Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899

Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

EDUARD OSCAR SCHMIDT.

APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SEPTEMBER, 1899.

ARE WE IN DANGER FROM THE PLAGUE?

By VICTOR C. VAUGHAN,

PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

In an article on the plague in this journal, in May, 1897, the writer answered this question as follows: "Yes, there is danger; but this, being foreseen, may be easily avoided. Thorough inspection of persons and disinfection of things from infected districts will keep the disease out of Europe and America. Only by the most gross carelessness could the plague be permitted to enter either of these continents."

It will be of interest to take up this subject again, and study it in the light of the history of the plague since the article referred to was written. The plague first appeared in western India, at Bombay, where it still prevails. We are without any exact information concerning its introduction into that city. Before the outbreak of the disease at Bombay the mortality had increased so markedly that it was a subject of discussion for three meetings of the Grant Medical Society. The increase was attributed to the filthy condition of the streets. This society made an investigation of the increased mortality, and presented a report on the same to the municipal authorities. Instead of heeding the warning, the authorities jeered at the society, and refused to allow the report to be read.

Dr. Viegas appears to have been the first physician to recognize the existence of the plague in the city. In a paper read before the Grant Medical Society on November 24, 1896, he discussed the possible and probable avenues by which the disease had found its way into the town. He stated that sugar and dates had been mentioned as means by which the plague was imported, but, if this had been the case, he thought it strange that the infection had not been conveyed from Bagdad and Bassorah, inasmuch as these articles come almost exclusively from those places. Again, it was thought possible that the clothes of the sick or of the dead from the plague in China might have been brought over to Bombay, but Dr. Viegas was unable to find any evidence in support of this theory. It had also been claimed that rats sick with the plague had come by ship from Hong Kong, and had infected the rats about the docks in Bombay. This theory, Dr. Viegas held, was not supported by any facts. In short, Dr. Viegas found some objection to every theory that had been proposed, and leaves us in doubt as to his own views concerning the avenue by which the plague reached Bombay. He is quite confident, however, that the filthiness of the city is to blame for the rapidity with which the disease spread.

In a report by Lieutenant-Colonel Weir on the plague in Bombay a statement is made that the disease was imported from Suez. Early in September, 1896, four very suspicious deaths were reported, but, as none of these had been attended by medical men, no definite conclusion could be reached concerning them. The first case was reported by Dr. Viegas late in September, 1896. The patient was a native who had not been out of the city for months. The first case reported among Europeans occurred on November 12, 1896. During the winter of 1896 and 1897 the disease prevailed most alarmingly, and reached its highest mortality during the week ending February 9, 1897, when the deaths from all causes in Bombay numbered 1,891. During the summer of 1897 the disease declined, and led to the belief that the measures that had been put in operation would prove successful. This hope, however, was not realized, and during the winter of 1897 and 1898 there was a recrudescence of the disease. During the summer of 1898 the disease again abated, to appear with renewed strength during the winter of 1898 and 1899. During the last week in March, 1899, the total number of deaths from all causes in Bombay reached 2,408, and the deaths from plague alone numbered more than 250 a day. It will be seen from these figures that the plague still rages with undiminished virulence in the capital of western British India. The abatement of the disease during the summer months and its increased severity during the colder season are not directly due to the effects of temperature. In the warm season many of the natives sleep out of doors, while during the colder weather they crowd into small, unventilated, filthy rooms. It is the opinion of practically all observers at Bombay that the recrudescence of the disease during the winter is due to this overcrowding.

Since the plague has prevailed at Bombay for nearly three years, it may be well to inquire concerning its probable continuance at that place. In making this inquiry we may learn something of the sanitary condition of the city and the habits of its inhabitants. Bombay is the metropolis of western India, and is situated on a long, narrow island running almost north and south. The city is located near the southern end of this island, with its harbor to the east and its sewage outfall to the west. Its population of about nine hundred thousand is a very mixed one, consisting of Hindoos of different castes, of Mohammedans, of Eurasians, and of Europeans. Differences in race, in religion, and in caste make it exceedingly difficult to carry out sanitary measures and to look after the sick. The mean temperature is about 79° F., and the relative humidity seventy-seven per cent. A considerable portion of the island is below high-water level, and consequently the sewage must be removed by means of pumps. The mean maximum temperature of the ground eleven feet below the surface is 84.9° F., and the mean minimum temperature is 80.9° F. It will be seen from these figures that organic matter must undergo rapid decomposition both on the surface and in the sewers. The water supply, which is said to be excellent, is so carelessly drawn upon by the natives that, although sufficiently abundant if used properly, it sometimes becomes scant. It not infrequently happens that the sewers will not carry the volume of water turned into them. For this reason, together with the tropical rains, the soil often becomes water-logged. Indeed, the surface in some sections of the city may be, not inappropriately, compared with a fermenting muck-heap. Besides the fixed population, there is a constant current of people flowing to and fro between the island and the mainland. When there is any opportunity for the employment of a large number of unskilled laborers, hundreds and thousands from the surrounding country pour into the city. These people know nothing of sanitary appliances, they lodge in the most densely crowded parts of the city, and often a dozen of them will hire a single room, not more than ten feet square, in which they eat and sleep. It is said that seventy per cent of the inhabitants of Bombay live in "chawls." These are tenement buildings of from five to seven stories high, built on the "flat" system. A narrow hall, at the end of which is a latrine, runs through each story, and from this doors open into rooms eight by twelve feet in area. In one of these houses from five hundred to eight hundred people live. These buildings are crowded together, with only narrow, dark alleys between. Into these alleys the inhabitants of the houses on both sides throw all kinds of refuse. In many parts of the city fecal matter is deposited in boxes or baskets, and these, when filled, are carried on the heads of scavengers to certain designated places and the contents dumped into the sewers. It may be of interest to note, in passing, that these scavengers seem to be largely immune to the plague and all other infectious diseases.

This is a brief description of the sanitary condition of the city into which the bubonic plague found its way nearly three years ago. How long is it likely to remain? Before attempting to answer this question we might ask what means have been employed to eradicate the disease. On October 6, 1896, the municipal health commissioner issued an order to the effect that all cases of the plague were to be segregated, their houses disinfected, by force if necessary, and their sick to be taken to the hospital. Health inspectors visited all parts of the city, and carefully went through the great tenement houses looking for those sick with the plague. When such were found they were immediately sent to a hospital. Later, four camps were prepared, with facilities for accommodating about twenty thousand people. An attempt was made to transfer all the residents from a certain section of the city to these camps, and detain them there while their residences were being disinfected. After this had been done these people were allowed to return to their homes, and another twenty thousand were taken to the camps. This attempt, however, was never fully carried out. A high-caste Hindoo prefers death at any time to association with one of inferior caste. Every attempt at segregation of the sick led to more or less disturbance; and finally, in March, 1898, serious riots resulted. These were begun by Mohammedans, who followed a medical officer to the hospital and burned the building and hospital supplies. A plague inspector and three English soldiers were stoned to death. Since the riots attempts at segregation of the sick have been practically abandoned. Numerous hospitals have been provided, in order that those differing in religion or in caste might be cared for at different places. Under certain restrictions those sick with the plague are allowed to remain in their homes. It will be seen from these statements that it is not probable that the plague will be driven by human agency out of Bombay. The Hindoos believe that when the plague finds its way into a city it will remain for six years. The probabilities are that this belief will be strengthened by the history of the present epidemic in Bombay. Nothing short of an extensive conflagration, destroying a large part of the city, can thoroughly disinfect this place, in which the plague has already dwelt for nearly three years. I think, therefore, that we must conclude that it is quite certain that for several years yet Bombay will remain an infected city.

When the plague was first announced at Bombay a large number of its inhabitants, estimated at about three hundred thousand, left the city. There can be but little doubt that with these the germs of the plague were carried into the surrounding country. From Bombay the disease has spread out in every direction, until it has found its way into nearly every part of India. To-day the three large commercial cities of British India—Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras—are all infected. The manner of the introduction of the disease into Calcutta is somewhat uncertain, several different accounts being given as authentic. Dr. Cantlie says on this point: "The first case dealt with and reported upon in Calcutta gives an interesting history. The patient, a lad seventeen years old, came from Bombay, where evidently he had been exposed to infection, as his sister, who accompanied him, had seen several cases of plague in Bombay. Fifteen days before leaving Bombay he had noticed swelling first in one groin and then in the other, but never felt ill until his arrival in Calcutta, on September 24th. He was seen and carefully examined in Calcutta by honest observers, and a diplobacterium identical with the Kitasato bacillus was found in his blood. Not only so, but the clinical symptoms of plague were most manifest."

Another authority would have it that the plague was brought to Calcutta from Hong Kong by a British regiment which had been engaged in cleansing infected houses at Hong Kong. On this point Dr. Simpson makes the following statement: "In January, 1895, the regiment went to Calcutta, and this disease was first diagnosed as syphilis, then as malarial fever with bubo, and finally the cause was declared to be unknown. In June, 1896, one of the medical officers of the regiment was attacked with fever, and the glands of the neck, axilla, and groin were all enlarged. A goodly number of similar cases were met with in the town; moreover, the rats became sick, and the grain stores swarmed with diseased and dead rats. In spite of opposite evidence, it was well-nigh certain that plague in a sporadic form had been in Calcutta since 1895 or 1896."

The bacillus of the plague has undoubtedly found Calcutta quite as well prepared for its reception as Bombay. In discussing a medical report on the sanitary condition of Calcutta, the Pioneer Mail makes the following statement: "London, with its population of over 4,000,000, has about 36,000 people to the square mile. In the thirteen wards of Calcutta there are only four below this figure; the remainder have from 46,000 to 144,000 per square mile, three wards containing actually over 100,000. Colootolah is most densely populated; the houses are literally crammed with people. One case is quoted where 250 persons were living in a space that should accommodate only 50. In a hut seven feet in length, breadth, and height five men were found, and several instances are given where similar conditions obtained. In our barracks 600 cubic feet per man is the minimum space allowed. In these bastis the space runs from 157 to 49 cubic feet. This would be bad enough if everything were clean and sweet in and about the huts, but, as the medical board puts the case, 'here we find an allowance per head going as low as practically one thirtieth of that given in barracks, and no ventilation, with filth ad libitum both in the room and in its surroundings, to say nothing of the filthy persons of its occupants, the sewage in the adjacent drains, and the accumulated filth in the neighboring latrines; and to this may be added the fact that the subsoil on which the huts are built is soaked through and through with sewage matters and littered with garbage and filth of all kinds.' The narrow gullies which give access to these huts are in keeping with the general character of the bastis, and we may well wonder that epidemic disease is not always present."

The probabilities are that the plague will continue in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras until it dies out from want of susceptible material. It is not at all likely, with the conditions in these cities, such as have already been described, that sanitary measures sufficiently energetic to destroy the bacillus will be resorted to. For some years to come these cities are likely to harbor the infection, and will remain, as they are now, nurseries for the disease.

The plague has not confined itself to the large cities of India, but has spread all over that country. It has extended into the northwestern provinces, has crossed the frontier, and passed into Baluchistan and Afghanistan. In many of the interior cities it has proved quite as fatal, in proportion to the population, as at Bombay and Calcutta. At Poonah the mortality has during some weeks been as high as eighty per cent of the cases, and four hundred deaths a week have been reported. At Sholapore, in the Punjab, far to the northwest of Bombay, the disease has prevailed in epidemic form.

With the plague widely diffused over the Indian empire, what measures have been taken to prevent its spread to other parts of the world? There are two routes by means of which the disease may pass from India to Europe. One of these is by ship through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean; the other is overland from the northwestern provinces of India through Afghanistan into southeastern Europe. In fact, there are three overland routes from northwestern India into Europe. One of these leads from Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, through Afghanistan into the Transcaspian Province of Russia. The Transcaspian Railway extends from Samarkand, a place of about thirty-five thousand inhabitants, through the desert to the Caspian Sea at Ouzoun Ada. The latter place is connected by steamer with Baku and the Russian railroad system. The second overland route starts from the northwestern provinces, or Afghanistan, or Baluchistan, passes through Persia, extending on up between the Caspian and Black Seas, and crosses the Caucasus Mountains in the neighborhood of Tiflis. Both of these routes are quite extensively traveled and pass through cities of considerable commercial importance. Samarkand has extensive manufactures of cotton and silk, and carries on considerable trade by means of the Transcaspian Railway with European Russia. The second route passes through Teheran, the capital of Persia, with a population of about two hundred and twenty-five thousand. This route is also largely employed by commercial travelers, especially from Russia. The third overland route passes through Persia and Turkey in Asia up to Constantinople. This route can not be called a commercial highway, but it is used to a considerable extent, especially by pilgrims, and since at no point do travelers along this route come in contact with European guards against the plague, it is most likely that the pest will find its way into Constantinople by this avenue, if at all. The first two overland routes are guarded by Russian medical inspectors. Russia has not been slow to protect itself against the introduction of this epidemic. In December, 1896, the following lines of action were determined upon, and have apparently since that time been carried out quite thoroughly: First, Russian medical men were sent to the larger cities of Persia, such as Teheran and Meshed, for the purpose of watching the approach of the plague. All Russian consular officers in Persia were requested to inform these medical men of every rumor of the epidemic. Second, points of embarkation on the Persian shore of the Caspian Sea have been watched, in order to detect suspicious cases that might pass to Russia along this route. Third, observation stations have been established along the frontiers of the Transcaspian Province. Inspection officers stationed at these places have been notified to close the frontier, with the exception of certain points where inspection stations have been established. Fourth, inspectors have also been placed to guard the region of Tiflis against the introduction of the plague from both Persia and Turkey. For the reasons above mentioned, it seems to me probable that if the plague reaches Europe, it will likely do so by way of Turkey in Asia, across the Bosporus into Constantinople. The large number of pilgrims passing along this route, with the Turk's well-known fatalistic belief, render it quite probable that infection gathered anywhere along the route may be carried into Europe. Since several places in Hedjaz, along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, have already become infected with the plague, it is by no means improbable that the disease may find its way into the Balkan Peninsula. There are also several centers of infection along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It will be seen from these statements that Mohammedan pilgrims are exposed to the infection. Indeed, already the disease has been detected among these pilgrims on steamships in the Red Sea.

Certain international measures for the restriction of the plague were formulated at the Sanitary Convention of Venice in 1897. Nearly all civilized nations sent representatives to this conference, and certain general rules were adopted. Recognizing the fact that Mohammedan pilgrims from infected districts in India, coming to Mecca and other places along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, would mingle with those of like faith from Turkey and northern Africa, special rules concerning pilgrims were adopted at this conference. It should be understood, however, that these rules are likely to prove efficient safeguards only among those pilgrims who travel by sea. In the first place, the conference made certain regulations concerning the construction and sanitary arrangements of pilgrim ships. The upper deck must be kept clear for these people, and on the main covered deck every pilgrim has to have at least sixteen square feet of surface. Every one embarking on a pilgrim vessel must pass a medical inspection. No sick person or one suspected of having an infectious disease is allowed to go on board. The number which the vessel is allowed to carry is determined beforehand, and the names of all passengers and their home residences are recorded. The ship must supply wholesome water and make provision for food, proper in quality and sufficient in quantity. Every vessel carrying pilgrims must have on board a medical officer and a disinfecting stove. Details are given concerning the sanitary regulations during the voyage. All pilgrims are landed on the island of Camaran, in the Red Sea, before being allowed to disembark on the last stage of their journey. The period of detention from healthy ships at this place extends through only three days. If no disease appears during this time, the pilgrims are allowed to embark again, and go directly to Jeddah. If disease appears either before or after landing at Camaran, the pilgrims are detained at least ten days from the date of the last case. Arriving at Jeddah, they are no longer under international sanitary regulations, and any control exercised over them at that time must be administered by Turkish authorities. Just here, in my opinion, lies the greatest danger so far as pilgrims are concerned. It is true that the conference made certain recommendations and formulated certain rules concerning the return of those pilgrims going to the north or into Egypt, but the fact must not be overlooked that these restrictions are applicable only to those who go by sea. No restrictions are placed upon Mohammedan pilgrims returning from Mecca to India. India is already so generally infected that such restrictions have been deemed unnecessary.

The following is a general statement of the rules applicable to vessels coming to European ports from India through the Suez Canal: All vessels that have been ten days or longer at sea after departure from an infected port are allowed to pass through the canal without question and without precaution. Suspected vessels or those which have been at sea less than ten days since departure from an infected port, and which are provided with a medical officer and a properly equipped disinfecting plant, are allowed to pass through the canal in quarantine. This means that while passing through the canal there shall be no communication between those on board the vessel and those on the land. Other suspected vessels are compelled to proceed to the Wells of Moses for disinfection. Here the passengers and crew are disembarked, isolated for twenty-four hours, and their effects disinfected. At the same time the contents of the ship undergo disinfection. If the plague be found on board, all passengers, as well as the crew, are detained for a period not exceeding ten days. All clothing, the cargo, and the ship itself are disinfected. When a vessel passes through the Suez Canal in quarantine, notice of that fact is telegraphed to the country to which the vessel is going, and it is not allowed to land elsewhere.

Should the plague appear in any European country, the following rules were formulated to prevent its spread: (1) Whenever a case of the plague appears in any country the sanitary authorities of that country must give immediate notice to all other countries represented in the conference. This notice may pass through diplomatic or consular agencies, or it may be sent directly by telegraph. After this the sanitary authorities of the country in which the plague has appeared shall inform other countries at least once a week concerning the progress of the disease and the measures resorted to to prevent its spread.

(2) When an infected person enters a country by rail or other conveyance overland, disinfection of his person and personal effects is made obligatory. Land quarantine is condemned, and it is recommended that modern disinfection be practiced in its stead. Each country, however, may reserve the right to close its frontier against any other country in which the disease exists. It is recommended that medical inspection along the frontier be established in connection with custom-house examinations, in order to prevent unnecessary delay in travel. Passenger trains and postal cars are not to be detained at any frontier, but if a car be found to contain a real or a suspected case of the plague, this car shall be detached from the train at the frontier or at the nearest station thereto and its contents disinfected.

(3) Travelers coming from infected countries may be, at the discretion of the sanitary authorities, detained under observation for a period not exceeding eight days. Individual governments are allowed to take any special measures that may be deemed wise against the importation of the disease by means of gypsies, vagrants, and immigrants.

In formulating the above-mentioned rules to prevent the importation of the plague into Europe the members of the Venice Congress seem to have been thoroughly convinced that the longest period of incubation possible in this disease is ten days. It seems to have been assumed that if a vessel had been for ten days or longer at sea after departure from an infected port, and no cases of the plague had developed up to that time, there could be no danger of this vessel carrying the infection. It appears to me that a safer course would have been to require inspection of all persons and things going on board a vessel leaving an infected port, and the thorough disinfection of certain things, at least, on such vessels arriving at uninfected ports. The disinfection of a ship and its cargo by means of steam is not at present a very costly procedure.

Since the plague, if it reaches America at all, must come to us by sea, it may be of special interest to inquire concerning outbreaks of this disease on board ship. In making this inquiry we will confine ourselves to such cases as have occurred within the past two years. In March, 1897 (I have been unable to ascertain the exact date), the transport Dilwara left Bombay, bound for Southampton, with a regiment of English soldiers, together with their wives and children. On March 18th, while the vessel was in the Red Sea, a child died of the plague and was buried at sea. On arriving at Suez the persons who had been in immediate contact with the child were transferred to the Wells of Moses and properly disinfected. After this had been done, the vessel was allowed to pass through the Suez Canal in quarantine. No fresh case occurred, and the vessel arrived at Southampton April 6th. Here all articles which might possibly contain infection were disinfected, the passengers were allowed to go to their homes, and the troops were placed in barracks. No other cases resulted.

On July 6, 1897, one of the crew of the Carthage, of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's line, was attacked with the plague. The ship was then in the Arabian Sea. Two days later the sick man, with two other members of the crew detailed to attend him, was landed at Aden. Six days later a second member of the crew was attacked with slight symptoms of the plague. This fact was reported when the vessel passed Malta. The Carthage had intended to stop at Marseilles, but, on account of the plague on board, continued its course to England. Both of these patients were isolated by being placed in a large boat hung at a height at the side of the vessel so as to avoid communication with others on the ship. When the vessel arrived at Plymouth the passengers were allowed to depart to their respective homes. The only precaution that was taken consisted in ascertaining the destination of each person, and informing the health authorities of the places to which these people were going. The Carthage had on board a steam disinfector, and everything that had been exposed to the infection was thoroughly disinfected. On arrival at the port of London the second patient was isolated until he recovered. No cases developed in England.

On December 7, 1897, the Caledonia arrived at Plymouth, England, from Bombay, without touching at any Mediterranean port. While in the Red Sea two lascars developed symptoms of the plague. They were landed at Suez, and no further outbreak occurred. When the ship reached Plymouth one hundred and sixty passengers were landed, and their names and addresses forwarded to the local authorities of their respective destinations. After proper disinfection, the ship proceeded to London.

In December, 1898, a case of plague developed on the Golconda while at Marseilles, on her way from Bombay to London. The ship proceeded immediately, the patient was landed at Plymouth, proper disinfection was carried out, and no other cases developed. This is a proof that the assumption that a vessel is safe from infection after ten days have passed since leaving an infected port is fallacious, as this time was exceeded between Bombay and Marseilles.

The report that the Nippu Maru recently arrived at San Francisco with the plague on board has proved to be erroneous.

In September, 1896, a Portuguese-Indian steward died at the Seamen's Hospital, at Greenwich, England, very suddenly. This man was in the hospital for only forty-eight hours, and no one suspected the plague at that time. On the last day of October of the same year another patient in the same hospital was taken ill and died with symptoms of the plague. Bacteriological examinations of the glands of the body of the second man were made, and a bacillus which presented the well-known characters of the plague bacillus was found. The vessel on which the Portuguese steward came to England left Bombay about the end of August, 1896. There was at that time no official knowledge of the existence of the plague in Bombay, but it probably existed there. This is another evidence of the fallacy of the belief in the ten days' period of incubation. It seems quite evident to me that the English authorities lay too much stress upon the period of incubation. A man leaving Bombay or any other infected port may carry the bacillus under his finger nails, elsewhere on his person, or in his clothing, and may not become infected until many days after leaving the infected place. Careful inspection and thorough disinfection of all vessels coming from infected ports should be insisted upon. It has been abundantly demonstrated by the history of the plague, as well as that of other infectious diseases, that the old plan of detention in quarantine is a relic of bygone times. Detention is cruel, dangerous, and inefficient; inspection and disinfection are rational and efficacious.

The modes of infection with the bacillus of the plague are as follows: (1) By inoculation. The history of the present epidemic in Asia recounts several instances of inoculation with the plague bacillus. On June 22 or 23, 1896, while making a post-mortem examination, Professor Ayoama, of Tokio, one of the Japanese commissioners sent to Hong Kong to study the plague, scratched the third finger on his left hand; on June 27th he again scratched himself on the end of the right thumb; on the evening of June 28th he felt ill, and had a temperature of 101.6° F.; he slept well during that night, but during the afternoon of June 29th he had a temperature of 105° F. At that time a bubo was found in the left axilla, and there was well-marked lymphangitis of the right arm. Professor Ayoama has described his own case as follows: "On June 28th, after having finished a dissection, I took my meal about half past two and did not enjoy it. After the meal I went upstairs, when at certain movements of the arm I felt a slight pain in the left armpit, and on feeling with my finger I found some slightly enlarged glands present. In the evening I felt very ill, depressed, and languid, burning hot along the whole of the back, while the thermometer showed normal temperature. As Mr. Kitasato and I had invited guests that evening, I was present at supper. I had no appetite, and felt so languid that I often wished to withdraw. At half past eleven I hurried to my room, when I found my temperature was 39° C. I took one gramme of quinine, and slept well. Next morning I awoke and noticed, on the under side of the left ring finger, a small, whitish-yellow blister, and then, along the back of the hand, a red line. From this time I remembered nothing for more than two weeks."

Dr. Ishigami, another of the Japanese commission in Hong Kong, also inoculated himself with the plague while making a post-mortem examination.

A patient, while delirious with the pneumonic form of the plague, expectorated into the face of an English nurse caring for him. Within a few hours the eye on that side of the face became inflamed; later the parotid and cervical glands became involved, and the nurse died. Other illustrations of inoculation with the bacillus of the plague might be given. Dr. Wyssokowitch and Dr. Jobobat believe that the bacillus can penetrate the unbroken skin. In support of this belief they report some experiments made by them upon macaque monkeys. They found that when a needle was dipped in the culture of the plague bacillus and drawn across the palm of the hand of one of these monkeys, without making any visible scratch, the animal speedily developed the disease. However, this does not prove that the bacillus will penetrate the unbroken skin of man.

(2) By inhalation. That the pneumonic form of the plague results from inhalation of the bacillus can not be doubted. Monkeys caused to inhale the bacillus develop this form of the disease.

(3) By deglutition. That the disease may be acquired by taking the bacillus into the alimentary canal has been demonstrated by experiments upon animals of various kinds.

The sputum of patients suffering from the pneumonic form of the disease is filled with the bacilli. The germs are also found, sometimes at least, in the discharges from the bowels and kidneys. That the infection may be transported in clothing and rags has been long known. The following extract from a memoir by Sir John Hay, then minister from England to Morocco, indicates that the plague was introduced into Morocco in 1826 by means of infected articles of clothing: "The danger from plague by contagion can not, however, to my mind be called in question. That dire disease was introduced into Morocco about the year 1826 by an English frigate, which our Government had dispatched to Alexandria, where the plague was then raging, to convey from that port to Tangier two sons of the Sultan, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. No case of plague or other illness had occurred on board the frigate during the voyage, and the Sultan's sons and other passengers were allowed to land at Tangier.

"The customs officers, being suspicious that, in the numerous boxes brought by the pilgrims who had been permitted to embark with the Moorish princes, contraband goods were being smuggled, caused some of the cases to be opened. One contained Egyptian wearing apparel, which the owner said he had bought second hand, and subsequently confessed had belonged to a person who had died of the plague in Alexandria. The two Moorish officials who opened the boxes were attacked with the plague that night and died in a few hours. The disease spread rapidly throughout Morocco, carrying off eighty per cent of those who were attacked."

I mention these facts in order to emphasize the desirability of disinfecting all articles liable to carry the infection coming from infected places.

Professor Haffkine's preventive inoculation against the plague is still being largely employed in India. This consists in injecting hypodermically sterilized cultures of the bacillus. No curative action is claimed for this treatment, but it is believed to be protective against the disease. It is stated that more than eighty thousand people in India have undergone this form of vaccination, and that the death rate among these has been exceedingly low. However, it is well to be careful in accepting statistical statements on a matter of this nature. In the first place, it is probable that only the more intelligent will submit to vaccination, and these will also employ other means of protecting themselves against the disease. In the second place, there are many thousands of people exposed to the infection, or at least live in infected districts, who have never been vaccinated and who do not acquire the disease.

Three kinds of serum have been used as curative agents in the plague. In 1896 M. Yersin began the use of a specially prepared serum in China. The first cases treated with this preparation did unusually well, and it was hoped that most valuable results would follow from its more extended use. This serum is prepared after the manner of the antitoxine used in the treatment of diphtheria. That used most largely in India is made at the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg. Numerous physicians in India have reported upon the action of this serum, and none of them favorably. Very recently Dr. Clemow treated fifty cases with this serum, and compared them with fifty other cases treated without the serum. Every other case was selected for the serum treatment. The mortality was exactly the same in each group, forty patients out of fifty dying.

The second serum is that prepared by M. Roux, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. This is practically the same as the preparation made by M. Yersin, and the results obtained are equally unsatisfactory. In 1897 the writer had the privilege of observing, both at Paris and at St. Petersburg, the preparation of these agents, from which at that time great results were expected. A third preparation is made by Professor Lustig, of Florence. I have been unable, so far, to find any detailed account of the method followed by Professor Lustig in preparing his serum. From all that I can learn, however, it is not a serum, but a sterilized bacterial culture; at any rate, Lustig's preparation has proved probably least valuable of all.

At present (July, 1899) the plague prevails throughout India, and has appeared at various places in Baluchistan and Afghanistan, at Samarkand in the Transcaspian Province of Russia; in Persia, at Bassorah and other points along the Persian Gulf; at several places along the western shore of the Red Sea; at Suez and Alexandria; at Tamatave, in Madagascar; at Port Lewis, Mauritius; at Penang, in the Straits Settlements; at Amoy and Hong Kong, China; and at numerous places in Formosa. For reasons already given, it will not be at all surprising should the recent report that the plague had appeared in Constantinople prove to be true. If it once reaches that place, it is more than likely that it will become scattered throughout the Balkan Peninsula. The sad death of Professor Müller and his laboratory servant, at Vienna, from the plague bacillus which Professor Müller brought from Bombay, shows the necessity for caution in handling the germ of this disease.

Are we in America in danger of the plague? I will have to answer this question very much as I did two years ago: "Yes, we are in danger; but this danger, being foreseen, may be easily avoided." In my opinion, our most vulnerable point is along the Pacific coast. With the plague at Hong Kong, it is possible that it may be transferred to Manila, and the transports bringing soldiers to this country may also bring the infection. However, I think the chances of this happening are small. The length of time required to make the voyage from Manila to San Francisco is so great that, with the infection on board, it would be almost certain to manifest itself before reaching our shores, and, knowing its presence on board a ship reaching San Francisco or any other point on the western coast, thorough inspection and disinfection will keep the disease out of this country. The probabilities are that for several years to come the larger cities of India, at least, will remain infected, and our sanitary authorities must be vigilant. The fact that, if the plague reaches us at all, it must come by sea, that a long voyage must be made before it can reach us, and that the disease will most probably appear on board ship before arrival at any American port—all these conditions are in our favor. The General Government should take upon itself the control of all measures to prevent the introduction of infectious diseases from without. Quarantine detention is a relic of ignorance of the true nature of infectious diseases. All transports and other vessels between Manila and this country should be provided with proper disinfecting apparatus. The Government should supply the Marine-Hospital Service with every needed equipment, and if this be done the plague can enter America only through incompetency in that service. There is another source of danger on our Western coast that must not be overlooked. The plague is now widely distributed in Formosa, which is under the control of Japan, and our intercourse with the last-mentioned country should be most carefully watched.

TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE AND ITS PRESIDENT.

By M. B. THRASHER.

Tuskegee is a county town in the State of Alabama, not far from Montgomery. It is near the center of that part of the South commonly spoken of as the "black belt," because the negro inhabitants there greatly outnumber the whites. The town is one of the oldest in the South. It is said, in fact, that when De Soto made his famous journey across that part of the newly discovered continent he found an Indian village of the same name on the site of the present town. Tuskegee is five miles from the main line of the Southern Railroad, with which it is connected at Chehaw by means of a narrow-gauge road.

The Faculty of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

Tuskegee, as the word is oftenest used now, means the Normal and Industrial Institute, situated a mile out from the town and forming a little settlement in itself. This is the great school for young negro men and women which Booker T. Washington has built up, and of which he is the principal. The pupils who attend number a thousand each year. It is the largest school for colored people, managed by colored people, in the United States. There is no one connected with the school, except some of the members of the board of trustees, who is not of the race which the institute is designed to help.

Tuskegee Institute is so entirely the result of Booker T. Washington's labors, and his life has been so interwoven with the development of the school, that a brief account of his boyhood and youth is almost indispensable to a complete description of the institute, particularly as the conditions with which he struggled were so generally those which confronted all of the negroes at that time.

President Booker T. Washington.

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Virginia, not long before the breaking out of the war. It seems strange that a man who is so widely known to-day and is so universally respected as Mr. Washington, when asked how old he is should be obliged to reply that he does not know, yet such is the case. The birth of one more black babies on a large plantation at that time was a matter of too little moment to have sufficient notice taken of it to accurately fix the date. He was a boy old enough during the war, though, to know something of the struggle going on around him, for, speaking in public of Lincoln once, I heard him say: "My first acquaintance with our hero was this: Night after night, before the dawn of day, on an old slave plantation in Virginia, I recall the form of my sainted mother bending over the bundle of rags that enveloped my body, on a dirt floor, breathing a fervent prayer to Heaven that 'Massa Lincoln' might succeed, and that some day she and I might be free."

Mrs. Booker T. Washington.

Another incident of those days I have heard him tell of in these words: "Word was sent over the plantation for all 'the hands' to come up to the 'big house.' We went, and to us men, women, and children gathered in the yard some one standing on the veranda read a paper. I was too young to understand why the men and women around me should have begun to shout, 'Hallelujah! Praise de Lawd!' when the reading was finished, but my mother, bending down to where I was clinging to her dress, whispered to me that we were free."

Not long after the close of the war the Washingtons left the plantation and went to West Virginia, where, in the coal mines, work could be had which would pay money wages. At first Booker worked in the mines with his brothers, but he soon became dissatisfied with the chance for improvement which that work afforded. "The first thing that led me to study," he has said, "was seeing a young colored man slowly reading a newspaper to a group of colored people who surrounded him with open mouths and gaping eyes. He was almost a god to them." The chance to study was soon found. An energetic woman of kindly nature hired the young colored boy to work about her house as a general chore-boy. Finding that he was anxious to learn, she offered to teach him to read in the spare minutes of his work, and did so. One day he overheard a man talking about Hampton, where General Armstrong had already begun his noble work. This, the man said, was a place where black boys could go to school, and at the same time work to pay their way. "As soon as I heard that," Mr. Washington has said, "I made up my mind that Hampton was just the place for me, and that I would go there. I started, although I had no money and did not even know where Hampton was. I felt sure I could inquire the way as I went, and work my passage. I walked a good share of the way, begged some rides, and when I had earned any money which I could spare, paid my fare to ride on the trains. I reached Richmond, Virginia, one night too late to get any work, and I was entirely out of money. While I was walking about wondering where I would get a lodging, I happened to see a nice dry place under a stretch of plank sidewalk. Watching my chance when no one was looking, I crawled in and curled up to sleep. The next day I was so fortunate as to get work helping to unload a vessel, and, as the job lasted several days, I came back each night to my lodging under the sidewalk, thus saving all my wages except the little required for food. In this way I was able to get money enough to carry me the rest of the way to Hampton, and leave me fifty cents when I got there."

In these days of entrance examinations to various institutions of learning, it is interesting to read of the examination which young Washington was required to pass before he could enter Hampton. He tells us of it thus: "Of course," says he, "they knew nothing of me, and, after my long tramp, days of hard labor and nights of sleeping in barns and under sidewalks, I suppose I could not have presented a very prepossessing appearance. After looking me over in a not very encouraging manner, they gave me a broom and took me into a room, which they told me to sweep. I suppose I swept that room over three or four times before I was satisfied to call it done, when a teacher came in and took her handkerchief and wiped the walls to see if she could find any dust on them. After that they said I could come to the school. So you see I passed my examination.

"At Hampton I found the opportunity, in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries provided by the generous, to get training in the class room, and by practical touch with industrial life to learn thrift, economy, and push. I was surrounded by an atmosphere of business, Christian influence, and a spirit of self-help that seemed to have awakened every faculty within me, and caused me for the first time to realize what it meant to be a man instead of a piece of property.

"While there I resolved that, when I had finished my course of training, I would go into the far South, into the 'black belt' of the South, and give my life to providing the same kind of opportunity for self-reliance and self-awakening that I had found provided for me at Hampton. My work began at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881, in a small shanty and church, with one teacher and thirty students, without a dollar's worth of property. The spirit of work and of industrial thrift, with aid from the State and generosity from the North, has enabled us to develop an institution of a thousand students, gathered from twenty-six States, with eighty-one instructors and thirty-eight buildings.

"I am sometimes asked what is the object of all this outlay of energy and money. To that I would answer that the needs of the ten million colored people in the South may be roughly said to be food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a settlement of race relations. These ten million people can not be reached by any direct agency, but they can be reached by sending out among them strong selected young men and women, with the proper training of the head and hand and heart, who will live among these masses and show them how to lift themselves up. The problem that Tuskegee Institute keeps before itself is how to prepare these leaders."

The first time I went to Tuskegee I happened to ride for half a day through the State of Georgia in the same seat in the car with a man whose conversation showed him to be one of the class to whom the designation "unreconstructed" has sometimes been applied. An officer in the Confederate army, he had accepted the situation at the close of the war, but now, after thirty years, although he spoke of existing conditions without bitterness, he spoke of them with little or no sympathy. I had some doubt how he would comment on my errand, when I told him that I was on my way to attend the Negro Conference at Tuskegee. Imagine my surprise when he exclaimed: "Going to Tuskegee, are you, to see Booker Washington? Just let me tell you there's a man that's got the right idea of things. He's teaching the negroes to work. I wish the South had a thousand Booker Washingtons." This man, I learned afterward, when I was in Atlanta, was one of the most prominent and successful business men of that city.

The second day of my stay at Tuskegee, as I came out of the rude buildings where the conference had been held, a young colored man waiting at the door accosted me. "Is not this Mr. ——," he said, "and at the World's Fair were you not in charge of such an exhibit?" naming one of the educational exhibits. I said I was the man. "Don't you remember me?" he added, telling me where he had been working at the time. I did remember him perfectly, and asked how he happened to be so far removed from Chicago.

"It was like this," he said. "Next year I went to the Atlanta Exposition. While there I heard Mr. Washington speak, and learned about his school where negro boys could learn a trade. I had always been at a disadvantage because I did not know how to do any kind of work really well. So I came here and began to learn carpentering. I have the trade nearly learned now, and when I graduate from here I shall know how to really work."

Soon after beginning my long car ride from Tuskegee back to the North I stepped into the mail car on the train to post some letters. The envelopes I had used bore the imprint of Tuskegee Institute in the corner. As I handed them to the postal clerk, he glanced at the printing in the corner and exclaimed: "I say, that Booker Washington is a wonderful man, isn't he? I never saw him, but he's teaching those people there to work." Then he went on to tell me about a young colored man whom he had known who had gone to Tuskegee and learned harness-making, and then come home to set up business for himself. This man told me later that he had never been farther north than Louisville.

It seemed to me as if here was an interesting coincidence of unsought testimony, and all tending to show how consistently Tuskegee teaches a gospel of work. Industrial training goes hand in hand there, with mental and moral teaching, in earnest effort to help the thousand young negro men and women there and make their lives count for the most possible for themselves and their race.

A Class in Mental Philosophy.

Any one who has heard Mr. Washington speak at any length to audiences of his own race knows how earnestly he advocates industrial education for the negro. As might be expected, then, we find at Tuskegee practical hand training. The advantage is twofold. The students not only learn to work, but in doing so many are enabled to work out all or a part of the expenses which otherwise in many cases would have prevented them from remaining at the school.

Armstrong Hall. One of the oldest buildings at Tuskegee.

Of the thirty-eight buildings at Tuskegee, all but the first three, and these are among the smallest ones, have been built by the students. Several of the largest of these buildings are of brick, and the educational process begins in the institute's own brickyard, where a class of muscular young men are making bricks under the direction of a capable instructor, and in making them learn the trade which they expect to follow in after life. This yard not only makes all the bricks the institute uses, but many thousand more to be sold each year for use in the surrounding country.

Alabama Hall. One of the first buildings erected by the students.

I heard Mr. Washington tell to an audience of fifteen hundred negroes, in Charleston, South Carolina, a characteristic story of the beginning of this brickyard. "After I had been teaching a while at Tuskegee," he said, "I began to feel that I was partly throwing away my time teaching the students only books, without getting hold of them in their home life and without teaching them how to care for their bodies and how to work. I looked about for some land, and found a farm near Tuskegee which could be bought. I had no money, but a good friend had confidence enough in our prospects to loan me five hundred dollars to pay down toward the land so as to secure it. After that it was not long before I had the school moved. Then I would teach the boys for a part of the day, and then for the rest of the time take them out of doors with me to help clear up the land. In that way we did all the work we possibly could. When it came to making bricks for a building, though, we were stuck. We could make the bricks, and did, but none of us knew how to burn them. For that it was necessary to have a skilled man, who must be paid. I was out of money by that time, but I owned a gold watch. This I took to a pawnshop and raised all I could on it. The money I got was enough to pay a man to burn the bricks and teach us so that we could do the next ones ourselves. That watch is in pawn yet, but we have got thirty-eight buildings."

Students at Work on New Trades-School Building.

Another class of young men are learning bricklaying. They take the bricks as they come from the yard and put up the walls of the buildings, while the carpenters do the woodwork. The classes in woodworking are among the most important at the school. The institute now owns a large tract of valuable timber land, while among the industrial buildings on the grounds is a good sawmill, equipped with the necessary machinery. Whatever lumber is needed in the erection of the buildings is cut on the timber lot, drawn to the mill, and sawed. In this way one class learns to saw and handle lumber. Besides the regular carpentry classes, joiner work and carriage-making are carried on. A large part of the furniture in the buildings, including the beds, tables, and chairs in the dormitories and dining rooms, was built in this way. All the carts, wagons, and carriages which are used about the place were built in the carriage shop, and the hickory lumber wagons turned out there have so good a reputation that all not needed on the place are sold readily to be used on the near-by farms. The carriages are painted, ironed, and trimmed by the young men, and no better proof of the workmanship can be asked than some of the rides I have had in them about Tuskegee.

One End of the Dining Hall at Tuskegee.

The management at Tuskegee tries to have a building always in course of construction for the benefit of the building classes. This year they are erecting a trades-school building. Last year they built a handsome brick church, which will seat two thousand persons. The building of this church shows well what the school's building classes can do. The designs were drawn by Mr. R. R. Taylor, the young colored man who is the instructor in mechanical and architectural drawing. One of his pupils designed the cornices with which the building is finished, and another designed the pews which furnish it. These pews were built in the school's joiner shop. The bricks were all made in the school's brickyard, and laid by the students. Men learning slating and tinsmithing covered the roof, and the steam-heating and electrical apparatus were also put in by the students, although this is one of the first of the buildings where the students have been sufficiently advanced in those trades to do the last-named work.

As it was determined to employ only negroes as instructors at Tuskegee, it was at first difficult to find enough men and women of that race skilled in the arts and trades which it was wished to have taught there, and teachers were brought to the institute from all over the country. Now, however, as each year sees the industrial classes better under way, the tide is setting out, and Tuskegee yearly turns out teachers of trades, both men and women, who are eagerly sought by other institutions which are coming to see the value of industrial training. In many cases these teachers go to such positions at lower wages than they might hope to earn if they went to work at their trades, but they do this because they feel they have a duty to the institute and to the friends who have sustained it, to help extend its influence as widely as lies within their power. The question is often asked if a negro having learned a trade can find work at it. I do not think that the Tuskegee students who have thoroughly fitted themselves feel any anxiety about this. I remember speaking on this subject to the teacher in the harness-making and saddlery department, a good workman and a superb physical specimen of a man. He told me that during the long summer vacations he had left Tuskegee, and had never had any trouble in getting work and keeping it in shops in Montgomery and other towns of the State.

A Class of Tailors.

"Building a Hat"; Millinery Department.

Among the buildings at Tuskegee is a foundry and machine shop, which is always full of work, especially in the way of repairs upon agricultural machinery for the farmers about Tuskegee, because there is no other shop of the kind within thirty miles at least which has facilities for doing such heavy work as this. Printing, tailoring, blacksmithing, and painting are taught. Since a large proportion of the students at Tuskegee are young women, arrangements are made to furnish opportunities for them also to learn to work. They do all the work of taking care of the dormitories and dining rooms, learn plain and fancy cooking, candy-making, millinery, dressmaking, and all the most modern methods of laundry work. One class learns nursing, under the direction of a capable trained nurse.

In speaking of the trades taught at Tuskegee, it should be remembered that agriculture is reckoned among them, and one of the most important. A very large percentage of the negroes of the South must continue to live upon the plantations and gain a living by tilling the soil. As a general thing their knowledge of how to best do this is lamentably deficient, and they labor under great disadvantages. They do not own their land, but rent it at ruinous rates. They mortgage their crops and eat them up before they are harvested. They plant nothing but cotton, because that is about the only crop that can be mortgaged, and are therefore obliged to buy food at any exorbitant prices which the dealers may demand. Tuskegee tries to remedy these evils by teaching the young men who come there the best methods of modern farming. If the farmers' sons can remain only a short time they carry back to the home plantations some new ideas to put in practice there; if they can remain for the full term of three or four years, they are fitted to take full charge of the work on any large plantation. The institute has a farm on which are raised the crops best adapted to the soil and climate of that part of the South. The men who have charge of this work are among the most able in the entire force of instructors. Mr. C. W. Green, the farm superintendent, has no superior in the South as a practical farmer. Mr. George W. Carver, the head of the agricultural department, is a graduate of the Iowa State College. To my mind, no more valuable text-book for Southern scholars could be furnished than a little pamphlet which this man has recently issued, telling how he raised between two hundred and three hundred bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground, whereas the average yield of that crop in the same part of the country is less than fifty bushels to the acre.

An Institute Cabbage Field.

Tuskegee has a large herd of cows and a good dairy and creamery, in which a class of men receive instruction in dairy work. An incident which occurred in connection with this dairy furnishes a story which Mr. Washington likes to tell, because it illustrates a point which he constantly impresses upon his colored audiences. One of the surest ways to abolish the color line, he tells his hearers, is to learn to do some kind of work so well that your services will be really needed.

The Start from the Barn. "Farm Students."

"There came to my knowledge," says Mr. Washington, "the fact that the owners of a certain creamery were in search of an able superintendent. We had just graduated a man who was thoroughly capable in every way, but he was just about as black as it is possible for a man to be. Nevertheless, I sent him on to apply for the place. When he made his errand known to the owners they looked at him and said:

"'A colored man? Oh, that would never do, you know.'

Dairying Division; making Butter.

"The applicant for work said very politely that he had not come there to talk about his color, but about the making of butter. Still, they said he would not do.

"Finally, however, something the man said attracted the attention of the owners of the creamery, and they told him he might stay two weeks on trial, although they still assured him that there was no possibility whatever of their hiring a colored man. He went to work, and when the report for the first week's shipment of butter came back—would you believe it?—that butter had sold for two cents a pound more than any butter ever before made at that creamery! The owners of the establishment said to each other, 'Why, now, this is very singular!' and waited for the second week. When the returns for that week came back—a cent a pound more than for the week previous, three cents a pound more than the creamery's best record before our man had taken charge of it—they didn't say anything. They just pocketed the extra dividend, as welcome as it was unexpected, and hired the man for a term of years. That extra three cents a pound on the price of the butter he could make had knocked every bit of black out of the color of his skin so far as they were concerned."

Delegates to the Tuskegee Negro Conference.

Out of the desire of Mr. Washington to help the struggling negro farmers has grown one of Tuskegee's greatest institutions—the annual Negro Conference which assembles there each year. About ten years ago Mr. Washington invited a few of the negro farmers who lived near Tuskegee to meet at the institute on a stated day "to talk over things." Perhaps twenty men accepted the invitation. These men, gathered in one of the smaller rooms of the institute, under Mr. Washington's leadership discussed the problems with which they had to contend, and different ones among them told how they had succeeded or failed. The meeting was felt to be so helpful that another was planned for the next year. From that small beginning has developed a conference which now brings to Tuskegee, in February of each year, two thousand persons, from a dozen States, and representing many occupations besides that of farming. These men and women are the parents of the generation which is at school at Tuskegee and similar institutions. These fathers and mothers lived "too soon" to be able to profit by such advantages. Few of them can read or write, and nearly all of them know by experience what slavery was. They see their children learning so much which was unattainable for them that they ask, "Is there no chance for us?" The conference is Tuskegee's attempt to answer that cry. As one grizzled old negro preacher, whom I heard make the opening prayer one year, said, "O Lawd, we wants ter tank de for dis, our one day ob schoolin' in de whole year."

Negro Conference in Session in Tuskegee Institute Church.

Beginning with this year the conferences will be held in the new church, which will comfortably seat all the delegates. Until this church was completed, though, there was no audience room at the institute which would begin to accommodate all who came, and the sessions were held in a rude temporary building, which was also utilized for chapel and graduation exercises. Convenient as the new church is in every way, I shall always miss the unique gathering in that old pavilion. Imagine a broad, low building of unplaned boards, its floor the earth, and its seats backless benches made by spiking planks on to posts driven into the ground. From its rafters hang masses of Spanish moss, amid which streamers of red, white, and blue bunting are woven. On the walls are many American flags, looped back with the spiked leaves of the palmetto tree. Booker Washington stands on a low platform at one end of the room, and all around him, packed just as closely as they can be, are the people, while hundreds of late comers cluster around the doors and open windows like bees around the opening of a hive. No matter if the benches are backless and hard. No opera audience in five-dollar chairs ever sat half so interested for an hour as do these men and women through all the day, which, long as it is, proves far too short for what they have to say. This is the one day of the year for them, and not a minute must be wasted. The speakers are the men and women themselves. Mr. Washington simply starts the discussions and steers them so as to make all the time count. He is a genius as a presiding officer, and gets more out of the limited time than any one else could do. The subjects which they discuss are the practical ones which concern them most vitally. Some I have mentioned—non-ownership of land, crop-mortgaging, and the evil of raising only cotton. Others are the need of a longer school year and how to get it, the foolish extravagances of buying showy clocks, sewing machines, and organs before a house is owned to put them in, and similar subjects. The time is never long enough for all there is to be said. The effort is to make this a center from which some helpful thought will be carried out to take root during the year.

"Plain-Sewing" Room.

I saw a striking example of the influence which the conference may exert at one of the sessions. A tall young mulatto woman had finally succeeded in getting a chance to speak, for there are always twice as many to talk as can find time. "Last year brother Washington told us," said she, "that three acres of land, properly carried on, would support a person, and told us how, and said that a woman as well as a man could carry on the land. I made up my mind I'd try it. I did, and it's so. I hired three acres of land and had it plowed. I had it plowed deep, too. No lazy nigger half done the job, for I sat on the ground myself to see it done." She then went on to tell what her seed and fertilizer had cost, what she planted and raised, and what her profits were, showing them to be quite enough, as she had said, to support her for a year.

Loud applause greeted this report, and cries of "Dat's good!" and "Go ahead, sister!" but through it all the woman was seen to be still standing where she had spoken, waiting for a chance to go on, and with no sign of satisfaction in her face at the approval shown her. Raising one yellow hand high above her head, as soon as she could be heard, she cried in a strangely thrilling voice, which echoed through the dusky room: "How can you waste the one day of the year for us in such foolishness, when the life of a race is in jeopardy? Get to work! We must learn first to help ourselves, if we want God to help us!"

Hardly had this woman finished speaking when it was seen that another woman had risen and was waiting for a chance to make herself heard. I think I never saw a more pitiful figure. Very black, old, with a gaunt form on which a shabby dress hung loosely, her face was that of a person for whom life had been so hard that hope was for her a word unknown. Two or three men in the audience said, "Oh, sit down!" as if they wondered what such a person could have to say which would not be a waste of the meeting's time, but she would not sit down. Standing there until the noise had hushed, she began:

"I wants ter tank Gawd I'se come here ter day an' heard what dat sister had ter say. I don' know what made me come. I'se nebber been here before, but I'se so glad I come ter-day! I'se been de mother ob sixteen chillen. I hain't nebber had a home nor a mule nor eben a dress dat wa'n't morgiged. My chillen's gone an' lef' me as soon as dey's growed up, an' now my ole man is gone too. I tought dere wasn't nuffin lef' for me ter do but jes' die, but now I'se goin' home an' get some lan' an' do for myself an' my littles' chillens what nobody has ebber done for me. I kin do it, an' I tank Gawd I'se been here ter git de word."

It seems to me as if this was missionary work of the best kind, and it is such work as this that Tuskegee is doing constantly.

RECENT LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DRINK EVIL.

By APPLETON MORGAN.

[Concluded.]

X. Quality Inspection.—In my paper in these pages, in 1894, I remarked, "If there is any such thing as a salutary liquor law, not derived from excise or police jurisdiction, it would be, perhaps, a statute insuring the purity of liquor; reviving that old English functionary, the 'ale-taster,' with his care over all drinkables exposed for sale." And surely this would be a legitimate and a constitutional law, as providing for the public safety (which is, after all is said, the origin and summit of all law). To kill a rattlesnake the rattlesnake must first be recognized as alive, and the old cry of the Podsnap that nothing improper exists is fast disappearing. It seems to me that at present, and in view of the fact that Mr. Reed's plan would involve a social and economical plant which could only be accumulated by long and deliberate legislative action, and admitting that the drink evil not only calls for legislative action but has received it for sixty-two years, and so accustomed our communities to expect it; admitting also Mr. Bellamy's and Mr. Reed's basic proposition that there is no reason why any human being should starve, and that it is not public policy that any creature of the State (even if a criminal confined for crime in a State penitentiary) should starve—admitting all these, it seems as if this plan really might be the best and most immediately practicable plan yet. Every State, without any criticism or clamor of constitutionalists against paternal government, appoints its official tester of illuminating fluids, that conflagration may not ensue and the public safety be imperiled by the destruction of the citizens' homes. Why not a State "tester" of the stimulant which may inflame the vital forces of the citizen himself, and so imperil the public peace, which, by all laws, is the public safety? Municipal corporations appoint inspectors of meat, of milk, of fruits, of confectionery, precisely under this constitutional duty of preserving the public health, upon which, most largely of all, the public safety depends. Why not, then, inspectors of the potables which the public drink?

By having liquors examined, and only pure liquors sold, and condemned liquors destroyed, precisely as in the case of unclean or impure meats, milk, fruit, and confectionery; much could be practicably, and in a minimum lapse of time, accomplished to the decrease of the liquor evil. The prohibitionists themselves, by placing and replacing and abolishing and experimenting with all sorts of statutes upon the statute-book, have accustomed us to State regulation of the sale of intoxicants, and, least of all, can complain of yet one more experiment toward the decrease of drunkenness.

Let the national or State government have liquors examined, and those not up to the standard emptied into the sewers, precisely as in the case of milk found filthy, dangerous, or questionable. The Government might also supervise the distilleries and forbid the manufacture of what are called "quick-aging" goods, or "continuous distillation," precisely as it controls the manufacture of oleomargarine. It is not improbable that a commission appointed to this good work might, by just, equitable, and easily-to-be-borne statutes, prescribe a time limit or period after which no spirituous liquors should be sold less than, say, five years old (the age of liquor being said to regulate its irritant and insanitary and to conserve its really salutary and sanitary qualities). I believe (not without consultation and a deliberate exchange of opinion with experts) that the good effects of such legislation would be almost instant; I believe that from pure motives of self-interest alone the distillers and rectifiers of liquors, instead of fighting such a law, would be eager to compete to furnish pure brands of liquor for the State censors, in the certainty that the State must adopt the best and the purest. To-day the public is served with precisely what the publican finds it most to his profit to sell. It may be only dirty water which he sells at a price at which he could (to his own immense profit) sell pure liquor. In every drinking place in the land, to which the public resorts, there are two prices—one price for what you order, and the other for the same "good." I believe that one of these days the world will remember, as curiously as it now remembers the days of the stagecoach or the tallow-dip, a time when a man desiring a dram of liquor was obliged to drink whatever the dram-seller found it profitable to sell him.

We have tried about everything else. Why not try this? We have conceded to our legislators the right and the jurisdiction. Since we can not adopt Mr. Reed's proposition to feed everybody, why not enter the wedge right here and do the next best or a next best thing—see that the people not only eat proper meats and fruits, but that they drink, if drink they will, pure liquors? And it need be added (however it may appear to be a sop to Cerberus) that it would not antagonize that most powerful class, whose organized and capitalized opposition every other liquor-regulating law which has ever been suggested has at once antagonized, and been obliged in the end to if not conciliate, at least to recognize in the adjustment of equities. Fortunately, we have not to begin our experiments out of whole cloth. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington have led the way, and made the adulteration of liquor a misdemeanor. (New York, however, has probably negatived the best results of the prohibition by adding that the prohibited adulteration must only be "with any deleterious drug, substance, or liquor which is poisonous or injurious to the health," which is shutting one door and opening another, and relegating to the lawyers and their experts a tedious inquisition as to what the word "poisonous" or the term "injurious to health" may mean, in the course of which the offender would walk free.) The question as to whether it would conserve the public peace as well as the public safety by decreasing drunkenness can only be favorably conjectured. Experience of such a law only can show. To begin with, it would increase the cost of a dram. A glass of true whisky, for example, might be twenty cents instead of ten, and (the law forbidding adulteration) this would probably in itself lessen dram-drinking. In England, many years ago, a similar law was found to eventuate in compelling that only the highest grades of ale should be sold at a certain price. This led to the offering of a second, and then of a third grade, and finally of what was claimed to be a blending of all three grades or an "entire" (which was the origin of the term ENTIRE, that later began to be the name of an alehouse—a legend still seen on English alehouse signs). But the law we now suggest, by preventing the blending of three grades of spirits, might, while lessening the sales, increase the excise revenues, and perhaps accomplish whatever may be left to be accomplished in conserving at once the health, the peace, and the income of the State.

That a system by which only pure liquors can be exposed for sale as beverages is feasible, seems already assured, the States of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Washington having already long since adopted a partial statutory policy of the sort, and the State of New York, in 1896, having followed. In order to demonstrate what these have accomplished, and what improvements can be suggested, there were addressed to the proper officers of each of these States the following questions, viz.:

1. In your State what officer is charged with enforcement of the provisions of its liquor statutes, forbidding adulteration of liquors exposed for sale as beverages? And must such officer be examined as to his experience or as to his competency only?

2. Is his standard of unadulterated liquors established by law, and if so, what is it? Or is the officer's judgment as to what liquor may or may not be sold discretionary according to the circumstances of each case?

3. Is the examination to be conducted by taste or tasting (sampling), the old English method, or by chemical analysis?

4. Is adulteration so defined as to include the mixing of liquor with water, or only with substances or liquids in themselves toxicants?

5. Is the effect of this clause thought to be beneficial? Has it, for example, decreased drunkenness?

To the first question Mr. Samuel P. Sharpless, State Assayer of Massachusetts, reports as follows: "An assayer of liquor is appointed under our public statutes, who is charged with performing such duties as are referred to him. No particular examination prior to appointment is laid down. The presumption is that an analytical chemist will receive the appointment, as in the twenty years in which the law has existed only analytical chemists have received the same."

As to Ohio, Mr. Joseph E. Blackburn, Dairy and Food Commissioner, says: "The office of Dairy and Food Commissioner is charged with the enforcement of all laws governing the sale of food, drink, and drugs. He is not required to stand any examination, and his experience and qualifications are not considered except as to his eligibility as a candidate. It is distinctly a political position, and all the parties nominate candidates for the place."

As to Michigan, Mr. Elliot O. Grosvenor, Dairy and Food Commissioner, says, "The Dairy and Food Commissioner of the State is charged with enforcement of the law relating to adulteration of liquors."

As to Illinois, Hon. E. C. Akin, Attorney-General, writes: "It is the duty of the several State's attorneys to prosecute for violations of this section, on complaint of any one, or by indictment. There is no officer charged with the duty of making examinations or tests of liquors."

As to New York, Hon. Henry H. Lyman, Commissioner of Excise, replies: "The district attorneys of the several counties in this State have direct and exclusive control of all criminal prosecutions against violators of the liquor-tax law, but indirectly the matter of enforcing this section devolves upon the State Board of Health. By the provisions of section 42, chapter 661, laws of 1893, the State Board of Health shall take cognizance of the interests of the public health as affected by the sale or use of foods and adulterations thereof, and make all necessary inquiries and investigations relating thereto. It shall appoint such public analysts, chemists, and inspectors as it may deem necessary for that purpose, etc. Upon discovering any violations of the provisions of the act relating to the adulteration of foods or drugs, the State Board of Health shall immediately communicate the facts to the district attorney of the county where the violation occurred, who shall thereupon forthwith commence proceedings for the indictment of the persons charged with such violations."

To the second question, as to what is held to be adulteration, in Massachusetts the only standard fixed by law is that of the United States Pharmacopœia. Chapter 272, Acts of 1896, undertakes to provide certain standards. But so far not a single case has been brought under this act, since it has not been made the duty of any one in particular to enforce it. The assayer and inspector can only examine such liquors as are brought to him by the proper officers. He has no authority to institute proceedings even if he finds the liquor to be badly adulterated. Such action must be taken by the officers making the seizure. But Mr. Sharpless writes that, in his opinion, the law (section 31 of chapter 100 of the public statutes) providing for taking samples of liquors for analysis contains in its last sentence a clause which renders it inoperative: it requires such samples to be paid for if they are found to be of good quality. Mr. Sharpless adds: "Under this section I have received perhaps on an average twenty samples a year for the past fifteen years. These samples have generally been whisky, gin, brandy, and rum. The Legislature has been repeatedly requested to give the assayer authority to take samples in the same manner as they are taken by the milk inspector, but has as uniformly refused to give him that power."

Ohio reports that the legal standard for liquors is the requirements of the United States Pharmacopœia.

In Michigan the law does not define any standard for adulteration or unadulteration. Nor is it left to the mere judgment of any officer. "In case of prosecution the fact of adulteration would have to be proved to the satisfaction of the jury by any competent evidence." This is the language of Mr. Samuel A. Kennedy, Deputy Secretary of State. Mr. Elliot O. Grosvenor, the Dairy and Food Commissioner, indicates the nature of the evidence, however, as follows: "If the word 'standard' can be used in connection with the word 'adulteration,' our law does regulate this standard. We send you under another cover a copy of the law concerning liquors, so far as within the jurisdiction of this department, from which you will see we have little or no discretion in the matter." The clause marked by Mr. Grosvenor is as follows: "The law relating to liquors seems to be meant only to prohibit the sale of spirituous or fermented or malt liquors containing drugs or poisons or substances or ingredients deleterious or unhealthful; and provides that each barrel, cask, keg, bottle, or other vessel containing the same shall be branded or labeled with the words 'Pure and without drugs or poison,' together with the name of the person or firm preparing the package. This applies to every package of whatever size—it matters not whether they are put up for immediate delivery or for stock purpose. This includes all bottled ale, beer, rum, wine, or other malt or spirituous liquors, also the bottles used for dispensing over the bar. The State has no standard of proof, but liquors in packages where proof is indicated must test to that proof. Compounds containing nothing deleterious or unhealthful may be sold as cordials. The blending of liquors will be permitted, if spirits or other ingredients are not added. Dealers purchasing and receiving goods not properly branded or labeled are not relieved from any responsibility, if they sell the same without branding or labeling."

In Illinois the standard is not mentioned, but the articles forbidden are plainly set forth by the criminal code of the State, which provides that "whoever adulterates, for the purpose of sale, any liquor used for drink, with cocculus indicus, vitriol, grains of paradise, opium, alum, capsicum, copperas, laurel water, logwood, Brazilwood, cochineal, sugar of lead, or any other substance which is poisonous or injurious to health; and whoever sells or offers, or keeps for sale any such liquor so adulterated, shall be confined in the county jail not exceeding one year, or fined not exceeding one thousand dollars, or both."

In New York there is a standard fixed for wines, and sections 46, 47, and 48 of the laws of 1893 are devoted to the definition of pure wine, half wine, made wine, and the adulteration of wines generally. But there is no standard of purity enacted for spirituous or malt liquors, and it is left to the discretion of the inspecting officers whether any liquors inspected and analyzed by them contain any deleterious substances.

As to question third, all the States seem to agree that chemical analysis is the safer, but adulteration seems to be considered by them all as a fact, to be proved by any competent process, even the taster not being barred, as he certainly is not by the clause as to inspection in the State of New York. Mr. Grosvenor, Food Commissioner of Michigan, however, says that the only test recognized by his department would be that made in its own laboratory by its own two chemists.

As to whether the adulteration could be by water only, all our courteous informants refer us to their answer to the question as to standards but Ohio, whose Food Commissioner (Blackburn) replies, "Yes, if the proofage is reduced to less than one hundred degrees." In Massachusetts, Mr. Sharpless says, "In a case brought a number of years ago the court refused to consider water as an adulteration; no recent case has been brought."

As to the fifth and vital question, whether the clause against adulteration tends to decrease drunkenness, Mr. Sharpless adds the following valuable record of his experiences as State assayer in a State which, in thirty years, has experimented with about every known form of liquor statute: "So far as I have observed, the quality of the liquor has but little to do with the question of drunkenness. In some localities where prohibition has been strictly enforced we find that the class who will have liquor is obtaining it in other than the well-known commercial forms. Frequently we find that large quantities of extract of ginger are being consumed. A number of cases have been brought against the venders of this article, as an alcoholic beverage containing more than one per cent of alcohol. These cases have generally proved successful in stopping its sale. Essence of peppermint and of checkerberry, for example, are favorite tipples. During the past summer a case was found in which 'So-and-so's Drops,' a nostrum, a mixture of ether and alcohol, was being used as an intoxicant. The so-called 'native wines' have given us some trouble. These are essentially a fermented solution of sugar and water, with sufficient juice of some fruit for flavoring and color. When made without the addition of spirits they contain about fourteen per cent of alcohol. They are generally pretty poor stuff. About two years ago we had an epidemic of so-called 'malt extracts.' These, with very few exceptions, were found to be essentially porter. The alcohol in them averaged about six per cent, and they were quite palatable beverages. They contained about seven or eight per cent of solid extract.

"It has been several times proposed here that no liquors should be sold unless their purity was certified to by the State assayer. This I have uniformly opposed, for the reason that, while the State may well prohibit the sale of adulterated liquors, it is no part of its business to certify to the purity of any man's goods; and, unless the State becomes the sole vender of liquors, it has no means of keeping track of them.

"It has been my practice during my term of office never to give a certificate in regard to a liquor to any one but the officers authorized to ask such a certificate. In other words, the only way a private person can get an analysis of liquor made by the State assayer is to take it to the chief of police of his town or city and make a complaint in regard to it; as the assayer is paid by the State for his work, it would obviously be wrong for him to do work which he might, have to revise in his official capacity.... I may perhaps be allowed to add a few words as to what is defined in this State as an intoxicating liquor. When the State assayer of liquors was first appointed he soon became convinced that some limit must be fixed to the allowable amount of alcohol contained in a liquor. After consultation this amount was fixed at three per cent by volume at 60° F. This law remained in force several years. Soon after it was found that a large amount of beer was being made which contained about 3.5 per cent of alcohol. This was a palatable beer, and the venders gave the officers much trouble. The regular trade, who were selling lager beer and ale, and paying for the privilege, were also much opposed to its sale, and the Legislature was asked to reduce the limit to one per cent by volume. This at one stroke destroyed a large amount of illegitimate trade. The Massachusetts law, as it now stands, is that ale, porter, strong beer, lager beer, cider, all wines, and any beverage containing more than one per cent of alcohol, by volume, at 60° F., as well as distilled spirits, shall be deemed to be intoxicating liquor, within the meaning of the license provisions, and this section of the law has been decided by the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth to be constitutional.[A] The question is never raised now in the court as to whether a liquor is actually intoxicating; the only question being, Does it contain more than one per cent of alcohol? If it does (and as a matter of fact cases are very rarely brought in which the sample does not contain at least two per cent of alcohol), the court has no power except to convict, if it be proved that the article was kept for sale. The result of this law has been that the sale of beer, with the idea that it is possible to convince the court that it is not intoxicating, has entirely stopped. Some few attempts are made to produce a beverage that shall contain less than one per cent of alcohol. And several brands are on the market which, when cold, taste very well, but which contain only about 0.85 per cent of alcohol. Generally the only test made in regard to liquors is as to the amount of alcohol that they contain; or, rather, whether the amount of alcohol exceeds one per cent, that being the maximum amount that can be sold without a license. Such examination is generally made by distilling the liquor and determining the alcohol in the distillate.

"The whiskies examined have in Massachusetts, as a rule, been free from any substance more injurious than the alcohol they contain. They have generally (as well as the other distilled liquors examined) been of standard strength—that is, they have contained about fifty per cent of alcohol, and as a rule have not given much over the amount of residue allowed by the Pharmacopœia. As you will see by the foregoing remarks, the provisions of the Massachusetts liquor law, so far as adulteration is concerned, are practically a dead letter. I have been repeatedly before the Legislature asking for such modifications of the law as would enable me to make an intelligent study of the subject; but it seems satisfied to allow the matter to stand as it now is. Several difficulties arise in regard to any enforcement of the law. One of these—that samples must be paid for, and there is no appropriation to pay for them—I have already pointed out. In the second place, the State Board of Health (which has full power to inspect liquors under the food act) has discovered that the chief adulteration is water in distilled liquors, and that this, together with a little burned sugar and sirup, is practically the only adulteration. Large amounts of rectified spirits are used in the preparation of whiskies for the market, where the whisky is used only as a flavoring material. But such manufactured whiskies meet the requirements of the Pharmacopœia better than the genuine article, being more free from the higher alcohols and ethers than a pure whisky. The only point in which they do not agree is that they are not three years old. But the only method for determining the age of a liquor that I am acquainted with, is the brand on the barrel. It certainly can not be determined by any chemical means."

But, with the exception of Massachusetts, where Mr. Sharpless points out clearly the reason why the law against adulteration is a dead letter, all the reports speak encouragingly. Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio believe that the operation of the provision will do genuine good. Says Food Commissioner Blackburn, of Michigan, "It is my opinion that this law has and will decrease drunkenness, for the reason that pure liquor will not create the unnatural appetite that compounded, adulterated, or artificially prepared liquors do."

The State of Washington sends no report. There is a provision in the South Carolina law providing that liquors shall be "pure"; but, as the State is the dispenser of liquors, the operation of this clause has not been considered exemplary for the purposes of this article. Mr. Lyman, in New York, thinks that sufficient time has not elapsed to fully pronounce as to the benefits of the law.

XI and XII. High License and Local Option.—Certainly the examination of these statutes and reports of their results in forty-nine States and Territories leaves it beyond question that so far the very best results have accompanied the combination of these two provisions. Perhaps the best example is in the largest of the communities to be affected—viz., in the State and city of New York. Here, by separating the plebiscitum or referendum into four local options—viz., (1) selling liquor to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (2) selling liquor not to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (3) selling liquor by apothecaries only on physician's prescription, (4) selling liquor by license granted to "hotel keepers" only—the result obtained has been, I think, precisely what I contended for in the paper of five years age, namely, the value of liquor has been recognized, and its sale provided for without denying its dangers as a temptation, or the disastrous effects of drunkenness. To use the exact words of the commissioner's report: "The tendency is to recognize the propriety of the sale of liquors by hotels and pharmacists in many communities where they will not, by their votes, approve the sale by saloons and groceries; and while there are now twenty less absolutely 'no-license' towns than when the law took effect, there are very many less saloons and groceries where liquors are dispensed." And this while not in any way compromising or dallying with the proposition which the prohibitionists and temperance societies insist upon (and which is all they have as a basis for their claims), viz., the consequences of intoxication and the public policy of its prevention. To show that, as a fact, an equivalent result has been reached in every State in the Union where high license and local option are united, would unduly tax these pages. But one or two prominent examples are of the paradoxical results—as gratifying as they are paradoxical—that the fewer the places where liquor is sold the larger the revenue to the State, and the less the drunkenness, may be cited. In the State of New York in two years of high license the reduction in selling places was 5,484; the increase of revenue to the State was $9,094,646.01; the decrease in the number of arrests was 22,689. In the city of New York alone the reduction in places was 1,204; the increase of revenue was $3,549,851.90; the decrease in the arrests for drunkenness was 3,044. Similar results are reported invariably as the fruit of high license elsewhere in the United States. In the city of Chicago, under an exceedingly high license, the reduction in one year was 200 in the number of saloons, while the increase of revenue was $1,250,000; and yet the decrease in the number of arrests was 1,217. Contrast this result with the condition of affairs in the triple-steel-barred prohibition State of Maine! Says an ex-Mayor of Portland: "I went into office perfectly free; I think I enforced the law impartially with all the vigor I could control.... I looked it all over to see what I had accomplished; I found that I had driven out of the business one set of men, and another had come in worse than the first. I found that the young men were establishing club rooms. Not only did they become drinking places, but they brought in gambling and other vice. While I was driving liquor out of the ordinary shops I was driving it into houses and kitchens, where even children dealt in it.... I am sorry to say it, but the law makes perjury alarmingly common; it opens up ... an avenue for bribes.[B]

"The local authorities could not be trusted to enforce the law. The price of liquors has been lessened and the quality is worse.... To those who shunned the open bars the apothecary shops supplied liquor by the bottle as often as desired.... Then arose pocket peddlers, young men who loiter about the street supplying customers from the bottle with a drink known as splits—a concoction of the cheapest alcohol mixed with a dash of rum and coloring matter, which produces a dangerous form of intoxication.... At the city agency the question 'Medicine?' and the answer 'Yes,' was quite sufficient, and throngs of people were constantly waiting with flasks to be filled.... 'Bars,' 'Eating Houses' (so called because protected by the police), 'Kitchen Bars,' 'Pocket Peddlers,' 'Hotel Bars,' 'Apothecary Shops,' 'Bottling Houses,' 'Express Companies,' 'Clubs,' and the 'City Agency.'"

But all these, under the very eye of the late Hon. Neal Dow, were powerless to convince the Hon. Neal Dow that his policy was not a massive and monumental success, and to the end of his days the good old man delivered glowing eulogiums upon its exalted benefits to a suffering and liquor-ridden world!

Among the novel devices among the statutes of States classed as licensing sales of liquor (or which have rejected prohibition) may be mentioned the following: Apothecaries may sell without a license if they keep records of sales. Purchasers of liquor must make affidavit of the purpose for which they require the liquor. Physicians prescribing liquors must make affidavit that they are required by the case they are attending. Public officers who tolerate or refuse to prosecute are fined. Name of owner of premises where liquors are sold must be painted in large letters on outside window with the word "owner" added. A provision that any one may sell liquor, but that the Legislature may provide in any way it sees fit against "the evils resulting therefrom." No barmaids, or dancing, gambling, or oil paintings on premises where liquor is sold. The provisions that eatables must or must not be sold where liquor is retailed are about numerically even. (It will be remembered that the New York ["Raines">[ law at first abolished free lunches, but insisted that while one must not have food with his liquor on week days, he could not on Sundays have it without—the last provision still being enforced). Similarly, in some States, liquor dealers must not keep lodging houses, while in others they must. West Virginia says that a tavern or hotel must not be used as a liquor-selling establishment only, and that a refusal to give diet or lodging to any one demanding it will forfeit its license to sell liquor. One State (Colorado) recognizes the so-called "gold-cure," and authorizes "the person most interested," or the county, to send habitual drunkards at county expense to "any respectable gold-cure institute." In Illinois a drunkard is by law a vagrant, and drunkenness is a cause for divorce. In Louisiana the excise man who makes an erroneous estimate of the amount of business done (Louisiana regulates the liquor business according to sales only, disclaiming any preventive or reformatory object) is removable from office. In Tennessee applicants for license must state the amount of business they intend to do. Kentucky regulates the price of liquors sold, being the only American State so doing (except that South Carolina says that the price of a potion shall not be "more than fifty per cent above," or if used as a medicine "more than ten per cent above," the cost thereof to the seller—rather a difficult matter to approximate). Arkansas prohibits sales within three miles of a church, schoolhouse, or academy. The sales of liquor to Indians is prohibited, and the exclusive right of army officers to purchase it is conserved, at the proper frontiers. Texas inserts in her statutes a fine for keeping a "blind tiger" (defined to be a place "where intoxicating liquors are sold by any device whereby the party selling or delivering the same is concealed from the person buying or to whom the same is delivered"). And, in Kansas, twenty-five reputable women must unite with twenty-five reputable men in applying for a license to sell liquor. No State or Territory mentions the size or quantity of liquor to be sold at any price, as is the European custom.

It would seem, therefore, that, with the exception of the State of Maine alone, all the American Commonwealths are gradually harking back to the standpoint of the earliest liquor laws. Moderation (temperance) in drinking was the public policy. Leaving out the act of the British Parliament, in the year 1735 (which gave Governor Oglethorpe the right to prohibit the importation of ardent spirits into Georgia, which was not a measure to prevent intoxication, but to give a monopoly to Governor Oglethorpe), the first temperance association was that founded by Dr. Rush; and it is related that the venerable president, upon being elected, rose with a glass of brandy in his hand and gave the toast: "Gentlemen, fill your glasses. Let us show the world that we know how to drink in moderation."

To sum it all up. Why, since we can not set out with a club or a headsman's axe to reform mankind; since there are substantial rights to adjust and innocent parties to protect, why is not the proposition to prevent by law the exposure of adulterated liquors for sale as beverages the best so far suggested? Is there another which at the same time is constitutional, equitable, peaceable, and so conservative of the public safety, which creates no law-breaking class out of honest citizens, sheds no blood (as blood was shed in South Carolina in 1875 because men of Anglo-Saxon breed could not be readily made to concede that a man's house was not his castle), and which imports no new doctrine into American policy?

I, for one, believe that, with it, the solution of the drink problem would be in sight. High license and personal damage laws are two thirds of it. If a man desires to sell liquor let him pay one or two thousand dollars, or other substantial sum of money, to the school or the police or the poor fund of his neighborhood. Let him be liable in damages, as are common carriers or any others who deal in conveniences or commodities in which there is possible risk to the community, for what is injured by his operations. As to the remaining third of the remedy: the sole objections to local option (viz., that it may be abused at the polls, where the total-abstinence interest might be as capable of a wrong use of money or of other undue influence as the liquor interest, or that it might be inconvenient to the public) are fully met by making adulteration impossible and providing for a compulsory, rigid, and universal inspection of liquors exposed for sale as beverages. And then, besides, it will be unnecessary to burn down our village to roast our pig.

A curious experiment, at Carnot, in the Congo, is described in the journal Le Chasseur Français in the shape of the collection and raising of the animals which the natives bring in from the bush. Large numbers have been taken in. Some of the animals die, some escape. Among those that have stayed are two wild hogs, which roam at liberty, eat from the hand, and follow like dogs. There are a jackal, mangoustes, small rodents, a company of monkeys, and a young tiger cat, "which is the lawgiver to the others." None of the animals is confined, except that the jackal is tied, though he follows; but it has been necessary to separate the guinea-pigs from the rest. A large monkey has assumed the office of shepherd's dog, and takes care of the sheep. There are also dogs—"good company, but not of much value"—eight horses, with a colt that will eat at the table if allowed to; forty horned cattle, which are multiplying; and asses, which are also increasing.

HAWK LURES.

By W. E. CRAM.

It is a pretty well known fact among hunters and students of Nature generally that most flesh-eating animals, whether in fur or feathers, can be more readily called by imitating the squeaking of mice than in any other way, and proves conclusively enough that these creatures depend largely on the sense of hearing in their struggle for a livelihood.

My first practical illustration of this fact occurred so long ago that it seems almost like ancient history.

For some reason or other one summer's vacation began some six hours earlier than was expected, and although apparently insignificant enough when compared with the entire three months that were to follow, that extra half holiday was probably valued out of all due proportion by the pupils, owing to its unexpectedness, and for that reason, perhaps, more than any other, is still recalled by one at least as distinctly as ever.

One of the boys had a contrivance known as a bird-call—a simple instrument of wood and some soft metal—that, on being turned, produced noises that bore not the slightest resemblance to the cries of any bird, but were not entirely unlike the squeaking of a mouse in distress.

Some of us were more or less skeptical as to its powers of attracting birds, and decided to put it to the test. So we loafed about under the apple trees working the thing for all it was worth, but no birds came about us, and the bird-call was in danger of being thrown away in disgrace, when a small brown beast appeared from under a pile of boards and came running toward us, till suddenly scenting danger it disappeared. There was some discussion at the time whether it was a rat, chipmunk, or red squirrel; none had seen it very clearly or could give any very definite description of it, but in all probability it was a weasel attracted by what it supposed to be the voice of its accustomed prey.

About halfway between that time and the present a young long-eared owl became an important member of our family, a most original and amusing bird, without the slightest fear of any of us. He was christened Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles.

As he was learning to fly, it seemed advisable that he should be taught to come at our call to be fed; and accordingly one day, by way of experiment, I held out a piece of meat to him and squeaked like a mouse. There was a rush of downy pinions, and his talons were neatly arranged about my lips. He was evidently a good deal excited, but was careful not to hurt me any more than was absolutely necessary in order to secure the mouse which he fancied he had cornered in my mouth. I was just reckless enough to try it again on the following day as he perched on the low branch of an apple tree. His power of detecting the direction whence the sound came proved fully equal to the occasion, and the result was the same as in the first instance. The end of Mephisto was tragic in the extreme. He was sometimes fastened by a linen cord six or eight feet long and as large as a lead pencil, which when not in use was hung across the perch where he slept. Evidently he felt that the food furnished him was too effeminate, for the powerful stomachs of all birds of prey require a certain amount of such indigestible matter as hair, feathers, or bone to keep them in good condition. So one ill-fated night, in looking about for something that would answer that purpose, he unfortunately hit upon the cord as a substitute, and proceeded to swallow one end of it. The first few feet must have fully satisfied his cravings, but there was the rest to be disposed of, and the most feasible method that presented itself naturally was to go on swallowing. The thing must have grown extremely dry and distasteful as inch after inch disappeared, still there was nothing for it but to go on, which he did. In the morning he was strangely silent and gloomy, with hardly a foot of cord protruding from his beak. Any attempt on our part to remove the cord proved not only fruitless but painful, so it was cut off close to his beak, whereupon he swallowed what remained in his mouth and looked relieved. His meal proved too much for him, however, and he only lived a few days after it.

The different species of hawks vary greatly as regards the readiness with which they may be called—most of them, in fact, absolutely refusing to be lured in any way. As might be expected from its habits, the marsh hawk is the most susceptible, and in still weather may be brought from a distance of one hundred yards or more. At the first squeak he wheels about in the air and comes directly toward you with most unexpected impetuosity and swiftness. His discomposure on discovering the fraud is usually most amusing, as he stops short in mid air, with wings and legs asprawl, and turning his back on you, hurries off in feverish haste.

The red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks are also easily attracted in this manner, but the rough-legged hawks, although they live almost entirely on mice, are not so readily deceived, though this is undoubtedly owing more to their extreme wariness than to any dullness of hearing on their part.

None of the falcons or short-winged hawks pay the slightest attention to the most lifelike squeaking, so that evidently when they do deign to attack such ignoble quarry as a field mouse they depend more on their eyesight than on the sense of hearing. One still October day the red-tailed hawks were soaring and screaming above the pines beneath which I was hidden; by mimicking their cries I enticed one of them nearer and nearer, till at last he closed his wings and alighted bolt upright on a dead stump not fifty feet away. Changing my tactics, I endeavored to convince the hawk that a family quarrel was in progress among the mice in the thick clump of pines below him, and was rewarded by seeing him turn first one keen eye and then the other on my place of concealment; then he leaned forward and crouched catlike on his perch, half opening his broad wings and shifting his feet about in his impatience. But he evidently desired more positive evidence than his ears could give him before making the final dash for his breakfast. There was a slender dead branch beside me, and cautiously taking this, I shoved it slowly along under the carpet of pine needles out into the opening, as one sometimes amuses a kitten with a pencil beneath the tablecloth. The instant the hawk's eye caught the movement of the pine needles he descended with a whir almost to the point of seizing the stick in his claws; then, catching sight for the first time of the author of his disappointment, he rose flapping into the air, shrieking out his anger to the skies. If we had been more evenly matched in weight, I fear I should have suffered the most extreme punishment for my deceit.

The northern shrike is generally given the credit of living to a certain extent on mice, but the only evidence pointing in that direction that I have ever seen is that, like the mouse-eating hawks and owls, he comes quickly enough to the call; nor is there any need of concealment when dealing with this bird. He will come fearlessly within a few yards of you, hopping and flying from twig to twig, with his long tail continually moving up and down in his excitement, apparently impelled more by motives of curiosity than hunger.

Northern Shrike.

But when it comes to calling up to you such shy creatures as the mink or fox the utmost caution is necessary, for although lacking the keenness of eyesight possessed by birds, the acuteness of their sense of smell and hearing is something marvelous; yet when conditions are favorable they may sometimes be brought quite close and studied to advantage.

Standing one day beside an old tumble-down rail fence that ran along between the woods and salt marshes, half hidden in the brambles and tall grass, I caught the merest glimpse of a mink slipping along between the bottom rails. As he was evidently unaware of my presence, I determined to see more of him, and squeaked in as mouselike a manner as possible, and quickly had the satisfaction of seeing him make his appearance on a projecting stake much nearer than when I had first seen him. Stretching himself along the stake, he appeared to listen and look in my direction, but although I was standing in plain sight on the edge of the marsh hardly a rod away, the fact that he was obliged to look directly into the sun made it quite impossible for him to clearly distinguish what he saw. At the end of a few moments he dropped into the grass and started in my direction, the trembling grass blades clearly indicating his progress as he approached nearer and nearer, until almost at my feet he vanished, and, in spite of the most patient waiting on my part, absolutely refused to show himself again.

The last instance of the kind that has come under my notice happened on a clear moonlight night as I was wheeling along a lonely road between old apple orchards. Some part of the machine squeaked at intervals in a way that might possibly have been mistaken for a mouse. At all events, an owl appeared to have been deceived thereby, for he came flapping out of the orchard and flew alongside, at times coming quite close and again swinging off into the shadow, till at last, convinced that his supper lay not in that direction, he put on fresh speed and left me far behind. Perhaps he would have done as he did if the bicycle had not squeaked, but, judging from his behavior, I am inclined to think otherwise.

THE MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES.

By Prof. H. W. CONN.

The ever-growing needs of civilized communities constantly demand new methods. At the time when the streets of Boston may have been the actual cow paths which we are sometimes told they represent, the milk problem did not exist. Every farmer owned his cows, and if some of the people in the small communities did not happen to own a cow there were plenty of these animals in their neighborhood to furnish them with milk. But as our cities have grown the farmer has been pushed back farther and farther into the country, while the demand for milk in the cities has been constantly increasing. The man of the city can no longer call upon his neighbor for milk, but must depend upon some unknown farmer living perhaps many miles away. In England the farmer still lives somewhat close to the city, and as soon as one passes the city limits he begins to find the fields and meadows covered with cows. London and Berlin draw their immense milk supply chiefly from a radius of seventy-five miles. In the United States, however, the farmer does not live so close to the cities, and the demand for milk is even greater than in Europe. Our cities must therefore depend upon a wider range of territory. New York draws its milk from a radius of some three hundred miles. It is easy to see that with such conditions many new problems have arisen. These problems, so far as they concern the obtaining of a sufficient quantity and the transportation and preservation of the milk, have, from a business standpoint, been pretty satisfactorily solved. The milk-supply companies succeed in obtaining a sufficient supply at all seasons of the year, and get it into the city in such a manner that when delivered to the consumer, even though it be forty-eight hours old, it is in tolerably good condition. But it is beginning to appear that the problem, as concerns the consumer, is a somewhat serious one, and that this problem has not yet been solved, nor is it likely to be solved unless the consumer himself takes a direct interest in it.

The problem of the milk supply in the smaller cities is quite different from that of our larger cities. In the smaller cities, even those with populations of one hundred thousand, there may be commonly found a number of milkmen who bring into the city the milk from their own farms and personally distribute it. Such a business is a small one, and the dealer and the producer may be held directly responsible for the quality of the milk. In large cities, however, the business is very different. The individual milk dealer who brings in milk from his own farm has almost disappeared, and his place is supplied by the milk-supply companies that control the product from hundreds of farms and regulate the large part of the milk which the city consumes. These companies send milk trains into the country in all directions, and collect milk from thousands of farms. The milk is brought into the city in cars in which it is cooled by ice. It may be already many hours old when it reaches the city. It is taken from the cars, and the milk from many different sources is mixed in large mixers to insure greater uniformity. It is again packed in ice, and remains thus until the individual dealer is ready to put it into his cart and distribute it through the city to the customer.

As a result of this the customer no longer knows whence his milk comes. If he is a citizen of New York, he may receive milk from his own State, or Connecticut, or Pennsylvania, or New Jersey. It may come from a thrifty farmer, or from a slovenly, filthy farm, or, for all that the consumer knows, it may come in part from a farm where there is a contagious epidemic. There is no method of tracing responsibility, no method of even knowing the source of any lot of milk. One morning we may receive milk from northern New York, and the next from New Jersey. One morning, for all he knows, it may come from a model dairy farm, and the next from the most unhygienic surroundings imaginable.

But this is to a certain extent true of other foods. We can not tell where our flour or meat comes from, or our apples or sugar. Why should we be more disturbed over milk than other foods? Indeed, until recently we have had no especial interest in the milk problem, and have taken milk as it has been offered without question, except as to its being pure milk unadulterated with water. But the rapid discoveries of bacteriology, which have shown milk to be such a good locality for bacterial growth, have been raising some very significant questions. We have been told of the countless millions of bacteria which we have been drinking daily. This has somewhat disturbed us, and no sooner have we become reconciled to this idea than we are told of the great amount of filth that finds its way into milk—two hundred pounds of cow dung being the daily ration of New York city, some one tells us. The matter appears more serious still when we are told by the public press that there are more bacteria in city milk than in city sewage, and are informed of the epidemics of typhoid which are distributed by milk, or of the prevalence of tubercle bacteria in this food product. We become suspicious of the milk supply and hesitate to use this food product or to give it to our children.

Naturally, the people in small communities feel somewhat more at ease in the matter since they know their milk producer and can hold him responsible. But it is questionable whether the milk supply of the large city is not more reliable. The milk supply in the city is handled by organizations, and these, on the whole, are rather more likely to exercise care in the treatment of the milk than are the small dealers. The advantage of handling the matter through companies is well shown in many European cities. In the large cities of England and the continent the milk business is commonly handled by concerns that distribute great quantities daily. Now, many of these companies deal with the subject in a very intelligent manner. They exercise a very considerable control over the individual dairy farms. Some of them keep inspectors traveling constantly among the farms, spending $10,000 to $15,000 yearly in such inspections. They will receive no milk from a farm until after an inspector has visited it and looked into the hygienic conditions of the dairy, even sometimes going so far as to make an analysis of the water used in the dairy. Only after such inspection has been declared favorable is the milk received in the city. These inspections are repeated monthly. The appearance of a contagious disease on the farm is noted at once and the milk no longer received, although still paid for. These companies employ chemists and bacteriologists to study the character of the milk received. They educate their men into their business, and consequently employ more intelligent help than small concerns can. They can furnish a more uniform product than can be expected of smaller dealers. They soon acquire a reputation for their milk, which they are very careful to preserve. Such firms can exercise a much more satisfactory control over the individual farmer than can even public statute, since, with their systems of inspection, it is possible to have an accurate knowledge of the actual conditions under which the milk is produced. It is plainly within the power of firms dealing in large quantities to control the character of its milk more accurately than can small dealers.

Results, too, appear on the whole in favor of the large dealers. In the cities where there is a system of rigid milk inspection it is comparatively seldom that the milk furnished by such companies is found below the standard. This milk is kept up to the standard, and the companies having a chemical laboratory and having milk from many sources can keep the quality of the milk much more uniform than can a dealer whose supply comes from a single farm. The milk inspectors usually find that it is the small dealers that fail to meet the standard. Moreover, it is a fact that where epidemics have been traced to milk it has always been in communities where individual milkmen bring in milk from one or two dairies and distribute it personally. All the epidemics of typhoid that have been definitely traced to milk have been in small communities, and none traced to the milk of large dealers. It is true that it would be difficult or impossible to trace to the milk a typhoid epidemic which might occur in a large city. No one is likely to receive the milk from the same source for two days in succession, and the mixing which the milk receives in the receiving station entirely obliterates the individual source. If there should be some milk brought to the city which contained typhoid bacteria it would be impossible to determine the fact, for such milk, after mixing, would be thoroughly scattered beyond any possibility of following it. We may, then, question somewhat the significance of the fact, but it certainly is true that while serious epidemics have been caused by milk in smaller cities no such instance has occurred in the large cities, or been traced to the milk furnished by companies that handle it in considerable amounts. It would seem that if milk has ever been the cause of such diseases in large cities there ought to have been some evidence of the fact obtained.

It is probable, therefore, that the small community can hardly feel itself any better off in regard to the milk supply than the larger city. It is, of course, easier to trace responsibility for bad milk if we know where it comes from, but it is less likely to be very bad if it comes from a large number of sources and is thoroughly mixed. The milk in the large city is perhaps forty-eight hours old when it is received by the consumer. But it has been kept on ice, has perhaps been filtered, and many of its bacteria may have been killed by the long-continued cold temperature. So far as concerns the bacteria question, our milk which is thus two days old, appears to be actually superior to milk delivered in European cities, which is only a few hours old. The free use of ice in our milk car produces a more favorable result than the more rapid handling which the milk receives in Europe. The milk company controlling a large territory, with great resources at its command, can put into practice rules which even public statute can not enforce, and which the individual farmer will rarely do by himself. One who is acquainted with the methods of handling milk in our cities finds that the companies are each year improving their methods, and that the milk is in most places becoming more reliable. The proper solution of the milk supply for our communities is in the formation of large companies, provided they are managed partly for the benefit of the public and not wholly for money-making.

There is little question that the public has become somewhat suspicious of milk, and that many hesitate to drink it as freely as in earlier years. This suspicion is more pronounced in Europe than in the United States. Upon the continent of Europe the amount of milk which is used raw is really very small, and apparently its use in this condition is destined to cease. The younger generation of physicians are now being taught that raw milk is a dangerous food, and in some countries even the children in the schools are being taught that it is not safe to drink raw milk. Such teaching can have only one result, and that is the reduction in the amount of milk consumed. Much less milk is used in Europe than in this country. It is used for tea or coffee or for cooking, and of course for infant feeding, but for any one to drink milk as we do in this country is certainly a rarity. The suspicion under which milk has been placed has decreased its use.

The dangers which are feared in milk are of course connected with the distribution of disease. Most persons who thus hesitate to use milk have simply a vague fear, without knowing just what is to be feared. When we put together all the facts in our possession we find that there is good reason for believing that milk is sometimes concerned in the distribution of the following well-known diseases and some obscure ones: The first is tuberculosis, which is a disease attacking the cow, and, if located in the mammary gland, may infect the milk with tubercle bacilli, and may subsequently produce the disease in the person who drinks the milk. It should be stated, however, that there is good reason for believing that the danger from this source has been overrated. Second, we have diphtheria, which apparently may also attack the cow. The diphtheria germs may get into the milk from the cow, and they certainly do get into the milk occasionally from secondary sources. Scarlet fever apparently is distributed by milk, though whether this disease may come from the cow or only by secondary contamination of the milk is not yet positively settled. Typhoid fever has in a large number of cases been traced to the milk supply. This disease, however, does not occur in the cow, and the germs always get into the milk from a secondary source, such as water or contact with a person who has the disease. Cholera may be distributed by milk, but this is of course of little importance. Of these disease bacteria, the tubercle bacillus probably never grows in milk, while the typhoid and diphtheria germs do. The most common of all troubles attributed to milk are those somewhat obscure intestinal diseases which attack people especially in the summer months, and are particularly common among children. Prominent among these stands cholera infantum. These latter troubles, according to our present knowledge, are not produced by distinct species of bacteria finding entrance into the body and growing there, as are the other diseases mentioned. They appear to be produced by bacterial poisons which are in the milk. The bacteria—probably several different varieties—grow in the milk and there give rise to certain poisonous products, and these, when taken into the stomach, produce the diarrhœal diseases referred to.

The question of more importance is, however, as to the extent of the danger from such causes. This question is much like the famous one of how large is a piece of chalk. There is danger in everything, even in drinking water and breathing air. Is the danger from milk so great as to suggest that we should give up our habit of drinking milk as they have largely done in Europe, or is this danger so slight that we can well afford to neglect it? We can not avoid all sources of disease even if we would. To do this we should need to shut ourselves up in a box, breathe nothing but sterilized air, drink nothing but sterilized water, and come in contact with no other person, to say nothing of wearing sterilized clothes. Such a method will produce physical weakness rather than vigor. We have learned in the last few years that the proper way of avoiding disease is rather by preparing ourselves to resist it rather than try to avoid all contact with possible disease germs. The question is significant, then, whether the danger from milk is so great that we should use every means of avoiding it; or is it one of the slight dangers which we may best class with the everyday incidents against which our proper guard should be simply vigorous health?

It is impossible to say how great is the liability of contracting disease from milk. Sometimes the subject looms up before us in gigantic proportions. When our papers are describing the occurrence of hundreds of cases of typhoid fever in a city, all traced to a milk supply, the seriousness of the problem is very apparent, and very likely we stop drinking milk for a season. But when, on the other hand, we remember the millions of people that are drinking milk daily without injury, and remember that our forefathers have done the same, we grow graver and begin again our old custom. No one can, indeed, pretend to say how great the danger is. That it is greater than that from drinking water is pretty clear. That it is less than that of riding in the cars is probably equally true. That it is greater in a small community than a large one seems probable, and that there is a greater likelihood of its being serious where the milk comes from a single source than where it passes through the hands of a milk-supply company appears to the author to be quite sure.

In his relation to this problem each person must decide for himself. We do not cease to ride in the cars because there is danger here, nor do the innumerable accidents from bicycling deter us from this pleasure. Ought we to give up milk because of an occasional instance of disease? It might be possible to give advice to use milk freely, looking upon the danger as a slight one and one of the unavoidable dangers of living, but if such advice is given some one will instantly declare it bad advice. It might be possible to advise boiling all milk before drinking, and again some authority would say that this is unnecessary and bad. Personally, the author, though living in a small community, uses raw milk with perfect freedom, but would regard it as unwise to allow young children, especially infants, to use it in this way.

As already stated, the agitation over the milk supply is greater in Europe than in this country. While in England milk is used much as in this country, on the continent really little milk is drunk raw, and there is a growing demand for some means which shall deprive milk of the suspicions attached to it. This demand has been rapidly growing in recent years, and has resulted in the appearance of two new industries. These are the preparation of sterilized and Pasteurized milk. Neither of these industries has as yet developed much in the United States, although in our larger cities beginnings are being made along similar lines.

Sterilized milk has been used for many years. Long ago our doctors learned to recommend, for invalids, that milk should be boiled before drinking. This was done before the matter of its relation to bacteria was understood, and when physicians simply conceived that the boiling rendered the milk more digestible. From being used by invalids it came to be suggested in feeding infants, and then, after the relation of milk to possible disease germs had been understood, the general sterilization of milk was widely recommended. The process of sterilization of milk has not taken much of a hold upon the people of this country as yet, nor has it in England. In continental Europe, especially in northern countries, where the amount of tuberculosis is very large, it has made rapid headway, and now in most of the cities sterilized milk can be bought on the streets just as easily as ordinary milk.

In sterilizing milk as it is done in Europe the destruction of the disease germs is not the only purpose. An object of perhaps equal weight is to produce a milk that will keep. There are many circumstances where it is desirable to carry milk for long distances, and to lay in a supply to last many days or even weeks. Under these circumstances sterilization is resorted to, since it preserves the milk.

There are various methods of sterilizing milk. The simplest, and doubtless the most common, is simply the boiling of the milk. This can easily be done by any one at home, and is, beyond question, very widely resorted to. But where the sterilization is to be performed by a public-supply company, boiling is not satisfactory, since the milk, although it will keep some time, is not indefinitely preserved. The common method used is heating with superheated steam. The milk is placed in bottles of special device, holding about a pint or a quart, and are placed, hundreds at a time, in a large chamber which can be hermetically sealed and then filled with steam under pressure. Here the temperature rises to 102° to 106° C. (216° to 220° F.), and is retained here for some little time. This high heat is supposed to kill all the living bacteria that may be in the milk, even the resisting spores being commonly destroyed. While the milk is still in this apparatus, and before the chamber is opened, the bottles are sealed by a mechanical contrivance and then allowed to cool. After this they are taken out of the sterilizer, and are ready for distribution. The milk thus treated is sometimes pure white, although frequently it has acquired a brownish color, which is not enticing to one accustomed to ordinary milk. Moreover, it has a taste of cooked milk, which is to some people very unpleasant. But when the method is successful the milk contains no living bacteria, and may now be kept indefinitely without further change. It may be shipped to all parts of the world, and whenever opened it will be found still sweet. The process is evidently equivalent to the canning of fruit or meat, only more difficult because the milk commonly contains many resisting spores.

Such sterilized milk can be bought almost anywhere in Europe, and there is undoubtedly a growing demand for it. Where this or other sterilized milk is used it is claimed that very favorable results follow. Careful statistics have been collected as to the number of deaths among infants from diarrhœal diseases, and it is found that in some cities the deaths from infants fed upon raw milk are nearly three times as great as among those fed upon sterilized milk. Of course, no typhoid epidemics can ever be traced to such milk, and in general its use seems to meet with decided favor.

There are, however, some serious objections to this method of treating milk, which have been and probably will continue to be sufficient to prevent its wide extension. The first is that such milk appears to be slightly less digestible than raw milk. Over this matter, however, there has been and still is a great diversity of opinion, and many claim that there is really no difference in the digestibility. It is a matter of comparatively little importance, however, at least for adults and healthy children, for the sterilized milk can be digested, and the slight difference in ease of digestion probably has little significance unless it be for weakly individuals. Secondly, the taste of the sterilized milk is that of boiled milk, and this is rather unpleasant to most people. Probably a majority of our people, if called upon to drink sterilized milk or none at all, would prefer to give it up entirely. This is really an almost insurmountable obstacle to the wide extension of the use of sterilized milk, at least for the present generation. Those who have accustomed themselves to the taste of raw milk will not drink sterilized milk, and, if they do not dare to drink it raw, will not drink it at all. If infants are brought up on sterilized milk the next generation may look upon the matter differently, since the taste can be cultivated.

The third objection to sterilized milk is its cost, which pretty effectually prevents its wide use. Here is probably the real reason why the sterilized-milk industry has not extended more rapidly than it has. The cost of the milk that has been subjected to the treatment above described is considerably above that of ordinary milk, and the size of the pocketbook is commonly a matter outweighing, with most people, even matters of health. When raw milk can be purchased at half the price of sterilized milk, or even for a cent or two less, it will be purchased almost uniformly by the bulk of people, rather than the more expensive sterilized milk. Thus it happens that, in spite of the fact that sterilized milk can be purchased easily in most European cities, the business is not a large one. Probably not one quart of sterilized milk is sold to a hundred quarts of raw milk, even in cities where the business is best developed.

There are some who think that this method of treating milk is soon to be recognized as a necessity, and that it will be shortly regarded as improper to drink raw milk as it is to eat raw pork. But the business has grown rather slowly. Most people prefer to purchase their milk raw at a cheaper price and then boil it themselves, if they do not forget it. There is, moreover, one rather serious criticism that is made against this sterilized milk. Even with the high temperature that is used, it is impossible to be sure that all bacteria spores are destroyed. In most cases they are killed, but occasionally, and indeed not infrequently, a lot of milk will contain resisting spores that the heat does not destroy. These few spores that are left may become serious, far more so than the bacteria in raw milk. After sterilization they begin to grow, and, since this milk is very commonly kept for many days before it is used, these germs have a chance to become very abundant in the milk and to produce profound chemical changes therein, in some cases actually developing poisons. The changes that thus occur may be such as to escape notice with the eye, since they do not curdle the milk, and they may even fail to affect the taste of the milk. Such milk is to all appearances good, and would be given to infants without hesitation. If it did contain the injurious products thus referred to the results would be serious. Some bacteriologists are convinced that not a few cases of serious sickness have been produced in this way. When the milk is used shortly after the sterilization this matter is of no importance, since the bacteria spores grow slowly. But sterilized milk is supposed to keep indefinitely, and is therefore likely to be preserved some time before using, giving abundant opportunity for these spores to grow.

For these several reasons there is developing a different method of dealing with the problem. It is the well-known process of Pasteurization. But although the process has been known for several years, its application to the milk business on a large scale is quite new. Pasteurization consists in heating the milk to a temperature of only about 68° to 85° C. (165° to 185° F.), leaving it at this temperature for a short time, and then rapidly cooling. The length of time required depends upon the temperature used, being, of course, shortest for the higher temperature, but it varies from some two minutes to half an hour. This moderate heat does not necessarily produce the cooked taste nor, as we shall see, does it involve an expense which need raise the price. The temperature, however, is not sufficient to destroy all bacteria, and for this reason is looked upon with disfavor by those who feel that what is needed is an absolute destruction of all bacteria. The Germans, who like to do things thoroughly, do not take readily to Pasteurization, and there are others besides Germans who insist that this treatment does not make the milk safe. But if one is looking for practical possibilities rather than theoretical success, there is perhaps at present more to be said in favor of Pasteurization than sterilization.

Pasteurization is found to be sufficient to destroy all the strictly pathogenic bacteria that are likely to be in milk. The germs of diphtheria and typhoid are killed, and even the tubercle bacillus is rendered innocuous by a few moments at a temperature of 75° C. The resisting spores above mentioned are of course not destroyed, and many other bacteria are left uninjured. But the bacteria which escape the heat are not strictly pathogenic, and do not grow in the body. If they produce any injury to the drinker it is because they grow in the milk and produce injurious chemical products there. They are only dangerous, therefore, after they have had an opportunity to grow in the milk for some time. This opportunity they do have, as we have seen, in sterilized milk, but they do not have the opportunity in Pasteurized milk. Pasteurized milk is not designed for keeping, and those who use it know that while the strictly pathogenic bacteria are killed the milk will not keep. It will remain sweet a little longer than raw milk, but it must be used at once. It must be treated just like fresh milk. Under these conditions the bacteria do not commonly have an opportunity of growing sufficiently to produce their poisonous products before the milk is consumed. Practically, then, these bacteria that resist the moderate heat of Pasteurization are of no serious importance in connection with the healthfulness of milk. Pasteurized milk has been deprived of all its strictly pathogenic bacteria, and the germs still left will commonly have no opportunity to grow very much before the milk is consumed. It is therefore the confident belief of many that Pasteurization is actually a safer method of treating milk than sterilization. Moreover, the results appear to be equally favorable, for Pasteurization is claimed to produce an effect upon diarrhœal diseases equal to that of sterilization.

But the most important argument for Pasteurization seems to be that it is really practical, and can be introduced upon a scale vastly more extended than can sterilized milk. The practice of Pasteurizing milk has doubtless been followed not a little by private families, but from the very outset it has appeared that the proper method of dealing with the matter is to treat the milk at a general distributing center, rather than to depend upon the consumer to do it. Not a few devices have been suggested for accomplishing the purpose satisfactorily and rapidly. The machines invented are planned upon two different principles. In one plan the milk is placed in some large vessel holding many gallons and is here heated, commonly by steam coils. It is allowed to remain here at the desired temperature for twenty minutes to half an hour, and is then cooled. This method is necessarily slow—so slow, indeed, that it is impractical for use where large amounts of milk must be treated rapidly for general distribution. It probably could not be used for the milk supply of a city. The other method is called that of continuous flow. Here the milk is allowed to flow continuously over a heated surface, which brings it quickly to the desired temperature. It is kept hot for only a short time, however, and it then flows over a cooled surface, where the temperature is brought down again and the milk is finally delivered from the machine in a continuous stream of cooled milk. Great objections have been urged against this process, from the fact that it is not thorough. The milk is retained at the high temperature for such a short time that many of the bacteria are not killed. The Pasteurization is decidedly less thorough than by the other method. But here, again, before condemning the process it is necessary to consider its purpose. If it is to destroy all the bacteria, or as large a number of them as is possible, it is of course unsatisfactory. If, however, the purpose is to treat the milk cheaply and rapidly in such a manner as to remove the danger of disease distribution through, the milk supply, it would appear that such a method is perhaps satisfactory.

So far as can be determined, this method is efficient in destroying pathogenic bacteria. Its efficiency is of course dependent upon the length of time that the milk is retained at the high temperature, and this can be regulated by the rate of the flow of the milk through the machine. All evidence we have seems to point to the conclusion that a temperature of 75° C., continued for a few minutes only, so far destroys or weakens the pathogenic bacteria which are liable to be found in milk that they need not subsequently be feared as producing disease. Of course, there are pathogenic bacteria that are not destroyed by this temperature, but they are not likely to occur in milk. The germs of typhoid, diphtheria, and tuberculosis are probably rendered harmless by such treatment, and these are the chief pathogenic bacteria of milk. Moreover, the other bacteria are very greatly decreased in numbers, so that the dangers of intestinal troubles are at least much reduced. In hospitals where Pasteurization has been adopted the results are as favorable as with sterilization.

The great value of this plan is, however, that it is practical on a large scale. In Copenhagen it has been in practice for some three years very extensively. In Denmark the amount of tuberculosis among cows is very great, somewhat more than half the animals suffering from this disease. As a result the public milk supply is regarded with more suspicion than in countries where the disease is less. It is everywhere recommended that the milk be always boiled before using, but the bother of treating the milk thus daily makes people unwilling to do it, and it is doubtful whether the practice is as common as the physicians think necessary. Some three years ago a company was organized to meet the public demand for safe milk, and it has adopted plans by which it furnishes Pasteurized milk on a scale as extensive as that of the ordinary milk-supply companies. The company has devised and manufactured two large machines which receive the milk, Pasteurize it, and cool it in a constant stream, and are capable of treating two thousand quarts an hour. The milk received by the company is tested chemically and filtered, and then allowed to pass through one of these large machines. After this it is placed in glass bottles and sealed with the company's seal. The heating is done by steam, and the cooling by brine cooled by an ammonia cooling machine. The greatest care is taken in cleaning and sterilizing the bottles, an enormous chamber some twenty feet long and six feet in diameter being used for a sterilizer. Into this the washed bottles are placed, the chamber hermetically closed, and then superheated steam is turned in upon them. Everything connected with the establishment is conducted with the greatest attention to cleanliness, and upon a very large scale. The bottled milk is subsequently distributed in ordinary milk carts. A bacteriologist is constantly testing the efficiency of the machines by bacteriological examinations of the Pasteurized milk.

The most important feature in this undertaking is that the company furnishes the city with milk at the same price as that furnished by the other companies without Pasteurization. It seems strange that this can be done, for the Pasteurization of course costs something. But the explanation is essentially that heat is cheaper than cold. Because of the subsequent Pasteurization this company does not feel it necessary to demand that the milk should reach them in as cool a condition as is required by the other companies. While their business rivals insist that they shall receive milk not warmer than 4° C., this Pasteurizing company receives it as warm as 10° C., and this saving in the cooling largely pays for the Pasteurization. The mechanical bottling enables them to employ a cheaper grade of help than is necessary when the milk is peddled in carts.

The results of this endeavor to furnish safe milk are in quite decided contrast to those connected with sterilized milk. Sterilized milk has now been on the market for quite a number of years, but, in spite of the fact that it can be readily bought in most cities, the actual business is small. The largest milk-supply company in Europe has a demand for only a few hundred quarts per day. This company in Copenhagen offers to the public a milk which has the taste of fresh milk and which has been so treated as to have all pathogenic bacteria within it destroyed, and at the same time the other bacteria greatly reduced in number. This milk it sells at the same price as ordinary milk. As a result its business has rapidly grown, and instead of supplying a few hundred quarts it sells some thirty thousand daily, and the amount of milk handled is increasing with great rapidity. It probably sells more Pasteurized milk than all the sterilized milk sold in Europe.

It would thus seem that we have here actually a practical method of dealing with the new problem of the milk supply. That it is practical is manifest from the actual results in this institution in Copenhagen. Whether it is regarded as satisfactory will of course depend upon our standpoint. Those that insist that the milk must be freed from all danger, and hence deprived of all bacteria, will not regard this method as satisfactory. But probably every one will recognize that milk thus treated is very much safer than raw milk, and that dangers from typhoid epidemics and tuberculosis are removed, even if they do not admit that intestinal troubles are thus avoided.

There can be little doubt that the method would be successful in our own cities, but its success would depend upon the price at which the milk is sold. If the Pasteurized milk is sold for a price much higher than ordinary milk it will not be a commercial success, for the vast majority of people prefer to save the one or two cents per quart, and run the rather slight risk of trouble from the milk. If it can be sold in our cities, as in Copenhagen, for the same price or a price only slightly higher than that of ordinary milk, it is hardly doubtful that it would soon come into favor, for who would not prefer milk that is safe from disease germs if the price is the same? Already there are a few attempts in this direction in some of our cities, but as yet they are only in the beginning stage. Whether they will develop to a wide extent depends probably almost wholly upon the price at which the milk can be sold.

It would appear, then, that this method of Pasteurization by a central company offers the most hopeful solution of this feature of the problem which is growing with the growth of cities. The milk companies could probably arrange, without great expense, such a plan of Pasteurizing large amounts of milk. This only emphasizes the conclusion, already reached, that the most hopeful method of dealing with the problem in our cities is through properly organized companies that can handle milk on a large scale, and will do it conscientiously, and not wholly from the standpoint of money-making.

TEACHERS' SCHOOL OF SCIENCE.

By FRANCES ZIRNGIEBEL.

[Concluded.]

Parallel in time with the course in historical geology or paleontology was that in botany, under the leadership of Dr. Robert W. Greenleaf, a Boston physician, who in his student days had assisted Dr. Goodale and was at the time of giving these lessons Professor of Botany and Materia Medica at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. A growing interest in the study of botany in the schools, and Dr. Greenleaf's exceptional ability as a teacher, made the attendance at this class very large. After an hour's lecture the instructor and two assistants directed the observation of the specimens by the students, who were required to make sketches of the objects studied. The first set of lessons was similar to that given in the school by Dr. Goodale several years before, and was of a preparatory nature, including morphological, structural, and physiological botany.

Robert W. Greenleaf.

The introductory lesson dealt with the relation of botany to its various subdivisions and to other studies. The meaning of morphology was illustrated by comparing the four plant members—root, stem, leaf, and plant hair—with the different plant organs, and a practical exercise, with specimens whose parts were sketched and labeled, was given to show that the position and mode of development of a part determine its rank as a member or structural division, while its function may give it quite a different rank as an organ.

A preliminary view of vegetable histology, considering the shape, wall, markings in the wall, and contents of cells, was next given. This was followed by lessons on vegetable physiology, in which the absorption of liquids and gases for the making of food, assimilation, transfer and storage of food, the growth of cells and tissues, the excretion of waste products, special kinds of work, as climbing, catching of insects, etc., reproduction, and the process of metabolism as illustrated in cells, were treated of first in a general way and then elaborated upon in the succeeding lessons. Much time was devoted to the anatomy, histology, and germination of seeds and to the structure and function of root, stem, and leaf. The morphology of fruits and their anatomical classification (profusely illustrated from the fruits of the market and neighboring fields), with a discussion of the contrivances for dissemination of fruits and seeds, furnished subject-matter for both a profitable and interesting lesson.

The last lessons of this set were devoted to the study of the flower and its parts, particularly stamens and pistils, and ended with an explanation of the processes of pollination and fertilization. The work of making vertical and horizontal plans of the flower served as an introduction for the second year's course on Systematic Botany, wherein the relations between the common families of flowering plants were shown. This course was illustrated by numerous hothouse flowers and also by dried specimens, of which one hundred kinds were given to each teacher. This course was given to teachers, many of whom could by means of a key analyze any common flower, but who knew nothing of the principles of plant relationship. The theories of special creation and of evolution were explained, and the theory of descent with variation was taken as a hypothesis.

Starting with this theory of evolution as a basis, the structure of certain families was studied and they were taken as types with which other related families were compared. After a classification of all known flowering plants into gymnosperms and angiosperms, and subdividing the latter into monocotyledons and dicotyledons, the lily family was considered as typical of monocotyledons. It and its related families afforded a simple means of demonstrating the problems under consideration. Members of this family were found to be characterized by having an endogenous stem, usually parallel veined leaves, six-parted perianth free from a three-celled superior ovary, and six stamens. The allied families were shown to agree with the type in the internal or fundamental characters, such as the number of carpels and cells of the ovary, but were found to differ in the more external or environmental characters, such as the arrangement of the parts of the perianth.

After studying the relations between the various groups of endogens, the trees and weeds of the apetalous division of exogens were next considered, and through Ranunculaceæ connected with polypetalous dicotyledons. These latter were classified according to whether the parts of the flower were hypogenous, perigynous, or epigynous. These terms signify, respectively, under the pistil, around the pistil, and on the pistil. In this group the rose family presented several modifications of the pistil, according to which it was divided into tribes.

When the group of Gamopetalæ was studied, Solanaceæ, the nightshade family, with its regular flower, and Labiatæ, or mint family, with irregular flower, were taken as types with superior ovaries. Various modifications from these types were found in several families.

Ericaceæ, the heath family, presented, in its suborders of Ericineæ, Pyroleæ, and Monotropeæ, which had superior ovaries, and Vacciniæ, which had inferior ovaries, an intermediate order between the preceding superæ and following inferæ, of which latter group Campanulaceæ was considered a type.

The relations between many families were traced, and the Compositæ were lastly considered, this family showing the greatest differentiation with its coalescence of circles, adnation of different circles, reduction in parts, and number of individuals brought together. The greatest deviation from a simple flower and a complexity of structure were here presented. Through the co-operation of parts these flowers were of high physiological efficiency.

Throughout the course, families of medicinal or other economic value, or such as presented evidences of adaptation for cross-fertilization, dissemination of seed, life in desert regions, or contained examples of parasiticism or many poisonous genera, were incidentally considered.

Carefully made illustrated notebooks, collections of dried specimens, and other evidences of interest in the course were shown by the teachers, who gained great facility in placing an unknown flower in its proper family without the use of a key or botany.

The next set of lessons in the botanical series consisted of the usual number (fifteen) on cryptogamic botany. This was perhaps the course which was the most difficult of presentation; but, notwithstanding, much dried and fresh material, representing chiefly the higher cryptogams, was distributed among the pupils and examined by them.

The fourth and last year of the series was spent on paleobotany. This was a somewhat novel and valuable course, which was particularly appreciated by those who had studied geology and paleontology in other classes of the school. A large amount of laboratory material was provided from the museum. The duplicate fossil specimens of the society were used by the class, and ninety determined species were figured by many members. Since the close of these lessons persons who have shown throughout the four years a satisfactory knowledge of botany and have passed the examinations, in the most exhaustive course ever given in the subject for teachers, have received certificates stating their qualifications.

George H. Barton.

In the spring of 1887, owing to a suggestion made by Professor W. O. Crosby and to assistance furnished by him, a private course of instruction was arranged by Prof. G. H. Barton, of the Institute of Technology, for a series of lessons in field geology. Twenty-one persons, nearly all of whom had attended Professor Crosby's course in The Teachers' School of Science, took these lessons with great enthusiasm. The series of lessons was continued in the autumn, with the addition of twelve new members to the class. From this beginning has grown the systematic course of field instruction in geology now carried on as one of the regular courses. As at present conducted, it consists of a series of lessons in the autumn and spring of each year, so arranged as to give detailed instruction in methods of observation covering a range through all portions of the subject, embracing mineralogy, lithology, structural geology, historical geology, and physiography.

Teachers' School of Science. Field Class in Geology. Prof. George H. Barton, Instructor.

The method pursued is as follows: The class is taken to a typical place for illustrating the subject in hand. The area to be studied is pointed out, and then for a half hour or so the class is asked to make observations unassisted by the instructor and with as little communication among themselves as possible. Then they are called together and questions are asked to draw out the results of their observations, free discussion being invited at this time, and questions from the class answered by the instructor. Then the instructor explains the phenomena studied, and finally gives a general lecture upon the particular subject involved. Notes, taken in the field, are carried home and rewritten and then handed in at the next lesson, to be corrected and returned later. A printed synopsis is furnished each member of the class at every lesson, for which payment is made sufficient to cover the cost of the printing. Each member is also required to be provided with a hammer, chisel, and compass.

The course of instruction begins with a discussion of the general principles of erosion, and one lesson each is given at places illustrating an excess of chemical and mechanical action. At Medford a very broad dike of coarsely crystalline diabase, penetrated by numerous cracks, furnishes an exceptionally good opportunity for the observation of rapid chemical decomposition, an almost complete gradual transition being shown from the fresh unaltered rock through all degrees of decomposition to the formation of soil. The cause of the decomposition is explained, with the resulting products, and the history of the latter is traced till they form parts or the whole of a new rock. A drumlin is seen, at Great Head, Winthrop, being undermined and worn away by the waves. By comparison with other drumlins in the neighborhood, the original form of Great Head can be easily restored mentally and the effect of waves and currents upon a coast can be readily appreciated. In an excursion to North Adams and rides over the Hoosac Mountains and to the summit of Greylock, rivers are seen in their various stages of action, the cutting backward by the cascade action, the cutting downward of torrent action, and the more quiet transportation and final deposition of the streams passing through the lower levels and approaching the sea. From the sides of Hoosac and Greylock the surface of the Massachusetts plateau is seen, with its dissection by the Berkshire and Deerfield Valleys, illustrating the broad effects of erosion over the surface of the continent.

Passing next to a discussion of the disposition of the material that is derived by erosion from the land, a lecture upon the sorting action of water is given, and the resultant beds of gravel, sand, and clay are studied in a section cut by the Fitchburg Railroad through the sand plateau at Lake Walden, in Concord.

The next step is to study these products of deposition in their consolidated forms. At Parker Hill, Roxbury, a large quarry furnishes opportunity for the study of conglomerate, special attention being paid to the means of determination of stratification in a nearly homogeneous, coarse material. Here also is a large section in a drumlin left in a nearly vertical face by excavation about twenty years ago, and now illustrating finely the action of rain during the years. This forms an instructive contrast with the marine erosion of Great Head, Winthrop. Any one of the numerous slate quarries at Somerville serves the purpose of studying stratification in a fine, homogeneous material. In each of these three last-named places the various phenomena of stratified rocks are studied, such as unconformity, cross-bedding, ripple-marks, strike, and dip, but attention is confined more especially to the original structures, subsequent structures being left for later lessons.

Eruptive rocks are then taken up and studied in respect to their origin and original structures. The quarries near Winter Hill, in Somerville, furnish an admirable opportunity to study dikes. Here a small hill of slate is intersected by three series of dikes of different character and intersecting each other at various angles, enabling a determination of their relative ages. An intrusive bed, now separated from its parent dike by erosion, affords the means of comparing the characteristics of the two forms and of tracing out the relation between them. The inclined positions of the dike and bed and the numerous quarries furnish several sections in varying relations to the two. The various dikes and the inclined position of the inclosing slate give an excellent chance for the first instruction in the making of geological maps and sections. Notes are taken for this purpose, and both maps and sections are constructed and handed in at a later date.

At Marblehead Neck various other eruptive structures, such as flow structure, ancient ash-beds, etc., are seen in the felsite, of which many varieties occur there. Attention is especially called to the liability of mistaking flow structure for stratification, the similarities and differences being explained. At Marblehead Neck, also, a careful study is made of the formation of pebbles, all stages being shown from the dislodging of fragments from the cliffs by frost action, the dropping into reach of the waves, the first rounding of the sharp angles to the subangular outline, and finally the rounding of the fragment into a complete pebble form.

At Newton Centre a study of contemporaneous beds is made, including their relations to the inclosing rocks and a comparison of their characteristics with those of intrusive beds.

Eruptive masses, metamorphic rocks, and vein phenomena are all well shown at Fitchburg, where Rollstone Hill is an eruptive mass of granite cutting through the metamorphic mica schists and gneisses, and the granite in turn is cut by very numerous veins of pegmatite, abundantly rich in tourmaline crystals and occasionally having beryl.

Glacial structures are next taken up. At Newtonville is studied the esker and sand plateau, rendered famous by the work of Prof. W. M. Davis and others; at Clinton an exceptionally fine set of terraces, and the best example of roches moutonnées near Boston, where a class can be taught in a very few minutes to recognize that the movement of the ice sheet must have been from the north toward the south; and at Stow and Haverhill are studied drumlins.

After this, special attention is devoted to the subsequent structures of rocks, such as folds, faults, cleavage, joints, etc. Typical places, as before, are selected for each, and the work carried on in the same manner. When this course has been entirely accomplished, then places of greater complexity and where the problems are not quite so plain are visited, and opportunity is given to exercise the skill or knowledge already gained.

Following this, a series of lessons is devoted to the study of typical places illustrating the various historical strata occurring in Massachusetts; among others, Nahant and Braintree for the Cambrian, Attleboro for the Carboniferous, Mount Holyoke for the Triassic, Gay Head for the Cretaceous and Tertiary, Rockport, Martha's Vineyard, and claypits of Cambridge for the Glacial Champlain.

The work in this course has been marked by enthusiasm, and the attendance has been very large, reaching a maximum of two hundred and ten, with an average attendance of seventy-one in the autumn of 1896. As a direct outcome of this work, and connected with it, several excursions to distant points have been made by parties under the charge of Professor Barton during the summer vacations. The most important of these were the following: A five-days' trip through western Massachusetts; a seven-weeks' trip to the Pacific coast, including visits to the Lake Superior copper regions, the Yellowstone Park, Butte, Montana, Great Shoshone Falls in Idaho, Columbia River, Mount Hood, Frazer Cañon in British Columbia, the Great Glacier of the Selkirks, and the Hot Springs at Banff; and two trips through Nova Scotia, one in 1894 and another in 1898. In each of the latter trips special attention has been paid to the various kinds of mining coal, iron, and gold, to the famous mineral localities like Cape Blomidon, and to the general geology.

Also, connected with this work, a special course of lessons has been given by Professor Barton each spring to a class from the Boston Normal School, and many occasional lectures and field lessons to the classes of the State Normal School at Framingham, and at other schools, teachers' clubs, etc. During the Boston exhibition of the cyclorama of the volcano of Kilauea, Hawaii, over three hundred teachers and a large number of schools visited that exhibition and listened to personal lectures by Professor Barton in direct connection with the work of The Teachers' School of Science.

Owing to the request of members of the field class, a private class was organized in the winter for a course of twelve lessons in mineralogy. This proving successful, and a demand for laboratory work being shown, this work was incorporated as a distinct course in the school. It was during the early part of this work that Professor Barton introduced for the first time in The Teachers' School of Science the system of daily and final examinations—a system since followed as the general practice of the school and now considered as one of its most fundamental features.

This course, after various experiments, has finally developed into a definite four-years' course of instruction, at the end of which those members who have met all the requirements receive the diploma of the school. The full four-years' course is designed to give a thorough training in the fundamental principles of geological science. Each year is given a series of fifteen lessons of two hours each, partly laboratory, partly lecture, and fully illustrated with specimens and diagrams. The first year's work is devoted to mineralogy. One introductory lecture is given on the principles of chemistry as the basis of understanding the composition of minerals, and the four following lessons are devoted to a study of the physical properties, mainly crystallography. During the remaining lessons, about one hundred and fifty of the commonest mineral species are studied, the class being required to learn to recognize each species and be able to tell its composition.

The second year's work with lithology is carried on largely in the same way as with mineralogy. At first a brief review is made of the most important rock-forming minerals. Then all the commoner species of rocks are taken up and studied, so as to learn to recognize each species at sight and to tell its composition. Besides this, lectures are given upon the origin of the rocks and the derivation of their component materials, involving a large amount of dynamical geology.

During the third and fourth years are taken up, respectively, structural and historical geology. Both these subjects are taught largely by lectures, illustrated by charts and diagrams, a select set of specimens for the table, and a few such specimens as can be passed around the room. In the historical geology special care is taken to furnish for class use as many specimens as possible of the typical rocks and fossils of the various ages. It is nearly impossible to provide so abundantly, however, as for mineralogy and lithology. As regards examinations, the methods used are as follows: The first half hour of each exercise is taken up with answering questions or identifying specimens, the examinations in all cases being written. The ground covered by each examination includes all that has been gone over during that year previous to the examination. After the examination is finished, the instructor briefly answers and explains the questions. The papers so handed in are marked by the instructor and returned the following week. All of this serves to enable the class to keep a comprehensive grasp of the subject constantly in hand. At the end of each year's work a final examination of three hours in length is given, covering the complete subject. The final rank given each member is made up equally from an average of the term's work and the final examination. This course has proved decidedly popular. The instruction was originally given in the Geological Department of the Institute of Technology, in a room adapted to seating thirty-six persons. This was gradually crowded to accommodate fifty-six persons. At the beginning of the last four-years' course the number of the applications was so large that each applicant was required to sign a printed statement promising to be present at all exercises for the four years, except for good and sufficient reasons. One hundred and seventeen persons gave the required promise. In order to meet this demand, two divisions were formed, and on each Saturday afternoon the same lesson was repeated. In order to defray the additional expense of the second division the members of the class voluntarily contributed three dollars each. The labor of repeating the lessons on the same afternoon proving too great, provision was made the second year to transfer the instruction to the large lecture hall of the Natural History building, where accommodations were made for one hundred and twelve students. The work has since been carried on there, and a complete new set of specimens, diagrams, etc., is gradually being obtained.

The membership of the class is, of course, principally made up from Boston and the towns immediately surrounding, but a few come from places as far distant as towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island, from Bridgewater, Scituate, Framingham, Fitchburg, Lowell, Lawrence, and Beverly.

One member of the class has made an exhaustive study of the granites of eastern Massachusetts, and others are teaching geology in secondary schools outside of Boston.

An important and influential outcome of the first lessons of Mr. Barton was the formation, in the fall of 1888, of the Barton Chapter of the Agassiz Association, by seven ladies who had been fellow-students in mineralogy. Later, men and other ladies who had attended Mr. Barton's field lessons were invited to join. For ten years this club has flourished, and held weekly evening meetings for nine months of the year, at which the members have done much systematic work in the study of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, botany, entomology, and zoölogy. At some of the sessions the individual members have taken their share of the work by the preparing of exhaustive papers which have been read to and discussed by the class, and sometimes a series of lessons has been given by specialists in the several departments. Many of the first scientists of Boston have aided this association by the giving of lectures and advice regarding courses of lessons and opportunities for study, while the club has in return been a great benefactor to many who sought its instruction and the association of those with like tastes. In arranging regular Saturday outings for the study of field geology and botany, this club was the pioneer in this vicinity of the kind of study which happily now seems to be fast becoming popular. A number of persons who were members of this association in their younger years are now holding positions in the United States Geological Survey or other departments of the Government, or in the capacity of curator or instructor are connected with large museums, colleges, or schools in different parts of the country, thereby having opportunities to continue their favorite lines of work, to spread a knowledge of the things about them, and to induce in others tastes such as were fostered in them while connected with the Barton Chapter of the Agassiz Association.

Field Class in Zoölogy. Looking for Shore Life among the Bowlders at Woods Hole.

Since closing the four-years' course in botany Dr. Greenleaf has repeated the lessons on vegetable morphology and physiology and those on systematic botany. Finding the class not so well prepared as in former years, instead of continuing the third course of the series, he has given a set of fifteen lessons on the elementary structure and function of flowering plants, as he believed that course to be a necessary foundation for further botanical study.

Another feature of The Teachers' School of Science should not remain unnoticed. It consists of effective work in zoölogy and geology by Mr. A. W. Grabau, the official guide in the museum and a graduate student of geology. A course of lessons on The Shore Animals of New England was begun by him in April, 1897. Directly connected with these field lessons was held a class in laboratory work, which was attended by about twenty persons.

The next year Mr. Grabau endeavored to give his audience a comprehensive view of the action of cold and heat, of winds and waves, rain and rivers, and of the chemical effect of the atmosphere in the production of the natural features of the earth's surface, by giving eight lectures on The Surface of the Earth, its Rocks, Soils, and Scenery. Special attention was given to the scenery of New England, and this awakened an interest in local scenery, which interest led to Mr. Grabau giving several lectures in surrounding towns, under local auspices. One of these lectures called the attention of the people of Arlington, Massachusetts, to the fact that they had in their midst a valuable geological monument, and led them to start a movement for the preservation of a terminal bowlder moraine on Arlington Heights, which is the only good accessible example of such moraine near Boston.

Under the same instruction ten lessons were given on the use of the microscope and the preparation of specimens of hydroids.

The work begun at the winter lectures was continued during the spring by excursions to the seashore. The beaches of Revere, Swampscott, Marblehead; the cliffs and tide pools of Nahant, Marblehead Neck, and Nantasket, and the mud flats and piles of Beverly, were explored. One excursion was made to the outer shore of Cape Cod and Buzzards Bay. The party spent four days on this excursion.

During the early part of the summer an outing was made to Bayville, Maine, where a laboratory was furnished, with microscopes and other accessories, and fourteen persons (mostly teachers) devoted ten days to the study of marine fauna, special attention being given to hydroids. Some geology was studied during this excursion, and a small island mapped. Those who attended this expedition were delighted with an experience new to most of them, as many of them had not before studied zoölogy and knew not what a field could be opened by the study of natural history. One of the party afterward remarked, "I feel as if I had been born into a new world, so different are these things in their homes from their representations in books."

In the autumn and following spring field lessons were given on marine zoölogy, the object being to study animals in their natural habitats. Another excursion was made to Woods Hole, Buzzards Bay, and a summer laboratory established for ten days at Goldsborough, Maine, where work similar to that done the previous summer was here carried out. Among the field lessons of the spring of 1899 was an excursion of four days' duration to Cuttyhunk, one of the Elizabeth Islands, where there was an opportunity to study a marine fauna southern in character and different from that found on the Maine coast. On the afternoon of Agassiz's birthday a sail was taken to another of this group of islands—Penikese, the site of the famous summer school. In the evening the class of seventeen persons listened to the reading of selections from the life of Agassiz, poems regarding him, and magazine articles describing events connected with the great meeting in the summer of 1873. The next day an excursion was made to Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, where the afternoon was spent in studying the wonderfully colored clay cliffs and in searching for fossils. As an outcome of Mr. Grabau's field lessons the Hale House Natural History Club was formed. This club consists of teachers and other persons who have banded together for the study of natural history. Meetings are held twice a month, and similar classes have been formed for children of the neighborhood.

The Teachers' School of Science has been of great assistance to the Boston Normal School by furnishing certain of its pupils with instruction in geology and zoölogy.

In 1893 The Teachers' School of Science took part in the exhibition of elementary science teaching made by certain teachers of the schools of the eastern part of Massachusetts. The school was enabled to take part in this public exhibit through the generosity of Mr. T. A. Watson, a pupil in the school, who paid the necessary expenses.

A collection of articles obtained by the Baron de Baye in a scientific expedition last year to Siberia and the Russian Caucasus contains specimens from very ancient times down. Among them are mammoth bones and chipped flints, like those of the Mousterian period in France, from the Yenisei; arrowheads, like the European and American, from the same region; bronze weapons from the Caucasus; iron arrowheads like those of the Congo; skulls, weapons and ornaments, necklaces of hard, polished, pierced stones, from the Kurgans of the steppes, dating from antiquity down to the beginning of the middle ages; Caucasian jewels, and ceramic ware ancient and modern. A very curious object is one of the statues, called Kamenaia Baba, of a kind supposed to have been set up by the Scythians and always held in veneration, of which the present specimen is the only one yet allowed to go out of Russia.

INFLUENCE OF THE WEATHER UPON CRIME.

By EDWIN G. DEXTER.

The relation between general climatic conditions and the prevalence of suicide has been somewhat exhaustively studied by students of criminology, the result being a considerable accumulation of data and the formulation of a number of more or less tenable theories. From these studies we may safely conclude that the homicidal tendency, as shown by self-destruction (suicide) and the destruction of others (murder), is stronger in the temperate climatic zones than in the torrid or frigid, and that in the late spring and early summer months more of these offenses have been recorded than for any other period of the year. To these few facts the seeming effects of cosmical forces upon such tendencies has apparently been limited.

In fact, it was the oft-repeated statement that nothing was known of the exact relations of the more definite meteorological conditions with the prevalence of suicide—a statement to be found in most treatises upon the subject—that has given rise to this paper. Realizing that the science of climatology must include, and in fact be based upon, a study of the meteorological conditions prevalent, and that the study of these definite conditions for the exact times when suicides or murders occurred might throw some light upon the question, this problem was undertaken.

In the preparation of the accompanying charts, from the study of which the conclusions herein stated were deduced, the record of crime for Denver, Colorado, for the fourteen years ending with June, 1897, was made use of. Superintendent Howe, chief of the city detective service, has kept such a record with the greatest care, and we wish here to acknowledge the many courtesies of his office.

No attempt has been made in this paper to compare the conditions for Denver, either meteorological or social—and each is somewhat unique—with such conditions elsewhere. In fact, such a comparative study is at present impossible since data are wanting.

In the actual preparation of the charts each murder, suicide, or attempt at suicide—which, for our purpose, is equally important—was set down chronologically in the left-hand columns of large sheets of paper ruled for the purpose. These sheets were then taken to the office of the United States Weather Bureau, F. H. Brandenburg, director, where were recorded in the proper columns the maximum and minimum barometer readings, maximum and minimum temperature, maximum and minimum humidity, maximum velocity of the wind, precipitation, and character of the day for each day during the fourteen years on which a crime of either class occurred. When several took place upon the same day the fact was taken into consideration. From the sheets thus filled out, the curves on the accompanying charts were plotted by computing the per cent of crimes of each class committed under the definite meteorological condition indicated.

The curves marked "normal" were constructed by tabulating in a similar manner the conditions for every day in a sufficient number of days to secure a fair average. Five years were so tabulated for Figs. 2, 3, 4, and 5, and the records for nineteen years used in Figs. 1 and 6.

The whole number of suicides recorded is two hundred and sixty; murders, one hundred and eighty. It may be noted that this number of suicides, for a city averaging hardly one hundred thousand inhabitants for the fourteen years, is largely in excess of the rate recorded for American cities, but it must be remembered that some of these were unsuccessful attempts, and also that the social conditions of Denver tend to swell the number—containing, as it does, so many disappointed in the last struggle for health.