I received a
specimen from an esteemed correspondent--Dr. J. M. Shaffer, of Keokuk,
Iowa--together with a letter written on May 7th, in which the statement
was made that four specimens flew into his window the night before. The
insect, therefore, is attracted to light or is becoming attracted to
light, is a night-flier, and enters houses through open windows. Among
the several cases coming under the writer's observation of bites by
this insect, one has been reported by the well-known entomologist Mr.
Charles Dury, of Cincinnati, Ohio, in which this species (_M. picipes_)
bit a man on the back of the hand, making a bad sore. In another case,
where the insect was brought for our determination and proved to be
this species, the bite was upon the cheek, and the swelling was said to
be great, but with little pain. In a third case, occurring at Holland,
S. C., the symptoms were more serious. The patient was bitten upon
the end of the middle finger, and stated that the first paroxysm of
pain was about like that resulting from a hornet or a bee sting, but
almost immediately it grew ten times more painful, with a feeling of
weakness followed by vomiting. The pain was felt to shoot up the arm to
the under jaw, and the sickness lasted for a number of days. A fourth
case, at Fort Bliss, Texas, is interesting as having occurred in bed.
The patient was bitten on the hand, with very painful results and bad
swelling.

The third of the Eastern species, _Coriscus subcoleoptratus_, is said
by Uhler to have a general distribution in the Northern States, and is
like the species immediately preceding a native insect. There is no
record of any bite by this species, and it is introduced here for the
reason that it attracted the writer's attention crawling upon the walls
of an earth closet in Greene County, New York, where on one occasion it
bit him between the fingers. The pain was sharp, like the prick of a
pin, but only a faint swelling followed, and no further inconvenience.
The insect is mentioned, however, for the reason that, occurring in
such situations, it is one of the forms which are liable to carry
pathogenic bacteria.

[Illustration: RASATUS BIGUTTATUS. Twice natural size. (Original.)]

[Illustration: REDUVIUS (OPSICOSTES) PERSONATUS. Twice natural size.
(Original.)]

There remain for consideration the Southern and Western forms--_Rasatus
thoracicus_ and _R. biguttatus_, and _Conorhinus sanguisugus_.

The two-spotted corsair, as _Rasatus biguttatus_ is popularly termed,
is said by Riley to be found frequently in houses in the Southern
States, and to prey upon bedbugs. Lintner, referring to the fact that
it preys upon bedbugs, says: "It evidently delights in human blood, but
prefers taking it at second hand." Dr. A. Davidson, formerly of Los
Angeles, Cal., in an important paper entitled So-called Spider Bites
and their Treatment, published in the Therapeutic Gazette of February
15, 1897, arrives at the conclusion that almost all of the so-called
spider bites met with in southern California are produced by no spider
at all, but by _Rasatus biguttatus_. The symptoms which he describes
are as follows: "Next day the injured part shows a local cellulitis,
with a central dark spot; around this spot there frequently appears
a bullous vesicle about the size of a ten-cent piece, and filled with
a dark grumous fluid; a small ulcer forms underneath the vesicle, the
necrotic area being generally limited to the central part, while the
surrounding tissues are more or less swollen and somewhat painful. In
a few days, with rest and proper care, the swelling subsides, and in
a week all traces of the cellulitis are usually gone. In some of the
cases no vesicle forms at the point of injury, the formation probably
depending on the constitutional vitality of the individual or the
amount of poison introduced." The explanation of the severity of the
wound suggested by Dr. Davidson, and in which the writer fully concurs
with him, is not that the insect introduces any specific poison of
its own, but that the poison introduced is probably accidental and
contains the ordinary putrefactive germs which may adhere to its
proboscis. Dr. Davidson's treatment was corrosive sublimate--1 to 500
or 1 to 1,000--locally applied to the wound, keeping the necrotic part
bathed in the solution. The results have in all cases been favorable.
Uhler gives the distribution of _R. biguttatus_ as Arizona, Texas,
Panama, Pará, Cuba, Louisiana, West Virginia, and California. After a
careful study of the material in the United States National Museum,
Mr. Heidemann has decided that the specimens of _Rasatus_ from the
southeastern part of the country are in reality Say's _R. biguttatus_,
while those from the Southwestern States belong to a distinct species
answering more fully, with slight exceptions, to the description of
Stal's _Rasatus thoracicus_. The writer has recently received a large
series of _R. thoracicus_ from Mr. H. Brown, of Tucson, Arizona, and
had a disagreeable experience with the same species in April, 1898, at
San José de Guaymas, in the State of Sonora, Mexico. He had not seen
the insect alive before, and was sitting at the supper table with his
host--a ranchero of cosmopolitan language. One of the bugs, attracted
by the light, flew in with a buzz and flopped down on the table. The
writer's entomological instinct led him to reach out for it, and was
warned by his host in the remarkable sentence comprising words derived
from three distinct languages: "Guardez, guardez! Zat animalito sting
like ze dev!" But it was too late; the writer had been stung on the
forefinger, with painful results. Fortunately, however, the insect's
beak must have been clean, and no great swelling or long inconvenience
ensued.

Perhaps the best known of any of the species mentioned in our list is
the blood-sucking cone-nose (_Conorhinus sanguisugus_). This ferocious
insect belongs to a genus which has several representatives in the
United States, all, however, confined to the South or West. _C.
rubro-fasciatus_ and _C. variegatus_, as well as _C. sanguisugus_,
are given the general geographical distribution of "Southern States."
_C. dimidiatus_ and _C. maculipennis_ are Mexican forms, while _C.
gerstaeckeri_ occurs in the Western States. The more recently described
species, _C. protractus_ Uhl., has been taken at Los Angeles, Cal.;
Dragoon, Ariz.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. All of these insects are
blood-suckers, and do not hesitate to attack animals. Le Conte, in his
original description of _C. sanguisugus_,[5] adds a most significant
paragraph or two which, as it has not been quoted of late, will be
especially appropriate here: "This insect, equally with the former"
(see above), "inflicts a most painful wound. It is remarkable also
for sucking the blood of mammals, particularly of children. I have
known its bite followed by very serious consequences, the patient not
recovering from its effects for nearly a year. The many relations which
we have of spider bites frequently proving fatal have no doubt arisen
from the stings of these insects or others of the same genera. When
the disease called spider bite is not an anthrax or carbuncle it is
undoubtedly occasioned by the bite of an insect--by no means however,
of a spider. Among the many species of _Araneidæ_ which we have in the
United States I have never seen one capable of inflicting the slightest
wound. Ignorant persons may easily mistake a _Cimex_ for a spider. I
have known a physician who sent to me the fragments of a large ant,
which he supposed was a spider, that came out of his grandchild's
head." The fact that Le Conte was himself a physician, having graduated
from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1846, thus having been
nine years in practice at the time, renders this statement all the
more significant. The life history and habits of _C. sanguisugus_ have
been so well written up by my assistant, Mr. Marlatt, in Bulletin No.
4, New Series, of the Division of Entomology, United States Department
of Agriculture, that it is not necessary to enter upon them here.
The point made by Marlatt--that the constant and uniform character
of the symptoms in nearly all cases of bites by this insect indicate
that there is a specific poison connected with the bite--deserves
consideration, but there can be no doubt that the very serious results
which sometimes follow the bite are due to the introduction of
extraneous poison germs. The late Mr. J. B. Lembert, of Yosemite, Cal.,
noticed particularly that the species of _Conorhinus_ occurring upon
the Pacific coast is attracted by carrion. Professor Toumey, of Tucson,
Arizona, shows how a woman broke out all over the body and limbs with
red blotches and welts from a single sting on the shoulders. Specimens
of _C. sanguisugus_ received in July, 1899, from Mayersville, Miss.,
were accompanied by the statement--which is appropriate, in view of the
fact that the newspapers have insisted that the "kissing bug" prefers
the lip--that a friend of the writer was bitten on the lip, and that
the effect was a burning pain, intense itching, and much swelling,
lasting three or four days. The writer of the letter had been bitten
upon the leg and arm, and his brother was bitten upon both feet and
legs and on the arm, the symptoms being the same in all cases.

[5] Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
vol. vii, p. 404 1854-'55.

More need hardly be said specifically concerning these biting bugs.
The writer's conclusions are that a puncture by any one of them may
be and frequently has been mistaken for a spider bite, and that
nearly all reported spider-bite cases have had in reality this cause,
that the so-called "kissing-bug" scare has been based upon certain
undoubted cases of the bite of one or the other of them, but that other
bites, including mosquitoes, with hysterical and nervous symptoms
produced by the newspaper accounts, have aided in the general alarm.
The case of Miss Larson, who died in August, 1898, as the result of
a mosquito bite, at Mystic, Conn., is an instance which goes to show
that no mysterious new insect need be looked for to explain occasional
remarkable cases. One good result of the "kissing-bug" excitement will
prove in the end to be that it will have relieved spiders from much
unnecessary discredit.




THE MOSQUITO THEORY OF MALARIA.[6]

BY MAJOR RONALD ROSS.


I have the honor to address you, on completion of my term of special
duty for the investigation of malaria, on the subject of the practical
results as regard the prevention of the disease which may be expected
to arise from my researches; and I trust that this letter may be
submitted to the Government if the director general thinks fit.

[6] A report, published in Nature, from Major Ronald Ross to the
Secretary to the Director General, Indian Medical Service, Simla. Dated
Calcutta, February 16, 1899.

It has been shown in my reports to you that the parasites of malaria
pass a stage of their existence in certain species of mosquitoes, by
the bites of which they are inoculated into the blood of healthy men
and birds. These observations have solved the problem--previously
thought insolvable--of the mode of life of these parasites in external
Nature.

My results have been accepted by Dr. Laveran, the discoverer of the
parasites of malaria; by Dr. Manson, who elaborated the mosquito
theory of malaria; by Dr. Nuttall, of the Hygienic Institute of
Berlin, who has made a special study of the relations between insects
and disease; and, I understand, by M. Metchnikoff, Director of the
Laboratory of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Lately, moreover, Dr. C.
W. Daniels, of the Malaria Commission, who has been sent to study with
me in Calcutta, has confirmed my observations in a special report to
the Royal Society; while, lastly, Professor Grassi and Drs. Bignami
and Bastianelli, of Rome, have been able, after receiving specimens
and copies of my reports from me, to repeat my experiments in detail,
and to follow two of the parasites of human malaria through all their
stages in a species of mosquito called the _Anopheles claviger_.

It may therefore be finally accepted as a fact that malaria is
communicated by the bites of some species of mosquito; and, to judge
from the general laws governing the development of parasitic animals,
such as the parasites of malaria, this is very probably the only way in
which infection is acquired, in which opinion several distinguished men
of science concur with me.

In considering this statement it is necessary to remember that it does
not refer to the mere recurrences of fever to which people previously
infected are often subject as the result of chill, fatigue, and so on.
When I say that malaria is communicated by the bites of mosquitoes, I
allude only to the original infection.

It is also necessary to guard against assertions to the effect that
malaria is prevalent where mosquitoes and gnats do not exist. In my
experience, when the facts come to be inquired into, such assertions
are found to be untrue. Scientific research has now yielded so absolute
a proof of the mosquito theory of malaria that hearsay evidence opposed
to it can no longer carry any weight.

Hence it follows that, in order to eliminate malaria wholly or partly
from a given locality, it is necessary only to exterminate the various
species of insect which carry the infection. This will certainly
remove the malaria to a large extent, and will almost certainly remove
it altogether. It remains only to consider whether such a measure is
practicable.

Theoretically the extermination of mosquitoes is a very simple matter.
These insects are always hatched from aquatic larvæ or grubs which can
live only in small stagnant collections of water, such as pots and tubs
of water, garden cisterns, wells, ditches and drains, small ponds,
half-dried water courses, and temporary pools of rain-water. So far as
I have yet observed, the larvæ are seldom to be found in larger bodies
of water, such as tanks, rice fields, streams, and rivers and lakes,
because in such places they are devoured by minnows and other small
fish. Nor have I ever seen any evidence in favor of the popular view
that they breed in damp grass, dead leaves, and so on.

Hence, in order to get rid of these insects from a locality, it will
suffice to empty out or drain away, or treat with certain chemicals,
the small collections of water in which their larvæ must pass their
existence.

But the practicability of this will depend on
circumstances--especially, I think, on the species of mosquito with
which we wish to deal. In my experience, different species select
different habitations for their larvæ. Thus the common "brindled
mosquitoes" breed almost entirely in pots and tubs of water; the
common "gray mosquitoes" only in cisterns, ditches, and drains; while
the rarer "spotted-winged mosquitoes" seem to choose only shallow
rain-water puddles and ponds too large to dry up under a week or more,
and too small or too foul and stagnant for minnows.

Hence the larvæ of the first two varieties are found in large numbers
round almost all human dwellings in India; and, because their breeding
grounds--namely, vessels of water, drains, and wells--are so numerous
and are so frequently contained in private tenements, it will be almost
impossible to exterminate them on a large scale.

On the other hand, spotted-winged mosquitoes are generally much
more rare than the other two varieties. They do not appear to breed
in wells, cisterns, and vessels of water, and therefore have no
special connection with human habitations. In fact, it is usually
a matter of some difficulty to obtain their larvæ. Small pools of
any permanence--such as they require--are not common in most parts
of India, except during the rains, and then pools of this kind are
generally full of minnows which make short work of any mosquito
larvæ they may find. In other words, the breeding grounds of the
spotted-winged varieties seem to be so isolated and small that I
think it may be possible to exterminate this species under certain
circumstances.

The importance of these observations will be apparent when I add
that hitherto the parasites of human malaria have been found only in
spotted-winged mosquitoes--namely, in two species of them in India and
in one species in Italy. As a result of very numerous experiments I
think that the common brindled and gray mosquitoes are quite innocuous
as regards human malaria--a fortunate circumstance for the human race
in the tropics; and Professor Grassi seems to have come to the same
conclusion as the result of his inquiries in Italy.

But I wish to be understood as writing with all due caution on these
points. Up to the present our knowledge, both as regards the habits
of the various species of mosquito and as regards the capacity of each
for carrying malaria, is not complete. All I can now say is that if
my anticipations be realized--if it be found that the malaria-bearing
species of mosquito multiply only in small isolated collections of
water which can easily be dissipated--we shall possess a simple mode of
eliminating malaria from certain localities.

I limit this statement to certain localities only, because it is
obvious that where the breeding pools are very numerous, as in
water-logged country, or where the inhabitants are not sufficiently
advanced to take the necessary precautions, we can scarcely expect the
recent observations to be of much use--at least for some years to come.
And this limitation must, I fear, exclude most of the rural areas in
India.

Where, however, the breeding pools are not very numerous, and where
there is anything approaching a competent sanitary establishment, we
may, I think, hope to reap the benefit of these discoveries. And this
should apply to the most crowded areas, such as those of cities, towns
and cantonments, and also to tea, coffee, and indigo estates, and
perhaps to military camps.

For instance, malaria causes an enormous amount of sickness among the
poor in most Indian cities. Here the common species of mosquitoes breed
in the precincts of almost all the houses, and can therefore scarcely
be exterminated; but pools suitable for the spotted-winged varieties
are comparatively scarce, being found only on vacant areas, ill-kept
gardens, or beside roads in very exceptional positions where they can
neither dry up quickly nor contain fish. Thus a single small puddle
may supply the dangerous mosquitoes to several square miles containing
a crowded population: if this be detected and drained off--which will
generally cost only a very few rupees--we may expect malaria to vanish
from that particular area.

The same considerations will apply to military cantonments and estates
under cultivation. In many such malaria causes the bulk of the
sickness, and may often, I think, originate from two or three small
puddles of a few square yards in size. Thus in a malarious part of
the cantonment of Secunderabad I found the larvæ of spotted-winged
mosquitoes only after a long search in a single little pool which could
be filled up with a few cart-loads of town rubbish.

In making these suggestions I do not wish to excite hopes which may
ultimately prove to have been unfounded. We do not yet know all the
dangerous species of mosquito, nor do we even possess an exhaustive
knowledge of the haunts and habits of any one variety. I wish merely
to indicate what, so far as I can see at present, may become a very
simple means of eradicating malaria.

One thing may be said for certain. Where previously we have been unable
to point out the exact origin of the malaria in a locality, and have
thought that it rises from the soil generally, we now hope for much
more precise knowledge regarding its source; and it will be contrary to
experience if human ingenuity does not finally succeed in turning such
information to practical account.

More than this, if the distinguishing characteristics of the
malaria-bearing mosquitoes are sufficiently marked (if, for instance,
they all have spotted wings), people forced to live or travel in
malarious districts will ultimately come to recognize them and to take
precautions against being bitten by them.

Before practical results can be reasonably looked for, however, we must
find precisely--

(_a_) What species of Indian mosquitoes do and do not carry human
malaria.

(_b_) What are the habits of the dangerous varieties.

I hope, therefore, that I may be permitted to urge the desirability of
carrying out this research. It will no longer present any scientific
difficulties, as only the methods already successfully adopted will be
required. The results obtained will be quite unequivocal and definite.

But the inquiry should be exhaustive. It will not suffice to
distinguish merely one or two malaria-bearing species of mosquito in
one or two localities; we should learn to know all of them in all parts
of the country.

The investigation will be abbreviated if the dangerous species be found
to belong only to one class of mosquito, as I think is likely; and the
researches which are now being energetically entered upon in Germany,
Italy, America, and Africa will assist any which may be undertaken in
India, though there is reason for thinking that the malaria-bearing
species differ in various countries.

As each species is detected it will be possible to attempt measures at
once for its extermination in given localities as an experiment.

I regret that, owing to my work connected with _kala-azar_, I have not
been able to advance this branch of knowledge as much during my term
of special duty as I had hoped to do; but I think that the solution of
the malaria problem which has been obtained during this period will
ultimately yield results of practical importance.




FOOD POISONING.

BY VICTOR C. VAUGHAN,

PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.


Within the past fifteen or twenty years cases of poisoning with foods
of various kinds have apparently become quite numerous. This increase
in the number of instances of this kind has been both apparent and
real. In the first place, it is only within recent years that it has
been recognized that foods ordinarily harmless may become most powerful
poisons. In the second place, the more extensive use of preserved
foods of various kinds has led to an actual increase in the number of
outbreaks of food poisoning.

The harmful effects of foods may be due to any of the following causes:

1. Certain poisonous fungi may infect grains. This is the cause of
epidemics of poisoning with ergotized bread, which formerly prevailed
during certain seasons throughout the greater part of continental
Europe, but which are now practically limited to southern Russia and
Spain. In this country ergotism is practically unknown, except as a
result of the criminal use of the drug ergot. However, a few herds of
cattle in Kansas and Nebraska have been quite extensively affected with
this disease.

2. Plants and animals may feed upon substances that are not harmful
to them, but which may seriously affect man on account of his greater
susceptibility. It is a well-known fact that hogs may eat large
quantities of arsenic or antimony without harm to themselves, and thus
render their flesh unfit for food for man. It is believed that birds
that feed upon the mountain laurel furnish a food poisonous to man.

3. During periods of the physiological activity of certain glands
in some of the lower animals the flesh becomes harmful to man. Some
species of fish are poisonous during the spawning season.

4. Both animal and vegetable foods may become infected with the
specific germs of disease and serve as the carriers of the infection to
man. Instances of the distribution of typhoid fever by the milkman are
illustrations of this.

5. Animals may be infected with specific diseases, which may be
transmitted to man in the meat or milk. This is one of the means by
which tuberculosis is spread.

6. Certain nonspecific, poison-producing germs may find their way into
foods of various kinds, and may by their growth produce chemical
poisons either before or after the food has been eaten. This is the
most common form of food poisoning known in this country.

We will briefly discuss some foods most likely to prove harmful to man.

MUSSEL POISONING.--It has long been known that this bivalve is
occasionally poisonous. Three forms of mussel poisoning are recognized.
The first, known as _Mytilotoxismus gastricus_, is accompanied by
symptoms practically identical with those of cholera morbus. At first
there is nausea, followed by vomiting, which may continue for hours.
In severe cases the walls of the stomach are so seriously altered that
the vomited matter contains considerable quantities of blood. Vomiting
is usually accompanied by severe and painful purging. The heart may be
markedly affected, and death may result from failure of this organ.
Examination after death from this cause shows the stomach and small
intestines to be highly inflamed.

The second form of mussel poisoning is known as _Mytilotoxismus
exanthematicus_ on account of visible changes in the skin. At first
there is a sensation of heat, usually beginning in the eyelids, then
spreading to the face, and finally extending over the whole body.
This sensation is followed by an eruption, which is accompanied by
intolerable itching. In severe cases the breathing becomes labored, the
face grows livid, consciousness is lost, and death may result within
two or three days.

The most frequently observed form of mussel poisoning is that
designated as _Mytilotoxismus paralyticus_. As early as 1827 Combe
reported his observations upon thirty persons who had suffered from
this kind of mussel poisoning. The first symptoms, as a rule, appeared
within two hours after eating the poisonous food. Some suffered from
nausea and vomiting, but these were not constant or lasting symptoms.
All complained of a prickly feeling in the hands, heat and constriction
of the throat, difficulty of swallowing and speaking, numbness about
the mouth, gradually extending over the face and to the arms, with
great debility of the limbs. Most of the sufferers were unable to
stand; the action of the heart was feeble, and the face grew pale and
expressed much anxiety. Two of the thirty cases terminated fatally.
Post-mortem examination showed no abnormality.

Many opinions have been expressed concerning the nature of harmful
mussels. Until quite recently it was a common belief that certain
species are constantly toxic. Virchow has attempted to describe the
dangerous variety of mussels, stating that it has a brighter shell,
sweeter, more penetrating, bouillonlike odor than the edible kind, and
that the flesh of the poisonous mussel is yellow; the water in which
they are boiled becomes bluish.

However, this belief in a poisonous species is now admitted to be
erroneous. At one time it was suggested that mussels became hurtful
by absorbing the copper from the bottoms of vessels, but Christison
made an analysis of the mussels that poisoned the men mentioned by
Combe, with negative results, and also pointed out the fact that the
symptoms were not those of poisoning with copper. Some have held that
the ill effects were due wholly to idiosyncrasies in the consumers,
but cats and dogs are affected in the same way as men are. It has also
been believed that all mussels are poisonous during the period of
reproduction. This theory is the basis of the popular superstition that
shellfish should not be eaten during the months in the name of which
the letter "r" does not occur. At one time this popular idea took the
form of a legal enactment in France forbidding the sale of shellfish
from May 1st to September 1st. This widespread idea has a grain of
truth in it, inasmuch as decomposition is more likely to alter food
injuriously during the summer months. However, poisoning with mussels
may occur at any time of the year.

It has been pretty well demonstrated that the first two forms of mussel
poisoning mentioned above are due to putrefactive processes, while
the paralytic manifestations seen in other cases are due to a poison
isolated a few years ago by Brieger, and named by him mytilotoxin. Any
mussel may acquire this poison when it lives in filthy water. Indeed,
it has been shown experimentally that edible mussels may become harmful
when left for fourteen days or longer in filthy water; while, on the
other hand, poisonous mussels may become harmless if kept four weeks
or longer in clear water. This is true not only of mussels, but of
oysters as well. Some years ago, many cases of poisoning from oysters
were reported at Havre. The oysters had been taken from a bed near the
outlet of a drain from a public water closet. Both oysters and mussels
may harbor the typhoid bacillus, and may act as carriers of this germ
to man.

There should be most stringent police regulations against the sale of
all kinds of mollusks, and all fish as well, taken from filthy waters.
Certainly one should avoid shellfish from impure waters, and it is not
too much to insist that those offered for food should be washed in
clean water. All forms of clam and oyster broth should be avoided when
it has stood even for a few hours at summer heat. These preparations
very quickly become infected with bacteria, which develop most potent
poisons.

FISH POISONING.--Some fish are supplied with poisonous glands, by means
of which they secure their prey and protect themselves from their
enemies. The "dragon weaver," or "sea weaver" (_Trachinus draco_),
is one of the best known of these fish. There are numerous varieties
widely distributed in salt waters. The poisonous spine is attached
partly to the maxilla and partly to the gill cover at its base. This
spine is connected with a poisonous gland; the spine itself is grooved
and covered with a thin membrane, which converts the grooves into
canals. When the point enters another animal its membrane is stripped
back and the poison enters the wound. Men sometimes wound their feet
with the barbs of this fish while bathing. It also occasionally happens
that a fisherman pricks his fingers with one of these barbs. The most
poisonous variety of this fish known is found in the Mediterranean Sea.
Wounds produced by these animals sometimes cause death. In _Synanceia
brachio_ there are in the dorsal fin thirteen barbs, each connected
with two poison reservoirs. The secretion from these glands is clear,
bluish in color, and acid in reaction, and when introduced beneath the
skin causes local gangrene and, if in sufficient quantity, general
paralysis. In _Plotosus lineatus_ there is a powerful barb in front of
the ventral fin, and the poison is not discharged unless the end of
the barb is broken. The most poisonous variety of this fish is found
only in tropical waters. In _Scorpæna scrofa_ and other species of this
family there are poison glands connected with the barbs in the dorsal
and in some varieties in the caudal fin.

A disease known as _kakke_ was a few years ago quite prevalent in
Japan and other countries along the eastern coast of Asia. With
the opening up of Japan to the civilized world the study of this
disease by scientific methods was undertaken by the observant and
intelligent natives who acquired their medical training in Europe and
America. In Tokio the disease generally appears in May, reaches its
greatest prevalence in August, and gradually disappears in September
and October. The researches of Miura and others have fairly well
demonstrated that this disease is due to the eating of fish belonging
to the family of _Scombridæ_. There are other kinds of fish in
Japanese waters that undoubtedly are poisonous. This is true of the
_tetrodon_, of which, according to Remey, there are twelve species
whose ovaries are poisonous. Dogs fed upon these organs soon suffered
from salivation, vomiting, and convulsive muscular contractions. When
some of the fluid obtained by rubbing the ovaries in a mortar was
injected subcutaneously in dogs the symptoms were much more severe, and
death resulted. Tahara states that he has isolated from the roe of the
tetrodon two poisons, one of which is a crystalline base, while the
other is a white, waxy body. From 1885 to 1892 inclusive, 933 cases of
poisoning with this fish were reported in Tokio, with a mortality of
seventy-two per cent.

Fish poisoning is quite frequently observed in the West Indies, where
the complex of symptoms is designated by the Spanish term _siguatera_.
It is believed by the natives that the poisonous properties of the fish
are due to the fact that they feed upon decomposing medusæ and corals.
In certain localities it is stated that all fish caught off certain
coral reefs are unfit for food. However, all statements concerning the
origin and nature of the poison in these fish are mere assumptions,
since no scientific work has been done. Whatever the source of the
poison may be, it is quite powerful, and death not infrequently
results. The symptoms are those of gastro-intestinal irritation
followed by collapse.

In Russia fish poisoning sometimes causes severe and widespread
epidemics. The Government has offered a large reward for any one who
will positively determine the cause of the fish being poisonous and
suggest successful means of preventing these outbreaks. Schmidt, after
studying several of these epidemics, states the following conclusions:

(_a_) The harmful effects are not due to putrefactive processes. (_b_)
Fish poisoning in Russia is always due to the eating of some member of
the sturgeon tribe. (_c_) The ill effects are not due to the method of
catching the fish, the use of salt, or to imperfections in the methods
of preservation. (_d_) The deleterious substance is not uniformly
distributed through the fish, but is confined to certain parts. (_e_)
The poisonous portions are not distinguishable from the nonpoisonous,
either macroscopically or microscopically. (_f_) When the fish is
cooked it may be eaten without harm. (_g_) The poison is an animal
alkaloid produced most probably by bacteria that cause an infectious
disease in the fish during life.

The conclusion reached by Schmidt is confirmed by the researches of
Madame Sieber, who found a poisonous bacillus in fish which had caused
an epidemic.

In the United States fish poisoning is most frequently due to
decomposition in canned fish. The most prominent symptoms are nausea,
vomiting, and purging. Sometimes there is a scarlatinous rash, which
may cover the whole body. The writer has studied two outbreaks of
this kind of fish poisoning. In both instances canned salmon was the
cause of the trouble. Although a discussion of the treatment of food
poisoning is foreign to this paper, the writer must call attention to
the danger in the administration of opiates in cases of poisoning with
canned fish. Vomiting and purging are efforts on the part of Nature to
remove the poison, and should be assisted by the stomach tube and by
irrigation of the colon. In one of the cases seen by the writer large
doses of morphine had been administered in order to check the vomiting
and purging and to relieve the pain; in this case death resulted. The
danger of arresting the elimination of the poison in all cases of food
poisoning can not be too emphatically condemned.

MEAT POISONING.--The diseases most frequently transmitted from the
lower animals to man by the consumption of the flesh or milk of the
former by the latter are tuberculosis, anthrax, symptomatic anthrax,
pleuro-pneumonia, trichinosis, mucous diarrhoea, and actinomycosis.
It hardly comes within the scope of this article to discuss in detail
the transmission of these diseases from the lower animals to man.
However, the writer must be allowed to offer a few opinions concerning
some mooted questions pertaining to the consumption of the flesh
of tuberculous animals. Some hold that it is sufficient to condemn
the diseased part of the tuberculous cow, and that the remainder
may be eaten with perfect safety. Others teach that "total seizure"
and destruction of the entire carcass by the health authorities are
desirable. Experiments consisting of the inoculation of guinea pigs
with the meat and meat juices of tuberculous animals have given
different results to several investigators. To one who has seen
tuberculous animals slaughtered, these differences in opinion and in
experimental results are easily explainable. The tuberculous invasion
may be confined to a single gland, and this may occur in a portion
of the carcass not ordinarily eaten; while, on the other hand, the
invasion may be much more extensive and the muscles may be involved.
The tuberculous portion may consist of hard nodules that do not break
down and contaminate other tissues in the process of removal, but the
writer has seen a tuberculous abscess in the liver holding nearly a
pint of broken-down infected matter ruptured or cut in removing this
organ, and its contents spread over the greater part of the carcass.
This explains why one investigator succeeds in inducing tuberculosis
in guinea pigs by introducing small bits of meat from a tuberculous
cow into the abdominal cavity, while another equally skillful
bacteriologist follows the same details and fails to get positive
results. No one desires to eat any portion of a tuberculous animal, and
the only safety lies in "total seizure" and destruction. That the milk
from tuberculous cows, even when the udder is not involved, may contain
the specific bacillus has been demonstrated experimentally. The writer
has suggested that every one selling milk should be licensed, and the
granting of a license should be dependent upon the application of the
tuberculin test to every cow from which milk is sold. The frequency
with which tuberculosis is transmitted to children through milk should
justify this action.

That a profuse diarrhoea may render the flesh of an animal unfit
food for man was demonstrated by the cases studied by Gärtner. In this
instance the cow was observed to have a profuse diarrhoea for two
days before she was slaughtered. Both the raw and cooked meat from this
animal poisoned the persons who ate it. Medical literature contains the
records of many cases of meat poisoning due to the eating of the flesh
of cows slaughtered while suffering from puerperal fever. It has been
found that the flesh of animals dead of symptomatic anthrax may retain
its infection after having been preserved in a dry state for ten years.

One of the most frequently observed forms of meat poisoning is that
due to the eating of decomposed sausage. Sausage poisoning, known
as _botulismus_, is most common in parts of Germany. Germans who
have brought to the United States their methods of preparing sausage
occasionally suffer from this form of poisoning. The writer had
occasion two years ago to investigate six cases of this kind, two
of which proved fatal. The sausage meat had been placed in uncooked
sections of the intestines and alternately frozen and thawed and
then eaten raw. In this instance the meat was infected with a highly
virulent bacillus, which resembled very closely the _Bacterium coli_.

In England, Ballard has reported numerous epidemics of meat poisoning,
in most of which the meat had become infected with some nonspecific,
poison-producing germ. In 1894 the writer was called upon to
investigate cases of poisoning due to the eating of pressed chicken.
The chickens were killed Tuesday afternoon and left hanging in a market
room at ordinary temperature until Wednesday forenoon, when they were
drawn and carried to a restaurant and here left in a warm room until
Thursday, when they were cooked (not thoroughly), pressed, and served
at a banquet in which nearly two hundred men participated. All ate
of the chicken, and were more or less seriously poisoned. The meat
contained a slender bacillus, which was fatal to white rats, guinea
pigs, dogs, and rabbits.

Ermengem states that since 1867 there have been reported 112 epidemics
of meat poisoning, in which 6,000 persons have been affected. In 103 of
these outbreaks the meat came from diseased animals, while in only five
was there any evidence that putrefactive changes in the meat had taken
place. My experience convinces me that in this country meat poisoning
frequently results from putrefactive changes.

Instances of poisoning from the eating of canned meats have become
quite common. Although it may be possible that in some instances the
ill effects result from metallic poisoning, in a great majority of
cases the poisonous substances are formed by putrefactive changes. In
many cases it is probable that decomposition begins after the can has
been opened by the consumer; in others the canning is imperfectly done,
and putrefaction is far advanced before the food reaches the consumer.
In still other instances the meat may have been taken from diseased
animals, or it may have undergone putrefactive changes before the
canning. It should always be remembered that canned meat is especially
liable to putrefactive changes after the can has been opened, and when
the contents of the open can are not consumed at once the remainder
should be kept in a cold place or should be thrown away. People are
especially careless on this point. While every one knows that fresh
meat should be kept in a cold place during the summer, an open can of
meat is often allowed to stand at summer temperature and its contents
eaten hours after the can has been opened. This is not safe, and has
caused several outbreaks of meat poisoning that have come under the
observation of the writer.

MILK POISONING.--In discussing this form of food poisoning we will
exclude any consideration of the distribution of the specific
infectious diseases through milk as the carrier of the infection,
and will confine ourselves to that form of milk poisoning which is
due to infection with nonspecific, poison-producing germs. Infants
are highly susceptible to the action of the galactotoxicons (milk
poisons). There can no longer be any doubt that these poisons are
largely responsible for much of the infantile mortality which is
alarmingly high in all parts of the world. It has been positively shown
that the summer diarrhoea of infancy is due to milk poisoning. The
diarrhoeas prevalent among infants during the summer months are not
due to a specific germ, but there are many bacteria that grow rapidly
in milk and form poisons which induce vomiting and purging, and may
cause death. These diseases occur almost exclusively among children
artificially fed. It is true that there are differences in chemical
composition between the milk of woman and that of the cow, but these
variations in percentage of proteids, fats, and carbohydrates are of
less importance than the infection of milk with harmful bacteria. The
child that takes its food exclusively from the breast of a healthy
mother obtains a food that is free from poisonous bacteria, while the
bottle-fed child may take into its body with its food a great number
and variety of germs, some of which may be quite deadly in their
effects. The diarrhoeas of infancy are practically confined to the
hot months, because a high temperature is essential to the growth and
wide distribution of the poison-producing bacteria. Furthermore, during
the summer time these bacteria grow abundantly in all kinds of filth.
Within recent years the medical profession has so urgently called
attention to the danger of infected milk that there has been a great
improvement in the care of this article of diet, but that there is yet
room for more scientific and thorough work in this direction must be
granted. The sterilization and Pasteurization of milk have doubtlessly
saved the lives of many children, but every intelligent physician knows
that even the most careful mother or nurse often fails to secure a milk
that is altogether safe.

It is true that milk often contains germs the spores of which
are not destroyed by the ordinary methods of sterilization and
Pasteurization. However, these germs are not the most dangerous ones
found in milk. Moreover, every mother and nurse should remember
that in the preparation of sterilized milk for the child it is not
only necessary to heat the milk, but, after it has been heated to a
temperature sufficiently high and sufficiently prolonged, the milk must
subsequently be kept at a low temperature until the child is ready to
take it, when it may be warmed. It should be borne in mind that the
subsequent cooling of the milk and keeping it at a low temperature is a
necessary feature in the preparation of it as a food for the infant.

CHEESE POISONING.--Under this heading we shall include the ill effects
that may follow the eating of not only cheese but other milk products,
such as ice cream, cream custard, cream puffs, etc. Any poison formed
in milk may exist in the various milk products, and it is impossible
to draw any sharp line of distinction between milk poisoning and
cheese poisoning. However, the distinction is greater than is at first
apparent. Under the head of milk poisoning we have called especial
attention to those substances formed in milk to which children are
particularly susceptible, while in cheese and other milk products
there are formed poisonous substances against which age does not give
immunity. Since milk is practically the sole food during the first year
or eighteen months of life, the effect of its poisons upon infants is
of the greatest importance; on the other hand, milk products are seldom
taken by the infant, but are frequent articles of diet in after life.

In 1884 the writer succeeded in isolating from poisonous cheese a
highly active basic substance, to which he gave the name _tyrotoxicon_.
The symptoms produced by this poison are quite marked, but differ in
degree according to the amount of the poison taken. At first there is
dryness of the mouth, followed by constriction of the fauces, then
nausea, vomiting, and purging. The first vomited matter consists of
food, then it becomes watery and is frequently stained with blood. The
stools are at first semisolid, and then are watery and serous. The
heart is depressed, the pulse becomes weak and irregular, and in severe
cases the face appears cyanotic. There may be dilatation of the pupil,
but this is not seen in all. The most dangerous cases are those in
which the vomiting is slight and soon ceases altogether, and the bowels
are constipated from the beginning. Such cases as these require prompt
and energetic treatment. The stomach and bowels should be thoroughly
irrigated in order to remove the poison, and the action of the heart
must be sustained.

At one time the writer believed that tyrotoxicon was the active agent
in all samples of poisonous cheese, but more extended experimentation
has convinced him that this is not the case. Indeed, this poison is
rarely found, while the number of poisons in harmful cheese is no doubt
considerable. There are numerous poisonous albumins found in cheese
and other milk products. While all of these are gastro-intestinal
irritants, they differ considerably in other respects.

In 1895 the writer and Perkins made a prolonged study of a bacillus
found in cheese which had poisoned fifty people. Chemically the
poison produced by this germ is distinguished from tyrotoxicon by
the fact that it is not removed from alkaline solution with ether.
Physiologically the new poison has a more pronounced effect on the
heart, in which it resembles muscarin or neurin more closely than it
does tyrotoxicon. Pathologically, the two poisons are unlike, inasmuch
as the new poison induces marked congestion of the tissues about the
point of injection when used upon animals hypodermically. Furthermore,
the intestinal constrictions which are so uniformly observed in animals
poisoned by tyrotoxicon was not once seen in our work with this new
poison, although it was carefully looked for in all our experiments.

In 1898 the writer, with McClymonds, examined samples of cheese from
more than sixty manufacturers in this country and in Europe. In all
samples of ordinary American green cheese poisonous germs were found in
greater or less abundance. These germs resemble very closely the colon
bacillus, and most likely their presence in the milk is to be accounted
for by contamination with bits of fecal matter from the cow. It is more
than probable that the manufacture of cheese is yet in its infancy,
and we need some one to do for this industry what Pasteur did for the
manufacture of beer. At present the flavor of a given cheese depends
upon the bacteria and molds which accidentally get into it. The time
will probably come when all milk used for the manufacture of cheese
will be sterilized, and then selected molds and bacteria will be sown
in it. In this way the flavor and value of a cheese will be determined
with scientific accuracy, and will not be left to accident.

CANNED FOODS.--As has been stated, the increased consumption of
preserved foods is accountable for a great proportion of the cases
of food poisoning. The preparation of canned foods involves the
application of scientific principles, and since this work is done by
men wholly ignorant of science it is quite remarkable that harmful
effects do not manifest themselves more frequently than they do. Every
can of food which is not thoroughly sterilized may become a source of
danger to health and even to life. It may be of interest for us to
study briefly the methods ordinarily resorted to in the preparation
of canned foods. With most substances the food is cooked before being
put into the can. This is especially true of meats of various kinds.
Thorough cooking necessarily leads to the complete sterilization of
the food; but after this, it must be transferred to the can, and the
can must be properly closed. With the handling necessary in canning
the food, germs are likely to be introduced. Moreover, it is possible
that the preliminary cooking is not thoroughly done and complete
sterilization is not reached. The empty can should be sterilized. If
one wishes to understand the _modus operandi_ of canning foods, let him
take up a round can of any fruit, vegetable, or meat and examine the
bottom of the can, which is in reality the top during the process of
canning and until the label is put on. The food is introduced through
the circular opening in this end, now closed by a piece which can be
seen to be soldered on. After the food has been introduced through this
opening the can and contents are heated either in a water bath or by
means of steam. The opening through which the food was introduced is
now closed by a circular cap of suitable size, which is soldered in
position.

This cap has near its center a "prick-hole" through which the steam
continues to escape. This "prick-hole" is then closed with solder, and
the closed can again heated in the water bath or with steam. If the
can "blows" (if the ends of the can become convex) during this last
heating the "prick-hole" is again punctured and the heated air allowed
to escape, after which the "prick-hole" is again closed. Cans thus
prepared should be allowed to stand in a warm chamber for four or five
days. If the contents have not been thoroughly sterilized gases will
be evolved during this time, or the can will "blow" and the contents
should be discarded. Unscrupulous manufacturers take cans which have
"blown," prick them to allow the escape of the contained gases, and
then resterilize the cans with their contents, close them again, and
put them on the market. These "blowholes" may be made in either end of
the can, or they may be made in the sides of the can, where they are
subsequently covered with the label. Of course, it does not necessarily
follow that if a can has "blown" and been subsequently resterilized its
contents will prove poisonous, but it is not safe to eat the contents
of such cans. Reputable manufacturers discard all "blown" cans.

Nearly all canned jellies sold in this country are made from apples.
The apples are boiled with a preparation sold under the trade
name "tartarine." This consists of either dilute hydrochloric or
sulphuric acid. Samples examined by the writer have invariably been
found to consist of dilute hydrochloric acid. The jelly thus formed
by the action of the dilute acid upon the apple is converted into
quince, pear, pineapple, or any other fruit that the pleasure of the
manufacturer may choose by the addition of artificial flavoring agents.
There is no reason for believing that the jellies thus prepared are
harmful to health.

Canned fruits occasionally contain salicylic acid in some form. There
has been considerable discussion among sanitarians as to whether or
not the use of this preservative is admissible. Serious poisoning with
canned fruits is very rare. However, there can be but little doubt that
many minor digestive disturbances are caused by acids formed in these
foods. There has been much apprehension concerning the possibility of
poisoning resulting from the soluble salts of tin formed by the action
of fruit acids upon the can. The writer believes that anxiety on this
point is unnecessary, and he has failed to find any positive evidence
of poisoning resulting from this cause.

There are two kinds of condensed milk sold in cans. These are known as
condensed milk "with" and "without" sugar. In the preparation of the
first-mentioned kind a large amount of cane sugar is added to condensed
milk, and this acting as a preservative renders the preparation and
successful handling of this article of food comparatively easy. On
the other hand, condensed milk to which sugar has not been added is
very liable to decomposition, and great care must be used in its
preparation. The writer has seen several cases of severe poisoning that
have resulted from decomposed canned milk. Any of the galactotoxicons
(milk poisons) may be formed in this milk. In these instances the cans
were "blown," both ends being convex.

One of the most important sanitary questions in which we are concerned
to-day is that pertaining to the subject of canned meats. It is
undoubtedly true that unscrupulous manufacturers are putting upon the
market articles of this kind of food which no decent man knowingly
would eat, and which are undoubtedly harmful to all.

The knowledge gained by investigations in chemical and bacteriological
science have enabled the unscrupulous to take putrid liver and other
disgusting substances and present them in such a form that the most
fastidious palate would not recognize their origin. In this way the
flesh from diseased animals and that which has undergone putrefactive
changes may be doctored up and sold as reputable articles of diet.
The writer does not believe that this practice is largely resorted
to in this country, but that questionable preservatives have been
used to some extent has been amply demonstrated by the testimony of
the manufacturers of these articles themselves, given before the
Senate committee now investigating the question of food and food
adulterations. It is certainly true that most of the adulterations
used in our foods are not injurious to health, but are fraudulent in a
pecuniary sense; but when the flesh of diseased animals and substances
which have undergone putrefactive decomposition can be doctored up and
preserved by the addition of such agents as formaldehyde, it is time
that the public should demand some restrictive measures.




WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

BY PROF. JOHN TROWBRIDGE,

DIRECTOR OF JEFFERSON PHYSICAL LABORATORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.


I never visit the historical collection of physical apparatus in the
physical laboratory of Harvard University without a sense of wonderment
at the marvelous use that has been made of old and antiquated pieces
of apparatus which were once considered electrical toys. There can
be seen the first batteries, the model of dynamo machines, and the
electric motor. Such a collection is in a way a Westminster Abbey--dead
mechanisms born to new uses and a great future.

There is one simple piece of apparatus in the collection, without which
telephony and wireless telegraphy would be impossible. To my mind it
is the most interesting skeleton there, and if physicists marked the
resting places of their apparatus laid to apparent rest and desuetude,
this merits the highest sounding and most suggestive inscription. It
is called a transformer, and consists merely of two coils of wire
placed near each other. One coil is adapted to receive an electric
current; the other coil, entirely independent of the first, responds
by sympathy, or what is called induction, across the space which
separates the coils. Doubtless if man knew all the capabilities of this
simple apparatus he might talk to China, or receive messages from the
antipodes. He now, by means of it, analyzes the light of distant suns,
and produces the singular X rays which enable him to see through the
human body. By means of it he already communicates his thoughts between
stations thousands of miles apart, and by means of its manifestations I
hope to make this article on wireless telegraphy intelligible. My essay
can be considered a panegyric of this buried form--a history of its new
life and of its unbounded possibilities.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Disposition of batteries and coils at the
sending station, showing the arrangement of the vertical wire and the
spark gap.]

For convenience, one of the coils of the transformer is placed inside
the other, and the combination is called a Ruhmkorf coil. It is
represented in the accompanying photograph (Fig. 1), with batteries
attached to the inner coil, while the outer coil is connected to two
balls, between which an electric spark jumps whenever the battery
circuit is broken. In fact, any disturbance in the battery circuit--a
weakening, a strengthening, or a break--provided that the changes are
sudden, produces a corresponding change in the neighboring circuit. One
coil thus responds to the other, in some mysterious way, across the
interval of air which separates them. Usually the coils are placed very
near to each other--in fact, one embraces the other, as shown in the
photograph.

The coils, however, if placed several miles apart, will still respond
to each other if they are made sufficiently large, if they are properly
placed, and if a powerful current is used to excite one coil. Thus,
by simply varying the distance between the coils of wire we can send
messages through the air between stations which are not connected
with a wire. This method, however, does not constitute the system of
wireless telegraphy of Marconi, which it is the object of this paper
to describe. Marconi has succeeded in transmitting messages over forty
miles between points not connected by wires, and he has accomplished
this feat by merely slightly modifying the disposition of the coils,
thus revealing a new possibility of the wondrous transformer. If the
reader will compare the following diagram (Fig. 2) with the photograph
(Fig. 1), he will see how simple the sending apparatus of Marconi is.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Diagram of the arrangement of wires and
batteries at the receiving station.]

S is a gap between the ends of one coil, across which an electric spark
is produced whenever the current from the batteries B flowing through
the coil C is broken by an arrangement at D. This break produces an
electrical pulsation in the coil C', which travels up and down the
wire W, which is elevated to a considerable height above the ground.
This pulsation can not be seen by the eye. The wire does not move;
it appears perfectly quiescent and dead, and seems only a wire and
nothing more. At night, under favorable circumstances, one could see a
luminosity on the wire, especially at the end, when messages are being
transmitted, by a powerful battery B.

It is very easy to detect the electric lines which radiate from every
part of such a wire when a spark jumps between the terminals S of
the coil. All that is necessary to do is to pass the wire through a
sensitive film and to develop the film. The accompanying photograph
(Fig. 3) was taken at the top of such a wire, by means of a very
powerful apparatus at my command. When the photograph is examined
with a microscope the arborescent electric lines radiating from the
wire, like the rays of light from a star, exhibit a beautiful fernlike
structure. These lines, however, are not chiefly instrumental in
transmitting the electric pulse across space.

There are other lines, called magnetic lines of force, which emanate
from every portion of the vertical wire W just as ripples spread out
on the surface of placid water when it is disturbed by the fall of a
stone. These magnetic ripples travel in the ether of space, and when
they embrace a neighboring wire or coil they produce similar ripples,
which whirl about the distant wire and produce in some strange way an
electrical current in the wire. These magnetic pulsations can travel
great distances.

[Illustration:

FIG. 2_a_ represents a more complete electrical arrangement of the
receiver circuit. The vertical wire, W', is connected to one wire of
the coherer, L. The other wire of the coherer is led to the ground, G.
The wires in the coherer, L, are separated by fine metallic particles.
B represents a battery. E, an electro-magnet which attracts a piece of
iron, A (armature), and closes a local battery, B, causing a click of
the sounder (electro-magnet), S. The magnetic waves (Fig. 5) embracing
the wire, W', cause a pulsation in this wire which produces an
electrical disturbance in the coherer analogous to that shown in Fig.
3, by means of which an electrical current is enabled to pass through
the electro-magnet, E.]

In the photographs of these magnetic whirls, Fig. 4 is the whirl
produced in the circuit C' by the battery B (Fig. 2), while Fig. 5 is
that produced by electrical sympathy, or as it is called induction,
in a neighboring wire. These photographs were obtained by passing the
circuits through the sensitive films, perpendicularly to the latter,
and then sprinkling very fine iron filings on these surfaces and
exposing them to the light. In order to obtain these photographs a
very powerful electrical current excited the coil C (Fig. 2), and the
neighboring circuit W' (Fig. 5) was placed very near the circuit W.

When the receiving wire is at the distance of several miles from
the sending wire it is impossible to detect by the above method the
magnetic ripples or whirls. We can, however, detect the electrical
currents which these magnetic lines of force cause in the receiving
wire; and this leads me to speak of the discovery of a remarkable
phenomenon which has made Marconi's system of wireless telegraphy
possible. In order that an electrical current may flow through a mass
of particles of a metal, a mass, for instance, of iron filings, it
is necessary either to compress them or to cause a minute spark or
electrical discharge between the particles. Now, it is supposed that
the magnetic whirls, in embracing the distant receiving circuit, cause
these minute sparks, and thus enable the electric current from the
battery B to work a telegraphic sounder or bell M. The metallic filings
are inclosed in a glass tube between wires which lead to the battery,
and the arrangement is called a coherer. It can be made small and
light. Fig. 6 is a representation in full size of one that has been
found to be very sensitive. It consists of two silver wires with a few
iron filings contained in a glass tube between the ends of the wires.
It is necessary that this little tube should be constantly shaken up
in order that after the electrical circuit is made the iron filings
should return to their non-conducting condition, or should cease to
cohere together, and should thus be ready to respond to the following
signal. My colleague, Professor Sabine, has employed a very small
electric motor to cause the glass tube to revolve, and thus to keep the
filings in motion while signals are being received. Fig. 7 shows the
arrangement of the receiving apparatus.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Photograph of the electric lines which emanate
from the end of the wire at the sending station, and which are probably
reproduced among the metallic filings of the coherer at the receiving
station.]

The coherer and the motor are shown between two batteries, one of
which drives the motor while the other serves to work the bell or
sounder when the electric wire excites the iron filings. In Fig. 2
this receiving apparatus is shown diagrammatically. B is the battery
which sends a current through the sounder M and the coherer N when the
magnetic whirls coming from the sending wire W embrace the receiving
wire W'.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Magnetic whirls about the sending wire.]

The term wireless telegraphy is a misnomer, for without wires the
method would not be possible. The phenomenon is merely an enlargement
of one that we are fully conscious of in the case of telegraph and
telephone circuits, which is termed electro-magnetic induction.
Whenever an electric current suddenly flows or suddenly ceases to
flow along a wire, electrical currents are caused by induction in
neighboring wires. The receiver employed by Marconi is a delicate
spark caused by this induction, which forms a bridge so that an
electric current from the relay battery can pass and influence magnetic
instruments.

Many investigators had succeeded before Marconi in sending telegraphic
messages several miles through the air or ether between two points
not directly connected by wires. Marconi has extended the distance by
employing a much higher electro-motive force at the sending station
and using the feeble inductive effect at a distance to set in action a
local battery.

It is evident that wires are needed at the sending station from every
point of which magnetic and electric waves are sent out, and wires at
the receiving station which embrace, so to speak, these waves in the
manner shown by our photographs. These waves produce minute sparks in
the receiving instrument, which act like a suddenly drawn flood gate in
allowing the current from a local battery to flow through the circuit
in which the spark occurs, and thus produce a click on a telegraphic
instrument.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Magnetic whirls about the receiving wire.]

We have said that messages had been sent by what is called wireless
telegraphy before Marconi made his experiments. These messages had
also been sent by induction, signals on one wire being received by a
parallel and distant wire. To Marconi is due the credit of greatly
extending the method by using a vertical wire. The method of using the
coherer to detect electric pulses is not due, however, to Marconi.
It is usually attributed to Branly; it had been employed, however,
by previous observers, among whom is Hughes, the inventor of the
microphone, an instrument analogous in its action to that of the
coherer. In the case of the microphone, the waves from the human voice
shake up the particles of carbon in the microphone transmitter, and
thus cause an electrical current to flow more easily through the minute
contacts of the carbon particles.

The action of the telephone transmitter, which also consists of minute
conducting particles in which a battery terminals are immersed, and
the analogous coherer is microscopic, and there are many theories to
account for their changes of resistance to electrical currents. We can
not, I believe, be far wrong in thinking that the electric force breaks
down the insulating effect of the infinitely thin layers of air between
the particles, and thus allows an electric current to flow. This action
is doubtless of the nature of an electric spark. An electric spark,
in the case of wireless telegraphy, produces magnetic and electric
lines of force in space, these reach out and embrace the circuit
containing the coherer, and produce in turn minute sparks. _Similia
similibus_--one action perfectly corresponds to the other.

The Marconi system, therefore, of what is called wireless telegraphy
is not new in principle, but only new in practical application. It had
been used to show the phenomena of electric waves in lecture rooms.
Marconi extended it from distances of sixty to one hundred feet to
fifty or sixty miles. He did this by lifting the sending-wire spark on
a lofty pole and improving the sensitiveness of the metallic filings
in the glass tube at the receiving station. He adopted a mechanical
arrangement for continually tapping the coherer in order to break up
the minute bridges formed by the cohering action, and thus to prepare
the filings for the next magnetic pulse. The system of wireless
telegraphy is emphatically a spark system strangely analogous to
flash-light signaling, a system in which the human eye with its rods
and cones in the retina acts as the coherer, and the nerve system, the
local battery, making a signal or sensation in the brain.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--The coherer employed to receive the electric
waves. (One and a third actual size.)]

Let us examine the sending spark a little further. An electric spark
is perhaps the most interesting phenomenon in electricity. What causes
it--how does the air behave toward it--what is it that apparently flows
through the air, sending out light and heat waves as well as magnetic
and electric waves? If we could answer all these questions, we should
know what electricity is. A critical study of the electric spark has
not only its scientific but its practical side. We see the latter side
evidenced by its employment in wireless telegraphy and in the X rays;
for in the latter case we have an electric discharge in a tube from
which the air is removed--a special case of an electric spark. In
order to understand the capabilities of wireless telegraphy we must
turn to the scientific study of the electric spark; for its practical
employment resides largely in its strength, in its frequency in its
position, and in its power to make the air a conductor for electricity.
All these points are involved in wireless telegraphy. How, then, shall
we study the electric spark? The eye sees only an instantaneous flash
following a devious path. It can not tell in what direction a spark
flies (a flash of lightning, for instance), or indeed whether it has
a direction. There is probably no commoner fallacy mankind entertains
than the belief that the direction of lightning, or any electric spark,
can be ascertained by the eye--that is, the direction from the sky
to the earth or from the earth to the sky. I have repeatedly tested
numbers of students in regard to this question, employing sparks four
to six feet in length, taking precautions in regard to the concealment
of the directions in which I charged the poles of the charging
batteries, and I have never found a consensus of opinion in regard to
directions. The ordinary photograph, too, reveals no more than the eye
can see--a brilliant, devious line or a flaming discharge.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Arrangement of batteries of motor (to disturb
the coherer) and the sounder by which the messages are received.]

A large storage battery forms the best means of studying electric
sparks, for with it one can run the entire gamut of this
phenomenon--from the flaming discharge which we see in the arc light
on the street to the crackling spark we employ in wireless telegraphy,
and the more powerful discharges of six or more feet in length which
closely resemble lightning discharges. A critical study of this gamut
throws considerable light on the problem of the possibility of secret
wireless telegraphy--a problem which it is most important to solve if
the system is to be made practical; for at present the message spreads
out from the sending spark in great circular ripples in all directions,
and may be received by any one.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Photograph of electrical pulses. The interval
between the pulses is one millionth of a second.]

Several methods enable us to transform electrical energy so as to
obtain suitable quick and intense blows on the surrounding medium.
Is it possible that there is some mysterious vibration in the spark
which is instrumental in the effective transmission of electrical
energy across space? If the spark should vibrate or oscillate to and
fro faster than sixteen times a second the human eye could not detect
such oscillations; for an impression remains on the eye one sixteenth
of a second, and subsequent ones separated by intervals shorter than a
sixteenth would mingle together and could not be separated. The only
way to ascertain whether the spark is oscillatory, or whether it is
not one spark, as it appears to the eye, but a number of to-and-fro
impulses, is to photograph it by a rapidly revolving mirror. The
principle is similar to that of the biograph or the vitoscope, in
which the quick to-and-fro motions of the spark are received on a
sensitive film, which is in rapid motion. One terminal of the spark
gap, the positive terminal so called, is always brighter than the
other. Hence, if the sensitive film is moved at right angles to the
path of the discharge, we shall get a row of dots which are the images
of the brighter terminal, and these dots occur alternately first
on one terminal and then on the other, showing that the discharge
oscillates--that is, leaps in one discharge (which seems but one to the
eye) many times in a hundred thousandth of a second. In practice it is
found better to make an image of the spark move across the sensitive
film instead of moving the film. This is accomplished by the same
method that a boy uses in flashing sunlight by means of a mirror. The
faster the mirror moves the faster moves the image of the light. In
this way a speed of a millionth of a second can be attained. In this
case the distance between the dots on the film may be one tenth of
an inch, sufficient to separate them to the eye. The photograph of
electric sparks (Fig. 8) was taken in this manner. The distance between
any two bright spots in the trail of the photographic images represents
the time of the electric oscillation or the time of the magnetic pulse
or wave which is sent out from the spark, and which will cause a
distant circuit to respond by a similar oscillation.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Photograph of a pilot spark, which is the
principal factor in the method of wireless telegraphy.]

At present the shortest time that can, so to speak, be photographed
in this manner is about one two-millionth of a second. This is the
time of propagation of a magnetic wave over four hundred feet long.
The waves used in wireless telegraphy are not more than four feet in
length--about one hundredth the length of those we can photograph.
The photographic method thus reveals a mechanism of the spark which
is entirely hidden from the eye and will always be concealed from
human sight. It reveals, however, a greater mystery which it seems
incompetent to solve--the mystery of what is called the pilot spark,
the first discharge which we see on our photograph (Fig. 9) stretching
intact from terminal to terminal, having the prodigious velocity of one
hundred and eighty thousand miles a second. None of our experimental
devices suffice to penetrate the mystery of this discharge. It is this
pilot spark which is chiefly instrumental in sending out the magnetic
pulses or waves which are powerful enough to reach forty or fifty
miles. The preponderating influence of this pilot spark--so called
since it finds a way for the subsequent surgings or oscillations--is
a bar to the efforts to make wireless telegraphy secret. We can see
from the photograph how much greater its strength is than that of the
subsequent discharges shown by the mere brightening of the terminals.
A delicate coherer will immediately respond to the influence of this
pilot spark, and the subsequent oscillations of this discharge will
have little effect. How, then, can we effectively time a receiving
circuit so that it will respond to only one sending station? We can not
depend upon the oscillatory nature of the spark, or adopt, in other
words, its rate of vibration and form a coherer with the same rate.

It seems as if it would be necessary to invent some method of sending
pilot sparks at a high and definite rate of vibration, and of employing
coherers which will only respond to definite powerful rates of magnetic
pulsation. Various attempts have been made to produce by mechanical
means powerful electric surgings, but they have been unsuccessful. Both
high electro-motive force and strength of current are needed. These can
be obtained by the employment of a great number of storage cells. The
discharge from a large number of these cells, however, is not suitable
for the purpose of wireless telegraphy, although it may possess the
qualifications of both high electrical pressure and strength of current.

The only apparatus we have at command to produce quick blows on the
ether is the Ruhmkorf coil. This coil, I have said, has been in all our
physical cabinets for fifty years. It contained within itself the germ
of the telephone transmitter and the method of wireless telegraphy,
unrecognized until the present. In its elements it consists, as we have
seen, of two electrical circuits, placed near each other, entirely
unconnected. A battery is connected with one of these circuits, and
any change in the strength of the electrical current gives a blow to
the ether or medium between the two circuits. A quick stopping of the
electrical current gives the strongest impulse to the ether, which
is taken up by the neighboring circuit. For the past fifty years
very little advance has been made in the method of giving strong
electrical impulses to the medium of space. It is accomplished simply
by a mechanical breaking of the connection to the battery, either by
a revolving wheel with suitable projections, or by a vibrating point.
All the various forms of mechanical breaks are inefficient. They do not
give quick and uniform breaks. Latterly, hopes have been excited by the
discovery of a chemical break, called the Weynelt interrupter, shown in
Fig. 1. The electrical current in passing through a vessel of diluted
sulphuric acid from a point of platinum to a disk of lead causes
bubbles of gas which form a barrier to its passage which is suddenly
broken down, and this action goes on at a high rate of speed, causing
a torrent of sparks in the neighboring circuit. The medium between
the two circuits is thereby submitted to rapid and comparatively
powerful impulses. The discovery of this and similar chemical or
molecular interruptions marks an era in the history of the electrical
transformer, and the hopes of further progress by means of them is far
greater than in the direction of mechanical interruptions.

We are still, however, unable to generate sufficiently powerful and
sufficiently well-timed electrical impulses to make wireless telegraphy
of great and extended use. Can we not hope to strengthen the present
feeble impulses in wireless telegraphy by some method of relaying or
repeating? In the analogous subject of telephony many efforts have
also been made to render the service secret, and to extend it to great
distances by means of relays. These efforts have not been successful up
to the present. We still have our neighbors' call bells, and we could
listen to their messages if we were gossips. The telephone service
has been extended to great distances--for instance, from Boston to
Omaha--not by relays, but by strengthening the blows upon the medium
between the transmitting circuit and the receiving one, just as we
desire to do in what is called wireless telegraphy, the apparatus of
which is almost identical in principle to that employed in telephony.
The individual call in telephony is not a success for nearly the same
reasons that exist in the case of wireless telegraphy. Perfectly
definite and powerful rates of vibration can not be sent from point to
point over wires to which only certain definite apparatus will respond.
There are so many ways in which the energy of the electric current can
be dissipated in passing over wires and through calling bells that the
form of the waves and their strength becomes attenuated. The form of
the electrical waves is better preserved in free space, where there
are no wires or where there is no magnetic matter. The difficulty
in obtaining individual calls in wireless telegraphy resides in the
present impossibility of obtaining sufficiently rapid and powerful
electrical impulses, and a receiver which will properly respond to a
definite number of such impulses.

The question of a relay seems as impossible of solution as it does in
telephony. The character of speech depends upon numberless delicate
inflections and harmonies. The form, for instance, of the wave
transmitting the vowel _a_ must be preserved in order that the sound
may be recognized. A relay in telephony acts very much like one's
neighbor in the game called gossip, in which a sentence repeated more
or less indistinctly, after passing from one person to another, becomes
distorted and meaningless. No telephone relay has been invented which
preserves the form of the first utterance, the vowel _a_ loses its
delicate characteristics, and becomes simply a meaningless noise. It is
maintained by some authorities that such a relay can not be invented,
that it is impossible to preserve the delicate inflections of the
human voice in passing from one circuit to another, even through an
infinitesimal air gap or ether space. It is well, however, to reflect
upon Hosea Bigelow's sapient advice "not to prophesy unless you know."
It was maintained in the early days of the telephone that speech would
lose so many characteristics in the process of transmission over wires
and through magnetic apparatus that it would not be intelligible.
It is certain that at present long-distance transmission of speech
can only be accomplished by using more powerful transmitters, and by
making the line of copper better fitted for the transmission--just as
quick transportation from place to place has not been accomplished by
quitting the earth and by flying through space, but by obtaining more
powerful engines and by improving the roadbeds.

The hopes of obtaining a relay for wireless telegraphy seem as small
as they do in telephony. The present method is practically limited to
distances of fifty or sixty miles--distances not much exceeding those
which can be reached by a search-light in fair weather. Indeed, there
is a close parallelism between the search-light and the spark used in
Marconi's experiments: both send out waves which differ only in length.
The waves of the search-light are about one forty-thousandth of an
inch long, while the magnetic waves of the spark, invisible to the
eye, are three to four feet--more than a million times longer than the
light waves. These very long waves have this advantage over the short
light waves: they are able to penetrate fog, and even sand hills and
masonry. One can send messages into a building from a point outside. A
prisoner could communicate with the outer world, a beleaguered garrison
could send for help, a disabled light-ship could summon assistance, and
possibly one steamer could inform another in a fog of its course.

Wireless telegraphy is the nearest approach to telepathy that has
been vouchsafed to our intelligence, and it serves to stimulate our
imagination and to make us think that things greatly hoped for can be
always reached, although not exactly in the way expected. The nerves
of the whole world are, so to speak, being bound together, so that a
touch in one country is transmitted instantly to a far-distant one. Why
should we not in time speak through the earth to the antipodes? If the
magnetic waves can pass through brick and stone walls and sand hills,
why should we not direct, so to speak, our trumpet to the earth,
instead of letting its utterances skim over the horizon? In regard
to this suggestion, we know certainly one fact from our laboratory
experiences: that these magnetic waves, meeting layers of electrically
conducting matter, like layers of iron ore, would be reflected back,
and would not penetrate. Thus a means may be discovered through the
instrumentality of such waves of exploring the mysteries of the earth
before success is attained in completely penetrating its mass.




EMIGRANT DIAMONDS IN AMERICA.

BY PROF. WILLIAM HERBERT HOBBS.


To discover the origin of the diamond in Nature we must seek it in
its ancestral home, where the rocky matrix gave it birth in the form
characteristic of its species. In prosecuting our search we should very
soon discover that, in common with other gem minerals, the diamond has
been a great wanderer, for it is usually found far from its original
home. The disintegrating forces of the atmosphere, by acting upon the
rocky material in which the stones were imbedded, have loosed them from
their natural setting, to be caught up by the streams, sorted from
their disintegrated matrix, and transported far from the parent rock,
to be at last set down upon some gravelly bed over which the force of
the current is weakened. The mines of Brazil and the Urals, of India,
Borneo, and the "river diggings" of South Africa either have been or
are now in deposits of this character.

The "dry diggings" of the Kimberley district, in South Africa, afford
the unique locality in which the diamond has thus far been found in
its original home, and all our knowledge of the genesis of the mineral
has been derived from study of this locality. The mines are located
in "pans," in which is found the "blue ground" now recognized as the
disintegrated matrix of the diamond. These "pans" are known to be the
"pipes," or "necks," of former volcanoes, now deeply dissected by the
forces of the atmosphere--in fact, worn down if not to their roots, at
least to their stumps. These remnants of the "pipes," through which
the lava reached the surface, are surrounded in part by a black shale
containing a large percentage of carbon, and this is believed to be the
material out of which the diamonds have been formed. What appear to
be modified fragments of the black shale inclosed within the "pipes"
afford evidence that portions of the shale have been broken from the
parent beds by the force of the ascending current of lava--a common
enough accompaniment to volcanic action--and have been profoundly
altered by the high temperature and the extreme hydrostatic pressure
under which the mass must have been held. The most important feature
of this alteration has been the recrystallization of the carbon of the
shale into diamond.

[Illustration: GLACIAL MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES REGION

Driftless Areas. Older Drift. Newer Drift.

Moraines. Glacial Striae. Track of Diamonds.


Diamond Localities E. Eagle O. Oregon K. Kohlsville D. Dowagiac M.
Milford. P. Plum Crk. B. Burlington.

We are indebted to the University of Chicago Press for the above
illustration.]

[Illustration: Copyright, 1899, by George F. Kunz.

FIVE VIEWS OF THE EAGLE DIAMOND (sixteen carats); enlarged about three
diameters. (Owned by Tiffany and Company.)

We are indebted to the courtesy of Mr. G. F. Kunz, of Tiffany and
Company, for the illustrations of the Oregon and Eagle diamonds.]

This apparent explanation of the genesis of the diamond finds strong
support in the experiments of Moissan, who obtained artificial diamond
by dissolving carbon in molten iron and immersing the mass in cold
water until a firm surface crust had formed. The "chilled" mass was
then removed, to allow its still molten core to solidify slowly. This
it does with the development of enormous pressures, because the natural
expansion of the iron on passing into the solid condition is resisted
by the strong shell of "chilled" metal. The isolation of the diamond
was then accomplished by dissolving the iron in acid.

The prevailing form of the South African diamonds is that of a rounded
crystal, with eight large and a number of minute faces--a form called
by crystallographers a _modified octahedron_. Their shapes would be
roughly simulated by the Pyramids of Egypt if they could be seen,
combined with their reflected images, in a placid lake, or, better
to meet the conditions of the country, in a desert mirage. It is a
peculiar property of diamond crystals to have convexly rounded faces,
so that the edges which separate the faces are not straight, but gently
curving. Less frequently in the African mines, but commonly in some
other regions, diamonds are bounded by four, twelve, twenty-four, or
even forty-eight faces. These must not, of course, be confused with the
faces of cut stones, which are the product of the lapidary's art.

Geological conditions remarkably like those observed at the Kimberley
mines have recently been discovered in Kentucky, with the difference
that here the shales contain a much smaller percentage of carbon, which
may be the reason that diamonds have not rewarded the diligent search
that has been made for them.

Though now found in the greatest abundance in South Africa and in
Brazil, diamonds were formerly obtained from India, Borneo, and from
the Ural Mountains of Russia. The great stones of history have, with
hardly an exception, come from India, though in recent years a number
of diamond monsters have been found in South Africa. One of these,
the "Excelsior," weighed nine hundred and seventy carats, which is in
excess even of the supposed weight of the "Great Mogul."

[Illustration: Copyright, 1899, by George F. Kunz.

FOUR VIEWS OF THE OREGON DIAMOND; enlarged about three diameters.
(Owned by Tiffany and Company.)]

Occasionally diamonds have come to light in other regions than those
specified. The Piedmont plateau, at the southeastern base of the
Appalachians, has produced, in the region between southern Virginia and
Georgia, some ten or twelve diamonds, which have varied in weight from
those of two or three carats to the "Dewey" diamond, which when found
weighed over twenty-three carats.

It is, however, in the territory about the Great Lakes that the
greatest interest now centers, for in this region a very interesting
problem of origin is being worked out. No less than seven diamonds,
ranging in size from less than four to more than twenty-one carats, not
to mention a number of smaller stones, have been recently found in the
clays and gravels of this region, where their distribution was such
as to indicate with a degree of approximation the location of their
distant ancestral home.

In order clearly to set forth the nature of this problem and the method
of its solution it will be necessary, first, to plot upon a map of the
lake region the locality at which each of the stones has been found,
and, further, to enter upon the same map the data which geologists
have gleaned regarding the work of the great ice cap of the Glacial
period. During this period, not remote as geological time is reckoned,
an ice mantle covered the entire northeastern portion of our continent,
and on more than one occasion it invaded for considerable distances
the territory of the United States. Such a map as has been described
discloses an important fact which holds the clew for the detection of
the ancestral home of these diamonds. Each year is bringing with it new
evidence, and we may look forward hopefully to a full solution of the
problem.

In 1883 the "Eagle Stone" was brought to Milwaukee and sold for
the nominal sum of one dollar. When it was submitted to competent
examination the public learned that it was a diamond of sixteen carats'
weight, and that it had been discovered seven years earlier in earth
removed from a well-opening. Two events which were calculated to arouse
local interest followed directly upon the discovery of the real nature
of this gem, after which it passed out of the public notice. The woman
who had parted with the gem for so inadequate a compensation brought
suit against the jeweler to whom she had sold it, in order to recover
its value. This curious litigation, which naturally aroused a great
deal of interest, was finally carried to the Supreme Court of the State
of Wisconsin, from which a decision was handed down in favor of the
defendant, on the ground that he, no less than the plaintiff, had been
ignorant of the value of the gem at the time of purchasing it. The
other event was the "boom" of the town of Eagle as a diamond center,
which, after the finding of two other diamonds with unmistakable marks
of African origin upon them, ended as suddenly as it had begun, with
the effect of temporarily discrediting, in the minds of geologists, the
genuineness of the original "find."

Ten years later a white diamond of a little less than four carats'
weight came to light in a collection of pebbles found in Oregon,
Wisconsin, and brought to the writer for examination. The stones had
been found by a farmer's lad while playing in a clay bank near his
home. The investigation of the subject which was thereupon made brought
out the fact that a third diamond, and this the larges of all, had
been discovered at Kohlsville, in the same State, in 1883, and was
still in the possession of the family on whose property it had been
found.

As these stones were found in the deposits of "drift" which were left
by the ice of the Glacial period, it was clear that they had been
brought to their resting places by the ice itself. The map reveals
the additional fact, and one of the greatest significance, that all
these diamonds were found in the so-called "kettle moraine." This
moraine or ridge was the dumping ground of the ice for its burden of
bowlders, gravel, and clay at the time of its later invasion, and hence
indicates the boundaries of the territory over which the ice mass was
then extended. In view of the fact that two of the three stones found
had remained in the hands of the farming population, without coming
to the knowledge of the world, for periods of eleven and seven years
respectively, it seems most probable that others have been found,
though not identified as diamonds, and for this reason are doubtless
still to be found in many cases in association with other local
"curios" on the clock shelves of country farmhouses in the vicinity
of the "kettle moraine." The writer felt warranted in predicting, in
1894, that other diamonds would occasionally be brought to light in the
"kettle moraine," though the great extent of this moraine left little
room for hope that more than one or two would be found at any one point
of it.

[Illustration: THREE VIEWS OF THE SAUKVILLE DIAMOND (six carats);
enlarged about three diameters. (Owned by Bunde and Upmeyer, Milwaukee.)

We are indebted to the courtesy of Bunde and Upmeyer, of Milwaukee, for
the illustrations showing the Burlington and Saukville diamonds.]

In the time that has since elapsed diamonds have been found at the rate
of about one a year, though not, so far as I am aware, in any case
as the result of search. In Wisconsin have been found the Saukville
diamond, a beautiful white stone of six carats' weight, and also the
Burlington stone, having a weight of a little over two carats. The
former had been for more than sixteen years in the possession of the
finder before he learned of its value. In Michigan has been found the
Dowagiac stone, of about eleven carats' weight, and only very recently
a diamond weighing six carats and of exceptionally fine "water" has
come to light at Milford, near Cincinnati. This augmentation of the
number of localities, and the nearness of all to the "kettle moraines,"
leaves little room for doubt that the diamonds were conveyed by the ice
at the time of its later invasion of the country.

Having, then, arrived at a satisfactory conclusion regarding not only
the agent which conveyed the stones, but also respecting the period
during which they were transported, it is pertinent to inquire by what
paths they were brought to their adopted homes, and whether, if these
may be definitely charted, it may not be possible to follow them in a
direction the reverse of that taken by the diamonds themselves until we
arrive at the point from which each diamond started upon its journey.
If we succeed in this we shall learn whether they have a common home,
or whether they were formed in regions more or less widely separated.
From the great rarity of diamonds in Nature it would seem that the
hypothesis of a common home is the more probable, and this view finds
confirmation in the fact that certain marks of "consanguinity" have
been observed upon the stones already found.

[Illustration: FOUR VIEWS OF THE BURLINGTON DIAMOND (a little over two
carats); enlarged about three diameters. (Owned by Bunde and Upmeyer,
Milwaukee.)]

Not only did the ice mantle register its advance in the great ridge
of morainic material which we know as the "kettle moraine," but it
has engraved upon the ledges of rock over which it has ridden, in a
simple language of lines and grooves, the direction of its movement,
after first having planed away the disintegrated portions of the rock
to secure a smooth and lasting surface. As the same ledges have been
overridden more than once, and at intervals widely separated, they
are often found, palimpsestlike, with recent characters superimposed
upon earlier, partly effaced, and nearly illegible ones. Many of
the scattered leaves of this record have, however, been copied by
geologists, and the autobiography of the ice is now read from maps
which give the direction of its flow, and allow the motion of the ice
as a whole, as well as that of each of its parts, to be satisfactorily
studied. Recent studies by Canadian geologists have shown that one of
the highest summits of the ice cap must have been located some distance
west of Hudson Bay, and that another, the one which glaciated the lake
region, was in Labrador, to the east of the same body of water. From
these points the ice moved in spreading fans both northward toward the
Arctic Ocean and southward toward the States, and always approached the
margins at the moraines in a direction at right angles to their extent.
Thus the rock material transported by the ice was spread out in a great
fan, which constantly extended its boundaries as it advanced.

The evidence from the Oregon, Eagle, and Kohlsville stones, which
were located on the moraine of the Green Bay glacier, is that their
home, in case they had a common one, is between the northeastern
corner of the State of Wisconsin and the eastern summit of the ice
mantle--a narrow strip of country of great extent, but yet a first
approximation of the greatest value. If we assume, further, that the
Saukville, Burlington, and Dowagiac stones, which were found on the
moraine of the Lake Michigan glacier, have the same derivation, their
common home may confidently be placed as far to the northeast as
the wilderness beyond the Great Lakes, since the Green Bay and Lake
Michigan glaciers coalesced in that region. The small stones found at
Plum Creek, Wisconsin, and the Cincinnati stone, if the locations of
their discovery be taken into consideration, still further circumscribe
the diamond's home territory, since the lobes of the ice mass which
transported them made a complete junction with the Green Bay and Lake
Michigan lobes or glaciers considerably farther to the northward than
the point of union of the latter glaciers themselves.

[Illustration: THREE VIEWS OF A LEAD CAST OF THE MILFORD STONE (six
carats); enlarged about three diameters.

We are indebted to the courtesy of Prof. T. H. Norton, of the
University of Cincinnati, for the above illustrations.]

If, therefore, it is assumed that all the stones which have been found
have a common origin, the conclusion is inevitable that the ancestral
home must be in the wilderness of Canada between the points where the
several tracks marking their migrations converge upon one another, and
the former summit of the ice sheet. The broader the "fan" of their
distribution, the nearer to the latter must the point be located.

It is by no means improbable that when the barren territory about
Hudson Bay is thoroughly explored a region for profitable diamond
mining may be revealed, but in the meantime we may be sure that
individual stones will occasionally be found in the new American homes
into which they were imported long before the days of tariffs and ports
of entry. Mother Nature, not content with lavishing upon our favored
nation the boundless treasures locked up in her mountains, has robbed
the territory of our Canadian cousins of the rich soils which she has
unloaded upon our lake States, and of the diamonds with which she has
sowed them.

[Illustration: COMMON FORMS OF QUARTZ CRYSTALS.]

[Illustration: COMMON FORMS OF DIAMONDS. The African stones most
resemble the figure above at the left (octahedron). The Wisconsin
stones most resemble the figure above at the right (dodecahedron).]

The range of the present distribution of the diamonds, while perhaps
not limited exclusively to the "kettle moraine," will, as the events
have indicated, be in the main confined to it. This moraine, with
its numerous subordinate ranges marking halting places in the final
retreat of the ice, has now been located with sufficient accuracy by
the geologists of the United States Geological Survey and others,
approximately as entered upon the accompanying map. Within the
territory of the United States the large number of observations of the
rock scorings makes it clear that the ice of each lobe or glacier moved
from the central portion toward the marginal moraines, which are here
indicated by dotted bands. In the wilderness of Canada the observations
have been rare, but the few data which have been gleaned are there
represented by arrows pointed in the direction of ice movement.

There is every encouragement for persons who reside in or near the
marginal moraines to search in them for the scattered jewels, which
may be easily identified and which have a large commercial as well as
scientific value.

The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey is now interesting
itself in the problem of the diamonds, and has undertaken the task of
disseminating information bearing on the subject to the people who
reside near the "kettle moraine." With the co-operation of a number of
mineralogists who reside near this "diamond belt," it offers to make
examination of the supposed gem stones which may be collected.

The success of this undertaking will depend upon securing the
co-operation of the people of the morainal belt. Wherever gravel
ridges have there been opened in cuts it would be advisable to look
for diamonds. Children in particular, because of their keen eyes and
abundant leisure, should be encouraged to search for the clear stones.

The serious defect in this plan is that it trusts to inexperienced
persons to discover the buried diamonds which in the "rough" are
probably unlike anything that they have ever seen. The first result of
the search has been the collection of large numbers of quartz pebbles,
which are everywhere present but which are entirely valueless. There
are, however, some simple ways of distinguishing diamonds from quartz.

Diamonds never appear in thoroughly rounded forms like ordinary
pebbles, for they are too hard to be in the least degree worn by
contact with their neighbors in the gravel bed. Diamonds always show,
moreover, distinct forms of crystals, and these generally bear some
resemblance to one of the forms figured. They are never in the least
degree like crystals of quartz, which are, however, the ones most
frequently confounded with them. Most of the Wisconsin diamonds have
either twelve or forty-eight faces. Crystals of most minerals are
bounded by plane surfaces--that is to say, their faces are flat--the
diamond, however, is inclosed by distinctly curving surfaces.

The one property of the diamond, however, which makes it easy of
determination is its extraordinary hardness--greater than that of any
other mineral. Put in simple language, the hardness of a substance
may be described as its power to scratch other substances when drawn
across them under pressure. To compare the hardness of two substances
we should draw a sharp point of one across a surface of the other
under a pressure of the fingers, and note whether a permanent scratch
is left. The harder substances will always scratch the softer, and if
both have the same hardness they may be made to mutually scratch each
other. Since diamond, sapphire, and ruby are the only minerals which
are harder than emery they are the only ones which, when drawn across a
rough emery surface, will not receive a scratch. Any stone whic

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