Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber.

CONTENTS

Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS’
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

APPLETONS’
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JANUARY, 1900.

ADVANCE OF ASTRONOMY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
By Sir ROBERT BALL,
lowndean professor of astronomy at the university of cambridge, england.

One of the most remarkable chapters in the astronomy of the past century was commenced on the very first night with which that century began. It was, indeed, on the 1st of January, 1801, that the discovery of a new planet was announced. The five great orbs—Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, and Venus—had been known from the earliest times of which we have records, and the planet Uranus had been discovered nearly twenty years before the previous century closed. The solar system was thus thought to consist of these six planets and, of course, the earth. On the memorable night to which I have referred, Piazzi, the astronomer, made a remarkable advance. He discovered yet another planet—the seventh, or eighth, if the earth be included. The new body was a small object in comparison with those which were previously known. It was invisible to the unaided eye, and seemed no more than a starlike point even when viewed through a telescope. It revolved around the sun in the wide region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This discovery was speedily followed by others of the same kind, and, as the century has advanced to its close, the numbers of these planets—asteroids, as they are generally called—has been gradually increasing, so much so that now, of these little bodies known to astronomers, the number amounts to about four hundred and fifty.

But just as the beginning of the century was heralded by the discovery of the first of these asteroids, so the close of the century will be signalized in the history of astronomy by the detection among these little objects of one which has entirely cast into the shade all other discoveries of the same nature. On the night of the 13th of August, 1898, a German astronomer, Herr Witt, exposed a photographic plate to the heavens in his telescope in the Observatory of Urania, at Berlin. On that plate a picture of the heavens was obtained, and in that picture a new planet was revealed. At first the discovery of one more asteroid does not imply very much. Hundreds of such planets might be found, and indeed have been found, and yet no particular comment has been called forth. But this planet found by Witt is a unique object; it is more interesting than the whole of the four hundred and thirty-two other minor planets which have preceded it—not, indeed, on account of its size, for Witt’s planet is a wholly insignificant object from this point of view. The special interest which this new planet has for us dwellers on the earth lies in the fact that it seems to be the nearest to the earth of all the other worlds in space—the moon, of course, excepted. This is the reason why the attention of all who are interested in the science of astronomy has been concentrated on Witt’s discovery. It is certainly the most interesting telescopic revelation which has been made for many years.

It may illustrate a characteristic feature in the progress of modern astronomy if I describe how Witt succeeded in obtaining this picture. He had selected one of the most rapid plates that the skilled manufacturer can supply to the photographer. He put this plate into his telescope, and he directed it to the heavens. If that plate had been used in broad daylight for the more ordinary purpose of obtaining a photographic portrait, an exposure of half a second would have been quite long enough. But the very faint stars can not work their charm on the plate with equal rapidity; a second is not long enough, nor is ten seconds, nor even ten minutes. If we desire to secure an imprint of the faintest stars we must expose the plate for an hour, and sometimes for even much longer than an hour. Of course, an exposure of such duration would utterly ruin the picture if a gleam of any other light obtained access. But in the darkness of night the plate is secure from this danger. Each star is thus given time enough to impress its little image at leisure.

The photographer has often occasion to deplore the poorness of his light. It is, of course, in the endeavor to counteract the poorness of the light that so long an exposure is frequently given. But it will not be any longer supposed that, from the astronomer’s point of view, a tedious exposure must necessarily be a disadvantage. Let it be henceforth recollected that it was the very requirement of a long exposure which led to the present important discovery. If the stars had been bright enough to be photographed by an exposure not longer than a few seconds or even than a few minutes, then this new and wonderful planet Eros would not have been revealed.

Many points of light which were undoubtedly stars, and merely stars, were shown on this picture taken by the German astronomer at Urania. Among these points of light was, however, one object which, though in appearance hardly distinguishable from a faint star, was in truth a body of a very different character. No telescope, however powerful, would show by mere inspection any appreciable difference between the dot of light indicating a star and the dot of light indicating the asteroid Eros. The fundamental difference between the star and Eros was, however, revealed by the long exposure. The stars in such a picture are, of course, at rest. They have occupied for years and for centuries the places where we now find them. If they are moving at all, their movements are so slow that they need not now be considered. But this starlike point, or, as we may at once call it, this asteroid, Eros, is moving. Not that its movements seem very rapid from the distance at which alone we are compelled to view it. No casual glance would indicate that Eros was flying along. The ordinary observer would see no change in its place in a second—no change in its place even in a minute. But when the exposure has lasted for an hour this asteroid, in the course of the hour, has moved quite appreciably. Hence arose a great difference between the representation which the photograph has given of the stars, properly so called, and of the asteroid. Each star is depicted as a sharp, well-defined point. This little body which is not a star, this unsteady sitter in the picture, could not be so represented; it merely appeared as a streak. The completed photograph accordingly shows a large number of well-marked dots for the stars, and among them one faint line for the asteroid.

Such a feature on a picture, though very unusual, does sometimes present itself. To detect such a streak on a photograph of the stars is a moment of transcendent joy to the astronomer. It is often for him the exciting occasion on which a discovery is made. This little moving point is in actual fact as different from a star as a pebble is different from a brilliant electric light. The resemblance of the asteroid to a star is merely casual; the resemblance would wholly disappear if we were able to make a closer inspection. The star is a brilliant blazing orb like a sun, but so far away that its luster is diminished to that of a point; the planet is comparatively near us; it is a dark body like our earth, and is like our earth also in this further respect that all the light it enjoys has been derived from the sun.

Though there is this immense difference between a star and a planet, yet the observer must not expect to notice any such difference by merely taking a peep through the telescope. It was only the long exposure in the photograph that revealed the little body.

Such is the manner in which an asteroid is generally discovered in these latter days. A discovery like this comes as the well-earned reward of the skill and patience of the astronomical photographer. There are, indeed, a large number of known asteroids; our catalogues contained four hundred and thirty-two of them up to the time when Witt exposed his now famous plate. Had the asteroid Witt then found been merely as other asteroids, it would never have received the prominent position that has now to be assigned to it in any account of the astronomy of the century. That object found by Witt on this night which is to be henceforth memorable in astronomy is of a wholly exceptional kind. Had Eros been merely an ordinary asteroid, Witt might no doubt have received the credit to which his labors and success would have entitled him. Another asteroid would have been added to the long list of such objects already known, but the newspapers would never have troubled their readers about the matter, and the only persons who would have been affected would have been the astronomers, and perhaps even among them no particular sympathy would have been felt in certain quarters. Those particular astronomers to whom has been intrusted the special work of looking after the asteroids and of calculating the tables of their movements might even have received with no very great enthusiasm the announcement of this further addition to the burden on their heavily laden shoulders.

I have said that Eros is quite a small globe; it may be well for us fully to realize how small that asteroid actually is. If the moon were to be crushed into two million equal fragments, each of those parts would be as big as Eros. If the whole of Eros were to be covered with houses, the city thus formed would not be so large as greater London. So far as mere size is concerned, Eros is quite unimportant. We can further illustrate this if we compare Eros with some of the other planets. The well-known evening star, Venus, the goddess of love, is a hundred million times as big as that tiny orb we now call Eros, the god of love. After all this it may seem strange to have to maintain what is, however, undoubtedly the fact, that the discovery of Eros is one of the most remarkable discoveries of this century.

Until Eros was discovered, our nearest neighbors among the planets were considered to be Venus on one side and Mars on the other. The other great planets are much more distant, while, of course, the stars properly so called are millions of times as far.

Great, then, was the astonishment of the astronomers when, by the discovery of Eros, Mars and Venus were suddenly dethroned from their position of being the earth’s nearest neighbors among the planetary host. This little Eros will, under favorable circumstances, approach the earth to within about one third the distance of Mars when nearest, or about one half the distance of Venus when nearest. We thus concentrate on Eros all the interest which arises from the fact that, the moon of course excepted, Eros is the nearest globe to the earth in the wide expanse of heaven. To the astronomer this statement is of the utmost significance; when Eros comes so close it will be possible to determine its distance with a precision hitherto unattainable in such measurements. Once the distance of Eros is known, the distance of the sun and of all the other planets can be determined. The importance of the new discovery arises, then, from the fact that by the help of Eros all our measurements in the celestial spaces will gain that for which every astronomer strives—namely, increased accuracy.

Seeing that the existence of intelligence is a characteristic feature of this earth, we feel naturally very much interested in the question as to whether there can be intelligent beings dwelling on other worlds around us. It is only regrettable that our means of solving this problem are so inadequate. Indeed, until quite lately it would have been almost futile to discuss this question at all. All that could then have been said on the subject amounted to little more than the statement that it would be intolerable presumption for man to suppose that he alone, of all beings in the universe, was endowed with intelligence, and that his insignificant little earth, alone amid the myriad globes of space, enjoyed the distinction of being the abode of life. Recent discovery has, however, given a new aspect to this question. At the end of this century certain observations have been made disclosing features in the neighboring planet, Mars, which have riveted the attention of the world. On this question, above most others, extreme caution is necessary. It is especially the duty of the man of science to weigh carefully the evidence offered to him on a subject so important. He will test that evidence by every means in his power, and if he finds the evidence establishes certain conclusions, then he is bound to accept such conclusions irrespective of all other circumstances.

Mr. Percival Lowell has an observatory in an eminently favorable position at Flagstaff, in Arizona. He has a superb telescope, and enjoys a perfect climate for astronomical work. Aided by skillful assistants, he has observed Mars under the most favorable circumstances with great care for some years. I must be permitted to say that, having carefully studied what Mr. Lowell has set forth, and having tested his facts and figures in every way in my power, most astronomers have come to the conclusion that, however astonishing his observations may seem to be, we can not refuse to accept them.

No one has ever seen inhabitants on Mars, but Mr. Percival Lowell and one or two other equally favored observers have seen features on that planet which, so far as our experience goes, can be explained in no other way than by supposing that they were made by an intelligent designer for an intelligent purpose. Mr. Lowell has discovered that there are certain operations in progress on the surface of Mars which, if we met with on this earth, we should certainly conclude, without the slightest hesitation, were the result of operations conducted under what we consider rational guidance.

A river, as Nature has made it, wends its way to and fro; it never takes the shortest route from one point to another; the width of the river is incessantly changing; sometimes it expands into a lake, sometimes it divides so as to inclose an island. If we could discern through our telescopes a winding line such as I have described on Mars it might perhaps represent a river.

But suppose, instead of a winding line, there was a perfectly straight line, or rather a great circle on the globe drawn as straight as a surveyor could lay it out—if we beheld an object like that on Mars I think we should certainly infer that it was not a river made in the ordinary course of natural operations; no natural river ever runs in that regular fashion. If such a straight line were indeed a river, then it must have been designedly straightened by human agency or by some other intelligent agency for some particular purpose. In its larger features Nature does not work by straight lines. A long and perfectly straight object, if found on our earth, might be a canal or it might be a road; it might be a railway or a terrace of some kind; but assuredly no one would expect it to be a natural object.

We have the testimony of Schiaparelli, now strengthened by that of Mr. Lowell and his assistants, that there are many straight lines of this kind on Mars. They appear to be just as straight as a railway would have to be if laid across the flat and boundless prairie, where the engineer encountered no obstacle whatever to make him swerve from the direct path. These lines on Mars run for hundreds of miles, sometimes, indeed, I should say for thousands of miles. They are far wider than any terrestrial river, except perhaps the Amazon for a short part of its course. The lines on Mars are about forty miles wide. Indeed, the planet is so distant that if these lines were much narrower than forty miles they would be invisible. Each of them is marvelous in its uniformity throughout its entire length.

The existence of these straight lines on the planet contains perhaps the first suggestion of the presence of some intelligent beings on Mars. The mere occurrence of a number of perfectly straight, uniform lines on such a globe would in itself be a sufficiently remarkable circumstance. But there are other features exhibited by these objects which also suggest the astonishing surmise that they have been constructed by some intelligent beings for some intelligent purposes.

Sometimes two of these lines will start from a certain junction, sometimes there will be a third or a fourth from the same junction; in one case there are as many as seven radiating from the same point. Such an arrangement of these straight lines is certainly unlike anything that we find in Nature. We are led to seek for some other explanation of the phenomenon, and here is the explanation which Mr. Lowell offers:

It has recently been found that there are no oceans of water on the planet Mars. In earlier days it used no doubt to be believed that the dark marks easily seen in the telescope could represent nothing but oceans, but I think we must now give up the notion that these are watery expanses. Indeed, there is not much water on that globe anywhere in comparison with the abundance of water on our earth. It is the scarcity of water which seems to give a clew to some of the mysteries discovered on Mars by Schiaparelli and Lowell.

As our earth moves round the sun we have, of course, the changing seasons of the year. In a somewhat similar manner Mars revolves around the sun, and accordingly this planet has also its due succession of seasons. There is a summer on Mars, and there is a winter; during the winter on that globe the poles of the planet are much colder than at other seasons, and the water there accumulates in the form of ice or snow to make those ice-caps that telescopic observers have so long noticed. In this respect Mars, of course, is like our earth. The ice-cap at each pole of our globe is so vast that even the hottest summer does not suffice to melt the accumulation; much of the ice and snow there remains to form the eternal snow which every arctic explorer so well knows. It would seem, however, that the contrast between winter and summer on Mars must be much more deeply marked than the contrast between winter and summer on our earth. During the summer of Mars ice and snow vanish altogether from the poles of that planet.

Mr. Lowell supposes that water is so scarce on Mars that the inhabitants have found it necessary to economize to the utmost whatever stock there may be of this most necessary element. The observations at Flagstaff tend to show that the dark lines on Mars mark the course of the canals by which the water melted in summer in the arctic regions is conducted over the globe to the tracts where the water is wanted. Not that the line as we see it represents actually the water itself; the straight line so characteristic of Mars’s globe seems rather to correspond to the zones of vegetation which are brought into culture by means of water that flows along a canal in its center. In much the same way would the course of the Nile be exhibited to an inhabitant on Mars who was directing a telescope toward this earth: the river itself would not be visible, but the cultivated tracts which owe their fertility to the irrigation from the river would be broad enough to be distinguishable. The appearance of these irrigated zones would vary, of course, with the seasons; and we observe, as might have been expected, changes in the lines on Mars corresponding to the changes in the seasons of the planet.

A noteworthy development of astronomy in the last century has been the erection of mighty telescopes for the study of the heavens. It must here suffice to mention, as the latest and most remarkable of these, the famous instrument at the Yerkes Observatory, which belongs to the University of Chicago. Just as the century is drawing to its close, the Yerkes telescope has begun to enter on its sublime task of exhibiting the heavens under greater advantages than have ever been previously afforded to any astronomers since the world began.

The University of Chicago having been recently founded, it was desired to associate with the university an astronomical observatory which should be worthy of the astonishing place that this wonderful city has assumed in the world’s history. Mr. Yerkes, an American millionaire, generously undertook to provide the cost of this observatory. Two noble disks of glass, forty inches in diameter, were produced at the furnaces of Messrs. Mantois, in Paris; these disks were worked by Mr. Alvan Clark, of Boston, into the famous object glass which, weighing nearly half a ton, has now been mounted in what we may describe as a temple or a palace such as had never been dreamed of before in the whole annals of astronomy.

Perhaps if we could now place the science of the nineteenth century in its proper perspective the most remarkable discovery which it contains would be that of the planet Neptune. Indeed, the whole annals of science present no incident of a more dramatic character.

It will be remembered that at the latter part of the eighteenth century William Herschel had immortalized himself by the discovery of a great planet, to which was presently assigned the name of Uranus. After the movements of Uranus had been carefully studied, it was found that on many previous occasions Uranus had been unwittingly observed by astronomers, who regarded it as a star. When these observations were all brought together, and when the track which Uranus followed through the heavens was thus opened to investigation, it was found that the movements of the planet presented considerable anomalies. The planet did not move precisely as it would have moved had it been subjected solely to the supreme attractive power of the sun. Astronomers are, of course, accustomed to irregularities of this description in the movements of the planets. These irregularities have as their origin the attractions of the various other members of the solar system. It is possible to submit these attractions to calculation and thus to estimate their amount. The effect, for instance, of Saturn in disturbing Jupiter can be allowed for, and the nature of Jupiter’s motion as thus modified can be precisely estimated. In like manner, the influence of the earth on Venus can be determined, and so for the other planets; and thus, generally speaking, it was found that when the proper allowances had been made for the action of known causes of disturbance, then the calculated movement of each planet could be reconciled with observation.

The circumstances of Uranus were, however, in this respect wholly exceptional. Due allowance was first made for the attraction of Uranus by Saturn, and for the attraction of Uranus by Jupiter, as well as by the other planets. It was thus found that the irregularities of Uranus could be to some extent explained, but that it was not possible in this manner to account for those irregularities completely. It was therefore evident that some influence must be at work affecting the movement of Uranus, in addition to those arising from any planet of which astronomers hitherto had cognizance. The only available supposition would be that some other planet, at present unrecognized, must be in our system, and that the attraction of this unknown body must give rise to those irregularities of Uranus which remained still outstanding.

A great problem was thus proposed for mathematicians. It was nothing less than to affect the determination of the orbit and the position of this unknown planet, the sole guide to the solution of the problem being afforded by the discrepancies between the places of Uranus as actually observed and the places which were indicated by the calculations, when every allowance had been made for known causes. The problem was indeed a difficult one, but, fortunately, two mathematicians proved to be equal to the task of solving it—Adams, in England, and Le Verrier, in France. Each of these astronomers, in independence of the other, succeeded in determining the place of the planet in the sky. The dramatic incident of this discovery was afforded when the mathematicians had done their work. When the place of the planet had been ascertained, then the telescopic search was undertaken to verify if it were indeed the case that a planet hitherto unknown did actually lurk in the spot to which the calculations pointed. Every one who has ever read a book on astronomy is well acquainted with the wonderful manner in which this verification was made. Just where the mathematicians indicated, there was the great planet discovered! To this object the name of “Neptune” has been assigned, and its discovery may be said to mark an epoch in the history of gravitation. It provided a most striking illustration of the truth of those great laws which Newton had discovered.

The latter half of the century will be also remarkable in the history of science from the fact that within that period mankind has been enabled to make some acquaintance with the chemistry of the celestial bodies. It was in 1859 that Kirchhoff and Bunsen first expounded to the world the true meaning of the dark lines in the solar spectrum. In this they were following out a line of reasoning that had been previously suggested by Prof. Sir G. Stokes, of Cambridge, England. Those who are at all conversant with that wonderful branch of knowledge known as spectrum analysis are aware how these discoveries have rendered it possible for us to determine in many cases the actual material elements found in the most distant bodies.

One of the striking results to which this investigation has led is the demonstration of the substantial unity of the materials from which the earth and the various heavenly bodies have been constructed. Those elements which enter most abundantly into the composition of the earth are also the elements which appear to enter most abundantly into the composition of the sun and of the stars. The iron and the hydrogen, the sodium and the many other materials of which our globe is so largely formed, are also the selfsame materials which, in widely different proportions and in very different associations, go to form the heavenly bodies. This conclusion is as interesting as it was unexpected. It might naturally have been thought that, seeing the sun is separated from us by nearly a hundred million miles, and seeing that the stars are separated from us by millions of millions of miles, all these celestial bodies must be constructed in quite a different manner and of substances quite distinct from the substances which we know on this earth. But this is not the case. Indeed, at the present moment it seems doubtful if there be any element which spectrum analysis has hitherto disclosed in the celestial bodies which is not also a recognized terrestrial body. The well-known case of helium gives a striking illustration. In the year 1868 Sir Norman Lockyer detected the presence of rays in the solar spectrum which were unknown at that time in terrestrial chemistry. These rays appeared to emanate from some substance which, though present in the sun, did not then appear to belong to the earth. This element was accordingly named “helium,” to indicate its solar origin. Twenty-five years later Professor Ramsay discovered a substance on the earth which had been hitherto unrecognized, and which, on examination, yielded in the spectrum precisely those same rays which had been found in the so-called helium from the sun. In consequence of this discovery this element is now recognized as a terrestrial body. It is indeed a remarkable illustration of the extraordinary character of modern methods of research that a substance should have first been discovered at a distance of nearly one hundred million miles, that same substance being all the time, though no doubt in very small quantities, a constituent of our earth as well as of the sun.

Much has been done within the past century in many other branches of astronomy. I must especially mention the important subject of meteoric showers. For the development of our knowledge of this attractive part of astronomy we are largely indebted to the labors of the late Prof. H. Newton, of Yale. By his investigations, in conjunction with those of the late Professor Adams, it was demonstrated that the shower of shooting stars which usually appears in the middle of November is derived from a shoal of small bodies which revolve around the sun in an elliptic track, and accomplish that circuit in about thirty-three years and a quarter. The earth crosses the track of these meteors in the middle of November. If it should happen that the great shoal is passing through the junction at the time the earth also arrives there, then the earth rushes through the shoal of little bodies. These plunge into our atmosphere, they are ignited by the friction, and a great shower is observed. It is thus that we account for the recurrence of specially superb displays at intervals of about thirty-three years.

But one more great astronomical discovery of this century must be mentioned, and here again, as in so many other instances, we are indebted to American astronomers. It was in 1877 that Prof. Asaph Hall discovered that the planet Mars was attended by two satellites. This was indeed a great achievement, and excited the liveliest interest and attention. Since the days when telescopes were first invented all the astronomers have been looking at Mars, and yet they never noticed (their telescopes were not good enough) those interesting satellites which the acute observation of Professor Hall detected with the help of the great telescope of the Naval Observatory at Washington. This discovery was followed by another of a still more delicate nature, when that consummate observer, Professor Barnard, using the great Lick telescope, detected the fifth satellite of Jupiter. This is indeed a most difficult object to observe, requiring, as it does, the highest optical power, the most perfect atmospheric conditions, and the most skillful of astronomical observers. We may take this observation to represent the high-water mark of telescopic astronomy in the nineteenth century. This being so, it may fitly conclude this brief account of some of the most remarkable astronomical discoveries which that century has produced.

THE APPLICATIONS OF EXPLOSIVES.
By CHARLES E. MUNROE,
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY.

Gun-Cotton Factory. Dipping cotton in nitrating troughs.

There is something about fire which fascinates every one, yet the action of explosives arouses even a livelier interest, since the accompanying fiery phenomena are more intense and are attended with a shocking report and a violent destruction of the surrounding material, while this train of events, with all its marked effects, is set in operation by what appears to be a very slight initial cause. It is evident on brief consideration that these bodies, like a coiled spring, a bent bow, or a head of water, are enormous reservoirs of energy which can be released at a touch, and which, if the explosive be properly placed in well-proportioned amounts and discharged at the right time, can be made to do useful and important work that can not be as conveniently and quickly accomplished in most cases, and in some cases can not be accomplished at all by any other means.

Gun-Cotton Factory. Digestion troughs.

The marked characteristic of all explosive substances, and especially of the so-called high explosives, is that the energy, as developed, is at high potential, and the uses to which energy in this condition can be economically put are so manifold that the production of explosives has become one of the most important of our chemical industries, this country alone producing, in 1890, 108,735,980 pounds, having a value of nearly $11,000,000.

The number of possible substances possessing explosive properties is exceedingly large; the number actually known is so great that it has taxed the ingenuity of inventors to provide them with suitable names; but these various explosive substances vary to so great an extent in the energy they will develop in practice and in their safety in storage, transportation, and use that but a comparatively small number have met with wide acceptance. All may be classified under the heads of physical mixtures like gunpowder, or chemical compounds like nitroglycerin, and they owe their development of energy to the fact that, like gunpowder, they are mixtures in which combustible substances such as charcoal are mixed with supporters of combustion such as niter; or that, like chloride of nitrogen, they are chemical compounds, the formation of whose molecules is attended with the absorption of heat; or that, like gun cotton, they are chemical compounds whose molecules contain both the combustible and the supporter of combustion, and whose formation from their elements is attended with the absorption of heat; while occupying a middle place between the gunpowder and the gun cotton class, and possessing also to some degree the properties of the nitrogen-chloride class, are the nitro-substitution explosives, of which melinite, emmensite, lyddite, and joveite furnish conspicuous examples.

Gun-Cotton Factory. Final press.

It may lead to a clearer understanding of what is said regarding the applications of explosives to dwell briefly on the methods by which some of them are produced, since, although the raw material in each case is different and the details of the operations vary, the underlying principles of the methods are the same, and a good example is found in the military gun cotton as made by the Abel process at the United States Naval Torpedo Station.

Gunpowder Grains. The large ones are over five pounds weight, each.

The material employed is cotton, but whether fresh from the field or in the form of waste, it must first be freed from dirt by hand picking and sorting, and from grease and incrusting substances by boiling in a weak soda solution. The cotton is now dried by wringing in a centrifugal wringer and exposing to a current of hot air in a metal closet; but as the compacted mass of cotton holds moisture with great persistency, after partial drying the cotton is passed through a cotton picker to open the fiber, so that it not only yields its contained water more readily and completely, but it also absorbs the acids more speedily in the dipping process to which it is subsequently exposed.

Burning Disk of Gun Cotton.

Extinguishing burning Gun Cotton.

When the moisture, by the final drying, is reduced to one half of one per cent the cotton is, while hot, placed in copper tanks which close hermetically, where it cools to the atmospheric temperature and in which it is transported to the dipping room, where a battery of large iron troughs, filled with a mixture of one part of the most concentrated nitric acid and three parts of the most concentrated sulphuric acid, set in a large iron water bath to keep the mixture at a uniform temperature, is placed under a hood against the wall. The fluffy cotton, in one-pound lots, is dipped handful by handful under the acid, by means of an iron fork, where it is allowed to remain for ten minutes, when it is raised to the grating at the rear of the trough and squeezed with the lever press to remove the excess of acid. It still retains about ten pounds of the acid mixture, and in this condition is placed in an acid-proof stoneware crock, where it is squeezed by another iron press to cause the contained acid to rise above the surface of the partly converted cotton. The covered crock is now placed with others in wooden troughs containing running water so as to keep the temperature uniform, where the cotton is allowed to digest for about twenty-four hours. The acid is then wrung out in a steel centrifugal, and the wrung gun cotton is thrown in small lots into an immersion tank containing a large volume of flowing water, in which a paddle wheel is revolving so as to rapidly dilute and wash away the residual acid in the gun cotton without permitting any considerable rise of temperature from the reaction of the water with the acid.

Making Mercury Fulminate.

Even these severe means are not enough, for, as the cotton fiber is in the form of hairlike tubes, traces of the acid sufficient to bring about the subsequent decomposition of the gun cotton are retained by capillarity. Therefore, after boiling with a dilute solution of sodium carbonate, the gun cotton is pulped and washed in a beater or rag engine until the fiber is reduced to the fineness of corn meal, and a sample of it will pass the “heat test.” This is a test of the resistance of gun cotton to decomposition, and requires that when the air-dried sample of gun cotton is heated to 65.5° C. in a closed tube in which a moistened strip of potassium iodide and starch paper is suspended, the paper should not become discolored in less than fifteen minutes’ exposure.

Detonator used in the United States Navy. Contains thirty-five grains of fulminate of mercury.

This pulping of the gun cotton not only enables one to more completely purify it, but it also renders it possible to mold it into convenient forms and to compress it so as to greatly increase its efficiency in use. For this purpose the pulp is suspended in water and pumped to a molding press, where, under a hydraulic pressure of one hundred pounds to the square inch, it is molded into cylinders or prisms about three inches in diameter and five inches and a half high, and these are compressed to two inches in height by a final press exerting a pressure of about sixty-eight hundred pounds to the square inch. As this is regarded as a somewhat hazardous operation, the press is surrounded by a mantlet woven from stout rope to protect the workmen from flying pieces of metal in case of an accident. The operation is analogous to that employed in powder-making, where the gunpowder has been pressed in a great variety of forms and into single grains weighing several pounds apiece.

Torpedo Cases and Blocks of Wood destroyed by a Naval Detonator.

Testing Detonators on Iron Plates.

Iron Cylinder filled with Water and containing a Naval Detonator. Before and after firing, shows the work accomplished by thirty-five grains of mercury fulminate.

Even under the enormous pressure of the final press the compressed gun cotton still retains from twelve to sixteen per cent of water, and in this form it is quite safe to store and handle. When dry it is very combustible and burns readily when ignited, but it can be quenched by pouring water upon it. When confined in the chamber of a gun or the bore-hole of a rock, gun cotton will burn like gunpowder when ignited, if dry, and produce an explosion, but, in common with nitroglycerin and other high explosives, gun cotton is best exploded and develops its maximum effect when detonated, a result which is secured by exploding a small quantity of mercury fulminate in contact with the dry material.

Smokeless Powders. In the bottle is indurite in flake grains. The larger grains are cylindrical and hexagonal multiperforated United States army grains. The bent grain in the foreground, looking like a piece of rubber tubing, is a grain of Maxim powder with a single canal. The flat strips in the foreground on the left are grains of the French B. N. powder. The flat strips in the foreground on the right are grains of the United States navy “pyrocellulose” powder.

Mercury fulminate is made by dissolving mercury in nitric acid and pouring the solution thus produced into alcohol, when a violent reaction takes place and the fulminate is deposited as a crystalline gray powder. This powder is loaded in copper cases and, after drying, it is primed with dry-mealed gun cotton, the mouth of the case being closed with a sulphur-glass plug, through which pass two copper leading wires joined by a bridge of platinum-iridium wire, two one-thousandths of an inch in diameter, which becomes heated to incandescence when an electric current is sent through it. This device is what is known as the naval detonator. Mercury fulminate is so employed because it is the most violent of all explosives in common use, and exerts a pressure of forty-eight thousand atmospheres when fired in contact. Although the naval detonator contains but thirty-five grains of mercury fulminate, yet it will rupture stout iron and heavy tin torpedo cases when fired suspended in them, it will rend thick blocks of wood when placed in a hole and fired within them, and it will even pierce holes through plates of the finest wrought iron one-sixteenth inch in thickness if only the base of the detonator is in contact with the plate, and this has been used as a test of their efficiency. Its force is markedly shown by firing one in a stout iron cylinder filled with water and closed tightly, when the cylinder is blown into a shredded sphere. When used to detonate gun cotton, either when confined or in the open, the detonator is placed in the hole which has been molded in the center of the gun cotton disk or block, so that it shall be in close contact with the gun cotton. I have found that perfectly dry compressed gun cotton is detonated by 2.83 grains of mercury fulminate; but as a torpedo attack is necessarily in the nature of a forlorn hope and should be provided with every possible provision against failure, and since if the detonator fails the attack fails, the naval detonator is supplied with thirty-five grains, so as to give a large coefficient of assurance.

Blending Machine for Cordite.

Cartridge of Cordite Smoke­less Powder. Charge for 6-inch 2 F gun, 13 pounds, 4 ounces. Cords, 22¾ inches long, 3 inches in diameter.

A characteristic feature of gun cotton is that it may be detonated even when completely saturated with and immersed in water, if only some dry gun cotton be detonated in contact with it. Thus in one experiment a disk of dry gun cotton was covered with a water-proof coating and the detonator inserted in the detonator hole of this disk. This dry disk was laid upon four uncoated disks, the five lashed tightly together, and sunk in Newport Harbor, where the column remained until the uncoated disks were saturated with salt water, when the mine was fired and the saturated disks were found by measurement of the work done to have been completely exploded. I have found that three ounces of dry compressed gun cotton will cause the detonation of wet compressed gun cotton in contact with it, but forty ounces of dry gun cotton are used as the primer in our naval mines and torpedoes, so as to give a large coefficient of assurance.

Gun-Cotton Spar Torpedo.

Blowing up the Schooner Joseph Henry.

In the mining and other industries the fulminate is used in smaller quantities and it is generally mixed with potassium chlorate, the mixture being compressed in small copper cases and sold as blasting caps. They are fired by means of a piece of Bickford or running fuse, consisting of a woven cotton or hemp tube containing a core of gunpowder, which is inserted in the mouth of the copper cap and made fast within it by crimping. The capped fuse is then inserted in a dynamite cartridge so that the cap is firmly in contact with the dynamite, the mouth of the cartridge is fastened securely, and the charge inserted in the bore-hole in the rock and tamped. The protruding end of the fuse is lighted, and the fire travels at the rate of three feet per minute down the train of gunpowder to the fulminate, which then detonates and causes the detonation of the dynamite.

Although gun cotton, nitroglycerin, and their congeners can be and usually are fired by detonation, there has within recent years been a great number of compositions invented which, while formed from gun cotton alone or mixtures of it with nitroglycerin, burn progressively when ignited and are therefore available for use as propellants; and since the products of their burning are almost wholly gaseous, they produce but little or no smoke and are therefore called smokeless powders. As upward of fifty-seven per cent of the products of the burning of ordinary gunpowder are solids or easily compressed vapors, this comparative smokelessness of the modern powders is a very important characteristic, and when used in battle they seriously modify our former accepted methods of handling troops. While this is the feature of these powders which has attracted popular attention, a far more important quality which they possess is the power to impart to a projectile a much higher velocity than black powder does, without exerting an undue pressure on the gun. A velocity of over twenty-four hundred feet per second has been imparted to a one-hundred-pound projectile with the powder that I have invented for our navy, while the pressure on the gun was less than fifteen tons to the square inch.

Torpedo Practice. Bow discharge.

Prior to my work in this field all the so-called smokeless powders were mixtures of several ingredients, resembling gunpowder in this respect. But, considering the precise and difficult work that was expected of these high-powered powders and the difficulty which had always been found in securing uniformity in mixtures, and that this difficulty had become the more apparent as the gun became more highly developed, I sought to produce a powder which should consist of a single chemical substance in a state of chemical purity, and which could be formed into grains of such form and size as were most suitable for the piece in which the powder was to be used.

I succeeded in so treating cellulose nitrate of the highest degree of nitration as to convert it into a mass like ivory and yet leave it pure. In this indurated condition the gun cotton will burn freely, but it has not been possible to detonate it even when closely confined and exposed to the initial detonation of large masses of mercury fulminate.

Torpedo Practice on the Cushing. Broadside discharge.

I am happy to say that this principle has now been adopted by the Russian Government, and by our navy in its specifications for smokeless powder; but they have, I think unwisely, selected a cellulose nitrate containing 12.5 per cent or less of nitrogen instead of that of the highest nitration.

This work was completed, a factory established, and the processes well marked out when I left the torpedo station in 1892. Besides this, there were then already commercial works established elsewhere in this country for the manufacture of the nitroglycerin-nitrocellulose powders of the ballistite class, while large quantities of many varieties could be easily procured abroad. Considering these facts, and that France and Germany had already adopted smokeless powders in 1887, that Italy adopted one in 1888, and England about the same time, it is unpardonable that our services should not yet have adopted any of the smokeless powders available when we were drawn into the conflict with Spain.

Besides their use as ballistic agents, gun cotton, dynamite, and explosive gelatin in their ordinary condition have found employment and been adopted as service explosives in military and naval mining, as their great energy and the violence with which they explode, even when unconfined, especially adapt them for use in the various kinds of torpedoes and mines which are in vogue in the service.

Launching Patrick Torpedo from the Ways.

One form of these torpedoes was attached to the end of a spar or pole which was rigged out from the bow of a launch or vessel so that it could be thrust under the enemy’s vessel, and the detonators of such spar torpedoes were not only connected with electric generators, so that they could be fired at will, but they, in common with mines, were frequently provided with a system of levers so arranged that the enemy’s vessel fired the torpedoes and mines automatically as it came in contact with the levers. It was with such a contact-spar torpedo, containing thirty-three pounds of gun cotton, that the schooner Joseph Henry was blown up in Newport Harbor in 1884.

Patrick Torpedo under way. Moving at the rate of twenty-three knots per hour.

There are many types of the automobile torpedo. Among them the Hall, Patrick, Whitehead, and Howell may be cited. The first three are propelled by the energy resident in compressed gases; the Howell by the energy stored in a heavy fly wheel, which also, by acting on the gyroscopic principle, serves to maintain the direction imparted to the torpedo as it is launched. The Hall, Whitehead, and Howell are launched from tubes or guns by means of light powder charges, and are independent of exterior control after launching. The Patrick is launched from ways, and is controlled from the shore or boat by a wire through which an electric current may be sent to its steering mechanism. The charges are quite variable, but the war heads of the larger torpedoes contain as much as five hundred pounds of gun cotton.

[To be concluded.]

A PARADOXICAL ANARCHIST.
By Prof. CESARE LOMBROSO.

While I have had the privilege of making several indirect studies of anarchists by means of the data furnished by legal processes, the journals, and the handwriting of the subjects, I have only rarely been able to examine one directly and make those measurements and craniological determinations upon him without which any study can be only approximate, or, we might even say, hypothetical. I had, however, an opportunity a short time ago to observe a real anarchist in person, and study him according to the methods of my criminological clinic. The results have been singular, and it seems to me that they should cast some light upon the dark world of these agitators, and especially upon the phenomena of the strange contradictions presented in their life; manifestations which jurists and police officers, intent only on achieving the judicial triumph of a conviction, consider and call simulations and falsehoods.

He was a fellow who had caused a great excitement, during the crowded days of the exposition at Turin, by saying that he wanted to kill the king. In fact, he gave himself up to the police, saying that the anarchists of Alexandria were seeking the assassination of the king, and had written him a letter directing him to arm himself, but that he, wishing anything else than to commit regicide, had surrendered in order to denounce the scheme. There was no real basis of criminal intent, but our police put him in prison, and there I found him.

His physiognomy presented all the characteristics of the born criminal and of the foolhardy and sanguinary anarchist. He had flaring ears, premature and deep wrinkles, small, sinister eyes sunk back in their orbits, a hollowed flat nose, and small beard—in short, he presented an extraordinary resemblance to Ravachol, as may be seen from their portraits.

The cranium was a little smaller than the normal, and the upper part of the skull was much rounded and deformed, with a cephalic index of 91—considerably more rounded than the head of Luccheni. The horizontal fold of the hand was of a type much like that of Ravachol.

I add that the biological study, which was made directly, and therefore more satisfactorily than was practicable with Caserio and Luccheni, revealed a series of very singular anomalies; a touch six times more obtuse than the normal—six millimetres on the right, five on the left; a remarkably blunt sensitiveness to pain and dull perception of location; an extraordinarily reduced visual field, particularly in the left eye; a somewhat tremulous handwriting, and slight defects of articulation in speech; and thin hair. There was nothing very striking in his affective nature. He spoke kindly of his parents, whom he would be glad to see. But he had a blunt moral sense, and had committed frequent thefts, especially against his family, so that he had been put into a house of correction. And it was just while he was still in this establishment, at sixteen years of age, that he pretended to have been invited to attend a meeting of about thirty anarchists at Brescia, where he was made to swear, kissing a dagger, to kill the king. He described the room, and spoke of the individual persons present, and then said that he thought no more of the matter after he returned to the house; but a few days ago it had come into his mind to go to the post office, and there he had found a letter from the anarchists of Alexandria, urging him to arm himself to kill the king.

He repeated this story minutely and with great persistence, notwithstanding the postal authorities denied having given him the letter, in the face of the asseverations of the prefects that there were not thirty anarchists in Brescia, where he was in correction, and although all the facts were against him. Observe that he was in prison, that he had been there three months, and that he was told he would be likely to stay there as long as he adhered to his story.

Ravachol.

Efforts to account for the phenomenon were unsuccessful, because his friends and relatives made no mention of any traces of insanity. Light began to break upon the case when it was learned that he had attempted suicide, a few years before, in grief at the death of his mother, and also that on the day before he gave himself up he had stolen a small sum from his drunken brother. These, however, were only distant hints. The matter was fully explained when, after he had drunk a litre of wine in the prison, he began to exclaim, “Viva l’anarchio!” (Hurrah for anarchy!), “Morte al Re!” (Death to the king!), to kiss a dagger, to break various things against imaginary guards, and, after a short period of quiet, to swear and forswear himself that his companions had done what he had done, that they had shouted for anarchy, had broken the vases, and had desired to kill the king.

Visual Field (Left Eye) of Chie ... Giac ...

The thin line indicates the normal visual field (left eye).

The thick line indicates the visual field (left eye) under alcoholic excitement.

This cleared up the matter at once for me, but I wished to complete the elucidation with an experiment. I began by giving him ten, then twenty, then thirty, then forty grammes of alcohol, up to eighty. I observed that his personality began to change after forty grammes. He became somewhat insolent and suspicious, and had vague delirious imaginings of persecutions. When invited to sing anarchistic songs he refused, evidently fearing to compromise himself, but sang them voluntarily in an undertone. When the dose of alcohol was increased to ninety grammes his personality seemed immediately to undergo a full change; his touch became twice as fine (three millimetres), and his visual field increased threefold; he declared that there was a spy around. When put into his cell he sang anarchistic hymns, threatened death to the king, handled a box as if brandishing a dagger, climbed to a window and insulted the sentinel, resisted five men who tried to disarm him, and continued in this condition for eight hours.

The next day he denied having done any of these things, avowed that he was a good monarchist and a good citizen, and declared distinctly that he had not done what he had done, in the face of the concurrent testimony of several witnesses. On renewing the experiment a few days afterward with eighty grammes of alcohol, the same series of phenomena recurred—a real anarchistic raving, a genuine mania for regicide, which would certainly have ended in some act if he had not been restrained by force; and this person, who had at first presented an evident obtusity of touch and an extraordinary contraction of the visual field, now exhibited an almost normal touch of three millimetres and a visual field enlarged to triple its extent when he was sober.

On the day after this he recollected none of all the things that had happened the day before. This double personality was determined in him by alcohol, as it is in others by misery or by fanaticism, while it rests with all upon a congenital basis. The fact helps us to explain how some inoffensive man may have a type of physiognomy quite similar to that of Ravachol, showing how often there are true criminals in potency, whose physiognomy, or rather the anomalies of it, bears a prophetic relation to the crime which breaks out on the first determining circumstance. And we have here another explanation of such contradictory characters as those of Ravachol, Caserio, and Luccheni, who, having been once well-behaved, end by becoming criminals.

Applied science was defined by Sir W. Roberts Austen, in his presidential address to the Iron and Steel Institute, 1899, as “nothing but the application of pure science to particular classes of problems.”

WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO.
By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr., C. E.

I.

Of all the wonderful operations accomplished by the aid of electricity at the present time, none so completely mystifies the beholder as the action of the trolley car. The electric light, although incomprehensible to the average layman, does not excite his curiosity to the same extent. The glowing filament of an incandescent lamp or the dazzling carbon points of an arc light stimulate the inquisitive proclivities to some extent, but as the popular notion with respect to the nature of electricity is that it is some kind of fluid that can flow through wires and other things like water through a pipe, the conclusion arrived at is that the current, in its passage through the filament or the carbon points, generates a sufficient amount of heat to raise the temperature of the material to the luminous point. The fact that energy is required to raise the temperature of the mass to the incandescent point is not taken into consideration by those not versed in technical matters, owing to the fact that, as nothing moves, it is not supposed that power can be expended. When a trolley car is seen coming down the street at a high rate of speed the effect upon the mind is very different. Here we see a vast amount of weight propelled at a high velocity, and yet the only source through which the power to accomplish this result is supplied is a small wire. The mystifying cause does not stop here, for if we look further into the matter we see that the energy has to pass from the trolley wire to the car through the very small contact between it and the trolley wheel. After contemplating these facts, it appears remarkable that the energy that can creep through this diminutive passage can by any means be made to develop the force necessary to propel a car with a heavy load up a steep grade. An electrical engineer, if asked to explain the action, would say that the force of magnetic attraction was made use of to accomplish the result, but this explanation would fail to throw any light upon the subject. In what follows, it is proposed to explain the matter in a simple manner, and then it will be seen that what appears to be an incomprehensible mystery, when not understood, is, in fact, no mystery at all.

Note.—The illustrations of railway motor, generator, and switchboard ([Figs. 15], [16], [17]) were made from photographs kindly furnished by the manufacturers, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.

Electricity and magnetism are two forces that are intimately associated with each other, and, although radically different, it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain one without the other, although it is a simple matter to make one inactive under certain conditions. It is very generally understood that a magnet possesses the power of attraction, and that it will draw toward it pieces of iron, steel, and other magnets. The laws governing the attractive properties of magnets, however, are not so well understood, and many are not aware of the fact that under certain conditions one magnet will repel another, but such is nevertheless the case.

Figs. 1, 2, 3.—Diagrams illustrating the Attraction and Repulsion of Magnets.

In [Fig. 1] the lower outline, M, represents a magnet fixed in position, and the upper bar represents another magnet arranged to swing freely around the pivot a. A magnet, as is generally known, will arrange itself in a north-to-south position if suspended from its center, like a scale beam, and allowed to swing freely, and the same end will always point toward the north. On this account the ends of a magnet are called its poles, and the one that will point toward the north is designated the north pole, while the other one is the south pole. The terms north and south poles were applied to magnets centuries ago, but at the present time the ends are more commonly designated as positive and negative. In [Fig. 1] it will be noticed that the stationary magnet has its positive end upward, and this attracts the negative end of the swinging magnet. If the order of the poles is reversed, so that the positive of the swinging magnet will come opposite the positive of the stationary one, then there will be a repulsive action instead of an attraction, as is shown in [Fig. 2]. If the two negative ends were placed opposite, the effect would be the same. From this we see that to obtain an attraction we must place the magnets so that opposite poles come together, and that by reversing the order we obtain a repulsive action.

If the swinging magnet is replaced by a bar of iron, as is shown in [Fig. 3], there will be an attraction, no matter what end of the magnet may be uppermost, thus showing that either end of a magnet will attract a bar of iron. The explanation of these different actions is that when two magnets are brought into proximity to each other each one exerts its force without any regard to the other, and if the two are set to act together they will attract one another, but if set to act in opposition they will repel. When one of the bars is not a magnet, but simply a piece of iron or steel, this bar, having no attractive or repulsive force of its own, can only obey the attractive action of the other, which is the only one that exerts a force.

Figs 4, 5.—Diagrams illustrating the Method of obtaining Rotary Motion with Magnets.

In [Fig. 4] M is a magnet bent into the form of a U, commonly called a horseshoe magnet. The short bar set between the upper ends is also a magnet, and is arranged so as to revolve around the shaft s. From what has just been explained in connection with [Figs. 1 and 2] it will be understood that, with the poles as indicated by the letters, there will be an attractive force set up between the top end of the straight bar and the P end of the horseshoe, and thus rotation will be produced in the direction of the arrow. The rotation, however, will necessarily stop when the bar reaches the position shown in [Fig. 5], for then the attraction between the poles will resist further movement. If the straight bar were not a magnet, but simply a piece of iron or steel, it is evident that when in the position of [Fig. 4] the attraction would be just as much toward the right as toward the left, and if the bar were placed accurately in the central position it would not swing in either direction. It would be in the condition called, in mechanics, unstable equilibrium. In practice this condition could not be very well realized, as it would be difficult to set and retain the bar in a position where the attraction from both sides would be the same, therefore the rotation would be in one direction or the other; but whichever way the bar might move, it would only swing through one quarter of a revolution, into the horizontal position of [Fig. 5].

If we reflect upon these actions we can see that if we could destroy the magnetism of both parts before the straight bar reaches the position of [Fig. 5] it would be possible to obtain rotation through a greater distance than one quarter of a turn, for then the headway acquired by the rotating part would cause it to continue its motion. If, after the completion of one half of a revolution, we could remagnetize both parts, we would then set up an attraction between the lower end of the straight bar and the left side of the horseshoe, for then the polarity of the former would be the reverse of that shown in [Fig. 4]—that is, the lower end would be negative. By means of this second attraction we would cause the bar to rotate through the third quarter of the revolution, and if, just before completing this last quarter, we were to remove all the magnetism again, the headway would keep up the motion through the final quarter of the revolution, thus completing one full turn. From this it will be realized that if we could magnetize and demagnetize the two parts twice in each revolution a continuous rotation could be obtained.

If the magnetizing and demagnetizing action were only applied to the rotating part we would fail to keep up a continuous rotation, for, as was shown in connection with [Fig. 3], the action when the straight bar reached the position of [Fig. 5] would be the same as if it were magnetized, owing to the fact that a magnet always exerts an attraction upon a mass of iron. Suppose, however, that we were to reverse the polarity of the rotating part just as it reaches the position of [Fig. 5], then there would be two poles of the same polarity opposite each other, and, as shown in [Fig. 2], the force acting between them would be repulsive, and would push the bar around in the direction of rotation. Not only would the right-side pole of the horseshoe force the end of the bar away from it, but the negative pole, on the left side, would attract this same end, and thus a force would be exerted by the two poles of M to keep up the rotation through the next half of a circle. On reaching this last position the rotation would stop if the polarity of the revolving bar were left unchanged, for then the poles facing each other would be of opposite polarity. If, however, we again reversed the polarity, a repulsion would be set up between the poles facing each other, and thus a force would be exerted to continue the rotation. Thus we see that if the polarity of the horseshoe magnet is not disturbed it is necessary to reverse that of the rotating part to obtain a continuous motion, but if we change the magnetic conditions of both parts, then it is only necessary to magnetize and demagnetize them alternately.

From the foregoing it is seen that there are two ways in which the force of magnetism could be utilized to keep up a continuous rotation, and the question now is, Can either of them be made available in practice? To this we answer that, by the aid of the relations existing between electricity and magnetism, both can be and are made available, as will be shown in the following paragraphs:

Figs. 6, 7, 8.—Diagrams illustrating the Principles of Electro-Magnets.

In [Fig. 6] W represents a coil of wire provided with a cotton covering, so that there may be no actual contact between the adjoining convolutions. If the ends p n of this coil are connected with a source of electric energy, an electric current will flow through it, and if a bar, as indicated by N P, of iron or steel is placed within the coil it will become magnetized. If the bar is made of steel and is hardened it will retain the magnetism, and become what is called a permanent magnet; such a magnet, in fact, as we have considered in all the previous figures. If the bar is made of iron it will not retain the magnetism, but will only be a magnet as long as the electric current flows through the coil W. A magnet of the latter type is called an electro-magnet. If the iron is of poor quality—that is, from an electrical standpoint—it will require an appreciable time to lose its magnetism, but if it is soft and high grade, electrically considered, it will lose its magnetism instantly, or nearly so. If we take two bars of soft iron and arrange them side by side, as in [Fig. 7], and wind coils around them as indicated each one will become magnetized when the ends p n of the coils are connected with an electric circuit. If the lower ends of the two bars are joined by a piece, as shown at M, we will have a horseshoe electro-magnet. If we take a round disk of iron, as in [Fig. 8], and wind a coil around it, it will also become a magnet when an electric current traverses the coil. Thus it will be seen that it makes little difference what the shape of the iron may be, providing it is surrounded by a coil of wire and an electric current is passed through the latter. This being the case, it is evident that either of the processes explained in connection with [Figs. 4 and 5] can be made available for the production of a continuous rotation by the aid of electro-magnets. Suppose we make a drum, as shown in [Fig. 9], and wind a wire coil around it in the direction indicated, then when a current passes through the wire the drum will be magnetized, with poles at top and bottom. If the electric current passes through the wire from end p to end n the drum will be magnetized positively at the top and negatively at the bottom, and if the direction of the current through the wire is reversed the polarity of the drum will be reversed. If we construct a horseshoe magnet of the shape shown in [Fig. 10], and place within the circular opening between its ends the drum of [Fig. 9], we will have a device that is capable of developing a continuous rotation, providing we have suitable means for reversing the direction of the electric current through the wire coil; and this machine constitutes an electric motor in its simplest form.

Figs. 9, 10.—Diagrams illustrating the Principles of the Electric Motor.

In an electric motor the horseshoe magnet is called the field magnet, and the rotating part is called the armature, while the device by means of which the direction of the current through the armature coil is reversed is called the commutator. In this last figure it will be noticed that the coils wound upon the field magnet are represented as of wire much finer than that wound upon the armature. In actual practice machines are sometimes wound in this way, and sometimes the field wire is twice as large as that on the armature. When the field wire is very much finer than that of the armature the machine is what is known as shunt wound, which means that only a small portion of the current that passed through the armature passes through the field coils. Although with this type of winding the current that passes through the field coils is very weak, the magnetism developed thereby can be made greater than that of the armature if desired. This result is accomplished by increasing the number of turns of wire in the field coils. Thus if the current through the armature is one hundred times as strong as that through the field coils, the latter can be made to equal the effect of the former by increasing the number of turns in the proportion of one hundred to one, and if the increase is still greater the field coils will develop the strongest magnetism. The reason why a small current passing around a magnet a great many times will develop as strong a magnetization as a large current, can be readily understood when we say that the magnetism is in proportion to the total strength of the electric current that circulates around the magnet. Suppose we have two currents, one of which is one thousand times as strong as the other, then if the weak one is passed through a coil consisting of one thousand turns it will develop just as strong a magnetization as the large current passing through a coil of only one turn. This last explanation enables us to see how it is that the comparatively small current that can pass through the contact between the trolley wire and the trolley wheel can develop in the motor force sufficient to propel a heavy car up a steep grade. When that small current reaches the car motors it passes through a thousand or more turns of wire, and thus its effect is increased a corresponding number of times.

A motor having a single coil of wire upon the armature, as in [Fig. 10], would not give very satisfactory results, owing to the fact that the rotative force developed by it would not be uniform. Such motors are made in very small sizes, but never when a machine of any capacity is required. For large machines it is necessary to wind the armature with a number of coils, so that the rotating force may be uniform, and also so that the current may be reversed by the commutator without producing sparks so large as to destroy the device. When an armature is wound with a number of coils the direction of the current is reversed, by the commutator, in each coil as it reaches the point where its usefulness ends, and where, if it continued to flow in the same direction, it would act to hold the armature back. The effect of this reversal of the current in one coil after another is to maintain the polarity of the armature practically at the same point, so that the strongest pull is exerted between it and the field magnet poles at all times. To explain clearly the way in which the commutator reverses the current in one coil at a time it will be necessary to make use of a diagram illustrating what is called a ring armature. Such a diagram is shown in [Fig. 11]. The ring A is the armature core, and is made of iron; the wire coils are represented as consisting of one turn to each coil, and are marked w w w. The current enters the wire through the spring B, and passes out through C. As can be seen, the current from B can flow through the coils w w in both directions, thus dividing into two currents, each one of which will traverse one half of the wire wound upon the armature. The two half currents will meet at C. If the armature is rotated the springs B and C (which are called commutator brushes) will pass from one turn of the wire coil to another just back of it as the rotation progresses, and each time that contact is made with a new turn the direction of the current in the turn just ahead will be reversed. The current in the wire as a whole, however, will always be in the same direction—that is, in all the turns to the right of the two brushes; the current will flow toward the center of the shaft on the front side of the armature, and away from the shaft in all the turns on the left side. As the direction of the current on opposite sides of the brushes is always the same, the poles of the armature will remain under B and C, therefore the relation between the position of the poles of the armature and the field magnet will be the same substantially as that illustrated in [Fig. 10], and, as a result, the force tending to produce rotation will at all times be the greatest possible for the strength of the current used and the size of the magnets.

Armatures are wound with a number of turns of wire in each coil, unless the machine is very large, and present an appearance more like [Fig. 12]. In this figure the brushes are arranged to make contact with the outer surface of the ring C, which is the commutator. The segments s s are connected with the ends of the armature coils c c c, but are separated from each other by some kind of material that will not conduct electricity—that is, they are electrically insulated. As will be noticed from this, the armature in [Fig. 11] acts as a commutator as well as an armature, its outer surface performing the former office. In the winding the difference between [Figs. 11 and 12] is simply in the number of turns in each coil, there being one turn in [Fig. 11] and several in [Fig. 12].

Figs. 11, 12.—Diagrams illustrating the Method of winding Armatures of Electric Motors and Generators.

The armature shown in [Fig. 10] is of the type called drum armature, but it can be wound so as to produce the same result as the ring, although it is not so easy to explain this style of winding. It will be sufficient for the present explanation to say that whatever type of armature may be used, the winding is always such that the direction of the current through the wire coils is reversed progressively, so that the magnetic polarity is maintained practically at the same point; therefore there is a continuous pull between this point of the armature core and the poles of the field magnet. The commutator is secured to the armature shaft, and the brushes through which the current enters and leaves are held stationary; keeping this fact in mind, it can be seen at once that in [Fig. 12] the current will flow from the brush a through the two sides of the armature wire to brush b, hence all the coils on the right of the vertical line will be traversed by the current in the same direction—that is, either to or from the center of the shaft—and in the coils on the left the direction will be opposite, which is just the same order as was explained in connection with [Fig. 11].

Figs. 13, 14.—Diagrams illustrating the Difference between an Elec­tric Motor and a Generator.

An electric motor can be turned into an electric generator by simply reversing the direction in which the armature rotates—that is, any electric machine is either a generator or a motor. This fact can be illustrated by means of [Figs. 13 and 14], both of which show the armature and the poles of the field magnet. The first figure represents an electric motor, and, as can be seen, the pull between the N pole of the armature and the P pole of the field is in the direction of arrow b, hence the armature will rotate in the same direction, as indicated by arrow a. To obtain the polarity of the armature and field it is necessary to pass an electric current through both—that is to say, we must expend electrical energy to obtain power from the machine. As soon as the current ceases to flow, the polarity of the armature and field dies out, and the rotation of the former comes to an end. The magnetism, however, does not die out entirely; a small residue is always left, although it is never sufficient to produce rotation, and even if it were it could only cause the armature to revolve through one quarter of a turn. If, after the current has been shut off, the armature shaft is rotated in the reverse direction, as indicated by arrow a in [Fig. 14], the motion will be against the pull of the magnetism; therefore, although the poles may be very weak, an amount of power sufficient to overcome their attraction must be applied to the pulley, otherwise rotation can not be accomplished. In consequence of the backward rotation a current is generated in the armature coils, and this current, as it traverses the field coils as well as those of the armature, causes the polarity of both parts to increase. As a result of the increased polarity the resistance to rotation is increased, and more power has to be applied to the pulley. The increase in the strength of the poles results in increasing the current generated, and this in turn further increases the pole strength, so that one effect helps the other, the result being that the current, which starts with an infinitesimal strength, soon rises to the maximum capacity of the machine.

The motor shown in [Fig. 10] does not in any way resemble an electric railway motor, nevertheless the principle of action is precisely the same in both. The design of a machine of any kind has to conform to the practical requirements, and this is true of railway motors, just as it is true of printing presses, sawmills, or any other mechanism. A railway motor must be designed to run at a comparatively slow speed and to develop a strong rotative force, or torque, as it is technically called. It must also be so constructed that it will not be injured if covered with mud and water. It must be compact, strong, and light, and capable of withstanding a severe strain without giving out. To render the machine water- and mud-proof it is formed with an outer iron shell, which entirely incases the internal parts. The first railway motors were not inclosed, and the result was that they frequently came to grief from the effects of a shower of mud. When the modern inclosed type of motor, which is called the iron-clad type, first made its appearance it was frequently spoken of as the clam-shell type, and the name is not altogether inappropriate, for while the outside may be covered with mud to such an extent as to entirely obliterate the design, the interior will remain perfectly clean and dry, and therefore its effectiveness will not be impaired.

Fig. 15.—External View of Electric Railway Motor mounted upon Car-Wheel Axle.

To enable the motor to give a strong torque and run at a slow speed the number of poles in the field and armature is increased. The design of [Fig. 10] has two poles in the field and two in the armature, and is what is known as the bipolar type. Machines having more than two poles in each part are called multipolar machines. The number of poles can be increased by pairs, but not by a single pole—that is, we can have four, six, eight, or any other even number of poles, but not five, seven, or any odd number. This is owing to the fact that there must always be as many positive as negative poles, no more and no less. Railway motors at the present time are made with four poles. The external appearance can be understood from [Fig. 15], while [Fig. 16] and [Fig. 17] will serve to elucidate the internal construction. In [Fig. 15] the motor casing is marked M, and, as will be seen, it forms a complete shell. The motion of the armature shaft is transmitted to the car-wheel axle F through a pinion, which engages with a spur gear secured to the latter. In [Fig. 16] the pinion and gear are marked N and L respectively. As it is necessary that the armature shaft and the axle be kept in perfect alignment, the motor casing M is provided with suitable bearings for both, those for the armature shaft being marked P P in [Fig. 16], and one of those for the axle being marked T in [Fig. 15]. It will be understood from the foregoing that the motor is mounted so as to swing around the car-wheel axle as a center, but, as it is not desirable to have all this dead weight resting upon the wheels without any elasticity, the motor is carried by the crossbars B B, [Fig. 15], which rest upon springs s s at each end. The beam A and a similar one at the farther end of the B B bars extend out to the sides of the car truck and are suitably secured to the latter. The coils w w are the ends of the field coils and the armature connections, and to these the wires conveying the current from the trolley are connected. The cover C on top of the motor at one end closes an opening through which access to the commutator brushes is obtained. The armature is shown at H in [Fig. 16] and the commutator at K in the same figure. Directly under the armature may be seen one of the field magnet coils, it being marked R.

Fig. 16.—Railway Motor with Casing Open, showing Armature in Lower Half.

As will be noticed in [Fig. 16], the motor casing is made so as to open along the central line, and the lower half is secured to the top by means of hinges, g g, [Fig. 15], and also by a number of bolts, which are not so clearly shown. The gear wheels are also located within a casing, which ([Fig. 16]) is made so as to be readily opened whenever it becomes necessary. All the vital parts of the machine are entirely covered, and are not easily injured by mud or water.

The construction of the armature and commutator is well illustrated in [Fig. 17], which shows this part of the machine by itself. The armature is marked A, the shaft B, and the commutator C. In the diagrams, [Figs. 9, 10], [11, and 12], the wire coils are represented as wound upon the surface of the armature core, but, from [Fig. 17], it will be noticed that they are located in grooves. A railway motor armature core, when seen without the wire coils, looks very much like a wide-faced cog wheel with extra long teeth, not very well shaped for gear teeth. In [Fig. 17] the ends of the teeth are marked D, and the grooves within which the wire is wound are marked E. The coils are not wound so that their sides are on diametrically opposite sides of the armature core, but so that they may be one quarter of the circumference apart, and, as will be noticed, the wires are arranged so as to fit neatly into each other at the ends of the armature core. The bands marked F F F F are provided for the purpose of holding the wire coils within the grooves. The flanges H and I are simply shields to prevent oil, grease, or even water, if it should pass through the bearings, from being thrown upon the commutator or armature. The pinion through which the armature imparts motion to the car-wheel axle is not shown in [Fig. 17], but it is mounted upon the taper end of the shaft.

Fig. 17.—Armature of Electric Railway Motor.

An electric railway motor is a machine that is characterized by extreme simplicity (there being only one moving part), compactness, and great strength. In addition, as none of the working parts is exposed it can not be injured, no matter how much mud may accumulate upon it. One of the reasons why the electric railway motor has met with such unparalleled success is that it is a machine that can withstand the roughest kind of usage without being damaged thereby. Another reason is that an electric motor can, if called upon, develop an amount of power two or three times greater than its full-rated capacity without injury, providing the strain is not maintained too long. A steam engine or any other type of motor that has ever been used for railway propulsion if loaded beyond its capacity will come to a standstill—that is, it will be stalled—but an electric motor can not be stalled with any strain that is likely to be placed upon it. If the load is increased the motor will run slower and the current will become greater, thus increasing the pull, but the armature will continue to rotate until the current becomes so great as to burn out the insulation. A railway motor calculated to work up to twenty-five-horse power will have to develop on an average about six-or seven-horse power, but if the car runs off the track on a steep grade, and has such a heavy load that the motor is called upon to develop one-hundred-horse power for a few seconds, the machine will be equal to the occasion. This result a steam, gas, or any other type of engine can not accomplish, and it is this fact as much as anything else that has given the electric motor the control of the street-railway field.

[To be continued.]

WOMAN’S STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY IN GERMANY.
By MARY MILLS PATRICK, Ph. D.,
PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE FOR GIRLS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

It is during the latter part of the present century that a general movement has arisen to give women their rights in business life and in political and social affairs. It is the intention of this article to treat of this movement, especially in its relation to education, in Germany, where, of all civilized lands, it has had apparently the smallest results. Progress in the direction indicated has been, however, far greater than appears on the surface, and the movement is slowly taking shape in a form that will gain official recognition and support, and the way is being prepared for scholarly attainments among the women of Germany, superior, possibly, to those of the women of other nations.

There is, moreover, an ideal side to this movement in Germany not altogether found in other lands. The motive for advanced study is more largely joy in the study itself, and desire to supply the spiritual needs of an idle life. In order to understand this ideal tendency it is necessary to cast a glance backward over nearly three hundred years.

Let us begin with the contest which was waged so successfully for the development and protection of the German language, first against the Latin and later against the French. In this struggle women took a prominent part, especially through membership in the society called the “Order of the Palms,” which, before the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, united the strongest spirits of Germany for this purpose. The first woman to join this society was Sophie Elizabeth, Princess of Mecklenburg, married in 1636 to the Herzog of Braunschweig. She was followed by many others, both of the nobility and the common people, and was named by virtue of this leadership “The Deliverer.”

In the eighteenth century we have the founder of the German theater, Caroline Neuber. In the artistic sense she was the first director of the German stage, the first to turn the attention of the greatest actors of her day to the ideal side of dramatic presentation. Early in the eighteenth century women began to take up university studies. A certain Frau von Zingler received a prize from the University of Wittenberg for literary work, and the wife of Professor Gottscheds entered upon a contest for a prize in poetry with her husband.

We find some old verses published in Leipsic, in a book of students’ songs, in 1736, recognizing the fact that women attended lectures in the university there, although the reference is rather sarcastic, speaking of “beauty coming to listen in the halls of learning.”

In 1754 the first woman received her degree of Doctor of Medicine in Halle—Dorothea Christine Erxleben, née Leborin, a daughter of a physician, who attained to this result only after many years of painstaking effort. With her father’s help she studied the classics and medicine, and gradually, in spite of the objections of his brother physicians, began to practice as a doctor under her father’s protection. She is said to have cured her patients cito tuto, jucunde, and in 1742 she published a book on the right of women to study, the title of which, according to the custom of the day, included the full table of contents. This book passed through two editions, and enabled her to gain the attention of Frederick II, who was persuaded to order the University of Halle to grant her the privilege of taking her examination there. The day arrived, and the hall was crowded for the occasion; the candidate passed the ordeal in a brilliant manner, and took the oath for the doctor’s degree amid a storm of applause from the listeners present.

In the present century the germ of the movement for educational rights for women came into consciousness in Germany in the stormy year 1848, and first found expression and life through the work of two women—Louise Otto Peters and Auguste Schmidt. The former founded the Universal Association for Women in Germany, and through this society both these women worked for thirty years and did much toward preparing the way for the broader efforts of the present time.

It is a fact granted by all the educational world that scholarship attains a depth and thoroughness in Germany not found in other lands, and this very perfection has been in part the cause of the backwardness of the educational movement among the women, for a high degree of scholarship has often been acquired by the men at the expense of the devoted service of the women connected with them. Yet when the women of Germany demand their educational rights it will be to share also in the rich intellectual inheritance of their land.

The majority of the men thus far regard the movement with distrust and suspicion, but are powerless to crush it out. An amusing instance occurred last year in the family of an official in one of the large university towns. He was a conservative man who had his immediate family in a proper state of subjection, but his mother-in-law, alas! he could not control, and to his dismay she enrolled herself at the university as a Hospitant, and, in spite of the protestations of her son-in-law, she was a regular attendant upon the courses of lectures that she had elected.

The regular schools for girls in Germany, above the common schools attended by girls and boys together, are of two grades—the middle schools and the high schools. The avowed object of these schools is to fit girls for society and for the position of housewife, as Herr Dr. Bosse, the Minister of Public Instruction for the German Empire, states in his report on the condition of girls’ schools in Germany, and as he publicly declared before the German Parliament in the discussion regarding the establishment of a girls’ gymnasium in Breslau, referred to later on in this paper.

The girls’ schools established by the Government provide well for the study of the modern languages, and it is the exception to find women in the upper classes who do not speak French and English. Literature, religion, gymnastics, and needlework are also well taught. The course of study in the high school includes a little mathematics, offered under the name of reckoning, and sufficient to enable a woman to keep the accounts of a household, and also a little science of the kind that can be learned without a knowledge of mathematics. Let me quote a paragraph from the report of the Minister of Public Instruction for the year 1898 in regard to the aim of the mathematical course in the girls’ high schools: “Accuracy in reckoning with numbers and the ability to use numbers in the common relations of life, especially in housekeeping. Great weight is laid upon quick mental computations, but in all grades the choice of problems should be such as especially apply to the keeping of a house.” This is the opportunity which is offered to girls by the Government in the department of mathematics! In addition to the two grades of schools mentioned there are seminaries in many of the large cities for the purpose of educating women teachers. The instructors in these seminaries are well prepared for their positions, are mostly men, and the instruction given is very superior to that given in the girls’ high schools. Latin and Greek are, however, not studied in these seminaries, and mathematics and science are expurgated, we might say, of points that might prove difficult for the feminine intellect.

The ability to learn Latin and Greek seems in the German mind to especially mark the dividing line between the masculine and feminine brain. The writer was at one time studying a subject in Greek philosophy, in the City Library of Munich, requiring the use of a number of Greek and Latin books, and it was amusing to notice the astonishment of the men present that a woman should know the classic languages!

The women who hold certificates from the seminaries are allowed, according to a new law passed in 1894, to continue their studies and to take the higher teachers’ examinations. This is considered a great step in advance, for a woman who has successfully passed this latter examination can hold any position in the girls’ schools, and can even be director of such a school.

That German women have long been discontented with the education provided for them by the Government is proved by the fact that the number of higher institutions offering private opportunities to girls is constantly increasing. As far back as 1868 the Victoria Lyceum was founded by a Scotch woman—Miss Georgina Archer—at her own expense and on her own responsibility, and this institution was well sustained from the beginning. It is now under the patronage of the Empress Frederick, and offers courses to women that run parallel to a certain extent with those given on the same subjects in the university. Professors from the university lecture in the Victoria Lyceum, but a young woman who had listened to the same professor in both places informed me that he (perhaps unconsciously) simplified his lectures very much for the Victoria Lyceum. Fraulein Anna von Cotta is the director of the institution. Among the women who teach there we note the name of the well-known Fraulein Lange, who lectures on psychology and German literature.

There are several girls’ gymnasia in Germany which testify to the demand for higher education. These institutions are all but one private, and three of them—one in Leipsic, one in Berlin, and a third, opened in October, 1898, in Königsberg—are called “gymnasial courses,” and are for girls who have finished the girls’ high school, and who must pass entrance examinations in order to be received into them.

There has been for some time a girls’ gymnasium which corresponds exactly to those for boys in Carlsruhe, under the auspices of the “Society for Reform in the Education of Women,” which receives girls of twelve who must have finished the six lower classes of a girls’ school. This society, to which the girls of Germany owe much, is planning to open another gymnasium in Hannover, to which girls will be received from the junior class of the girls’ high school; the course of study will occupy five years, and will fit girls for the same official examinations as the boys’ gymnasia. The language courses in the highest class will be elective, providing either for Greek or the modern languages, but Latin is obligatory in all the classes. The girls from all these gymnasia are debarred from taking any of the official examinations for which their studies have prepared them.

The next step in the matter of gymnasial education for girls was what might have been expected. The people of the wide-awake city of Breslau voted, by an overwhelming majority, to establish a girls’ gymnasium under the same laws and furnishing the same advantages as the boys’ gymnasia. The completed plan was sent to the Minister of Public Instruction in Berlin in January, 1898, for approval, with the intention of opening the gymnasium at Easter, for which twenty-six girls were already enrolled. Herr Dr. Bosse, however, foreseeing the results such an undertaking would involve, consulted the other departments of the ministry, and two months later a decided refusal came like a thunderbolt upon the people of Breslau. On the 30th of April, 1898, Herr Dr. Bosse was called to account in the Reichstag for his action in the matter, which he justified on the ground that Government approval of girls’ gymnasia would mean the acceptance of the diploma for matriculation in the universities and the opening to women of all Government professional examinations, and that to have granted it would have been to take a step in the direction of the modern movement for women which could never have been recalled, and would open the lecture rooms of Germany in general to women. He contended, further, that the founding of official gymnasia for girls would delegate the existing girls’ high school to a secondary place, an institution which had been planned thoughtfully by the Government for the purpose of educating women in the best manner, not to become rivals of men, but help-meets and able housekeepers.

The demand of the people of Breslau, Dr. Bosse said, was an unnatural one, and his refusal was founded on the fear that such a movement would increase and threaten the social foundations of all Germany, as the idea that women can compete with men in all careers is a false one.

The petition of the magistrate of Breslau was supported in the discussion by some of the national-liberal, free-conservative, and Polish representatives. These took the broad ground that girls have a right to equal education with boys, and that the educational institutions of Germany which have so long stood at the head of those of the world should not, in the matter of education of women, leave the question to be decided according to the whims of private individuals.

Some of the arguments of those who spoke in favor of the enterprise were amusing. One said that the girls of Germany would be grateful if the Minister of Public Instruction would furnish them with husbands, but, as there were not enough to go around, the others should have some career provided for them. Another, that about forty per cent of the girls of the higher classes no longer marry, and they should not be allowed to suffer the consequences of the fact that young men of the present day do not care to marry, but they have a right that the way be shown them to such careers as are suited to their feminine nature.

An objector said that he could not understand how any man of pedagogical culture could approve of a girls’ gymnasium, for it is evident that any such progress for women as that would imply must be at the expense of the men, who would gain less on account of the increased number of candidates for work of all kinds and would more seldom be able to offer the best of all existences to a woman—that of wifehood. The city of Breslau was obliged, therefore, to give up the undertaking for the present, but the agitation of the question has probably prepared the way for more extended plans in the future in the same direction in Prussia.

A similar undertaking in Carlsruhe, in Baden, has met with better success, and resulted in the opening of the first official gymnasium for girls in Germany, in September, 1898. This gymnasium was planned about the same time as that of Breslau, and as the permission of the Minister of Public Instruction in Baden was obtained without difficulty, the institution came into existence according to the will of the people of Carlsruhe. Seventy-nine of the members of the Bürgerauschuss voted in favor of the undertaking in the meeting in which the final action was taken early in the summer of 1898. The Christian-conservative party only decidedly opposed it. The leader of this party was very much excited over the matter, and called out, when the action was taken, “I ask you, gentlemen, on your honor, if any of you would marry a girl from a gymnasium?”

The opening of the Government gymnasium will remove the necessity for continuing the private one in Carlsruhe, under the society in charge of it, and leave that society free to direct its efforts elsewhere.

There had already been several references to the general subject of the education of women in the Reichstag before the question of the gymnasium in Breslau came up. In January, 1898, Prince Carolath spoke in favor of founding several girls’ gymnasia, and admitting women legally to the universities and to pedagogical and to medical state professional examinations, remarking that in all other civilized lands the universities are more open to women than in Germany.

Coming now to the present attitude of the universities to the higher education of women, we find that a great change has taken place during the last few years. While it is still the fact that no German woman can matriculate in any university in Germany, yet the problem of the stand which the universities should take is working out its own solution in the right direction.

The University of Berlin, the largest and in many respects the leading one, has made progress in the matter, although women still work there under great limitations. The cause was injured at the outset in Berlin by the fact that women, often foreigners, who had not the required preparation, rushed into lecture rooms which were open to them from motives of curiosity. This caused such strong feeling among the professors that in one instance a professor, on entering his classroom, saw a lady sitting in the rear, walked up to her, offered her his arm, and led her out of the room.

The first step in the right direction has been to demand either a diploma from some well-known institution, or, as that could not be complied with by German women, the certificate of the teachers’ examinations. The possessors of such credentials may attend lectures in any course, where the professor is willing, as Hospitants. The conditions under which women may attend the University of Berlin are the following:

1. A written permission must be obtained from the curator of the university on presentation of a satisfactory diploma, a passport, and, by Russian applicants, a written permission from the police authorities to study in Germany.

2. Written permission from the rector.

3. Written permission from the professors or docents whose lectures the applicant wishes to attend.

4. The permission from the rector must be obtained each semester, but from the curator only when a new subject is chosen.

5. The same fee is demanded from women as from men, and women are requested to always carry with them, in attending lectures, the written permission from the rector.

At the public installation of Rector Waldeyer, in October, 1898, both in his address and in that of the resigning rector, Geheimrath Professor Schmoller, the subject of education of women received attention.

Geheimrath Schmoller said that the first condition of further concessions in the matter must be better preparation on the part of the women, and when this deficiency should be provided for the faculty of the university could make the conditions of their attending lectures lighter, perhaps even the same as those for men. Geheimrath Waldeyer made the subject one of three to which he gave equal space, and which he said called for immediate attention in the educational affairs of Germany. The other two subjects were the relation of technical schools to the universities, and university extension. Geheimrath Waldeyer said that he had formerly been opposed to the higher education of women, but had been led to change his mind from seeing that the movement is not an artificial one, but rather the natural result of the present social condition of society, and on the simple ground of right should be forwarded in a legitimate manner. He spoke strongly, however, in favor of the establishment of separate universities for men and women, on account of the natural differences in the working of their minds and the necessity of adapting methods in both instances to their needs.

The number of women in the University of Berlin has increased very rapidly, being in the autumn of 1896 thirty-nine, in the winter of the same year ninety-five. The next year the largest number was nearly two hundred, and in 1897–’98 three hundred and fifty-two were in all inscribed. Nearly half of these were German women. Most of the women in the University of Berlin are in the department of philosophy, but several are pursuing courses in theology and law. These women are of all ages. One from Charlottenburg was sixty-two years old, and, besides this honored lady, there were five others whose white hair testified to an age of from fifty to fifty-five, while the youngest of all was a Bulgarian girl of seventeen.

The first woman to take her degree in the University of Berlin was Dr. Else Neumann, in December, 1898, in physics and mathematics, who succeeded, notwithstanding the difficulties to be contended with in the absence of preparatory study and the necessity for private preparation.

It is not, however, only in Berlin that the desire for university study has taken a strong hold on the German women, but it is shown in other places, not simply by the fact that many of them attend the universities of Switzerland, which are everywhere open to them, but by their also obtaining the advantages in their own land which have so long been denied them.

Heidelberg was the first university in Germany to grant the doctor examination to women, and this was done several years before lectures were open to them. The writer called upon Prof. Kuno Fischer one day in the summer of 1890 to ask permission to attend a lecture which he was to give that afternoon on Helmholtz. He said that he was very sorry indeed, but he was obliged to refuse women the privilege of listening to him, as they were not admitted to the university. I asked when they would probably be admitted, and he replied, speaking in French, “Jamais, mademoiselle, jamais!” Four years later, however, a friend of mine took her degree there in the department of philosophy, thus proving that the wisest of men sometimes make mistakes.

Women have for years studied as Hospitants in the Universities of Leipsic and Göttingen, but since November, 1897, the conditions of their admission in Göttingen have been made more difficult.

In Kiel the professors who are not willing to allow women to attend their lectures put a star opposite their names in the university programme of the lecture courses, and this star is unfortunately seen opposite the names of all the professors of theology and many of those of medicine. Women began to attend the University of Tübingen in the autumn of 1898, Dr. Maria Gräfin von Linden being the first, who was soon followed by many others.

The degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa has been conferred on two women by the University of Munich—in December, 1897, on the Princess Theresa, and in October, 1898, on Lady Blennerhassett, an author, for her researches in modern languages. The Dean of the Philosophical Faculty, accompanied by three professors, visited her in her home in Munich to communicate to her the honor which she had received.

The University of Breslau offers better conditions to women than are provided elsewhere, as might naturally be expected, especially in the department of medicine.

Germany was represented in the International Council of Women, held in London in June of this present year, by Frau Anna Simson, Frau Bieber Boehm, and Fran Marie Stritt, of Dresden.

It was also decided at this congress that the next Quinquennial International Council of Women should be held in Berlin, and it will without doubt be an occasion that will mark an era in the history of the progress of liberty for the women of Germany.

SCENES ON THE PLANETS.
By GARRETT P. SERVISS.

Although amateurs have played a conspicuous part in telescopic discovery among the heavenly bodies, yet every owner of a small telescope should not expect to attach his name to a star. But he certainly can do something perhaps more useful to himself and his friends. He can follow the discoveries that others, with better appliances and opportunities, have made, and can thus impart to those discoveries that sense of reality which only comes from seeing things with one’s own eyes. There are hundreds of things continually referred to in books and writings on astronomy which have but a misty and uncertain significance for the mere reader, but which he can easily verify for himself with the aid of a telescope of four or five inches’ aperture, and which, when actually confronted by the senses, assume a meaning, a beauty, and an importance that would otherwise entirely have escaped him. Henceforth every allusion to the objects he has seen is eloquent with intelligence and suggestion.

Take, for instance, the planets that have been the subject of so many observations and speculations of late years—Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. For the ordinary reader much that is said about them makes very little impression upon his mind, and is almost unintelligible. He reads of the “snow patches” on Mars, but unless he has actually seen the whitened poles of that planet he can form no clear image in his mind of what is meant. So the “belts of Jupiter” is a confusing and misleading phrase for almost everybody except the astronomer, and the rings of Saturn are beyond comprehension unless they have actually been seen.

It is true that pictures and photographs partially supply the place of observation, but by no means so successfully as many imagine. The most realistic drawings and the sharpest photographs in astronomy are those of the moon, yet I think nobody would maintain that any picture in existence is capable of imparting a really satisfactory visual impression of the appearance of the lunar globe. Nobody who has not seen the moon with a telescope—it need not be a large one—can form a correct and definite idea of what the moon is like.

The satisfaction of viewing with one’s own eyes some of the things the astronomers write and talk about is very great, and the illumination that comes from such viewing is equally great. Just as in foreign travel the actual seeing of a famous city, a great gallery filled with masterpieces, or a battlefield where decisive issues have been fought out illuminates, for the traveler’s mind, the events of history, the criticisms of artists, and the occurrences of contemporary life in foreign lands, so an acquaintance with the sights of the heavens gives a grasp on astronomical problems that can not be acquired in any other way. The person who has been in Rome, though he may be no archæologist, gets a far more vivid conception of a new discovery in the Forum than does the reader who has never seen the city of the Seven Hills; and the amateur who has looked at Jupiter with a telescope, though he may be no astronomer, finds that the announcement of some change among the wonderful belts of that cloudy planet has for him a meaning and an interest in which the ordinary reader can not share.

Jupiter seen with a Five-Inch Telescope. Shadow of a satellite visible.

Jupiter is perhaps the easiest of all the planets for the amateur observer. A three-inch telescope gives beautiful views of the great planet, although a four-inch or a five-inch is of course better. But there is no necessity for going beyond six inches’ aperture in any case. For myself, I think I should care for nothing better than my five-inch of fifty-two inches’ focal distance. With such a glass more details are visible in the dark belts and along the bright equatorial girdle than can be correctly represented in a sketch before the rotation of the planet has altered their aspect, while the shadows of the satellites thrown upon the broad disk, and the satellites themselves when in transit, can be seen sometimes with exquisite clearness. The contrasting colors of various parts of the disk are also easily studied with a glass of four or five inches’ aperture.

There is a charm about the great planet when he rides high in a clear evening sky, lording it over the fixed stars with his serene, unflickering luminousness, which no possessor of a telescope can resist. You turn the glass upon him and he floats into the field of view, with his cortége of satellites, like a yellow-and-red moon, attended by four miniatures of itself. You instantly comprehend Jupiter’s mastery over his satellites—their allegiance is evident. No one would for an instant mistake them for stars accidentally seen in the same field of view. Although it requires a very large telescope to magnify their disks to measurable dimensions, yet the smallest glass differentiates them at once from the fixed stars. There is something almost startling in their appearance of companionship with the huge planet—this sudden verification to your eyes of the laws of gravitation and of central forces. It is easy, while looking at Jupiter amid his family, to understand the consternation of the churchmen when Galileo’s telescope revealed that miniature of the solar system, and it is gratifying to gaze upon one of the first battle grounds whereon science gained a decisive victory for truth.

The swift changing of place among the satellites, as well as the rapidity of Jupiter’s axial rotation, give the attraction of visible movement to the Jovian spectacle. The planet rotates in four or five minutes less than ten hours—in other words, it makes two turns and four tenths of a third turn while the earth is turning once upon its axis. A point on Jupiter’s equator moves about twenty-seven thousand miles, or considerably more than the entire circumference of the earth, in a single hour. The effect of this motion is clearly perceptible to the observer with a telescope on account of the diversified markings and colors of the moving disk, and to watch it is one of the greatest pleasures that the telescope affords.

It would be possible, when the planet is favorably situated, to witness an entire rotation of Jupiter in the course of one night, but the beginning and end of the observation would be more or less interfered with by the effects of low altitude, to say nothing of the tedium of so long a vigil. But by looking at the planet for an hour at a time in the course of a few nights every side of it will have been presented to view. Suppose the first observation is made between nine and ten o’clock on any night which may have been selected. Then on the following night between ten and eleven o’clock Jupiter will have made two and a half turns upon his axis, and the side diametrically opposite to that seen on the first night will be visible. On the third night between eleven and twelve o’clock Jupiter will have performed five complete rotations, and the side originally viewed will be visible again.

Eclipses and Transits of Jupiter’s Satellites. Satellite I and the shadow of III are seen in transit. IV is about to be eclipsed.

Owing to the rotundity of the planet, only the central part of the disk is sharply defined, and markings which can be easily seen when centrally located become indistinct or disappear altogether when near the limb. Approach to the edge of the disk also causes a foreshortening which sometimes entirely alters the aspect of a marking. It is advisable, therefore, to confine the attention mainly to the middle of the disk. As time passes, clearly defined markings on or between the cloudy belts will be seen to approach the western edge of the disk, gradually losing their distinctness and altering their appearance, while from the region of indistinct definition near the eastern edge other markings slowly emerge and advance toward the center, becoming sharper in outline and more clearly defined in color as they swing into view.

Watching these changes, the observer is carried away by the reflection that he actually sees the turning of another distant world upon its axis of rotation, just as he might view the revolving earth from a standpoint on the moon. Belts of reddish clouds, many thousands of miles across, are stretched along on each side of the equator of the great planet he is watching; the equatorial belt itself, brilliantly lemon-hued, or sometimes ruddy, is diversified with white globular and balloon-shaped masses, which almost recall the appearance of summer cloud domes hanging over a terrestrial landscape, while toward the poles shadowy expanses of gradually deepening blue or blue-gray suggest the comparative coolness of those regions which lie always under a low sun.

After a few nights’ observation even the veriest amateur finds himself recognizing certain shapes or appearances—a narrow dark belt running slopingly across the equator from one of the main cloud zones to the other, or a rift in one of the colored bands, or a rotund white mass apparently floating above the equator, or a broad scallop in the edge of a belt like that near the site of the celebrated “red spot,” whose changes of color and aspect since its first appearance in 1878, together with the light it has thrown on the constitution of Jupiter’s disk, have all but created a new Jovian literature, so thoroughly and so frequently have they been discussed.

And, having noticed these recurring features, the observer will begin to note their relations to one another, and will thus be led to observe that some of them gradually drift apart, while others drift nearer; and after a time, without any aid from books or hints from observatories, he will discover for himself that there is a law governing the movements on Jupiter’s disk. Upon the whole he will find that the swiftest motions are near the equator, and the slowest near the poles, although, if he is persistent and has a good eye and a good instrument, he will note exceptions to this rule, probably arising, as Professor Hough suggests, from differences of altitude in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Finally, he will conclude that the colossal globe before him is, exteriorly at least, a vast ball of clouds and vapors, subject to tremendous vicissitudes, possibly intensely heated, and altogether different in its physical constitution, although made up of similar elements, from the earth. Then, if he chooses, he can sail off into the delightful cloud-land of astronomical speculation, and make of the striped and spotted sphere of Jove just such a world as may please his fancy—for a world of some kind it certainly is.

For many observers the satellites of Jupiter possess even greater attractions than the gigantic ball itself. As I have already remarked, their movements are very noticeable and lend a wonderful animation to the scene. Although they bear classical names, they are almost universally referred to by their Roman numbers, beginning with the innermost, whose symbol is I, and running outward in regular order II, III, and IV. The minute satellite much nearer to the planet than any of the others, which Mr. Barnard discovered with the Lick telescope in 1892, is called the fifth, although in the order of distance it would be the first. In size and importance, however, it can not rank with its comparatively gigantic brothers. Of course, no amateur’s telescope can show the faintest glimpse of it.

Satellite I, situated at a mean distance of 261,000 miles from Jupiter’s center—about 22,000 miles farther than the moon is from the earth—is urged by its master’s overpowering attraction to a speed of 320 miles per minute, so that it performs a complete revolution in about forty-two hours and a half. The others, of course, move more slowly, but even the most distant performs its revolution in several hours less than sixteen days. The plane of their orbits is presented edgewise toward the earth, from which it follows that they appear to move back and forth nearly in straight lines, some apparently approaching the planet, while others are receding from it. The changes in their relative positions, which can be detected from hour to hour, are very striking night after night, and lead to a great variety of arrangements always pleasing to the eye.

The most interesting phenomena that they present are their transits and those of their round, black shadows across the face of the planet; their eclipses by the planet’s shadow, when they disappear and afterward reappear with astonishing suddenness; and their occultations by the globe of Jupiter. Upon the whole, the most interesting thing for the amateur to watch is the passage of the shadows across Jupiter. The distinctness with which they can be seen when the air is steady is likely to surprise, as it is certain to delight, the observer. When it falls upon a light part of the disk the shadow of a satellite is as black and sharply outlined as a drop of ink; on a dark-colored belt it can not so easily be seen.

It is more difficult to see the satellites themselves in transit. There appears to be some difference among them as to visibility in such circumstances. Owing to their luminosity they are best seen when they have a dark belt for a background, and are least easily visible when they appear against a bright portion of the planet. Every observer should provide himself with a copy of the American Ephemeris for the current year, wherein he will find all the information needed to enable him to identify the various satellites and to predict, by turning Washington mean time into his own local time, the various phenomena of the transits and eclipses.

While a faithful study of the phenomena of Jupiter is likely to lead the student to the conclusion that the greatest planet in our system is not a suitable abode for life, yet the problem of its future, always fascinating to the imagination, is open; and whosoever may be disposed to record his observations in a systematic manner may at least hope to render aid in the solution of that problem.

Saturn seen with a Five-Inch Telescope.

Saturn ranks next to Jupiter in attractiveness for the observer with a telescope. The rings are almost as mystifying to-day as they were in the time of Herschel. There is probably no single telescopic view that can compare in the power to excite wonder with that of Saturn when the ring system is not so widely opened but that both poles of the planet project beyond it. One returns to it again and again with unflagging interest, and the beauty of the spectacle quite matches its singularity. When Saturn is in view the owner of a telescope may become a recruiting officer for astronomy by simply inviting his friends to gaze at the wonderful planet. The silvery color of the ball, delicately chased with half-visible shadings, merging one into another from the bright equatorial band to the bluish polar caps; the grand arch of the rings, sweeping across the planet with a perceptible edging of shadow; their sudden disappearance close to the margin of the ball, where they go behind it and fall straightway into night; the manifest contrast of brightness, if not of color, between the two principal rings; the fine curve of the black line marking the 1,600-mile gap between their edges—these are some of the elements of a picture that can never fade from the memory of any one who has once beheld it in its full glory.

Saturn’s moons are by no means so interesting to watch as are those of Jupiter. Even the effect of their surprising number (raised to nine by Professor Pickering’s discovery last spring of a new one which is almost at the limit of visibility, and was found only with the aid of photography) is lost, because most of them are too faint to be seen with ordinary telescopes, or, if seen, to make any notable impression upon the eye. The two largest—Titan and Japetus—are easily found, and Titan is conspicuous, but they give none of that sense of companionship and obedience to a central authority which strikes even the careless observer of Jupiter’s system. This is owing partly to their more deliberate movements and partly to the inclination of the plane of their orbits, which seldom lies edgewise toward the earth.

Polar View of Saturn’s System. The orbits of the five nearest satellites are shown. The dotted line outside the rings shows Roche’s limit.

But the charm of the peerless rings is abiding, and the interest of the spectator is heightened by recalling what science has recently established as to their composition. It is marvelous to think, while looking upon their broad, level surfaces—as smooth, apparently, as polished steel, though thirty thousand miles across—that they are in reality vast circling currents of meteoritic particles or dust, through which run immense waves, condensation and rarefaction succeeding one another as in the undulations of sound. Yet, with all their inferential tumult, they may actually be as soundless as the depths of interstellar space, for Struve has shown that those spectacular rings possess no appreciable mass, and, viewed from Saturn itself, their (to us) gorgeous seeming bow may appear only as a wreath of shimmering vapor spanning the sky and paled by the rivalry of the brighter stars.

In view of the theory of tidal action disrupting a satellite within a critical distance from the center of its primary, the thoughtful observer of Saturn will find himself wondering what may have been the origin of the rings. The critical distance referred to, and which is known as Roche’s limit, lies, according to the most trustworthy estimates, just outside the outermost edge of the rings. It follows that if the matter composing the rings were collected into a single body that body would inevitably be torn to pieces and scattered into rings; and so, too, if instead of one there were several or many bodies of considerable size occupying the place of the rings, all of these bodies would be disrupted and scattered. If one of the present moons of Saturn—for instance, Mimas, the innermost hitherto discovered—should wander within the magic circle of Roche’s limit it would suffer a similar fate, and its particles would be disseminated among the rings. One can hardly help wondering whether the rings have originated from the demolition of satellites—Saturn devouring his children, as the ancient myths represent, and encircling himself, amid the fury of destruction, with the dust of his disintegrated victims. At any rate, the amateur student of Saturn will find in the revelations of his telescope the inspirations of poetry as well as those of science, and the bent of his mind will determine which he shall follow.

Professor Pickering’s discovery of a ninth satellite of Saturn, situated at the great distance of nearly eight million miles from the planet, serves to call attention to the vastness of the “sphere of activity” over which the ringed planet reigns. Surprising as the distance of the new satellite appears when compared with that of our moon, it is yet far from the limit where Saturn’s control ceases and that of the sun becomes predominant. That limit, according to Prof. Asaph Hall’s calculation, is nearly 30,000,000 miles from Saturn’s center, while if our moon were removed to a distance a little exceeding 500,000 miles the earth would be in danger of losing its satellite through the elopement of Artemis with Apollo.

Although, as already remarked, the satellites of Saturn are not especially interesting to the amateur telescopist, yet it may be well to mention that, in addition to Titan and Japetus, the satellite named Rhea, the fifth in order of distance from the planet, is not a difficult object for a three-or four-inch telescope, and two others considerably fainter than Rhea—Dione (the fourth) and Tethys (the third)—may be seen in favorable circumstances. The others—Mimas (the first), Enceladus (the second), and Hyperion (the seventh)—are beyond the reach of all but large telescopes. The ninth satellite, which has received the name of Phœbe, is much fainter than any of the others, its stellar magnitude being reckoned by its discoverer at about 15.5.

Mars, the best advertised of all the planets, is nearly the least satisfactory to look at except during a favorable opposition, like those of 1877 and 1892, when its comparative nearness to the earth renders some of its characteristic features visible in a small telescope. The next favorable opposition will occur in 1907.

Mars seen with a Five-Inch Telescope.

When well seen with an ordinary telescope, say a four-or five-inch glass, Mars shows three peculiarities that may be called fairly conspicuous—viz., its white polar cap, its general reddish, or orange-yellow, hue, and its dark markings, one of the clearest of which is the so-called Syrtis Major, or, as it was once named on account of its shape, “Hourglass Sea.” Other dark expanses in the southern hemisphere are not difficult to be seen, although their outlines are more or less misty and indistinct. The gradual diminution of the polar cap, which certainly behaves in this respect as a mass of snow and ice would do, is a most interesting spectacle. As summer advances in the southern hemisphere of Mars, the white circular patch surrounding the pole becomes smaller, night after night, until it sometimes disappears entirely even from the ken of the largest telescopes. At the same time the dark expanses become more distinct, as if the melting of the polar snows had supplied them with a greater depth of water, or the advance of the season had darkened them with a heavier growth of vegetation.

The phenomena mentioned above are about all that a small telescope will reveal. Occasionally a dark streak, which large instruments show is connected with the mysterious system of “canals,” can be detected, but the “canals” themselves are far beyond the reach of any telescope except a few of the giants handled by experienced observers. The conviction which seems to have forced its way into the minds even of some conservative astronomers, that on Mars the conditions, to use the expression of Professor Young, “are more nearly earthlike than on any other of the heavenly bodies which we can see with our present telescopes,” is sufficient to make the planet a center of undying interest notwithstanding the difficulties with which the amateur is confronted in his endeavors to see the details of its markings.

The Illumination of Venus’s Atmosphere at the beginning of her Transit across the Sun.

In Venus “the fatal gift of beauty” may be said, as far as our observations are concerned, to be matched by the equally fatal gift of brilliance. Whether it be due to atmospheric reflection alone or to the prevalence of clouds, Venus is so bright that considerable doubt exists as to the actual visibility of any permanent markings on her surface. The detailed representations of the disk of Venus by Mr. Percival Lowell, showing in some respects a resemblance to the stripings of Mars, can not yet be accepted as decisive. More experienced astronomers than Mr. Lowell have been unable to see at all things which he draws with a fearless and unhesitating pencil. That there are some shadowy features of the planet’s surface to be seen in favorable circumstances is probable, but the time for drawing a “map of Venus” has not yet come.

The previous work of Schiaparelli lends a certain degree of probability to Mr. Lowell’s observations on the rotation of Venus. This rotation, according to the original announcement of Schiaparelli, is probably performed in the same period as the revolution around the sun. In other words, Venus, if Schiaparelli and Lowell are right, always presents the same side to the sun, possessing, in consequence, a day hemisphere and a night hemisphere which never interchange places. This condition is so antagonistic to all our ideas of what constitutes habitability for a planet that one hesitates to accept it as proved, and almost hopes that it may turn out to have no real existence. Venus, as the twin of the earth in size, is a planet which the imagination, warmed by its sunny aspect, would fain people with intelligent beings a little fairer than ourselves; but how can such ideas be reconciled with the picture of a world one half of which is subjected to the merciless rays of a never-setting sun, while the other half is buried in the fearful gloom and icy chill of unending night?

Any amateur observer who wishes to test his eyesight and his telescope in the search of shades or markings on the disk of Venus by the aid of which the question of its rotation may finally be settled should do his work while the sun is still above the horizon. Schiaparelli adopted that plan years ago, and others have followed him with advantage. The diffused light of day serves to take off the glare which is so serious an obstacle to the successful observation of Venus when seen against a dark sky. Knowing the location of Venus in the sky, which can be ascertained from the Ephemeris, the observer can find it by day. If his telescope is not permanently mounted and provided with “circles” this may not prove an easy thing to do, yet a little perseverance and ingenuity will effect it. One way is to find, with a star chart, some star whose declination is the same, or very nearly the same, as that of Venus, and which crosses the meridian say twelve hours ahead of her. Then set the telescope upon that star, when it is on the meridian at night, and leave it there, and the next day, twelve hours after the star crossed the meridian, look into your telescope and you will see Venus, or, if not, a slight motion of the tube one way or another will bring her into view.

For many amateurs the phases of Venus will alone supply sufficient interest for telescopic observation. The changes in her form, from that of a round full moon when she is near superior conjunction to the gibbous, and finally the half-moon phase as she approaches her eastern elongation, followed by the gradually narrowing and lengthening crescent, until she becomes a mere silver sickle as she swings in between the sun and the earth, form a succession of delightful pictures for the eye.

Not very much can be said for Mercury as a telescopic object. The little planet presents phases like those of Venus, and, according to Schiaparelli and Lowell, it resembles Venus in its rotation, keeping always the same side to the sun. In fact, Schiaparelli’s discovery of this peculiarity in the case of Mercury preceded the similar discovery in the case of Venus. There are perceptible markings on Mercury which have reminded some astronomers of the appearance of the moon, and there are various reasons for thinking that the planet can not be a suitable abode for living beings, at least for beings resembling the inhabitants of the earth. Uranus and Neptune are too far away to present any attraction for amateur observation.

PROFESSOR WARD ON “NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM.”
By HERBERT SPENCER.

In a recent advertisement, Professor Ward’s work entitled as above was characterized as “one of the most important contributions to philosophy made in our time in England,” and this was joined with the prophecy that it “may even do something to restore to philosophy the prominent place it once occupied in English thought.” Along with laudatory expressions, I have observed in some notices reprobation of the manner adopted by Professor Ward in his attack upon my views—I might almost say upon me; and one of the reviewers gives examples of the words he uses—“ridiculous,” “absurd,” “blunder,” “nonsense,” “amazing fallacy,” “our oracle.”

When, some time ago, I glanced at one of the volumes, I came upon a passage which at once stamped the book by displaying the attitude of the writer; but, being then otherwise occupied, I decided not to disturb myself by reading more. Now, however, partly by the reviews I have seen, and partly by the comments of a friend, I have been shown that I can not let the book pass without remark. The assumption that a critic states rightly the doctrine he criticises is so generally made, that in the absence of proof to the contrary his criticisms are almost certain to be regarded as valid. And when the critic is a Cambridge Professor and an Honorary LL. D., the assumption will be thought fully warranted.

* * * * *

Let me set out by quoting some passages disclosing the kind of feeling by which Professor Ward’s criticisms are influenced, if not prompted. In his preface he says:—

“When at length Naturalism is forced to take account of the facts of life and mind, we find the strain on the mechanical theory is more than it will bear. Mr. Spencer has blandly to confess that ‘two volumes’ of his Synthetic Philosophy are missing, the volumes that should connect inorganic with biological, evolution.”

Respecting the first of these sentences, I have only to remark that I have said (as in First Principles, § 62) and repeatedly implied, that force or energy in the sense which a “mechanical theory” connotes, can not be that Ultimate Cause whence all things proceed, and that there is as much warrant for calling it spiritual as for calling it material. As was asserted at the close of that work (p. 558), the “implications are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic; and no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic”; and as was contended in the Principles of Sociology, § 659, “the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as material, is the same Power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness.”

But it is to the second sentence I here chiefly draw attention. Whether or not there be a sarcasm behind the words “blandly to confess,” it is clear that the sentence is meant to imply some dereliction on my part. Now in the programme of the Synthetic Philosophy, the division dealing with inorganic nature was avowedly omitted, “because even without it the scheme is too extensive”; and this undue extensiveness was so conspicuous that I was thought absurd or almost insane. Yet I am now tacitly reproached because I did not make it more extensive still—because an undertaking deemed scarcely possible was not made quite impossible. When blamed for attempting too much, it never entered my thoughts that I might in after years be blamed for not attempting more.

Repeated reference to First Principles as “the stereotyped philosophy” are manifestly intended by Professor Ward to reflect on me, either for having left that work during many years unchanged, or for implying that no change is needed. Much as I dislike personal explanations, I am here compelled to make them. If, in 1896, when the ten volumes constituting the Synthetic Philosophy were completed, I had done nothing toward revision of them, the omission would not have been considered by most men a reason for complaint. The facts, however, are, that in 1867 I issued a recast and revised edition of First Principles; in 1870 an edition of the Principles of Psychology, of which half was revised, and ten years later an enlarged edition of the same work; in 1885 a revised edition of the first volume of the Principles of Sociology; and now I have fortunately been able to finish a revised and enlarged edition of the Principles of Biology. Any one not willfully blind might have seen that when persisting, under great difficulties, in trying to execute the entire work as originally outlined, it was not practicable at the same time to bring all earlier parts of it up to date. Professor Ward, however, thinks that I should have sacrificed the end to improve the beginning, or else that I should have found energy enough to re-revise an earlier volume while writing the later ones; and my failure to do both prompts sarcastic allusions.[A]

[A] Candor often brings penalties, as witness the announcement “stereotyped edition.” When another thousand of a work has been ordered, the printers do not always refer to the author for correction of the title-page, but, as a matter of course, put “second edition,” or “third edition,” as the case may be. When my attention has been drawn to such matters, however, I have directed that the words “stereotyped edition” shall be put on the title-page if the printing is from plates, and if the work is unaltered: objecting to a usage which betrays readers into the false belief that new matter is forthcoming. I did not perceive that an antagonist might transform the words “stereotyped edition” into an assertion that the work needed no changes. Experience should have warned me that adverse interpretations are inevitable wherever they are possible. To the question—“Why did you stereotype?” the obvious reply is—“From motives of economy.”

In further illustration of the feeling Professor Ward brings to his task, I may quote the following passage, in which he interposes comments on my mode of writing:—

“By the persistence of Force [capital F], we really mean the persistence of some Power [capital P] which transcends our knowledge and conception. The manifestations, as recurring either in ourselves or outside of us, do not persist; but that which persists is the Unknown Cause [capitals again] of these manifestations.”

The matter itself is trivial enough. It is worth noticing only as indicating a state of mind. Supposing even that capitals were in such cases inappropriate—supposing even that small initial letters would have been more appropriate; it is clear that only one having a strong animus would have gone out of his way to notice it.

After thus enabling the reader to judge in what temper the criticisms of Professor Ward are made, I may pass on.

* * * * *

As implied at the outset, my intention is not to discuss Professor Ward’s own philosophy—the less so because I discussed a like philosophy nearly a generation ago. His position is that “Once materialism is abandoned and dualism found untenable, a spiritualistic monism remains the one stable position. It is only in terms of mind that we can understand the unity, activity, and regularity that nature presents. In so understanding we see that Nature is Spirit.” (Preface.) This was the position of Dr. Martineau in 1872 (and probably is now). He argued, that to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going on, “Mind must be conceived as there,” “under the guise of simple Dynamics.” My criticisms on this view, given in an essay entitled “Mr. Martineau on Evolution,” can not here be repeated. But I held then, as I hold now, that “the Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of human consciousness than human consciousness is representable in terms of a plant’s functions.” Briefly the result is, that in saying “Nature is Spirit” (capital N and capital S!), Professor Ward implies that he knows all about it; while I, on the other hand, am sure that I know nothing about it.

* * * * *

And now, passing to my essential purpose, let me exemplify Professor Ward’s controversial method. Specifying an hypothesis of the late Dr. Croll (who, he thinks, had “incomparably more right to an opinion on the question” than I have), he says, that it “at least recognizes a problem with which Mr. Spencer scarcely attempts to deal—I mean the evolution of the chemical elements. It thus suffices to convict Mr. Spencer’s work of a certain incompleteness” (i., 190). Apparently the words “scarcely attempts” refer to a passage in the above-named essay, “Mr. Martineau on Evolution,” where several reasons are given for thinking that the “so-called elements arise by compounding and recompounding.” More than this has been done, however. The evolution of the elements, if not systematically dealt with within the limits of the Synthetic Philosophy, has not been ignored. In an essay on “The Nebular Hypothesis” (Essays, i., pp. 156–9), it is argued, that “the general law of evolution, if it does not actually involve the conclusion that the so-called elements are compounds, yet affords a priori ground for suspecting that they are such”; and five groups of traits are enumerated which support the belief that they originated by a process of evolution like that everywhere going on. But the point I here chiefly emphasize is that, having reflected upon me for omitting two volumes, Professor Ward again reflects upon me for having omitted something which one of these volumes would have contained. “Sir, you have neglected to build that house which was wanted! Moreover, you have not supplied the stairs!”

* * * * *

From a sin of omission let us pass to a sin of commission. Professor Ward quotes from me the sentence—“The absolutely homogeneous must lose its equilibrium; and the relatively homogeneous must lapse into the relatively less homogeneous.”—First Principles, p. 429. Then presently he writes:—

“In truth, however, homogeneity is not necessarily instability. Quite otherwise. If the homogeneity be absolute—that of Lord Kelvin’s primordial medium, say—the stability will be absolute too. In other words, if ‘the indefinite, incoherent homogeneity,’ in which, according to Mr. Spencer, some rearrangement must result, be a state devoid of all qualitative diversity and without assignable bounds, then, as we saw in discussing mechanical ideals, any ‘rearrangement’ can result only from external interference; it can not begin from within” (i., 223).

And then he goes on to argue that “Thus, the very first step in Mr. Spencer’s evolution seems to necessitate a breach of continuity. This fatal defect, &c.” (ibid.).

Observe the words “without assignable bounds”—without knowable limits, infinite. So that the law of the instability of the homogeneous is disposed of because it does not apply to an infinite homogeneous medium. But since infinity is inconceivable by us, this alleged case of stable homogeneity is inconceivable too. Hence the proposal is to shelve the law displayed in all things we know, because it is inapplicable to a hypothetical thing we can not know, and can not even conceive! Now let me turn to the essential point. This nominally-exceptional case was fully recognized by me in the chapter he is criticising. In § 155 of First Principles (p. 429), it is written:—

“One stable homogeneity only, is hypothetically possible. If centers of force, absolutely uniform in their powers, were diffused with absolute uniformity through unlimited space, they would remain in equilibrium. This, however, though a verbally intelligible supposition, is one that can not be represented in thought; since unlimited space is inconceivable.”

So that this nominal exception which Professor Ward urges against me as a “fatal defect,” was set forth by me thirty-seven years ago!

A somewhat more involved case may next be dealt with. Professor Ward writes:—

“Moreover, on the physical assumption from which Mr. Spencer sets out, viz., that the mass of the universe and the energy of the universe are fixed in quantity—which ought to mean are finite in quantity—there can be no such alternations [of evolution and dissolution] as he supposes” (i., 192).

After some two pages of argument, he goes on:—

“And so while all transformations of energy lead directly or indirectly to transformation into heat, from that transformation there is no complete return, and, therefore finally no return at all. This then is the conclusion to which Mr. Spencer’s premises lead. Two eminent physicists who accept those premises may be cited at this point: ‘It is absolutely certain,’ they say, ‘that life, so far as it is physical, depends essentially upon transformations of energy; it is also absolutely certain that age after age the possibility of such transformations is becoming less and less; and, so far as we yet know, the final state of the present universe must be an aggregation (into one mass) of all the matter it contains, i. e. the potential energy gone, and a practically useless state of kinetic energy, i. e. uniform temperature throughout that mass.... The present visible universe began in time and will in time come to an end’” (p. 194).

Mark now, however, that this opinion of “two eminent physicists,” quoted to disprove my position, and tacitly assumed to have validity in so far as it serves that end, is forthwith dismissed as having, for other purposes, no validity. His next paragraph runs:—

“To this conclusion we are surely led from such premises. But again I ask what warrant is there for the premises? Our experience certainly does not embrace the totality of things, is, in fact, ridiculously far from it. We have no evidence of definite space or time limits; quite the contrary. Every advance of knowledge only opens up new vistas into a remoter past and discloses further depths of immensity teeming with worlds.”

Thus the truth urged against me is that we can not know anything about these ultimate physical principles in their application to the ultra-visible universe. But, unhappily for Professor Ward’s criticism, I entered this same caveat long ago. Demurring to that doctrine of the dissipation of energy to which he now demurs, I wrote:—

“Here, indeed, we arrive at a barrier to our reasonings; since we can not know whether this condition is or is not fulfilled. If the ether which fills the interspaces of our Sidereal system has a limit somewhere beyond the outermost stars, then it is inferable that motion is not lost by radiation beyond this limit; and if so, the original degree of diffusion may be resumed. Or supposing the ethereal medium to have no such limit, yet, on the hypothesis of an unlimited space, containing, at certain intervals, Sidereal Systems like our own, it may be that the quantity of molecular motion radiated into the region occupied by our Sidereal System, is equal to that which our Sidereal System radiates; in which case the quantity of motion possessed by it, remaining undiminished, it may continue during unlimited time its alternate concentrations and diffusions. But if, on the other hand, throughout boundless space filled with ether, there exist no other Sidereal Systems subject to like changes, or if such other Sidereal Systems exist at more than a certain average distance from one another; then it seems an unavoidable conclusion that the quantity of motion possessed, must diminish by radiation; and that so, on each successive resumption of the nebulous form, the matter of our Sidereal System will occupy a less space; until it reaches either a state in which its concentrations and diffusions are relatively small, or a state of complete aggregation and rest. Since, however, we have no evidence showing the existence or non-existence of Sidereal Systems throughout remote space; and since, even had we such evidence, a legitimate conclusion could not be drawn from premises of which one element (unlimited space) is inconceivable; we must be forever without answer to this transcendent question.” (First Principles, § 182, pp. 535–6.)