The Chautauquan, May 1885

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. V. MAY, 1885. No. 8.

Officers of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor, J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors, The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

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REQUIRED READING FOR MAY.

ENGLISH AS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.

At the beginning of this study we must determine as clearly as possible the meaning attached to the word universal when it is applied to a language. For this purpose, the word is employed in a restricted sense. It is not meant that men are returning to the conditions of speech which prevailed before the building of Babel. To that condition men may or may not return in some far off century; so far as we can judge, that reunion of mankind is very distant. Max Müller[1] says that 900 languages are spoken by the human race; and if dialects are added the number may be three or four times as large. Most of our race speak dialects having no literature, and it is found to be a very slow task to substitute the language of a nation for the dialects of its people. Classical Greek was probably spoken by only a few of the Greeks. We know that the Latin of Cicero was not, not even in Rome, the speech of the people. At this day more than a score of dialects are spoken in Italy, and the majority of the population of that Peninsula can neither speak nor understand Italian. Public education and other unifying influences make very little progress against the diversity of speech in the various provinces. An Italian gentleman is bred in a nurse’s language (the dialect) and educated in Italian. He speaks two tongues, dialect and Italian; his servants speak but one, and that is the dialect. To break up the power of the nurse, and of the local influences which she represents, is a Herculean task which must be accomplished in every country except the United States, the Canadas, and a part of Great Britain, before mankind will speak only 900 tongues; the time required to reduce nine hundred to one can only be guessed at. If the problem of a universal language were how to provide a common language to be exclusively used by all men, this problem would be one for pure speculation, in the solving of which the imagination would be more active than the reason.

There is another sense in which scholars speak of a universal language. (1) There has always been in our Aryan[2] tribe a leading literary language. Once it was Sanskrit;[3] perhaps at a later time it was Persian; later it was Greek; later it was Latin. This Aryan tribe of ours has made the greater part of the history of the last 3,000 years; to-day it is the history-making and literature-making tribe. Great tracts of older history—Babylonian, Arabian, Egyptian—lie outside of the Aryan movements; but Persian, Greek, Roman, German, French, Spanish, English and American history lie in the Aryan line. Now, then, within this line some one Aryan language has always enjoyed a literary predominance. (2) For other than literary purposes, some one of our family of languages has at one time or another had an extended currency. For something like two centuries French, for example, has been the language of diplomacy. We are probably passing out of a period which has lasted for half a century, of the predominance of German as a language of research, especially of metaphysical and grammatical study. These examples will suffice to show what is meant by our problem. In trade and practical invention English is, in this modified sense, a universal language. What I undertake to measure is this: the probability that, at a not distant time, English will be universal in more senses (used by people of many countries for more purposes) than any other Aryan language was ever before used. Some careful observers believe that this is the present position of the language—that it is now universal to an extent quite beyond all precedent. I think that as a literary, political and commercial language, English has a fair prospect of universal use within the Aryan tribe, and a better prospect than any other tongue of coming into use for these purposes all over the globe.

1. The mere arraying of numbers carries with it a kind of presumption in favor of English. Did 5,000,000 ever at one time use either classic Greek or the Hellenic form of that speech? I seriously doubt that at any time 5,000,000 of people could have understood each other in any one form of that tongue. Did ever at any one time 15,000,000 of people speak the Latin of our classic authors? I doubt it. Turn to English, and we find not less than 110,000,000 of people speaking it at the present time. And this comparison is made much stronger when we remember that, one hundred years ago, our number did not probably exceed fifteen millions. Our vast growth is related to forces and conditions still existing, and now giving us an accelerating progress in numbers. I shall return to these forces and conditions in a later paragraph. Looking at our competitors, we see that the Germans come next to us, with probably not more than 45,000,000. The German empire counts 45,000,000, and there are 5,000,000, perhaps, of Austrian Germans; but the empire envelops millions of non-Germans. They sometimes zealously claim the Low Dutch; but we could claim them for English with better right. Next come the French with 37,000,000, about one third only of our strength. I think it fair for these purposes to count the populations under the dominion of the several tongues. French, English and German are spoken all over the world. Among the three runs the competition for the first place in the Aryan tribe. I do not commit the folly of making race lines and speech lines the same; but it is a convenient mode of describing the field of this competition as that of the Aryan race, although there have been so many fusions of tribes that perhaps there is no Aryan race at this late day.

2. Another presumption in favor of our language arises from the history of the competition for the first place which has gone on since the rise of the modern European nations. After the Dark Ages,[4] Italian first came to prominence as a polished literary tongue. Its poets converted a dialect into a language, and from Italian literature our Chaucer, our Shakspere, and even our Milton drew inspiration as well as materials for English poetry. As a literary language, Italian was for two centuries a universal language. Spain had the next opportunity for the primacy. Her flag was first planted on the outposts of this continent; the conquests of her kings at one moment placed Europe and America in her hands. Her poets and philosophers made her language as honorable in literature as her sailors and soldiers made it in discovery and conquest. If Spain had retained her grasp on the Mississippi valley and on Mexico and South America, she, and not we, would now be supreme on this continent; and Spanish, not English, would be the dominant speech of North America. But Spain may be said to have retired voluntarily from the primacy of the Aryan tribe; a great language and a great literature descended to generations of Spaniards who had ceased to be great. Next, the French language took the lead. During the eighteenth century the language of France was undoubtedly the leading Aryan tongue. Since the beginning of this century German has come strongly into the competition, and English has gradually attained a preponderance in numbers over our two great competitors.

3. A third presumption in our favor arises from the diversity of great functions which English fills. It is a political, a literary, a common, and a commercial speech. In this brief space I can dwell only on the fact that it is, in a peculiar sense, a political language. The English race has led the way towards modern liberty and towards the political institutions and habits which are the safeguards of freedom. English words even are in use among the continental nations to describe political things which they have borrowed from us. The word meeting is a good example. But the mere diffusion of political terms means comparatively little. The only really great universal language of the past was the language of Rome, and its preëminence grew from its political character. There are in modern Europe two sets of political ideas and juridical institutions; one is Roman, and the other is English; and the two face each other in the modern world, and are really in silent but effective competition with each other. Outside of England, Europe is Roman except as it has been made English. The continental nations have parliaments which are pale copies of the vigorous legislative bodies which cover the English-speaking world. Rome is mighty yet, for the juridical systems of the continent of Europe have their foundations in the Roman civil law. The greatness of Latin did not arise from the genius of the Roman poets and orators. It laid its vigorous hand on human society, and in some sort it is still administering civil society. English has a political and a judicial system of its own, and these systems are conquering mankind. The adoption of the parliament and the trial by jury by continental nations prove the high value of the English inventions in government and law. The French and the German are neither of them political languages. French is the language of a nation which will long command the respect of mankind; but its language counts for nothing in its political structure. German is the language of a great people who make good citizens, but have until recently shown little capacity for political affairs, and have yet to make a great national record. The genius of Bismarck has created a great empire out of a great people; but it remains to be seen whether any aggressive political ideas are to be born of this German empire. The English political system is aggressive. Englishmen are nation-builders; a shipload of them cast upon a desert island would form a government as instinctively and as easily as they would build themselves houses. In this respect English is like Latin; it is the language of a distinct, original political system, whose obvious advantages are enticing men to copy it all over the world.

4. Another presumption in favor of our speech arises from certain peculiarities of its grammar and of its enunciation. In its grammar, it has cast off more of the inflexional burdens than either of its competitors. Both of them retain the fictitious distinction of genders by terminations, and they are in other respects weighted with inflexional incumbrances. English has, unfortunately, a small inheritance of strong nouns and verbs; but it is far simpler in its grammar than either French or German. And it is not by any means a small matter that the grammarian has never obtained the control of the language. In this respect the Germans enjoy more freedom than the French; but in neither language is the grammarian so little powerful as he is among us. The reason is that English is spoken for all purposes by all our people. I do not forget the English dialects as an exception; but they are a very small exception in contrast with the fact that neither literary French nor literary German are used by the mass of either people for all purposes. There is “bad German” for daily life, and there is dialect French for the mass of Frenchmen outside of the great towns. In our language many efforts have been made to fix precise rules which would please the grammarian and render good English difficult, and therefore not common. These efforts have not prevented the progress of English toward simplicity, and the vigor which simplicity imparts; and the result is that children and foreigners readily learn and use the language which is employed in our books and periodicals. By flouting the grammarian we have dethroned the nurse, and have not one language for the home and another for the book.

The enunciation of English is characterized by a simplicity which has not been enjoyed by any other great language. The English word has but one vocal qualification, and that is the accent on a single syllable. And such is the simplicity of this accent that it may be heavy or light, and still the word is intelligible. The vowels all tend to a nearly common form in most situations; and if the accent be in the right place the word is usually understood. There are, of course, many exceptions, such as an Italian a at the end of many words; but though one says feyther, faather, or fauther, we still know what he means. The force of this consideration will best appear by contrast. We do not know how classic Greek was enunciated; but we have reason to suppose that the vocalization was as elaborate and artificial as the music of light opera. It was, of course, easily spoken after one had learned it, but the learning of it must have been a great task for a foreigner. Latin was less elaborately artificial, but there was doubtless an intonation of the Latin sentence, and a marking of the varying lengths of vowels; and these features must have made good Latin difficult and rare. We know that Italian spreads slowly throughout Italy under a system of public instruction, and that it defies the foreigner’s industry and patience, on account of the demand it makes for well defined vowels and a certain sentence rhythm. French is hardly less, if at all less difficult, because it makes similar demands upon the attention and vocal skill of the speaker. A good illustration of all this is found in the fact that the English ear is pleased, while the French and Italian ears are displeased by a “brogue,” or a variation of the position of a word in a sentence. We all like to hear foreigners speak our tongue, precisely because they set it to a new music and show us the range of its grammatical simplicity. There is doubtless a best arrangement of the words in any English sentence. If the grammarians had had their way, this best arrangement would have become the only proper arrangement. The fact that we allow the foreigner to put our words into a different order than the best, or even the second best—and are still pleased with his work—shows, I think, that English has in its vocal and syntactical systems a simplicity and a flexibility which adapt it to universal use.

5. There is also a presumption in favor of English which arises from its history and from certain results of that history. It was originally Teutonic, and made its first alliance with Scandinavian, and so by swallowing up the speech of “the Danes” it came to represent the northern branch of the Aryan race with more breadth than High German shows. Then came the Norman Conquest, by which other “Danes” who had conquered Normandy and adopted the French language became the masters of England. The contest between French and English ended as that between Scandinavian and English had ended—English swallowed French. This event gave us our composite English, and gave the world a language in which the northern and southern streams of Aryan speech mingle their waters and collect their far-gathered wealth. Ours is a composite and compromise speech. In the Danish and Norman struggles, our tongue proved its tenacity, its “holdfast.” In each struggle the conqueror adopted the dialect of the conquered. But in these conflicts, English showed itself to be not only stubbornly vital, but also remarkably charitable and catholic. It remained English, but it gave liberal hospitality to Danish and French words. And ever since, it has been a great borrower of foreign words. It is in this respect utterly unlike French, which will hardly tolerate even a foreign name, but translates these names whenever it is possible. I have sometimes wondered whether our speech might not become a world-speech by mere swallowing of the vocabularies of other languages. It is, of course, not a subject for rational conjecture; but neither would that great feast of French words have been a rational forecast in the eleventh century. We have borrowed from all the great tongues of our tribe, and from many other great and small dialects. We have always been borrowing; we borrow every year. It would be an entertaining and not unprofitable task to collect these harvests of the last fifty years. The readiness with which we naturalize a foreign word has made many a grammarian sick of his profession; but borrowing words is an English propensity which nothing can “reform” out of us. And this catholicity looks in several ways toward universality. Neither of our competitors has any corresponding merit. French is a grand speech, but it will not tolerate foreign words. German is a grand speech; but it is German, and nothing else, except as it has been infiltrated with literary and judicial Latin. I must pass hurriedly over some other important presumptions in our favor.

6. The primacy in commerce is freely conceded to our tongue. For such purposes it is spoken in all the great seaports of the world. In addition to this trade use, we may note that a great variety of practical inventions carry their English names and terms around the world.

7. We also have the great reading public of the world. Germans read; but their 45,000,000 do not consume more than one eighth as much literary food as England and America, the Canadas and Australia. The English literature market is not only the greatest in the world—exceeding in one year all the literary produce of antiquity which has come down to us—but it is a market which grows rapidly. If a German or a Frenchman wishes to reach the largest number of minds, he must write in the English language. We have made more than half the fame of German authors by translating their works into our tongue. Some of the German authors have been wise enough to learn and to use our speech in their books.

8. French and German each had a special advantage over English fifty years ago. Frenchmen have long had a rare power of popularizing knowledge—a power of which they have made much less use than would have been expected. French is very rich in the power of accurate and plain statement of scientific truth. This power Englishmen have been for some time borrowing, and the fruits of such copying appears in the good fame and liberal incomes of our Huxleys and Proctors. There is no reason to doubt that we shall overtake the French in this path of progress; for we have an inexhaustible demand for popularizations of science. Thirty years ago Germans had a primacy in research. They made the world come to their universities to study and master the German method in investigation. I believe that, though this German primacy still exists, it has nearly reached its end. English students have not gone in droves to Germany to come back empty handed. Many of them have conquered the German method and transferred it to their own home and tongue.

9. France is already out of the race. She has but thirty-seven millions, and grows only at a snail’s pace. A Frenchman has recently described the stationary condition of his people in the Révue des deux Mondes in stronger terms than I could use. German is our only serious rival for the primacy. Is it a serious rivalry? The Germans are a prolific race. They lose millions by emigration, and still increase to an extent which makes all Frenchmen sad. But how shall forty-five millions shut up in old Europe overtake the one hundred and ten millions who have the great open fields of the world? If North America were as thickly populated as Germany we should count our hosts as three or four hundred millions. They have room at home; but we have vastly more room. In a century our North American English population will number 250,000,000. The rest of the English speaking world can hardly fail to grow enough to make our grand total 400,000,000. The next doubling of our tribe—not more than one hundred and fifty years from now—would put us so far in front of all competition that no language would contest the primacy with us. Besides, we have great possibilities of gains outside of our own tribes. South America is more and more under the influence of English and American ideas; the East is being anglicised by the English dominion in India, and by American and English missionary schools. Africa is an open question; but a vast English speaking population on the Dark Continent is a far more probable addition to our numbers than this American-English population was in 1492, or even in 1700.

Such seems to be the outlook. In a recent letter forecasting the English-speaking primacy of the world, Mr. Gladstone said: “Mr. Barham Zincke, no incompetent calculator, reckons that the English-speaking peoples of the world one hundred years hence will probably count a thousand millions.… A century back I suppose they were not much, if at all, beyond fifteen millions.” This primacy, he adds, “would demand no propaganda, no superlative ingenuity or effort; it ought to be an orderly and natural growth.… To gain it will need no preterhuman strength; to miss it will require some portentous degeneracy.” I have made much more modest estimates than those quoted by Mr. Gladstone. I attach most importance to the political value of English and the nation-building instinct of our tribe. The great rush forward from fifteen to one hundred and ten millions in a century is a result of our political facility.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[May 3.]

The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of man and matter as the meeting place between them, is the whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between the heart as worshiper and God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed that “of the Scribes and the Pharisees.” The man who hates his brother, or calls him “Raca,” is a murderer in deed.… Oaths are but big sounds; the inner feelings are better represented by “yea, yea, nay, nay.” That love which resides within will walk through the world as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought before, and as inclusive of all things; life is more precious than all the means of it. The examination and correction of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all powerful. The essence of the law and the prophets lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted upon, these precepts from the Mount, heard and kept—become a rock of absolute safety, while all beside is sand now, and sea hereafter.

Such is, in substance, this sermon. It includes unconsciously all theology and all morals, and is invested, besides, with the beauty of imagery—theology, for what do we know, or can we ever know, of God, but that he is “our Father in heaven,” that he accepts our heart worship, forgives our debts, and hears our earnest prayers—morals, for all sin lies in selfishness, all virtue lies in losing our petty identity in the great river of the species, which flows into the ocean of God; and as to imagery, how many natural objects—the salt of the sea, the lilies of the valley, the thorns of the wilderness, the trees of the field, the hairs of the head, the rocks of the mountain, and the sand of the seashore—combine to explain and beautify the deep lessons conveyed! Here is, verily, the model—long sought elsewhere in vain—of a “perfect sermon,” which ought to speak of God and of man in words and figures borrowed from that beautiful creation, which lies between, which adumbrates the former to the latter, and enables the latter to glorify at once the works and the author.—Gilfillan.[1]

[May 10.]

The Hebrew poet was nothing if not sacred. To him the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the pressure of remorse.… Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question, “Are you in a religious mood to-day?” had been as absurd as “Are you alive to-day?” for all his moods— … whether wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah—were tinged with the religious element. From God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wherever he stood, under the silent starry canopy, or in the congregation of the faithful—musing in solitary spots, or smiting, with high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal—his feeling was, “How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” In him, surrounded by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone, and hence we may draw the deduction that its equal we shall never see again, till again religion outshine the earth with an atmosphere as it then enshrined Palestine—till poets, not only as the organs of their personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, have become the high priests in a vast sanctuary, where all shall be worshipers, because all is felt to be divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry! Is it the pastoral? The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy? It bewails his absence. Is it ode? It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. Is it the historical ballad? It recounts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm? Its climax is, “Against thee only have I sinned.” Is it the didactic poem? Running down through the world, like a scythed chariot, and hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Is it a burden, “tossed as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of Egypt and Babylon?” It is the burden of the Lord; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem? God’s meaning lies in the hollow of the parable; God’s eye glares in the “terrible crystal” over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above itself, and behold! a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of their God.—Gilfillan.

[May 17.]

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skillful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge, … because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not.

But the chief and top of his knowledge consists in the Book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.… In the Scriptures he finds four things: precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for illustration, and promises for comfort. These he hath digested severally.

But for the understanding of these, the means he useth are: First, A HOLY LIFE; remembering what his Master saith, that if any do God’s will he shall know of the doctrine (John viii), and assuring himself that wicked men, however learned, do not know the Scriptures, because they feel them not, and because they are not understood but with the same spirit that writ them. The second means is PRAYER; which, if it be necessary even in temporal things, how much more in things of another world, where the well is deep, and we have nothing of ourselves to draw with! Wherefore he ever begins the reading of the Scripture with some short ejaculation, as Lord, pen mine eyes, that I may see the wondrous things of thy law. The third means is A DILIGENT COLLATION of Scripture with Scripture. For, all truth being consonant to itself, and all being penned by one and the self-same Spirit, it can not be, but that an industrious and judicious comparing of place with place must be a singular help for the right understanding of the Scriptures. To this may be added the consideration of any text with the coherence thereof, touching what goes before and what follows after; as also the scope of the Holy Ghost. When the apostles would have called down fire from heaven, they were reproved as ignorant of what spirit they were. For the law required one thing and the gospel another; yet as diverse, not as repugnant; therefore the spirit of both is to be considered and weighed. The fourth means are COMMENTERS AND FATHERS, who have handled the places controverted; which the parson by no means refuseth. As he doth not so study others as to neglect the grace of God in himself, and what the Holy Spirit teacheth him; so doth he assure himself, that God in all ages hath had his servants, to whom he hath revealed his truth, as well as to him; and that as one country doth not bear all things, that there may be a commerce, so neither hath God opened, or will open, all to one, that there may be a traffic in knowledge between the servants of God, for the planting both of love and humility. Wherefore he hath one comment, at least, upon every book of Scripture; and, plowing with this and his own meditations, he enters into the secrets of God treasured in the holy Scripture.—Herbert.[2]

[May 24.]

It is exceedingly important, therefore, that all the Christian gifts and graces should be possessed in purity of spirit, uncontaminated by any unholy mixtures of an earthly nature. The mere suggestion that they have merit of themselves and separate from the God who gives them, if it be received with the least complacency, necessarily inflicts a deep wound. They are accordingly held in purity of spirit, and with the divine approbation, only when their tendency is to separate the soul from everything inward and outward, considered as objects of complacency and of spiritual rest, and to unite it more closely to God.… We do not find the parent, who has that degree of affection for his child which may be called entire or perfect love, making his love a distinct object of his thoughts, and rejoicing in it as such a distinct object; that would not be the genuine operation of perfect love. If his love is perfect, he has no time and no disposition to think of anything but the beloved object toward which his affections are directed. His love is so deep, so pure, so fixed and centered upon one point, that the sight of self, and of his own personal exercises, is lost. It ought to be thus in the feelings which we exercise toward God; and undoubtedly such will be the result, when the religious feeling has reached a certain degree of intensity; that is to say, when the feeling is perfect, the mind is not occupied with the feeling itself, but with the object of the feeling. The heart, if we may so express it, seems to recede from us; it certainly does so as an object of distinct contemplation; and the object of its affections comes in and takes its place. O, the blessedness of the heart, that, free from self and its secret and pernicious influences, sees nothing but God; that recognizes, even in its highest gifts and graces, nothing but God; that would rather be infinitely miserable with God, if it were possible, than infinitely happy without him!

In connection with these remarks we are enabled to understand and appreciate the state of mind which is described in some primitive writers as a state of cessation from “reflex acts.” By REFLEX ACTS, as we employ the phrase here, and as it appears to be employed by the writers referred to, we mean those acts of the mind in which the soul turns inward upon itself, and, ceasing for a time to regard the mere will of God as the only good, takes a self-conscious satisfaction in its own exercises. Such acts, when they are indulged in, stand directly in the way of the highest results of the religious life. On the other hand, he who has entirely ceased to put forth acts of this kind, and loves God to the entire forgetfulness of self, losing sight even of his own exercises, in consequence of being fully occupied with an infinitely higher object, has reached the broad and calm position of spiritual rest, the region of inward and abiding peace—a region where there is no noisy clamor, no outcries and contests of the passions; no contrivances of prejudice, interest, and ambition; no rebellious sighing and tears of the natural spirit; but all is hushed and lost in the one deep conviction that there is nothing good, nothing permanently true, nothing desirable—no, not heaven itself—but pure and everlasting union with the will of God.—Prof. Upham.[3]

[May 31.]

All science is simply a perception of the laws of God—a discovery of what he designed when he spread out the heavens and gemmed the infinity of space with its myriad of worlds. The laws of light are simply the power with which the Creator invested it. All we can do is to find what he has written on its wings. The law of magnetism is the subtle power and the mode of action with which God has touched the loadstone. The laws of astronomy, what are they but the thoughts of God, as he projected worlds into space, and gave to them their orbits and their periods?… Of nature in all its expanse, of all created powers, visible and invisible, hath not God said, “All are yours?” Are we not “heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ?”

I can accord the scientist nearly all he can claim, without in the slightest degree affecting the foundations of my faith.… There are many things which are claimed in evolution, to which I must give the verdict of the Scotch jury, “Not proven.” Yet were I to admit them all, they would not affect my faith in the wisdom and skill and power of the great Father. I admire the skill of the watch-maker who produces an accurate timepiece; but how much more would I admire his skill if he so made one watch that it was capable not only of keeping time, but also of evolving a series of watches, each keeping better time than that which produced it, so that from the plainest, simplest form of a watch there should be eventually evolved a magnificent chronometer, with jeweled holes, whose time would not vary from the true time a second in a million of years! If the great Creator created but a germ, but in that germ were all possibilities of form, and motion, and magnitude, of atoms and of worlds, with their laws of motion so impressed on each that it should take its place in due time, my admiration for his wonderful skill would be only enhanced.… These men who talk of evolution claim an infinity of time. I ask, how long since this protoplasm developed into a turtle, the turtle into a monkey, the monkey into a man? They admit there is no positive record anywhere. Since human history began there is no instance of any animal ascending in the scale of man. If at all, it must have been far back in the distant ages. Then, I ask, why not give Christianity similar time? She is changing the face of creation; she is transforming sinners into saints, savages into enlightened men. She took them naked, rude and uncultured, and has clothed, taught, and refined them. She has taken man that bowed down to stocks and stones, and has elevated him until he uses the world as a workshop, and all elements as his instruments, until he feels that he is a son of God, and his vicegerent upon earth. Why shall Christianity be called a failure, because it has not yet reached all the sons of men, or transformed them into sons of science? Give her at least as much time to change millions of savages into enlightened humanity, millions of sinners into saints, as, according to their own asking, it takes to change one species into another. We promise that the whole world shall be brought to the foot of the cross before the evolutionist shall find even a single monkey transformed into a man.—Bishop Simpson.

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.
Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

PHYSICS OF EARTH.

Our earth, as a whole, may be compared to a ship sailing on a smooth sea. Like the ship, it has its own motions with reference to other objects, and is affected by forces exterior to itself. The ship feels the influence of winds, currents and tides.

The earth also yields to forces outside of itself; to such an extent, indeed, that philosophers have more than once been led to look for an invisible power, which strangely affected it. For example, Adams[1] and Leverrier[2] were led to prophesy the existence of the planet Neptune, because the earth seemed to yield to the touch of some unknown body, which was afterward discovered at the enormous distance of 2,746,271,000 miles.

The ship, in addition to its motion in regard to distant points and susceptibility of being moved by outside forces, has its own peculiar construction, a complex adjustment of planks, timbers, bolts, spars, sails and ropes. It also has its inhabitants, living beings which move to and fro, quite independent, for the time being, of all other parts of the universe, save that on which they reside.

As it glides past some island we look from our cabin window and discover that the island seems to be moving by us in an opposite direction. Even so, as our earth sweeps round its axis with a speed of a thousand miles an hour, it seems motionless, while the starry spheres above appear gliding westward.

In spite of the impassioned and reiterated exclamation of Galileo, “It does move!” men would not believe it, until his experiment at the leaning tower of Pisa; and the beautiful demonstration of Foucault[3] from the dome of the Pantheon in Paris, proved beyond question the earth’s rotation. Let us briefly outline these two experiments. If the world has no motion, a heavy weight dropped from the top of a tall shaft would strike exactly at its base. But if the earth were rotating, the top of the tower must move faster than the base. The weight at the top would have the same motion as the top of the shaft, and would keep it, in falling, in accordance with a well known law, and consequently would strike beyond the base. The ball dropped by Galileo did thus strike. Foucault argued: If the earth does not rotate, a pendulum suspended so that a needle fastened to its lowest point would trace a line in sand sprinkled on the surface beneath, would forever move along the same line. But if the earth is rotating, the needle will trace different lines on the sand. If the pendulum was suspended at one of the poles, it would, in twenty-four hours, trace a series of lines like the spokes of a carriage wheel about the pole. Foucault showed that the needle did trace varying lines in the sand, therefore the earth moves. This experiment is repeated annually at Paris, and I have performed it in the Amphitheater at Chautauqua.

Sir Isaac Newton, as all the world knows, discovered the relation and mutual dependence of all matter in the universe. The law of gravitation has been called “Newton’s Darling Child.” It states, in brief, that every body attracts every other directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance.

The sun has three hundred thousand times the amount of matter contained in our earth; its power of attraction is therefore proportional. A man on its surface would be crushed by his own weight, but even Brobdignag,[4] or any other giant, could live comfortably on an asteroid. Indeed, he would weigh so little there that he could leap like the mountain goat.

As an illustration of the second part of the law: one body three times as far away as another from the attracting power, will be held by a force but one ninth as great. A body near the surface of the earth, or 4,000 miles from its center, will fall sixteen feet in a second. The moon is sixty times further from the center of the earth than such a body. Newton found that the moon fell toward the earth, or varied from a straight line, 1.36 of sixteen feet in a second. Now, the square of sixty is 3,600, therefore the moon proves that the force of gravity decreases as the square of the distance increases.

Nothing in nature is more beautiful than the adjustment of forces by which our earth is kept forever revolving in its appropriate orbit. In perihelion,[5] or its nearest approach to the sun, it is 3,000,000 miles nearer than in aphelion, when farthest away from it. Of course it will follow from the law that the attraction of the sun would then be greater. If there were no counteracting influence, there could be but one result—the earth would fly into the sun and be consumed. The very proximity of the earth to the sun, however, increases its speed, and therefore its tendency to fly off on a tangent. Kepler[6] has expressed this truth in one of his laws: “The radius vector (a line drawn from the sun to the earth) passes over equal areas in equal times.” The average speed of the earth in its orbit is 1,100 miles a minute—3,300 times that of the fastest steamship—but it varies throughout its course, and how wonderful that system of breaks by which its motion is regulated! Divine wisdom alone could invent such a plan.

TERRESTRIAL GRAVITY.

To the ordinary observer, our earth seems, in general, a flat surface, here and there varied by hills and valleys. In reality it is a sphere, with a curvature of eight inches to the mile. The equatorial diameter is twenty-six and five-elevenths miles greater than the polar. The irregularities of the earth’s surface are relatively far less than they seem. Very thin letter paper, spread over a globe sixteen inches in diameter, would by its thickness adequately represent the highest mountain ranges. The greatest ocean depth is about equal to the height of the highest mountain; we see by this that the earth is essentially a smooth, round body.

Its shape is proven in four ways: First, two different navigators may start from the same point, one sailing east and the other west, and reach the same destination. Second, navigators have sailed around the world, Magellan having first performed the task. Third, in moving toward elevated objects, their upper portion first strikes the eye. Fourth, the shadow of the earth, when it falls upon the moon, is round.

The enlargement of the equatorial diameter is supposed to be due to the fact that the earth was once in a plastic state, and the centrifugal force, which is directly proportioned to the rotating speed of a body, caused the matter in the equatorial region to bulge. This action can easily be shown by revolving rapidly a flexible steel hoop, or other mobile substance. All bodies tend to revolve around their shortest axis. A great variety of interesting experiments showing this can easily be performed, some of which are indicated in an accompanying picture.

There is no magical power in the center of our earth, as some have supposed from the fact that all bodies seek that point. Indeed, that is the one spot where there is no attraction, and where all substances would weigh nothing. The path described by a plummet, or any falling body, is simply a resultant motion produced by opposite particles of the earth making it pass half way between their lines of attraction. This will ordinarily be toward the center of the earth. As attraction of gravity is in proportion to mass, a body suspended near a mountain will be deflected toward it.

This has been shown by an experiment performed by Dr. Maskelyne,[7] near Mt. Schehallien, in Wales. Upon suspending a light body on opposite sides of this mountain, he observed that it swerved from the perpendicular toward the mountain. The amount of this variation measured the attraction of the mountain, as compared with the attraction of the earth. As the geological structure of this eminence was known, it was not difficult to compute its mass, and a comparison was made between it and the earth. From this calculation the entire weight of the earth was obtained, proving its specific gravity to be five times that of an equal bulk of water. Dr. Cavendish[8] afterward arrived at precisely the same result by experimenting with a pendulum.

A is a rotating machine; a is a skein of thread; á is the skein rotated; b is a chain; c is an onion; d is an apple; e is a glass fish aquarium, one tenth full of water, and rotated. A stick, hoop, shingle, or any such body suspended by a cord, when rapidly rotated will rise and revolve around its shortest axis.

Terrestrial gravity is constantly affecting the motion of bodies. Motion is the act of changing place, and always indicates the presence of some force; force or energy being that which tends to produce motion or rest. Motion in curved lines is produced by two or more forces acting upon a body, one of which must be constant. Example: A cannon ball is acted upon by the sudden explosion of the powder, the resistance of air, and the constant downward attraction of gravity. Nature seems to delight in curved motion; the waves, the flight of birds, the running brooks, the clouds, even the waving trees and grasses, all furnish illustrations of this. A little reflection upon any such instances will show that they are usually produced by the united action of an instantaneous and constant force.

The center of gravity is that point around which the opposite particles of a body balance each other. This point does not necessarily coincide with center of figure or center of motion, the former of which is a point equally distant from opposite parts of a regular body, while the latter is a point in a substance around which it revolves.

Ex.—A lead pencil poised on the finger. This experiment can be varied in many ways, showing the nature of stable and unstable equilibrium.

If the sun and all the planets could be strung on a rod passing through their centers, with the planets to the east, the center of gravity of the solar system would be somewhere in the sun, east of its center. As the planets assume various positions with reference to the sun, it must follow that the center of gravity in our system must vary accordingly.

The same is true of objects on the earth. The center of gravity may be elevated or depressed, moved to the right or left. We instinctively adjust our bodies so that a perpendicular let fall from the center of gravity will constantly fall within the base. The most surprising exhibition of this power of automatic adjustment was seen in Blondin, in his performances on the tight rope.

Stability in structures is usually secured by lowering the center of gravity in one of two ways: either by broadening the base or by making it of heavy materials.

Specific gravity is the weight of a substance as compared with an equal bulk of something taken as a standard; water having been selected as the standard for solids and liquids, and air for gases.

Gravity furnishes more units of measure of various kinds—weight, work, heat, tenacity—than any other force of nature.

It will be remembered that Physics is that branch of science that considers the general properties of matter, and the character of those forces which affect matter without destroying its molecule. It includes many subdivisions. In addition to those already mentioned, we find Molecular Attraction, or the operation of forces that act at insensible distances; Hydrostatics, which treats of liquids at rest; Hydraulics, of liquids in motion; Pneumatics, of gases; Machines, of means for applying force; Acoustics, of the laws of sound; Heat; Light; and Electricity.

As many physical properties have been mentioned in the articles on Air, Water, and Fire, they will not now be considered. Our discussion here applies more especially to those substances which, at ordinary temperatures, are solid.

Ex.—A body buoyed up in water displaces its own weight of the liquid. The glass is nicely graded, and as the water rises in the vessel, the registration at once indicates the amount of water displaced. This proves the truth of the “Law of Archimedes”[9], ascertained while he was investigating the problem of the golden crown.

The most characteristic properties of solid bodies are the following: Hardness, tenacity, malleability, ductility, and crystalline form. Hardness is the resistance which a body offers to being scratched. Tenacity is the resistance offered by a body to a separation of its parts. Malleability is that property of a body which makes it capable of being rolled into sheets. Ductility is capacity for being drawn into wire, and crystalline form is the property which causes it to assume regular shapes.

As will be observed, these peculiarities are closely dependent upon cohesion and adhesion. By the former we understand the force which holds together the similar molecules of a substance; and by the latter, the force which unites the surfaces of different materials. Familiar as we are with these two agencies, their nature is not yet understood. We can easily discover that they are very dependent upon heat, by the application of which most solids pass from the stable form, to one in which, instead of cohesive force between the molecules, there is repulsion; as in the conversion of ice into water, and then into steam.

This movement of molecules is also dependent upon pressure. The most interesting illustration of this is seen in the action of glaciers. It has been ascertained that the melting temperature of ice lowers one two hundred and fiftieth of a degree for every fifteen pounds of pressure to the square inch.

The immense superincumbent mass of ice must, in many places, set free so much latent heat that a portion of the ice melts, so that here and there cells and liquid veins would be opened in the interior of the glacier. But the particles which separate these thin layers of water would almost immediately close up. This is the brilliant demonstration of Prof. Tyndall, who has given the operation the name of “regelation.” It has been thus described: “This phenomenon takes place at every point in the thickness of the glacier. Particles of ice approach one another, and unite across little veins of water, which permeate it in every direction; fresh liquid films are formed under the pressure from above; fresh unions take place between the divided morsels of ice; and, by this continual process of change, the air contained in the mass of that which once was snow, is gradually expelled. Thus it happens that the whole mass ultimately assumes an almost perfect transparency and a beautiful azure color.”

CRYSTALLIZATION.

One of the most beautiful illustrations of cohesive attraction is seen in crystallization. In every instance in which substances pass into the form of a solid, they tend to assume regular shapes called crystals. Each material has its own characteristic form, so that a crystal is a type of a species in the mineral world, even as a plant or an animal is in the organic kingdom. A crystal is a substance bounded by plain surfaces and symmetrically arranged about imaginary lines called axes. The final form depends upon certain smaller forms in its interior structure. They possess lines of division, often in three directions, called “cleavage.”

While there are millions of crystals, they have all been classified under six systems, as follows: 1. Monometric, where the three axes are equal. 2. Dimetric, having one axis unequal to the other two, which are equal to each other. 3. Trimetric, having no two axes equal. 4. Monoclinic, having one axis inclined. 5. Triclinic, in which all the three intersections are oblique and the axes unequal. 6. Hexagonal, which has the form of a regular hexagonal prism.

Ex.—Showing change of volume. The upper part of the figure represents a substance expanded. There are no more molecules here than below, but they are pushed further apart. This is supposed to be the way in which all bodies are enlarged by heat.

While contemplating the thousand beautiful forms in which molecules are arranged into crystals, whereby many economic purposes are served, as well as taste manifested, one can not resist the conviction that such displays of wisdom, benevolence and love of beauty can alone emanate from the eternal Mind.

Another wide-spread effect of cohesion is seen in

PETRIFACTIONS.

Everywhere in fossiliferous rock may be found organic remains in which the material of which they were originally composed has been replaced by some mineral substance. Some have supposed that these plants and animals have actually been converted into stone by a change of their elements. This is of course absurd. Carbon can never be anything but carbon, nor indeed, can any element ever become anything other than itself. This dream of the alchemist was long since dissipated. No, strange as it may seem, the molecules of these fossilized organisms must actually pass out, and silica, lime, clay, or some such matter pass in and take their places. Beautiful specimens of petrified wood, found especially on the Pacific coast, are often hard as glass. One very handsome variety, called “opalized” wood, clearly indicates that petrifaction was either accompanied or followed by crystallization.

Myriads of shells, bones and plants scattered through the earth’s strata have been transformed in the manner indicated. Although petrifaction is usually a long process, there is reason to believe that it sometimes takes place rapidly. This operation must not be confounded with incrustation, which is often mistaken for it, and takes place where substances, like bending twigs, have deposited upon them layer after layer of lime, salt, sulphur or ice.

The molecules of solids, even, are in intense and ceaseless motion. As has been said, “A continuous and restless, nay, a very complicated activity is the order of Nature throughout all her individuals, whether these be living beings or inanimate particles of matter. Existence is, in truth, one continued fight, and a great battle is always and everywhere raging, although the field in which it is fought is often completely shrouded from our view.”

Ex.—A simple illustration of the convenience of machinery in applying force and changing direction.

The motto of the brave Huguenots in the time of Louis XIV. was “Ever burning, but never consumed.”

Nature’s motto, both for matter and energy is, “Ever changing, but never destroyed.” Let us next notice some instances of the

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.

Energy is the power to do work or overcome resistance. It is of two kinds—potential and kinetic. The former is the energy or force due to position, but it is latent or inactive. The latter is the energy of a body which is in motion. A stone resting on a mountain top, the water in a quiet mill pond, a coiled spring, are all examples of potential energy.

The stone, crushing through the cottage of a peasant, the water turning a factory wheel, the spring turning the wheels of a clock, are examples of actual or kinetic energy.

Ex.—Lay a magnet down on iron filings. They will gather in greatest abundance about the poles, and diminish toward the center, where there are none; thus showing the nature of polarity.

Energy often disappears to reappear under a different name. If we lift our hand to strike the palm of another, our vital energy becomes motion, and that in turn is changed into heat.

In the Bell telephone the sound-waves in the mouthpiece are converted into electric vibrations in the wire, and these, in turn, induce sound-waves in the receiving instrument at the other end of the line.

In dynamo-electric machines we have a chain of transmutations of force—chemical affinity in the fire-box, expansion in the boiler, becoming in turn, motion, magnetism, electric currents, until it appears as resplendent light and intense heat between the carbon points.

Potential energy slumbers in the raindrop, and, anon, as kinetic energy, flashes in the lightning.

In short, the sum of all the energies of nature is a constant quantity, although it manifests itself in a thousand different ways. The foregoing reflections indicate that the researches of modern science all point to a grand unity in God’s universe. Let us conclude by briefly referring to some instances of plan or design in the

GROUPING OF LAWS.

The most characteristic feature of all science is that it arranges facts in an orderly manner, under principles or laws.

Nature seems to delight, likewise, in doing a variety of things under one general principle. Note a curious trinity in her method: We have three great departments of nature—animal, vegetable and mineral; three parts to our being—physical, mental and moral; three divisions of the mind—intellect, sensibilities and will; three parts to all plants—root, stem and foliage; there is earth, sea and sky; three great classes in all mechanism—lever, cord, and inclined plane—and many others that might be mentioned.

Observe another group of laws in physics: Variation, in accordance with an exact proportion.

Gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance; heat varies inversely as the square of the distance; light varies inversely as the square of the distance, and sound varies also in exactly the same ratio.

Who can contemplate this exact mathematical arrangement, extending through many departments of matter, without concluding that “Nature is but the name for an effect whose cause is God?”

THE EYES BUSY ON THINGS ABOUT US.

BY JOSEPHINE POLLARD.

A distinguished writer has said: “The eyes are of no use without the observing power,” and surely no faculty we possess is capable of so much cultivation as the sight. The facility with which the eye can express the emotions of the soul has been the theme of poets of all ages, who have not hesitated to confess which style of eyes pleased them the most. Says one:

“I everywhere am thinking

Of thy blue eye’s sweet smile;

A sea of thoughts is spreading

Over my heart the while.”

And others:

“His eyes are songs without words.”

“A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.”

“An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.”

“Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; wait for no introduction; ask no leave of age or rank; respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!”

There are

“True eyes

Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise

The sweet soul shining through them;”

and “eyes that have murder in them, whose flash is the forerunner of thunder.” One has “an eye like Mars, to threaten and command,” and other eyes are “the homes of silent prayer.”

But the variety in color and expression of the eye is as nothing compared to difference in the power of observation. Those ancient companions, “Eyes and No-Eyes,” the story of whose wanderings conveyed a valuable lesson to young and old, were but prototypes of people who go through the world to-day, some of whom see everything, while others see nothing at all. Poets, who could write so beautifully of the eyes, must first have trained their own vision to perceive the beauty or baseness they described, and it is the exercise of this far-seeing, penetrating, analytical power that is the prerogative of genius.

The specialist devotes himself to the closest examination of details. The naturalist does not let the smallest insect escape him, and his trained eye perceives the least peculiarity that denotes the varieties of species.

A person with ordinary eyesight takes up a rose, a lily, or a daisy, and only admires color, shape, or perfume; while the botanist examines the flower in every part, and tells who was its grandfather or grandmother, and feels as tender an interest in it as if it were a human being.

The artist has to train his eye to look for beauty where apparently none appears. He must have an eye for color, for form, for expression, for whatever line he proposes to follow, and he will never rise to eminence if he is satisfied with a hasty, careless, superficial glance.

Turner[1] was one day painting a landscape with the richness of color that was his specialty, when an English girl who was painting near him left her easel and came to look over his shoulder. “Why, Mr. Turner,” said she, “I don’t see any of those colors in the grass or the trees.”

“No?” said Turner. “Don’t you wish you could?”

It is astonishing that with so much of beauty as there is around us, so many people are found who travel through the world without having used their eyes to any profit whatever. The training needs to be begun in early life; children should be taught how to observe; and as some are duller than others they need to have things pointed out to them, until the habit of examining closely becomes fixed, and like second nature.

What a wonderful field for study there is in the sky above us! Look at the clouds; here, in great, heavy masses; there assuming strange shapes, and taking on an infinite variety of coloring. See the setting sun; never twice alike; a marvel of beauty and grandeur; a feast for even young eyes.

Let us go down by the seashore and watch the great waves come in. The sea is broad, and grand, and deep; but is that all? Note how it reflects the color of the sky; mark the waves that rise afar, and show their white manes like wild horses of the sea, and dash on the shore like a charge of cavalry. How they come galloping, galloping on! Watch for the ninth wave, and look out for yourself! Observe the height that each succeeding wave obtains when the tide is on the rise, and how the character of the beach is changed after a severe storm of wind or rain. There is a volume of interesting study in a handful of sand, a tuft of moss, a small patch of grass, or a bunch of seaweed.

Ruskin,[2] that exceedingly close observer of art and nature, and eminently sharp critic of men and things, gives us some excellent instruction in the art of looking below the surface. “There is no bush,” he says, “on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. And out of this mass of various yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attention only that the conception of the constant character—the ideal form—hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of truth. Ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe, the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that he can not tell you, and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to tell you whether they are like nature or not. A man may recognize the portrait of his friend, though he can not, if you ask him apart, tell you the shape of his nose or the height of his forehead.

“The color of plants is constantly changing with the season, and that of everything with the quality of light falling upon it; but the nature and essence of the thing are independent of these changes. An oak is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be red or crimson; but let one curve of the petals, one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same. Two trees of the same kind, at the same season, and of the same age, are of absolutely the same color; but they are not of the same form, nor anything like it.”

How few of us observe these things! and how much we miss daily and hourly through lack of this special training of the eye!

A geologist was with a party of friends in the Yosemite valley and called their attention to the play of the light from a campfire on the underside of the leaves of the trees above them. It was a beautiful revelation, and all wondered that they had never noticed it before.

If you are living in the country you should educate the eye to study nature in all its phases, and every day add something to your store of knowledge. Observe the habits of birds, and their haunts; watch the ants and other insects; familiarize yourself with plant life so that you can tell a weed from a flower, and a medicinal herb from a poisonous plant.

If a dweller in the town, observe varieties of architecture, the materials used in the manufacture of houses; compare modern with ancient styles; and lose no opportunity of obtaining information in regard to all that is new and strange. Wherever you are, be less intent on reading novels than in observing wherein you can improve your surroundings. The slattern, with her nose in a book, is blind to the cobwebs that hang from the ceiling, and the rags and dirt visible to every one else. She is cultivating the eyes of her imagination, and reveling in scenes of fairy-like splendor, and has no eyes for the common things of every day life. Her powers of observation are exceedingly limited, and her home is no better for her being in it. She is content to lead an idle life, and does not see in how many ways she might amuse and improve herself.

The trained housekeeper has made good use of her eyes, and by noticing trifles has brought her department to a high state of perfection. It is not enough that she has a natural taste for it; she must be continually looking after things with the searching gaze of an inspector-general. Her practised eyes see when the table-cloth is awry, or the dishes not in their places; when the furniture needs renovating, or the dust has accumulated, and she feels that her reputation is at stake if the defects are not speedily remedied.

An expert in precious stones can tell almost at a glance the value and weight of each gem, and is not easily deceived by counterfeits.

The physician can so train his eye that he has merely to look closely at the patient to determine the nature of his disease; while the microscopist, the geologist, and the astronomer acquire such accuracy from their close and long continued investigations that they can detect the least change in the appearance of the heavens above or the earth beneath.

But the astronomer may have his eyes so fixed on the stars that he can not observe what is going on below; the geologist may be able to analyze a stone and tell to which stratum it belongs, and yet take no interest in anything that is above ground; and the devoted student of the microscope may be so entranced by the wonders continually opening before him, that he is utterly oblivious to all else surrounding him. Without this habit of observation, the world would have had no Galileo, no Humboldt, no Newton, no Agassiz, no Hugh Miller, no Edison,[3] and no progress. But all are not gifted in the same way; and often the sphere we move in or the place in which we are born, determines and decides our calling, and controls our habits to a very great extent. It is natural that one accustomed to an open country should have his eyes attracted toward the heavens, which are constantly revealing new wonders; and that one brought up among the rocks should take to hammering them to bits, boy-like, to see of what they are made, or how they look inside.

The differences between men consist in a great measure in the intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb says: “He goes through the forest and sees no firewood.” “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” says Solomon, “but the fool walketh in darkness.” It is the mind that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the very fiber of the phenomena presented to them, attentively noting differences, making comparisons and recognizing their underlying idea. Many before Galileo had seen a suspended weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the first to detect the value of the fact.

One of the vergers[4] in the cathedral at Pisa,[5] after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea of applying to it the measurement of time. Fifty years of study and labor elapsed before he completed the invention of his pendulum—the importance of which, in the measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overrated. In like manner, Galileo having heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had presented to Count Maurice, of Nassau,[6] an instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer to the beholder, began to inquire into the cause of such a phenomena, and this led to the invention of the telescope, and proved the beginning of the modern science of astronomy.

While Captain (afterward Sir Samuel) Brown[7] was occupied in studying the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed, near which he lived, he was walking in his garden one morning when he saw a tiny spider’s web suspended across his path. The idea immediately occurred to him that a bridge of iron ropes or chains might be constructed in like manner, and the result was the invention of his suspension bridge.

So James Watt,[8] when consulted about the mode of carrying water by pipes under the Clyde, along the unequal bed of the river, turned his attention one day to the shell of a lobster presented at table, and from that model he invented an iron tube, which, when laid down, was found effectually to answer the purpose.

Sir Isambard Brunel[9] took his first lessons in forming the Thames tunnel from the tiny ship-worm; he saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind of varnish, and by copying this work on a large scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and accomplish his great engineering work.

It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off.

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of what use is it?” To which his reply was, “What is the use of a child? It may become a man!” The great Cuvier[10] was a singularly accurate, careful, and industrious observer. When a boy he was attracted to the subject of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon,[11] which accidentally fell in his way. He at once proceeded to copy the drawings, and to color them after the descriptions given in the text. At eighteen he was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near Fécamp, in Normandy. Living close to the seashore, he was brought face to face with the wonders of marine life. Strolling along the sands one day he observed a stranded cuttle-fish.[12] He was attracted by the curious object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the study of the molluscæ, in the pursuit of which he achieved so distinguished a reputation. He had no books to refer to excepting only the great book of nature which lay open before him. The study of the novel and interesting objects which it daily presented to his eyes made a much deeper impression on his mind than any written or engraved descriptions could possibly have done. Three years thus passed, during which he compared the living specimens of marine animals with the fossil remains found in the neighborhood, dissected the specimens of marine life that came under his notice, and, by careful observation, prepared the way for a complete reform in the classification of the animal kingdom.

The life of Hugh Miller furnishes another illustration of the advantage of making a good use of the eyes. While Hugh was but a child, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned at sea, and he was brought up by his widowed mother. He had a school training after a sort, but his best teachers were the boys with whom he played, the men among whom he worked, the friends and relatives with whom he lived. With a big hammer which had belonged to his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, the boy went about chipping the stones and accumulating specimens of mica, porphyry, garnet, and other stones. Sometimes he had a day in the woods, and there, too, his attention was excited by the peculiar geological curiosities which came in his way. While searching among the rocks on the beach, he was sometimes asked, in irony, by the farm-servants who came to load their carts with seaweed, whether he was getting “siller in the stanes,” but was so unlucky as never to be able to answer in the affirmative. When of a suitable age he was apprenticed to the trade of his choice—that of a working stone cutter—and he began his laboring career in a quarry looking out upon the Cromarty Firth.[13] This quarry proved one of his best schools. The remarkable geological formations which it displayed awakened his curiosity. The bar of deep-red stone beneath, and the bar of pale-red clay above, were noted by the young quarryman, who even in such unpromising subjects found matter for observation and reflection. Where other men saw nothing, he detected analogies, differences, and peculiarities which set him thinking. He simply kept his eyes and his mind open; was sober, diligent and persevering, and this was the secret of his intellectual growth.

His curiosity was excited and kept alive by the curious organic remains, principally of old and extinct species of fishes, ferns, and ammonites,[14] which were revealed along the coast by the washings of the waves, or were exposed by the stroke of his mason’s hammer. He never lost sight of the subject, but went on accumulating observations and comparing formations, until at length, many years afterward, when no longer a working mason, he gave to the world his highly interesting work on the “Old Red Sandstone,” which at once established his reputation as a scientific geologist. But this work was the fruit of long years of patient observation and research.

We learn from these interesting records that, no matter how or where one is situated, he will always find opportunities for observation if he will only keep his eyes open and his mind open at the same time. It is the brain behind the eyes that makes seeing of any value. Every gift may be perfected by self-culture, and by keeping our eyes busy on things about us, by observing and comparing, we color our future lives, increase our intelligence, and are never at a loss for new worlds to conquer.

What the world needs to-day is less outlook and more insight; more careful observance of what is needed in our homes by those we love and those who love us. We need eyes to see our own duty in every department of life, to note our own faults, and to observe the beauty rather than the blemishes of others; to see wherein we can be of service, and in what way we may enlarge our opportunities, and in order to acquire any skill or proficiency we need continually to pray, “Lord, open thou the eyes of our understanding.”

EASY LESSONS IN ANIMAL BIOLOGY.

CHAPTER II.

SUB-KINGDOM VII.—ARTICULATA.

This subdivision of the animal kingdom, containing articulated or jointed animals and insects, exceeds every other in the number and diversity of the species. The articulation may belong to their bodies, limbs, or outer covering. The tough shells of some, formed by a secretion of a hard, horn-like substance, have numerous segments, or rings, either closely joined and firmly cemented, as those about the head and thorax, or loosely cemented, as those which encompass the abdomen. The skeleton of some is external, and consists of these articulated segments, which serve the double purpose of framework and covering. The muscles, or elastic cartilages holding them together, are striated, or furnished with small grooves in the sheath or shell. If the animal has limbs, they also are jointed, and hollow.

Class I.—Crustacea, so called from the crust in which their soft bodies are encased. They are a very large family, mostly of air breathing animals, with enough in common to indicate their relationship, yet distinguished by a great diversity in their forms and modes of life. Some are very small, and are as numberless as the sands on the shore. Others, when their members are all extended, can stretch themselves over a circle several feet in diameter.

The chief orders of the Crustacea are the Barnacles,[1] the Water-flea, the Fourteen-footed Crustacea,[2] and Ten-footed Crustacea.[3]

The Crayfish may be taken as a type of the structure of the Crustacea. The body has two principal sections. The anterior, called the cephalo-thorax,[4] extends to the first distinctly marked ring, and the shield, thus far, is comparatively smooth, the segments fitting so closely as to be practically one. In front and between the two pairs of antennæ, or feelers, is a small pointed process in the place of the nasal organ, but serving some other purpose. At the base of each of the smaller antennæ, on the under side, is a minute sac, the mouth of which is protected with delicate hairs. These are the organs of hearing, and near them, on the outer side, are the organs of smell. The sense of touch is in the fine cilia that fringe the mouth and the antennæ.

There are numerous appendages. Of the five pairs of legs, the first two are provided with claws, or nippers. The fore-legs, or arms, have, in the place of hands, strong pincers, similar, but not entirely alike; the one with sharp edge and smaller teeth is used for cutting, the other for mashing, or grinding the food. The other legs terminate in feathery points, and are used, in part, for locomotion, and by the female for carrying her eggs. The posterior pair, called swimmerets, together with the expansion of the last segment of the abdomen into a kind of caudal fin, are the main dependence for swimming. The segments are so loosely jointed that the “tail” can be moved freely, and by flapping it the animal moves easily. As there is no neck, in order to see objects in different directions, the eyes are not sunk in the head, but placed at the extremities of little muscular processes, or “eye stalks,” which are movable, making even hind-sight practicable when backward motion is desired.

THE CRAYFISH.

The crayfish breathes through branchiæ, or gills, situated at the sides of the thorax, protected by the carapace,[5] or horny covering, under the edges of which the water and air reach the gills. Here a very curious appendage is attached, called the “gill bailer,” which moves back and forth, creating a current of water through the gills that finds its way out through an opening near the mouth.

Under the welded sheath or cover of the head are the mandibles, or jaws, between which the mouth opens; a short passage, leading to the capacious, gizzard-like stomach, is provided with grinders, to still further masticate the food before it passes into the intestine. The eggs are small, and attached by glutinous threads to the appendages until they are hatched; the young are also attached, until sufficiently developed to live apart from the parent.

This class of animals undergoes periodic changes which are attended with some degree of violence. The crustaceous covering is a kind of epidermis,[6] having beneath it the true skin. It is formed by some process of exudation from the growing body. This sheath, while soft, expands slowly, but when hardened, the growth is retarded, and in time it is found too small for convenience, so it is cast off, and a new and larger one supplied to take its place. In this process of moulting the animal attempts to put off its outer covering, not in fragments or parts, but in one piece, though many delicate attachments have to be sundered, membranes rent, and sometimes even a limb torn off in the resolute effort to undress. This can not be done at all times, or at any time, without special preparation. A period of apparent sickness precedes, and the muscular parts of the limbs become shrunken, so that they are more easily extricated. The loss of a leg is not so serious a matter, since the damage is repaired by a new one with the same form and articulations. As the work of repairing the limb begins at the joint nearest the body, if the member is torn between that and the extremity, the partially mutilated animal has the strange power of throwing off all that remains beyond that joint.

Of other crustaceans, the common lobster is in most respects so similar to that shown in the first diagram as to need no further description than to say the cephalo-thorax is comparatively smaller, while the forearms and claws are larger.

There are also marine crayfish that are very numerous about the coral reefs off the Florida coasts, and have substantially the same characteristics, only their claws are considerably less, and their ciliated antennæ larger.

Crabs are closely allied to lobsters, and belong to the highest orders of the crustaceans. The lengthened, loose-jointed abdomen of the typical crayfish is wanting, and there is a general concentration of the parts; all the most important viscera being included in the thorax, and covered by a single, closely compacted shield. There are many species of crabs, differing in other respects as well as in the form of the shell or back, which in some is nearly orbicular, in others it is oblong, longer than it is broad, or broader than it is long. They differ in the smoothness of their shells, and in the length of their legs, which they stretch out from under their horny covering. Their first pair of limbs is not fitted for locomotion, but shows a vigorous development of the strong claws and pincers of other decapod crustaceans. Though found in almost all seas, they are poor swimmers, their legs being formed for walking or creeping, rather than as oars to propel them through the water. They are found in pools, among seaweeds, and particularly in marshy places left by the receding tides. Most species live in water, some in moist places on land. Many kinds of crabs are used for food. Its black claws and broad carapace readily distinguish it from other species. From activity in seizing, tearing, and devouring their food, and from their pugnacity, crabs are interesting inmates of the aquarium. They also moult, or cast off their shells; not at regular seasons, but when the demand for more room requires it.

Class II.—Arachnida are closely related to the crustaceans, having, like them, the body divided into two sections—cephalo-thorax and abdomen. To the former are attached four pairs of legs, but the abdomen has no appendages for locomotion. There are about 5,000 species, produced from eggs, and undergoing no metamorphoses in their development.

The lowest forms, under the common name of Acarina,[7] have the anterior part in a mass with the abdomen, and short legs near the head, terminated in little claws suitable for taking hold of hairs and feathers. They are mostly parasitic, and all birds and animals, even parasites themselves, are liable to suffer from acarina peculiar to their own species. Pedipalpi[8] (scorpions), and Araneina[9] (spiders), though much larger, belong to this class. The body of the scorpion is divided into segments, though the anterior of the abdominal part seems but a continuance of the thorax, and is as large. It, however, soon tapers off into a long, jointed, tail-like process, in the terminus of which is its hooked sting, perforated and connected with the poison sac. In striking, the tail is raised over the back and struck down. Its other weapons are the crab-like claws on the strong forearms. The Araneina, at least some classes of them, are well known. The soft, unjointed body is separated from the thorax by a narrow constriction or tie, and at the posterior end there are little appendages called spinnerets, through which the silken lines issue that form the web. The hinder feet are skillfully employed in arranging the gossamer threads after patterns that are instinctively followed.

Class III.—Myriapoda, Centipedes,[10] have the thorax merged with the elongated abdomen, while the head is free. They resemble worms in form, but the skin is stiffened with chitine,[11] and the many legs are articulated. There are two orders: the Chilognatha,[12] which move slowly, and are harmless, the “thousand legged worm” is a representative, and the Chilopoda,[13] more active, and having a flattened body of about twenty segments, each carrying one pair of legs. Their mouths are armed with formidable fangs connected with poison glands. They are carnivorous, and may be distinguished by their general appearance, quicker movements, and by having longer antennæ than the innocent vegetarians.

THE HEAD OF AN INSECT.

Ex.—A, gula, or throat; b, ligula, or tongue; c mandibles; d, maxillæ, or inner jaws.

Class IV.—Insecta. The distinguishing characteristics of this class are that the head, thorax, and abdomen are distinct; that they possess three pairs of jointed legs, one pair of antennæ, and, generally, two pairs of wings. The skin is hardened, and to it the muscles are attached. The eyes are usually composed of a number of facets, from fifty in the ant to many thousands in the winged insects. As the eyes are not movable, these facets enable them to see in many directions.

The several parts of the head and its appendages are shown in our illustration. The sensitive palpi, or feelers, with the delicate hair-brush tips at the ends, may also be noticed. The mouth differs in different species, and is fitted for biting and masticating, or puncturing and sucking. The adaptation seems perfect. Of all animals belonging to the articulate type, the Insecta possess the highest instincts. To this class belong the following orders: I. Neuroptera,[14] or lace-winged insects, of which the Dragon-fly, or Devil’s Darning Needle, is a good representative. II. The Orthoptera[15] (straight-winged). They have four wings, the front pair thick and narrow, overlapping along the back; the hind pair broad, net-veined and folded upon the abdomen. The representative forms are Crickets, Grasshoppers, Locusts, and Cockroaches. III. Hemiptera[16] (half winged). To this order belong the wingless Bed-bug, the Squash-bug, the Seventeen-year Locust, and the Cochineal.

Coccus-cacti[17]. The Mexican cochineal insect is of great value as a dye, and from it the most beautiful scarlet and crimson colors are obtained. The female is wingless, and, as an uncomely parasite, lives and feeds on cactus plants, especially those of the nopal[18] species, native in Mexico and Peru. The male only is represented in the diagram, and magnified somewhat larger than life. They are comparatively few in number, and of no commercial value. The plants are cultivated for the purpose, and the care of the insects, which increase very rapidly, is an industry giving employment to thousands of laborers, and in some parts of Mexico the product of the cochineal farms is among the most valuable of their exports. Cortes[19] in the sixteenth century received instructions from the Spanish court to obtain cochineal in as large quantities as possible. The export became very large, both Spaniards and others becoming skilled in the use of the beautiful dye stuff, nearly a hundred years before its real nature was known. The dried insect being very small, and crushed in preparing it for market, it was supposed to be the seed of some plant; and it was not until in 1703 that its true nature was discovered by microscopic observations. The industry still flourishes in Mexico, but both plant and the insect have been taken to other countries, and do well. The annual export of cochineal from the Canary islands has, in the present century, amounted to over 6,000 tons, valued at more than $4,000,000. The manner of collecting the insects is very simple. When of sufficient age, some already dead, and others yet alive, they are brushed off into bags, and the living killed by holding them either in boiling water or heated ovens, and then exposed in the sun till quite dry. The dried insects have the form and appearance of irregular fluted and concave grains, of which it is estimated there are 70,000 in a pound.

THE COCHINEAL.

There are several species of these insects, alike in form and habits, but not alike useful. Some, as the Scale insect, are a great annoyance to gardeners, and destructive to our house plants. Others, as the Wax insect, live on certain tropical trees, and soon entomb themselves in a mass of glutinous matter that oozes from the small twigs of the tree, and which furnishes them both food and shelter. As they are marvelously prolific, a single female, according to the estimates of entomologists, being succeeded by many millions of descendants in less than a year, when a colony has possession of a tree, every tender branch is soon punctured, and the abundant resinous juices that flow out envelop it in a coating often half an inch thick. These branches, and also what falls to the ground, are collected, and the wax, melted off, is prepared for the market. From this source the shellac of commerce, so extensively used, is obtained. This curious and useful insect, like its congener, the cochineal, secretes a coloring substance, but of different tints, and less valuable. The Lac insect is a native of Siam, Assam, Burmah, Bengal, and Malabar. For some years the average annual imports into Britain have been a little over 600 tons of the lac dye, and more than a thousand tons of lac, including the several varieties. This industry also gives employment to many thousands of people.

METAMORPHOSIS OF A BEETLE.

Ex.—A, larva; b, pupa; c, beetle.

IV.—Coleoptera[20] (sheath-winged). Beetles are innumerable, about ninety thousand species being recognized. Their anterior or upper wings, useless for flight, are composed of a hard, horn-like substance known as chitine, and meet in a straight line on the top of the back. The posterior wings are thin, membranous, and, when folded, out of sight. They have usually two pairs of laterally moving mandibles, or jaws, and in their development undergo several metamorphoses. We see the egg, the larva, or grub, in different stages of its growth, the chrysalis, and the imago,[21] or complete beetle. Entomologists have spent much time and labor in making collections, and classifying them according to their peculiarities of form or habits. If many are repulsive, and most plain in form and color, some are beautiful, and worthy of our admiration. Beetles, especially in their larva stage of development are very voracious, and as most of their species live on fruits, leaves, and stems of plants, they are often destructive of crops, and even of forests. Millions of vigorous, valuable trees have been assailed, and stripped of their leaves fast as they appeared, or literally bored to death. All know the ravages of the potato beetle on our American tuber, that has to be assiduously defended to prevent the entire destruction of the crop. Some known as Goliath and Hercules beetles are large, often measuring six inches in length, exclusive of their long antennæ. The “Diamond beetles” of Brazil are adorned with the most brilliant colors, showing a beautiful metallic luster, and the elytra,[22] or chitine sheaths, of this species are now largely used in the manufacture of personal ornaments.[23]

V. Diptera (two-winged), or Flies, number about 24,000 varieties. Among these are the Mosquito, Hessian fly, Daddy-long-legs, Flea, and common House fly. They usually have one pair of fully developed wings, the second pair being rudimentary, although a few, as the fleas, are wingless. They pass through a complete metamorphosis, the larvæ being usually footless maggots, with the breathing holes in the posterior part of the body; the pupa are either encased in the dry skin of the larvæ or are naked.

VI. Lepidoptera[24] (scaly-winged), or Butterflies and Moths, are distinguished by four wings, covered on both sides by minute scales. The butterflies fly by day and have knobbed antennæ, while the moths fly by night and have feathery antennæ. Among the moths one of the most interesting is that of the silk worm.[25] The physiology of the insect and its metamorphoses reveal nothing very peculiar, and its habits need not be mentioned farther than to say, the larva eats voraciously, with short intervals of abstinence, until full grown, which stage is reached in about a month. During the last ten days the silk germ is elaborated, the eggs laid, and then the spinning and winding soon begin. To complete the cocoon requires at most only about three days. The larva then becomes a chrysalis, and in due time the moth emerges from its cell.

VII. Hymenoptera (membrane-winged) comprises the Ichneumon and Gall fly, Ants, Wasps, Bees, in all about 25,000 species. This order includes the most social of the insects. They have four wings, which in flying they fasten together by means of small hooks on the edges. The females are usually provided with a sting or borer. The Gall fly produces the gall nuts or oak balls so common on oak trees. The Ichneumon fly introduces its eggs underneath the skin of the caterpillar.[26]

Ants[27] live in communities. They are divided into fertile females, males and infertile females. Among the ants, the mining ants, which make long galleries in the earth, and carpentering ants, which perforate solid timber, are the best known classes. Some species, like the white ants of the tropics, the termites, are famous for their ravages.

The bees are divided into queens or females, drones or males, and workers. Each community or swarm has one queen, which lays the eggs. The bee is provided with a formidable sting.

This curious weapon of attack and defense is here magnified with the adjacent parts. It consists of an extensile sheath with two needle shaped darts that are exceedingly sharp. This spear is furnished with barbs near the point, and when it pierces the skin, if thrust with violence, it sometimes remains, not only making the wound more painful, but, having been wrenched from the bee, frequently causes its death. The sting is connected with a little sac containing a poisonous liquid which is thrown into the wound and increases the pain.

STING OF A BEE.

SUB-KINGDOM VIII.—TUNICATA.

This very small class of animals is distinguished by the leathery sac-like covering, from which they take their name of Tunicata (having a tunic). The Ascidian[28] is the best known representative. It is found fastened to rocks, shells, crabs, and other bodies. These animals are both simple and compound; the latter are often phosphorescent. They have neither feet, head nor shell, but a shapeless body with apertures at both ends.

SUB-KINGDOM IX.—VERTEBRATA.

This division includes the most perfect animals. Their chief distinguishing characteristics are an internal skeleton; a backbone; a dorsal nervous cord, separated from the body cavity; a complete circulation, and limbs not exceeding four. There are about 25,000 living species, beside the numberless host now extinct.

Lowest of the vertebrates, and closely related to the true fishes, are the Lancelet and Lamprey.[29] The former is a lance-shaped animal having no skeleton, but boasting the rudiment of a backbone in a string-like cartilaginous cord. The organs are very simple, the heart being a long sac in which colorless blood circulates. It breathes by taking in water through the mouth and letting it out through the gill-slits. The Lamprey belongs to the pouch-gilled vertebrates or Marsipobranchii.[30] It is an eel-shaped animal of about three feet in length.

The round, soft mouth is suctorial, the tongue acting as a piston. By suction it can anchor itself to a rock, and allow the long body to float freely, without being carried by the current from the place. There are seven gill openings on each side, and the whole breathing apparatus so arranged that the animal can live some days out of the water. In some parts of England it is in demand for the table, and “lamprey pie”[31] is esteemed a great luxury. The American lamprey is similar, and the flesh good, but in less demand in our markets. During the breeding season those about the estuaries go up stream as do the shad, and by rolling stones together construct large conical nests[32] for the protection of their young. With apparently little adaptation for such architecture they accomplish wonders in that line.

THE LAMPREY.

Class I.—Pisces. The first clearly defined division of vertebrates is that of the fishes. They are regarded as, in some respects, the lowest of vertebrate animals. They are credited with having the least intelligence and sensibility. Their eyes, though often large, are nearly motionless in their sockets, are protected by no eye-lids, and are without the expression usual even in the animal eye. If they have ears the external parts are wanting. Sounds may reach the auditory nerve and be heard through the cranium. The other senses, as taste, touch and smell, are but slightly developed. But they are admirably adapted to the element in which they live, and the mode of life for which they were created. In no other organisms is the evidence of design in the adaptation of means to the ends contemplated, more apparent. In the number of species and variety of forms they exceed all other vertebrate animals.

The skeleton of a fish is usually divided into four parts: the head, respiratory organs, vertebral column and limbs.

The head is very suggestive, and of itself presents a profitable study. It is not hung or poised on a neck, but attached immediately to the body. In most species it is large, making a large mouth possible, but pointed, to lessen the resistance met in passing through the water. In some the eyes are quite near the nasal organ, in others farther back. In some they face laterally, in others upward. As there is no nictating[33] membrane there is neither winking nor the shedding of tears. Both jaws are, to some extent, movable and provided with osseous teeth that are usually sharp and of a spike-like form.

From the heads here presented the operculum,[34] or gill cover, is removed to show those delicate respiratory organs. The branchiæ, or gills, are situated at the sides of the head just back of the eyes, and consist of numerous and very vascular[35] plates, arranged in double fringe-like rows, fixed or attached at the base only, and so constructed, in all respects, as to expose as much surface as possible. These gills are covered with innumerable small blood vessels, to which blood is pumped from the heart, there to receive the needed supply of oxygen. The oxygen is obtained from what air circulates through the water, and not by a decomposition of the water, as some have supposed. For some species the modicum of oxygen, thus obtained, seems insufficient, and they come to the surface for more.

HEADS OF FISHES WITH GILL-COVERING REMOVED.

Notice another peculiarity. There being no neck or long gullet, the principal digestive organs are packed in the cavity near the capacious mouth, and this leaves the whole of the posterior tapering part of the body for strong muscles, that can vigorously move the caudal extremity from side to side as a propelling oar. The spine is so jointed as to allow a free horizontal and but little vertical motion.

The bones of fishes are less compact than those of the higher orders of animals, but quite elastic; and in some species small bones are distributed through the flesh, giving additional firmness to portions that lack muscular strength. As the peculiar breathing apparatus of the fish is adapted to its element and mode of life, so is every part and appendage of the whole structure. Adaptation reigns through the whole. The elongated tapering body, its scaly covering exquisitely adjusted, the material and position of the fins, all attest the intelligent and beneficent purpose of the Creator.

The Elasmobranchii[36] (strap-gilled) have a cartilaginous skeleton, rough skin, and uncovered gills. The Shark, the Saw-fish and the Ray are representatives of this order.

The Ganoidei (enameled scales) formed one of the largest orders in ancient geological history, but they have now but few representatives, such as the Sturgeon, Gar-pike and Mud-fish. Their characteristics are a skeleton not completely ossified, ventral fins placed far back, and the tail heterocercal, that is, having the upper lobe larger than the lower.

The Teleosti[37] (perfect bone) form the largest order, including nearly all our common fishes. The characteristics of the order are an osseous or bony skeleton; gills protected by a gill cover or operculum; and an equally divided tail. Lowest among the Teleosts is the common eel. It has an elongated, cylindrical, thick-skinned body, and is destitute of ventral fins. There are many species, and they are widely distributed, living in both salt and fresh water. One species is electrical.[38] The cat fishes of this order have long threads hanging from their jaws, and are noted for their peculiar methods of protecting their young; one species is electric, having cells arranged in layers over the body.

Other peculiar types are the Blind or Cave fishes,[39] living in the waters of caves; the Lamp fishes which take their name from the luminous spots arranged along the sides, and which are supposed to light the recesses where they live, and the Flying fishes.

There are at least two genera, and more than thirty species of “flying fish,” a name given to all those which have the pectoral fins so large that they are sustained in short, seeming flights through the air. They do not really fly, as they have not muscular power in their fins to beat the air as birds do. But when extended the fins help bear them up, and the impulse received at the start, sufficient to give them the elevation they reach, may be supplemented by the use of the caudal fin as in swimming. Some naturalists claim to have noticed a movement of the other fins, but the preponderance of testimony is that these are of service only as parachutes or the wings of a paper kite. The Herring, Shad, Salmon, Pike, Perches, Bass, Mackerel and Cod are valuable food fishes, belonging to the Teleosts. The Sword fishes, in which the upper jaw is developed into a long, sword-like projection, used as a weapon of defense and offense, is an interesting member of the order. The Climbing fishes, noted for being able to live out of water, and the Nest Builders, which make homes from the weeds of the Sargossa Sea,[40] are peculiar types.

Another curious Teleost is the Sea Horse. This peculiar animal has its name (Hippocampus) from the shape of the head, that has some resemblance to that of a horse. There is no other resemblance. The short body, without legs, is covered with angular spinous plates. Its fishy part is a long prehensile tail, but it has neither dorsal nor caudal fins.

The last order of fishes is the Dipnoi, or Lung fishes. They are characterized by the possession of two lungs, as well as gills. The gills are used in respiration when the fishes are under water, but when out of it, and burrowing in the mud as they often do, the lungs are put into service. They are also known as mud fishes, from their habits of encasing themselves in the mud.

THE SEA HORSE.

End of Required Reading for May.

HOW TO WIN.

BY FRANCES E. WILLARD,
President National W. C. T. U.

CHAPTER III.

But—as I was saying when the stern old gentleman was pleased to interrupt me—I am to give you reasons why you are to cultivate your specialty. And I claim, first (as has been implied already), that you should do this because you have a specialty to cultivate. (This, on the principle of the old cook book, which begins its “Recipe for Broiling Hares,” with the straightforward exhortation: “First catch your hare.”) The second reason is, because you will then work more easily and naturally, with the least friction, with the greatest pleasure to yourself and the most advantage to those around you. “Paddle your own canoe,” but paddle it right out into the swift, sure current of your strongest, noblest inclination. Thirdly, by this means you will get into your cranium, in place of aimless reverie, a resolute aim. This is where your brother has had his chief intellectual advantage over you. Quicker of wit than he, far less unwieldy in your mental processes, swifter in judgment, and every whit as accurate, you still have felt, when measuring intellectual swords with him, that yours was in your left hand, that his was in his right; and you have felt this chiefly, as I believe, because from the dawn of thought in his sturdy young brain, he has been taught that he must have a definite aim in life if he ever meant to swell the ranks of the somebodies upon this planet, while you have been just as sedulously taught that the handsome prince might whirl past your door “’most any day,” lift you to a seat beside him in his golden chariot and carry you off to his castle in Spain.

And of course you dream about all this; why shouldn’t you? Who wouldn’t? But, my dear friends, dreaming is the poorest of all grindstones on which to sharpen one’s wits. And to my thinking, the rust of woman’s intellect, the canker of her heart, the “worm i’ the bud” of her noblest possibilities has been this aimless reverie; this rambling of the thoughts; this vagueness, which when it is finished, is vacuity. Let us turn our gaze inward, those of us who are not thorough-going workers with brain or hand. What do we find? A wild chaos; a glimmering nebula of fancies; an insipid brain-soup where a few lumps of thought swim in a watery gravy of dreams, and, as nothing can come of nothing, what wonder if no brilliancy of achievement promises to flood our future with its light? Few women, growing up under the present order of things, can claim complete exemption from this grave intellectual infirmity.

Somehow one falls so readily into a sort of mental indolence; one’s thoughts flow onward in a pleasant, gurgling stream, a sort of intellectual lullaby, coming no-whence, going no-whither. Only one thing can help you if you are in this extremity, and that is what your brothers have—the snag of a fixed purpose in this stream of thought. Around this will soon cluster the dormant ideas, hopes, and possibilities that have thus far floated at random. The first one in the idle stream of my life was the purpose, lodged there by my life’s best friend, my mother, to have an education. Then, later on, Charlotte Bronte’s “Shirley” was a tremendous snag in the stream to me. Around that brave and steadfast character clustered a thousand new resolves. I was never quite so steeped in reveries again, though my temptations were unusual; my “Forest Home,” by a Wisconsin river, offering few reminders to my girlish thought, of the wide, wide world and its sore need of workers. The next jog that I got was from the intellectual attrition of a gifted and scholarly woman who asked me often to her home and sent me away laden with volumes of Wordsworth, Niebuhr and the British essayists. Margaret Fuller Ossoli was another fixed point—shall I not rather say a fixed star?—in the sky of my thought, while Arnold of Rugby, to one who meant to make teaching a profession, was chief of all. Well, is it possible that any word I have here written may set some of you thinking—that’s it, set you, a fixed purpose rather than a floating one—about a definite object in life toward which, henceforth, you may bend a steady, earnest gaze? I am not speaking of a thorough intellectual training only. It is rather to the life-work, which only a lifetime can fully compass, that I would direct your thoughts. Rather than that you should fail to have a fixed purpose concerning it, I would that your mental attitude might be like the one confided to me by a charming Philadelphia girl, whose letter of this morning has the following naïve statement:

“I feel such an aching in me to do or be something uncommon, and yet a kind of awful assurance that I never shall.”

Nor do I here refer to that general knowledge of household arts which forms the sole acquirement set forth in the regulation “Women’s Department” of the bygone age newspaper, which in many localities remains in this like the boulder of a past epoch.

It was once thought to be a high virtue for women, no matter how lofty in station or how ample of fortune, to do their own work with the needle. Homer represents Penelope spinning, surrounded by her maids, and classic art abounds with illustrations of like character. But the virtues of one age often become the mistakes of the next. When loom, needle and broom were woman’s only weapons, she did well to handle them deftly, no matter what her rank, for they were her bread-winning implements, and fortune has been proverbially fickle in all ages. But men, by their “witty inventions,” have perpetually encroached on “woman’s sphere.”

Eli Whitney, with his cotton gin, Elias Howe, with his sewing machine, and a hundred other intricate-brained mechanics who have set steel fingers to do in an hour what women’s fingers could not accomplish in a year; all these have combined to revolutionize the daily cares of the gentler sex. With former occupations gone, and the world’s welcome ready when they succeed in special vocations new to them, it becomes not only the privilege but the sacred duty of every woman to cultivate and utilize her highest gift. There is no more practical form of philanthropy than this, for every one who makes a place for herself “higher up” leaves one lower down for some other woman who, but for the vacancy thus afforded her in the world’s close crowded ranks, might be tempted into paths of sin. There is an army of poor girls wholly dependent, for a livelihood, upon the doing of house work. They have no other earthly resource between them and the poor house or haunt of infamy. There is another class to whom an honorable support can come only by sewing or millinery work. Whoever then fits herself for some employment involving better pay and higher social recognition, graduates out of these lower grades and leaves them to those who can not so advance, has helped the world along in a substantial way, because she has added to the sum of humanity’s well being.

To young women in wealthy homes, these considerations should come with even greater convincing force. As David Swing has wisely said to his own rich congregation:

“The rhetoric thrown at women of property for not doing ‘their own work’ could only be useful in an age of fashionable idleness, but in a busy age it is a part of nature’s law that what are called the ‘better classes’ shall leave for the poorer classes some labor to be done, just as the Mosaic law left some sheaves in the field for the gleaner. The world’s work is to be apportioned according to the need and capability of its workers, and the higher order of power must not encroach upon the task which nature seems to have set apart for the employment and support of the less capable.”

Let it not be concluded that I have meant to speak lightly of the intricate, skilled labor involved in making healthful and attractive that bright, consummate flower of a Christian civilization—the home. I have felt that this theme has been so often treated that it needed no amplification at my hands, but I will add that, having been entertained in scores of homes belonging to “exceptional women,” “women with a career,” etc., my testimony is that for wholesomeness, heartsomeness, and every quality that superadds home-making to housekeeping, I have never seen their superiors, and seldom, take them all in all, their peers. But as a rule, these women have earned the “wherewithal” to make a home, by the exercise of some good gift of brain or hand, and thus having been enabled to put a proxy in the kitchen, they direct, but do not attend to the minutiæ of their daily household cares.

Cultivate, then, your specialty, because the independence thus involved will lift you above the world’s pity to the level of its respect, perchance its honor. Understand this first, last, and always: The world wants the best thing. It wants your best. It needs you as a significant figure to give its ciphers value; to designate as an example; to serve up in a eulogy, perchance to shine in the galaxy by whose light alone its centuries maintain their places in the firmament of history. I know this may strike you as contradiction, for the paradox of paradoxes is this crotchety but kind, narrow-minded but just old world in which you and I are cast away, like Æneas in the domain of Dido. The effrontery of “Madame Grundy” passes all comprehension, and would be laughable if it were not so sad. She tells us women distinctly that we positively shall not do for society the thing we can do best; she declares that if we attempt it we shall be frowned down, and practically ostracised, if not utterly made away with, and then, if we go right on and succeed, she trumpets our names from sea to shore, showers us with greenbacks, and nods her conventional old head with a knowing “I told you so.” And per contra, while on one hand this same unreasonable old lady cripples our attempts to succeed, on the other she snubs us for not doing so. In fact, she is so poor a mathematician that she has never yet so much as tried to learn the value of the “unknown quantity.” The mute Milton is, to her, indeed “inglorious.” Her code of ethics recognizes just one crime (not mentioned in the Decalogue), and it is Failure. Her law is written on a single table—it is a table of stone—and it reads thus: “Succeed and live; make shipwreck of success, and die.”

And so, young friends, fold away your talents in a napkin if you choose; the world will not openly reprove you. She will never urge you to bring out your hidden treasure, but she knows right well when you defraud her, and the relentless old tyrant will punish you, with tireless lash, because you did not bring all your tithes into the storehouse of the common good, because you lived “beneath your privilege;” because, for yourself (which means for her), you did not “covet earnestly the best gifts.” She will cut you on the public street when she would have shown you all her teeth in smiles. She will send poverty on your track, when you might have sat down at her banquet an honored guest. Yes, the world wants the best thing; your best, and she will smite you stealthily if you do not hand over your gift. Now last, but not least (under the head of reasons for seeking to know your true vocation as a human being), let me bring forward the rationale of the bread-and-butter argument. In sooth, no writer or speaker may omit it with impunity, if he would retire in good order from an American audience. Briefly, then, your specialty, well trained, is your best bread-winning implement, and she who earliest grasps this, and who firmest holds it, comes off best in the race. “Be not simply good, be good for something,” said Henry D. Thoreau. A bright eyed girl of eighteen used to come to me on Friday evenings to give me German lessons. To be sure, I have lived in Germany, and she has never been out of Illinois, but then that language is not my specialty, while it is hers. “How is it that though so young, you have made yourself independent?” I inquired of her one day. Listen to the reply: “My mother was always quoting this saying of Carlyle: ‘The man who has a sixpence commands the world—to the extent of that sixpence.’ I early laid this sentiment to heart. Besides, when I was fifteen years old, I heard a sermon on the text: ‘This one thing I do.’ Being of a practical turn of mind, I made an application of which the preacher, perhaps, had no intention. I thought, why not in everyday affairs as well as in religion do one thing well, rather than many things indifferently, and in that way secure the magic sixpence of Carlyle! My father was a rich man then, but I resolved to prepare myself to teach the German language, of which I was very fond, by way of a profession. When the Chicago fire came we lost our property, but I discovered that I could not only support myself, but help my father to many a convenient sixpence, because, in prosperous days I had forearmed myself with a cultivated specialty.”

As she told me this, I thought how, from widely different premises and conditions in life young people may reach similar conclusions. For instance, on the top of the great St. Bernard, I said to the “Hospitable Father,” a noble young monk, “How is it that you, so gifted and well taught, are spending your life away up here among eternal snows?” And I shall never forget his look of exaltation as he simply answered, “’Tis my vocation.”

After all, this is the vital question: With what sort of a weapon will you ward off the attacks of the blood-hound Poverty, which Dame Fortune is pretty sure to let on everybody’s track sooner or later, that she may try his mettle, and learn what manner of spirit he is of? In times like these, when men’s hearts are failing them for fear, when riches are saved the trouble of “taking to themselves wings” by the faithless cashiers and bookkeepers who are adepts at furnishing these flying implements, and, above all, when labor is coming to be king, the question “What will you do?” has fresh significance. Remember, going forth from the uncertain Eden of your dreams, into the satisfying pleasures of honest, hard work, “the world is all before you, where to choose.” Will you share some other woman’s home, and help her make it beautiful? No task more noble or more needed awaits the thoughtful worker of to-day. The world exists but for the sake of its homes. Will you bestow your hand upon some fine æsthetic industry, as drawing, designing, engraving, telegraphing, phonographing, photographing? Will you be an architect? a printer? an editor? Will you enter one of the three learned professions? Braver women than you or I have won a foot-hold for us in each of them; as to the brain-hold, that is our affair. I will not now pursue the question further. Only the “Cyclopædia of Woman’s Occupations” (a book I recommend to your attention) can exhaust it, and with it exhaust you and the world’s work, too, for that matter!

After all, it doesn’t so much signify what you may do as that you do it well, whatever it may be. For the value of skilled labor is estimated on a democratic basis, nowadays. President Eliot, of Harvard University, the cook in the Parker House restaurant, and Mary L. Booth, who edits Harper’s Bazar, each receive $4,000 per year.

Think a moment. Will you be led to say: “The good old ways are good enough for me,” and so drop into the swollen ranks of teacherdom, or rattle awhile on a martyrized piano, and then set up for a musician, though you have not a particle of music in throat or finger-tips? Or will you stay at home and let papa support you until you grow tired of doing nothing and expecting nothing, and proceed to marry some man whom you endure rather than love, just to get decently out of your dilemma?

Nay, I do you injustice. Few girls who breathe the free air of our western prairies will be so cowardly. I may not construct your horoscope, but this much I will venture—that when you marry, no matter what you find, you will seek not a name, behind which to cover up the insignificance of your own; not a “good provider,” to feed and clothe one who has learned how to feed and clothe herself; not a “natural protector,” to shield you in his plaidie, the gallant, gallant laddie, from the cauld, cauld blast; but you will seek (and may heaven grant that you shall find) that rarest, choicest, most elusive prize of man’s existence, as of woman’s; one which—mournfully I say it—the modern marriage is by no means certain to involve, namely, a mate. At this juncture, shrewd mater familias whispers to pater: “That’s the first orthodox word she’s said.” Some youth throws down the magazine and mutters to himself: “There, I knew it would come to this! Look at the absurdity of these women! Why, they preach up all sorts of trades and professions, and then they come back, at last, to the ‘good old way’ they have forsaken, and advise every young lady to get a situation in a school of one scholar, and her board thrown in.”

Meanwhile, heroic Hypatia sits near by, and “musing in maiden meditation, fancy free,” on a “career,” murmurs within herself, “To this complexion must it come at last!”

Peace, peace, good friends! This seeming inconsistency is readily explained. In this century, when the wage of battle has cost our land an army of her sons, when widows mourn, and unwedded thousands are forced to meet the hard-faced world (from which rose-water theorists would shield them), America is coming to the rescue of her daughters! For the nearer perfect—that is, the more Christian—a civilization has become, the more carefully are the exceptional classes of society provided for. All our philanthropic institutions under state or private patronage illustrate this. In less enlightened days, your ideal woman composed the single, grand class for which public prejudice set itself to provide. She was to be the wife and mother, and she was carefully enshrined at home. But, happily, this is the world’s way no longer. The exceptions are so many, made by war, by the thousand misunderstandings and cross-purposes of social intercourse, by the peculiar features of the transition period in which we live, by the absurdly extravagant customs of our day, and the false notions of both men and women—that not to provide for them would be a monstrous meanness, if not a crime. And the provision made in this instance is the most rational, indeed, the only rational one which it is in the power of society or government to make for any save the utterly incapable, namely: a fair chance for self-help. Nor (to pursue the line of our argument still further) can we forget that skeleton hand which, in utter disregard of “the proprieties” in destiny’s drama, thrusts itself so often into the charmed domestic circle, and snatches the beloved “provider” away forever, while it sets gaunt famine by the fireside in his stead? Can we forget that, in ten thousand families, wives are this moment waiting in suspense and agony the return of wretched husbands to homes made hideous by the drunkard’s sin—wives whose work of brain or hand alone keeps their children from want, now that their “strong staff is broken, and their beautiful rod?” There are delicate white fingers turning the page on which I print these words, that will never wear the marriage ring; there are slight forms bending over my friendly lines, which, not far down the years, will be clothed in widow’s weeds. Alas, there are as surely others, who, when they have been wooed and won, shall find that they are worse than widowed. And what of these three classes of women, sweet and helpless? Clearly, to all of them I am declaring a true and blessed gospel, in this good news concerning honest independence and brave self-help! Clearly, also, no one is wise enough to go through the assembly of my readers, and tell me who, in future years, shall need a bread-winning weapon with which to defend herself and perchance, also, the helpless ones between whom and the world there may be no arm but hers. But it is a principle in public as well as private economy, that the wisest foresight provides for the remotest contingency, and thus, in its full force, all that I have been saying applies to every woman who may read this article on “How to Win.” Suppose that many of you, dear girls, are destined to a downy nest, instead of a strong-winged flight. What then? Will the years spent in making the most of the best powers with which God has endowed you be worse employed than if you had given them to fashion and frivolity? Those “ad interim” years which separate the graduate’s diploma from the bride’s marriage certificate, can they possibly be invested better than in the acquisition of some useful trade or dignified profession? And then, aside from this, I would help the youngest of you to remember (even in the bewildered years of her second decade) what noble Margaret Fuller said: “No woman can give her hand with dignity, or her heart with loyalty, until she has learned how to stand alone.” It is not so much what comes to you as what you come to, that determines whether you are a winner in the great race of life. Never forget that the only indestructible material in destiny’s fierce crucible is character. Say this, not to another—say it to yourself; utter it early, and repeat it often: Fail me not, thou.

THE LIFE OF MINERALS.

BY M. J. THOULET.

Translated for The Chautauquan from the Révue Scientifique.

The definition given to-day to mineralogy places it among the exact sciences. Long continued study has shown that it possesses all the inflexibility of chemistry, of physics, of mathematics. The work of one making a specialty of this subject is similar to that of a millwright who collects the different pieces, forged and cast and prepared in various ways by other workmen, and arranges them all in their proper relations to one another, joins them, and forms the mill with all its complication of machinery in good order, ready to run without friction, without jar. The mineralogist gathers up the facts and theories wrought out by workers in other fields of science, studies their variations, their agreements and connections, demonstrates their presence and their union in inorganic bodies, and sums up and announces all the results of his labor in the form of laws which shall be exact rules for events past, present, and future; for a science incapable of foreseeing and foretelling is not a true science. Mineralogy is not chemistry, nor physics nor mathematics, any more than the millwright is the smith or the smelter. It is a distinct science pursuing a particular aim, and which, although borrowing from other sciences certain of their results, nevertheless possesses its own individuality. It might be said to be a direct application of these three sciences, together with geology, to the study of the life of minerals.

I have just used a very significant expression: The life of minerals. Others have used it before me. “Not only do stones live, but they suffer from sickness, from old age, and death,” wrote Cardan in the sixteenth century. And he was right. Eternal matter performs an eternal cycle; the incessant variations which it experiences; the movement which is never arrested, which from modification to modification, from transformation to transformation draws it along without a single moment of rest; the continual births and deaths and resurrections are life. Every man, every animal, every plant, and every stone obey without any power to resist, and they are all borne along without relaxation or repose toward a vortex whose beginning and ending are concealed within the shadows of eternity. There is no difference between the mineral and vegetable, or animal. Inorganic life is identical with organic life, varying only in degree.

From the moment which we call birth, that is to say at the commencement of one of these periods of transformation, our eyes see, hour by hour, moment by moment, the living being develop. The atoms entering into its construction seek like atoms to which they ally themselves, and molecules combine with other molecules. What matters it about the form of being? Simple or complicated, the law is the same, and it is obeyed. The individual appears with its own chemical constitution, its own form and look, its own variations, all decided under its predetermined conditions. Among these conditions a single one is variable, but the equilibrium is constantly preserved; the individual changes from time to time in its own appointed way, but it never ceases to exist.

In the same manner as organic life bears the impress of its surroundings, so do minerals submit themselves to external influences. The one perhaps is more frail, more delicate, less able to resist, more susceptible to impressions; the natural forces of the other, more powerful because they are simpler, yield less readily to circumstances. Both alike are forced to take their part in the great concert of forces in which they fare only infinitely feeble notes; both alike are influenced by the majestic assembly of powers which act upon them, and upon which they, in turn, also act, conformably to one of the first laws of matter, that of equality between action and reaction.

Let us take any mineral whatever and subject it to a constantly increasing temperature. We notice first that it undergoes a change of form. Cease the application of heat and it will gradually resume its former shape. Let us heat it again, and more intensely. All the properties of the matter which constitutes it become changed, some quickly, some slowly, and it is incapable now of taking back its first appearance. Its crystalline form is different, and its mechanical elasticity, its hardness, and its electric properties; even its color is changed. We will still increase the heat. The molecules disperse, following certain directions, and, following others, gather themselves together. Suddenly a limit, varying according to the chemical composition, the crystalline type, or the pressure, is broken; the solid, beginning to melt, becomes a liquid. Heat it still higher and we shall see new phenomena appearing, volatilization and dissolution. Another limit is passed and the atom, becoming isolated, is free henceforward from the laws of chemistry, and must now obey laws yet unknown, the task of discovering and formulating which is awaiting some worker in the realms of physics or mechanics.

The dissolution of a mineral, is it not death? Every abrupt limit of all the powers of a body is death, and all death precedes a resurrection.

As a child, which at the same moment when it opens its eyes upon the light and utters its first cry, begins already to die, so with the mineral scarcely formed, death commences. Feldspar, which constitutes in great part the soil pressed by our feet, under the influence of air and of water, of drought by day and dews by night, of the heat of summer and the cold of winter, of all agents mechanical, chemical and physical acting upon it, is reduced to its elements by a series of almost insensible transformations. Its fragments are broken to still finer bits, and when they have become dust disintegration still goes on, and gradually the silicon, the aluminum, the iron, the lime, the magnesium, and the potassium which composed them form clay. The iron oxydizes, the silicon separates itself, is dissolved by rain and carried off by the streams. Each element then enters into a new combination; sometimes it again becomes part of a stone; sometimes it helps to form the structure of a plant; sometimes that of a man. Where can birth, signifying the beginning of all existence, be placed, or where shall we find any real death? I perceive only periods of life.

Of old, naturalists made more frequent and much stronger affirmations than they do to-day. Confidence in self is the property of youth; maturity learns to doubt, which is the beginning of wisdom, provided that it does not remain content, but rather compels man to seek with increased ardor the truth which seems to fly from him. The ancients placed between the animal and the vegetable limits which in reality did not exist. Up to the present time limits of the same nature have been set between organic and inorganic life. But in proportion as we examine minerals we shall see the differences disappear and the resemblances increase. Man is born of parents; the whole animal and vegetable worlds are perpetuated in obedience to the laws of reproduction, each after his own kind. It was this absolute identity between parent and offspring that separated distinctly the other kingdoms from the mineral; but recently a scientist has discovered that the same fixed law is established in this department of life also. M. Gernez prepared a solution consisting of octahedral borax in five equivalents of water, and rhomboidal borax in ten equivalents of water. The two bodies, excepting their proportion of water, had the same chemical composition. The liquid, treated with suitable precaution, remained perfectly limpid, and he could place in it fragments of all imaginable substances, without causing it to give rise to any remarkable phenomena. But when even an infinitely small crystal of octahedral borax was dropped into it, the temperature rose, and in a few minutes all the octahedral borax contained in the solution took the crystalline form. Meanwhile, the rhomboidal borax was held in solution, and in order to crystallize it in its turn, there was needed only the contact of a rhomboidal crystal.

The mineral was evidently born of a parent; it was identical with this parent; its symmetry was the same under the same circumstances. Similar results from numerous experiments with other substances were obtained.

… Under the influence of agents whose masters we are, molecules group themselves, following fixed laws, and arrange themselves in their relative positions. Just as soldiers off drill, and scattered throughout the camp, when the order of the commander is given, obey and fall into line, so do molecules obey the forces in command over them.

Stranger still, this crystal perfectly formed, seems sometimes to have a conception of an ideal of beauty, a perfect symmetry, the ellipsoid of the cubic system, which is a sphere; it seeks it, tries to reach it, and if it can not be attained, it falls to acting a part. It disguises itself, just as is sometimes done among men, and strives to appear the being it is not. The crystal, no more than the man, will ever assume a place in a lower rank; each seeks to appear better than he is. To attain its object the crystal will unite itself with the other crystals of the same kind; then these will gather into groups. As they can not modify their own angles they will crowd one against another. Let it cost what it may, if it is a possible thing they will have their imperfections removed, and will improve their individual appearance, and if any measure of success is attained, the little crystals will enjoy in silence their usurped glory.

If science, with the apparent rigidity of her measures, weights and figures holds for the scholar oftentimes disagreeable surprises, she sometimes cheers him by rewards full of a strange grandeur. Azote, or nitrogen in its free state, constitutes more than three fourths of the volume of the atmosphere, and is in its appearance the type of inertia. Its presence seems to have no other rôle than to reduce the over-exciting action of the oxygen upon our organs of respiration. In order to cause it to enter into combination with other substances, it is necessary to have recourse to the most energetic forces. Among these in nature only one, electricity, lightning, is able to accomplish this result. But the union once effected, the gas is capable of undergoing a thousand variations. As passive as it was while free, so active does it become after entering into any combination. As it is found in the constitution of all animal and vegetable life, we find that without the storm-cloud no organic life could exist. The origin of all creatures is to be found in a clap of thunder.

Such examples as these show that imagination as well as science derives great profit from the intimate study of the phenomena presented by minerals. One commences their study by measuring, by weighing, by carefully analyzing; one gathers now and then slowly a little knowledge; then suddenly this apparently barren field disappears to give place to large horizons, to vast generalizations of majestic simplicity, resting upon the solid foundation of experimentation. Let us not underestimate the rôle of the imagination in scientific researches. It gives to the scholar persistence in his daily toil; it is his hope at the moment he begins an undertaking, his guide during the work, and his recompense when he has finished. What a charm in the frequent discoveries of analogies between the highest orders of beings and those which occupy the lowest rounds in the ladder of perfection!

Similarity is to be observed also in the growth of individuals in the different kingdoms. One sees at first crystal skeletons, then gradually the crystals developing into perfection. Neither the chemist with all his delicate tests, nor the physician armed with his accurate instruments can decipher the feeblest trace of heterogeneity; the child grown has become a man; the mineral fully developed has reached also its age of virility.

Minerals may be hindered in their development, may become irregular, imperfect, deformed; upon certain of their angles new facets may appear, in other parts facets may slowly become obliterated. As soon as the obstacle causing the trouble is removed the wounds will heal over, perhaps leaving their scars, and the crystals will pursue their normal course. Sometimes an accidental circumstance, as that of too ardent a sun, or a season too wet, will cause a fissure, and a malady commences. Oxydation or hydration is produced, and the mineral begins to disintegrate; finally, as a result of the accident, the last particles are lost to sight. We think it has been destroyed. But it is dead; it has died just as a man dies. Its elements are just as imperishable as are those of man’s body, which, when it is laid away in the grave are not annihilated, but, as they are resolved, enter again into new forms in the great torrent of life. Their atoms are immutable, what they have been, they are, and will be to all eternity; eternally young, eternally the same, moving without rest, unmindful of time or of combinations. The ancient symbol of the serpent with his tail in his mouth well represents the cycle of life. Periods succeed periods.

The day ends in twilight and the night is followed by a new dawn. All limits are effaced. The stone, the flower, the animal intermingle their natures. With this thought in mind all life seems like a great net-work, whose meshes are interlaced in countless ways, before which the seeker after truth stands with ardent soul. But at the moment he thinks to grasp the solution of the absorbing problem, he is only made more deeply aware of his own weakness. And looking forward over the great expanse stretching out before him to infinity, he experiences only one sentiment, that of admiration; and his desire ever increases to learn still, and to learn always.