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

CONTENTS

THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
J. McKEEN CATTELL

VOL. LVII
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1900

NEW YORK AND LONDON
McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900,
By McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND COMPANY.

THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

OCTOBER, 1900.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.[A]
By Sir WILLIAM TURNER, F. R. S.,
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

[A] Given at Bradford on September 5, 1900.

Twenty-seven years ago the British Association met in Bradford, not at that time raised to the dignity of a city. The meeting was very successful, and was attended by about two thousand persons—a forecast, let us hope, of what we may expect at the present assembly. A distinguished chemist, Prof. A. W. Williamson, presided. On this occasion the association has elected for the presidential chair one whose attention has been given to the study of an important department of biological science. His claim to occupy, however unworthily, the distinguished position in which he has been placed, rests, doubtless, on the fact that, in the midst of the engrossing duties devolving on a teacher in a great university and school of medicine, he has endeavored to contribute to the sum of knowledge of the science which he professes. It is a matter of satisfaction to feel that the success of a meeting of this kind does not rest upon the shoulders of the occupant of the presidential chair, but is due to the eminence and active coöperation of the men of science who either preside over or engage in the work of the nine or ten sections into which the association is divided, and to the energy and ability for organization displayed by the local secretaries and committees. The programme prepared by the general and local officers of the association shows that no efforts have been spared to provide an ample bill of fare, both in its scientific and social aspects. Members and associates will, I feel sure, take away from the Bradford meeting as pleasant memories as did our colleagues of the corresponding Association Française, when, in friendly collaboration at Dover last year, they testified to the common citizenship of the Universal Republic of Science. As befits a leading center of industry in the great county of York, the applications of science to the industrial arts and to agriculture will form subjects of discussion in the papers to be read at the meeting.

Since the association was at Dover a year ago, two of its former presidents have joined the majority. The Duke of Argyll presided at the meeting in Glasgow so far back as 1855. Throughout his long and energetic life, he proved himself to be an eloquent and earnest speaker, one who gave to the consideration of public affairs a mind of singular independence, and a thinker and writer in a wide range of human knowledge. Sir J. Wm. Dawson was president at the meeting in Birmingham in 1886. Born in Nova Scotia in 1820, he devoted himself to the study of the Geology of Canada, and became the leading authority on the subject. He took also an active and influential part in promoting the spread of scientific education in the Dominion, and for a number of years he was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the McGill University, Montreal.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD.

Edward Gibbon has told us that diligence and accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer can ascribe to himself. Without doubt they are fundamental qualities necessary for historical research, but in order to bear fruit they require to be exercised by one whose mental qualities are such as to enable him to analyze the data brought together by his diligence, to discriminate between the false and the true, to possess an insight into the complex motives that determine human action, to be able to recognize those facts and incidents which had exercised either a primary or only a secondary influence on the affairs of nations, or on the thoughts and doings of the person whose character he is depicting.

In scientific research, also, diligence and accuracy are fundamental qualities. By their application new facts are discovered and tabulated, their order of succession is ascertained and a wider and more intimate knowledge of the processes of nature is acquired. But to decide on their true significance a well-balanced mind and the exercise of prolonged thought and reflection are needed. William Harvey, the father of exact research in physiology, in his memorable work, ‘De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis,’ published more than two centuries ago, tells us of the great and daily diligence which he exercised in the course of his investigations, and the numerous observations and experiments which he collated. At the same time he refers repeatedly to his cogitations and reflections on the meaning of what he had observed, without which the complicated movements of the heart could not have been analyzed, their significance determined and the circulation of the blood in a continuous stream definitely established. Early in the present century, Carl Ernst von Baer, the father of embryological research, showed the importance which he attached to the combination of observation with meditation by placing side by side on the title page of his famous treatise ‘Ueber Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere’ (1828) the words Beobachtung und Reflexion.

Though I have drawn from biological science my illustrations of the need of this combination, it must not be inferred that it applies exclusively to one branch of scientific inquiry; the conjunction influences and determines progress in all the sciences, and when associated with a sufficient touch of imagination, when the power of seeing is conjoined with the faculty of foreseeing, of projecting the mind into the future, we may expect something more than the discovery of isolated facts; their coördination and the enunciation of new principles and laws will necessarily follow.

Scientific method consists, therefore, in close observation, frequently repeated so as to eliminate the possibility of erroneous seeing; in experiments checked and controlled in every direction in which fallacies might arise; in continuous reflection on the appearances and phenomena observed, and in logically reasoning out their meaning and the conclusions to be drawn from them. Were the method followed out in its integrity by all who are engaged in scientific investigations, the time and labor expended in correcting errors committed by ourselves or by other observers and experimentalists would be saved, and the volumes devoted annually to scientific literature would be materially diminished in size. Were it applied, as far as the conditions of life admit, to the conduct and management of human affairs, we should not require to be told, when critical periods in our welfare as a nation arise, that we shall muddle through somehow. Recent experience has taught us that wise discretion and careful provision are as necessary in the direction of public affairs as in the pursuit of science, and in both instances, when properly exercised, they enable us to reach with comparative certainty the goal which we strive to attain.

IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS OF OBSERVATION.

While certain principles of research are common to all the sciences, each great division requires for its investigation specialized arrangements to insure its progress. Nothing contributes so much to the advancement of knowledge as improvements in the means of observation, either by the discovery of new adjuncts to research, or by a fresh adaptation of old methods. In the industrial arts, the introduction of a new kind of raw material, the recognition that a mixture or blending is often more serviceable than when the substances employed are uncombined, the discovery of new processes of treating the articles used in manufactures, the invention of improved machinery, all lead to the expansion of trade to the occupation of the people, and to the development of great industrial centers. In science, also, the invention and employment of new and more precise instruments and appliances enable us to appreciate more clearly the signification of facts and phenomena which were previously obscure, and to penetrate more deeply into the mysteries of nature. They mark fresh departures in the history of science, and provide a firm base of support from which a continuous advance may be made and fresh conceptions of nature can be evolved.

It is not my intention, even had I possessed the requisite knowledge, to undertake so arduous a task as to review the progress which has recently been made in the great body of sciences which lie within the domain of the British Association. As my occupation in life has required me to give attention to the science which deals with the structure and organization of the bodies of man and animals—a science which either includes within its scope or has intimate and widespread relations to comparative anatomy, embryology, morphology, zoölogy, physiology and anthropology—I shall limit myself to the attempt to bring before you some of the more important observations and conclusions which have a bearing on the present position of the subject. As this is the closing year of the century it will not, I think, be out of place to refer to the changes which a hundred years have brought about in our fundamental conceptions of the structure of animals. In science, as in business, it is well from time to time to take stock of what we have been doing, so that we may realize where we stand and ascertain the balance to our credit in the scientific ledger.

So far back as the time of the ancient Greeks it was known that the human body and those of the more highly organized animals were not homogeneous, but were built up of parts, the partes dissimilares (τὰ ἀνόμοια μέρη {ta anomoia merê}) of Aristotle, which differed from each other in form, color, texture, consistency and properties. These parts were familiarly known as the bones, muscles, sinews, blood-vessels, glands, brain, nerves and so on. As the centuries rolled on, and as observers and observations multiplied, a more and more precise knowledge of these parts throughout the animal kingdom was obtained, and various attempts were made to classify animals in accordance with their forms and structure. During the concluding years of the last century and the earlier part of the present, the Hunters, William and John, in our country, the Meckels in Germany, Cuvier and St. Hilaire in France, gave an enormous impetus to anatomical studies, and contributed largely to our knowledge of the construction of the bodies of animals. But whilst by these and other observers the most salient and, if I may use the expression, the grosser characters of animal organization had been recognized, little was known of the more intimate structure or texture of the parts. So far as could be determined by the unassisted vision, and so much as could be recognized by the use of a simple lens, had indeed been ascertained, and it was known that muscles, nerves and tendons were composed of threads or fibers, and the blood and lymph-vessels were tubes, that the parts which we call fasciæ and aponeuroses were thin membranes and so on.

Early in the present century, Xavier Bichat, one of the most brilliant men of science during the Napoleonic era in France, published his ‘Anatomie Générale,’ in which he formulated important general principles. Every animal is an assemblage of different organs, each of which discharges a function, and acting together, each in its own way, assists in the preservation of the whole. The organs are, as it were, special machines situated in the general building which constitutes the factory or body of the individual. But, further, each organ or special machine is itself formed of tissues which possess different properties. Some, as the blood-vessels, nerves, fibrous tissues, etc., are generally distributed throughout the animal body, whilst others, as bones, muscles, and cartilage, etc., are found only in certain definite localities. While Bichat had acquired a definite philosophical conception of the general principles of construction and of the distribution of the tissues, neither he nor his pupil Béclard was in a position to determine the essential nature of the structural elements. The means and appliances at their disposal and at that of other observers in their generation were not sufficiently potent to complete the analysis.

Attempts were made in the third decennium of this century to improve the methods of examining minute objects by the manufacture of compound lenses, and, by doing away with chromatic and spherical aberration, to obtain, in addition to magnification of the object, a relatively large flat field of vision with clearness and sharpness of definition. When in January, 1830, Joseph Jackson Lister read to the Royal Society his memoir “On Some Properties in Achromatic Object-Glasses Applicable to the Improvement of Microscopes,” he announced the principles on which combinations of lenses could be arranged, which would possess these qualities. By the skill of our opticians, microscopes have now for more than half a century been constructed which, in the hands of competent observers, have influenced and extended biological science with results comparable to those obtained by the astronomer through improvements in the telescope.

In the study of the minute structure of plants and animals, the observer has frequently to deal with tissues and organs, most of which possess such softness and delicacy of substance and outline that, even when microscopes of the best construction are employed, the determination of the intimate nature of the tissue, and the precise relation which one element of an organ bears to the other constituent elements, is, in many instances, a matter of difficulty. Hence additional methods have had to be devised in order to facilitate study and to give precision and accuracy to our observations. It is difficult for one of the younger generation of biologists, with all the appliances of a well-equipped laboratory at his command, with experienced teachers to direct him in his work, and with excellent text-books, in which the modern methods are described, to realize the conditions under which his predecessors worked half a century ago. Laboratories for minute biological research had not been constructed, the practical teaching of histology and embryology had not been organized, experience in methods of work had not accumulated; each man was left to his individual efforts, and had to puzzle his way through the complications of structure to the best of his power. Staining and hardening reagents were unknown. The double-bladed knife invented by Valentin, held in the hand, was the only improvement on the scalpel or razor for cutting thin, more or less translucent slices suitable for microscopic examination; mechanical section-cutters and freezing arrangements had not been devised. The tools at the disposal of the microscopist were little more than knife, forceps, scissors, needles; with acetic acid, glycerine and Canada balsam as reagents. But in the employment of the newer methods of research care has to be taken, more especially when hardening and staining reagents are used, to discriminate between appearances which are to be interpreted as indicating natural characters, and those which are only artificial productions.

Notwithstanding the difficulties attendant on the study of the more delicate tissues, the compound achromatic microscope provided anatomists with an instrument of great penetrative power. Between the years 1830 and 1850 a number of acute observers applied themselves with much energy and enthusiasm to the examination of the minute structure of the tissues and organs in plants and animals.

CELL THEORY.

It had, indeed, long been recognized that the tissues of plants were to a large extent composed of minute vesicular bodies, technically called cells (Hooke, Malpighi, Grew). In 1831 the discovery was made by the great botanist, Robert Brown, that in many families of plants a circular spot, which he named areola or nucleus, was present in each cell; and in 1838 M. J. Schleiden published the fact that a similar spot or nucleus was a universal elementary organ in vegetables. In the tissues of animals also structures had begun to be recognized comparable with the cells and nuclei of the vegetable tissues, and in 1839 Theodore Schwann announced the important generalization that there is one universal principle of development for the elementary part of organisms, however different they may be in appearance, and that this principle is the formation of cells. The enunciation of the fundamental principle that the elementary tissues consisted of cells constituted a step in the progress of biological science which will forever stamp the century now drawing to a close with a character and renown equalling those which it has derived from the most brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences. It provided biologists with the visible anatomical units through which the external forces operating on, and the energy generated in, living matter come into play. It dispelled forever the old mystical idea of the influence exercised by vapors or spirits in living organisms. It supplied the physiologist and pathologist with the specific structures through the agency of which the functions of organisms are discharged in health and disease. It exerted an enormous influence on the progress of practical medicine. A review of the progress of knowledge of the cell may appropriately enter into an address on this occasion.

STRUCTURE OF CELLS.

A cell is a living particle, so minute that it needs a microscope for its examination; it grows in size, maintains itself in a state of activity, responds to the action of stimuli, reproduces its kind and in the course of time it degenerates and dies.

Let us glance at the structure of a cell to determine its constituent parts and the rôle which each plays in the function to be discharged. The original conception of a cell, based upon the study of the vegetable tissues, was a minute vesicle inclosed by a definite wall, which exercised chemical or metabolic changes on the surrounding material and secreted into the vesicle its characteristic contents. A similar conception was at first also entertained regarding the cells of animal tissues; but as observations multiplied, it was seen that numerous elementary particles, which were obviously in their nature cells, did not possess an inclosing envelope. A wall ceased to have a primary value as a constituent part of a cell, the necessary vesicular character of which therefore could no longer be entertained.

The other constituent parts of a cell are the cell plasm, which forms the body of the cell, and the nucleus embedded in its substance. Notwithstanding the very minute size of the nucleus, which even in the largest cells is not more than one-five-hundredth of an inch in diameter, and usually is considerably smaller, its almost constant form, its well-defined sharp outline and its power of resisting the action of strong reagents when applied to the cell, have from the period of its discovery by Robert Brown caused histologists to bestow on it much attention. Its structure and chemical composition; its mode of origin; the part which it plays in the formation of new cells, and its function in nutrition and secretion have been investigated.

When examined under favorable conditions in its passive or resting state, the nucleus is seen to be bounded by a membrane which separates it from the cell plasm and gives it the characteristic sharp contour. It contains an apparently structureless nuclear substance, nucleoplasm or enchylema, in which are embedded one or more extremely minute particles called nucleoli, along with a network of exceedingly fine threads or fibers, which in the active living cell play an essential part in the production of new nuclei within the cell. In its chemical composition the nuclear substance consists of albuminous plastin and globulin; and of a special material named nuclein, rich in phosphorus and with an acid reaction. The delicate network within the nucleus consists apparently of the nuclein, a substance which stains with carmine and other dyes, a property which enables the changes, which take place in the network in the production of young cells, to be more readily seen and followed out by the observer.

The mode of origin of the nucleus and the part which it plays in the production of new cells have been the subject of much discussion. Schleiden, whose observations, published in 1838, were made on the cells of plants, believed that within the cell a nucleolus first appeared, and that around it molecules aggregated to form the nucleus. Schwann again, whose observations were mostly made on the cells of animals, considered that an amorphous material existed in organized bodies, which he called cytoblastema. It formed the contents of cells, or it might be situated free or external to them. He figuratively compared it to a mother liquor in which crystals are formed. Either in the cytoblastema within the cells or in that situated external to them, the aggregation of molecules around a nucleolus to form a nucleus might occur, and, when once the nucleus had been formed, in its turn it would serve as a center of aggregation of additional molecules from which a new cell would be produced. He regarded, therefore, the formation of nuclei and cells as possible in two ways—one within preëxisting cells (endogenous cell-formation), the other in a free blastema lying external to cells (free cell-formation). In animals, he says, the endogenous method is rare, and the customary origin is in an external blastema. Both Schleiden and Schwann considered that after the cell was formed the nucleus had no permanent influence on the life of the cell, and usually disappeared.

Under the teaching principally of Henle, the famous Professor of Anatomy in Göttingen, the conception of the free formation of nuclei and cells in a more or less fluid blastema, by an aggregation of elementary granules and molecules, obtained so much credence, especially amongst those who were engaged in the study of pathological processes, that the origin of cells within preëxisting cells was to a large extent lost sight of. That a parent cell was requisite for the production of new cells seemed to many investigators to be no longer needed. Without doubt this conception of free cell-formation contributed in no small degree to the belief, entertained by various observers, that the simplest plants and animals might arise, without preëxisting parents, in organic fluids destitute of life, by a process of spontaneous generation; a belief which prevailed in many minds almost to the present day. If, as has been stated, the doctrine of abiogenesis cannot be experimentally refuted, on the other hand it has not been experimentally proved. The burden of proof lies with those who hold the doctrine, and the evidence that we possess is all the other way.

MULTIPLICATION OF CELLS.

Although von Mohl, the botanist, seems to have been the first to recognize (1835) in plants a multiplication of cells by division, it was not until attention was given to the study of the egg in various animals and to the changes which take place in it, attendant on fertilization, that in the course of time a much more correct conception of the origin of the nucleus and of the part which it plays in the formation of new cells was obtained. Before Schwann had published his classical memoir in 1839, von Baer and other observers had recognized within the animal ovum the germinal vesicle, which obviously bore to the ovum the relation of a nucleus to a cell. As the methods of observation improved, it was recognized that, within the developing egg, two vesicles appeared where one only had previously existed, to be followed by four vesicles, then eight, and so on in multiple progression until the ovum contained a multitude of vesicles, each of which possessed a nucleus. The vesicles were obviously cells which had arisen within the original germ-cell or ovum. These changes were systematically described by Martin Barry so long ago as 1839 and 1840 in two memoirs communicated to the Royal Society of London, and the appearance produced, on account of the irregularities of the surface occasioned by the production of new vesicles, was named by him the mulberry-like structure. He further pointed out that the vesicles arranged themselves as a layer within the envelope of the egg or zona pellucida, and that the whole embryo was composed of cells filled with the foundations of other cells. He recognized that the new cells were derived from the germinal vesicle or nucleus of the ovum, the contents of which entered into the formation of the first two cells, each of which had its nucleus, which in its turn resolved itself into other cells, and by a repetition of the process into a greater number. The endogenous origin of new cells within a preëxisting cell and the process which we now term the segmentation of the yolk were successfully demonstrated. In a third memoir, published in 1841, Barry definitely stated that young cells originated through division of the nucleus of the parent cell, instead of arising, as a product of crystallization, in the fluid cytoblastema of the parent cell or in a blastema situated external to the cell.

In a memoir published in 1842, John Goodsir advocated the view that the nucleus is the reproductive organ of the cell, and that from it, as from a germinal spot, new cells were formed. In a paper, published three years later, on nutritive centers, he described cells, the nuclei of which were the permanent source of successive broods of young cells, which from time to time occupied the cavity of the parent cell. He extended also his observations on the endogenous formation of cells to the cartilage cells in the process of inflammation and to other tissues undergoing pathological changes. Corroborative observations on endogenous formation were also given by his brother, Harry Goodsir, in 1845. These observations on the part which the nucleus plays by cleavage in the formation of young cells by endogenous development from a parent center—that an organic continuity existed between a mother cell and its descendants through the nucleus—constituted a great step in advance of the views entertained by Schleiden and Schwann, and showed that Barry and the Goodsirs had a deeper insight into the nature and functions of cells than was possessed by most of their contemporaries, and are of the highest importance when viewed in the light of recent observations.

In 1841 Robert Remak published an account of the presence of two nuclei in the blood corpuscles of the chick and the pig, which he regarded as evidence of the production of new corpuscles by division of the nucleus within a parent cell; but it was not until some years afterwards (1850 to 1855) that he recorded additional observations and recognized that division of the nucleus was the starting-point for the multiplication of cells in the ovum and in the tissues generally. Remak’s view was that the process of cell division began with the cleavage of the nucleolus, followed by that of the nucleus, and that again by cleavage of the body of the cell and its membrane. Kölliker had previously, in 1843, described the multiplication of nuclei in the ova of parasitic worms, and drew the inference that in the formation of young cells within the egg the nucleus underwent cleavage, and that each of its divisions entered into the formation of a new cell. By these observations, and by others subsequently made, it became obvious that the multiplication of animal cells, either by division of the nucleus within the cell, or by the budding off of a part of the protoplasm of the cell, was to be regarded as a widely spread and probably a universal process, and that each new cell arose from a parent cell.

Pathological observers were, however, for the most part inclined to consider free cell-formation in a blastema or exudation by an aggregation of molecules, in accordance with the views of Henle, as a common phenomenon. This proposition was attacked with great energy by Virchow in a series of memoirs published in his ‘Archiv,’ commencing in Vol. 1, 1847, and finally received its death-blow in his published lectures on Cellular Pathology, 1858. He maintained that in pathological structures there was no instance of cell development de novo; where a cell existed, there one must have been before. Cell-formation was a continuous development by descent, which he formulated in the expression omnis cellula e cellulâ.

KARYOKINESIS.

While the descent of cells from preëxisting cells by division of the nucleus during the development of the egg, in the embryos of plants and animals, and in adult vegetable and animal tissues, both in healthy and diseased conditions, had now become generally recognized, the mechanism of the process by which the cleavage of the nucleus took place was for a long time unknown. The discovery had to be deferred until the optician had been able to construct lenses of a higher penetrative power, and the microscopist had learned the use of coloring agents capable of dyeing the finest elements of the tissues. There was reason to believe that in some cases a direct cleavage of the nucleus, to be followed by a corresponding division of the cell into two parts, did occur. In the period between 1870 and 1880 observations were made by Schneider, Strasburger, Bütschli, Fol, van Beneden and Flemming, which showed that the division of the nucleus and the cell was due to a series of very remarkable changes, now known as indirect nuclear and cell division, or karyokinesis. The changes within the nucleus are of so complex a character that it is impossible to follow them in detail without the use of appropriate illustrations. I shall have to content myself, therefore, with an elementary sketch of the process.

I have previously stated that the nucleus in its passive or resting stage contains a very delicate network of threads or fibers. The first stage in the process of nuclear division consists in the threads arranging themselves in loops and forming a compact coil within the nucleus. The coil then becomes looser, the loops of threads shorten and thicken, and somewhat later each looped thread splits longitudinally into two portions. As the threads stain when coloring agents are applied to them, they are called chromatin fibers, and the loose coil is the chromosome (Waldeyer).

As the process continues, the investing membrane of the nucleus disappears, and the loops of threads arrange themselves within the nucleus so that the closed ends of the loops are directed to a common center, from which the loops radiate outwards and produce a starlike figure (aster). At the same time clusters of extremely delicate lines appear both in the nucleoplasm and in the body of the cell, named the achromatic figure, which has a spindle-like form with two opposite poles, and stains much more feebly than the chromatic fibers. The loops of the chromatic star then arrange themselves in the equatorial plane of the spindle, and bending round turn their closed ends towards the periphery of the nucleus and the cell.

The next stage marks an important step in the process of division of the nucleus. The two longitudinal portions, into which each looped thread had previously split, now separate from each other, and whilst one part migrates to one pole of the spindle, the other moves to the opposite pole, and the free ends of each loop are directed toward its equator (metakinesis). By this division of the chromatin fibers, and their separation from each other to opposite poles of the spindle, two starlike chromatin figures are produced (dyaster).

Each group of fibers thickens, shortens, becomes surrounded by a membrane, and forms a new or daughter nucleus (dispirem). Two nuclei therefore have arisen within the cell by the division of that which had previously existed, and the expression formulated by Flemming—omnis nucleus e nucleo—is justified. Whilst this stage is in course of being completed, the body of the cell becomes constricted in the equatorial plane of the spindle, and, as the constriction deepens, it separates into two parts, each containing a daughter nucleus, so that two nucleated cells have arisen out of a preëxisting cell.

A repetition of the process in each of these cells leads to the formation of other cells, and, although modifications in details are found in different species of plants and animals, the multiplication of cells in the egg and in the tissues generally on similar lines is now a thoroughly established fact in biological science.

In the study of karyokinesis, importance has been attached to the number of chromosomes in the nucleus of the cell. Flemming had seen in the Salamander twenty-four chromosome fibers, which seems to be a constant number in the cells of epithelium and connective tissues. In other cells, again, especially in the ova of certain animals, the number is smaller, and fourteen, twelve, four and even two only have been described. The theory formulated by Boveri that the number of chromosomes is constant for each species, and that in the karyokinetic figures corresponding numbers are found in homologous cells, seems to be not improbable.

In the preceding description I have incidentally referred to the appearance in the proliferating cell of an achromatic spindle-like figure. Although this was recognized by Fol in 1873, it is only during the last ten or twelve years that attention has been paid to its more minute arrangements and possible signification in cell-division.

The pole at each end of the spindle lies in the cell plasm which surrounds the nucleus. In the center of each pole is a somewhat opaque spot (central body) surrounded by a clear space, which, along with the spot, constitutes the centrosome of the sphere of attraction. From each centrosome extremely delicate lines may be seen to radiate in two directions. One set extends towards the pole at the opposite end of the spindle, and, meeting or coming into close proximity with radiations from it, constitutes the body of the spindle, which, like a perforated mantle, forms an imperfect envelope around the nucleus during the process of division. The other set of radiations is called the polar and extends in the region of the pole towards the periphery of the cell.

The question has been much discussed whether any constituent part of the achromatic figure, or the entire figure, exists in the cell as a permanent structure in its resting phase; or if it is only present during the process of karyokinesis. During the development of the egg the formation of young cells, by division of the segmentation nucleus, is so rapid and continuous that the achromatic figure, with the centrosome in the pole of the spindle, is a readily recognizable object in each cell. The polar and spindle-like radiations are in evidence during karyokinesis, and have apparently a temporary endurance and function. On the other hand, van Beneden and Boveri were of opinion that the central body of the centrosome did not disappear when the division of the nucleus came to an end, but that it remained as a constituent part of a cell lying in the cell plasm, near to the nucleus. Flemming has seen the central body with its sphere in leucocytes, as well as in epithelial cells and those of other tissues. Subsequently Heidenhain and other histologists have recorded similar observations. It would seem, therefore, as if there were reason to regard the centrosome, like the nucleus, as a permanent constituent of a cell. This view, however, is not universally entertained. If not always capable of demonstration in the resting stage of a cell, it is doubtless to be regarded as potentially present, and ready to assume, along with the radiations, a characteristic appearance when the process of nuclear division is about to begin.

One can scarcely regard the presence of so remarkable an appearance as the achromatic figure without associating with it an important function in the economy of the cell. As from the centrosome at the pole of the spindle both sets of radiations diverge, it is not unlikely that it acts as a center or sphere of energy and attraction. By some observers the radiations are regarded as substantive fibrillar structures, elastic or even contractile in their properties. Others, again, look upon them as morphological expressions of chemical and dynamical energy in the protoplasm of the cell body. On either theory we may assume that they indicate an influence, emanating, it may be, from the centrosome and capable of being exercised both on the cell plasm and on the nucleus contained in it. On the contractile theory, the radiations which form the body of the spindle, either by actual traction of the supposed fibrillæ or by their pressure on the nucleus which they surround, might impel during karyokinesis the dividing chromosome elements toward the poles of the spindle, to form there the daughter nuclei. On the dynamical theory, the chemical and physical energy in the centrosome might influence the cell plasm and the nucleus and attract the chromosome elements of the nucleus to the poles of the spindle. The radiated appearance would therefore be consequent and attendant on the physico-chemical activity of the centrosome. One or other of these theories may also be applied to the interpretation of the significance of the polar radiations.

CELL PLASM.

In the cells of plants, in addition to the cell wall, the cell body and the cell juice require to be examined. The material of the cell body, or the cell contents, was named by von Mohl (1846) protoplasm, and consisted of a colorless tenacious substance which partly lined the cell wall (primordial utricle) and partly traversed the interior of the cell as delicate threads inclosing spaces (vacuoles) in which the cell juice was contained. In the protoplasm the nucleus was embedded. Nägeli, about the same time, had also recognized the difference between the protoplasm and the other contents of vegetable cells, and had noticed its nitrogenous composition.

Though the analogy with a closed bladder or vesicle could no longer be sustained in the animal tissues, the name ‘cell’ continued to be retained for descriptive purposes, and the body of the cell was spoken of as a more or less soft substance inclosing a nucleus (Leydig). In 1861 Max Schultze adopted for the substance forming the body of the animal cell the term ‘protoplasm.’ He defined a cell to be a particle of protoplasm in the substance of which a nucleus was situated. He regarded the protoplasm, as indeed had previously been pointed out by the botanist Unger, as essentially the same as the contractile sarcode which constitutes the body and pseudopodia of the Amœba and other Rhizopoda. As the term ‘protoplasm,’ as well as that of ‘bioplasm’ employed by Lionel Beale in a somewhat similar though not precisely identical sense, involves certain theoretical views of the origin and function of the body of the cell, it would be better to apply to it the more purely descriptive term ‘cytoplasm’ or ‘cell plasm.’

Schultze defined protoplasm as a homogeneous, glassy, tenacious material, of a jelly-like or somewhat firmer consistency, in which numerous minute granules were embedded. He regarded it as the part of the cell especially endowed with vital energy, whilst the exact function of the nucleus could not be defined. Based upon this conception of the jelly-like character of protoplasm, the idea for a time prevailed that a structureless, dimly granular, jelly or slime destitute of organization, possessed great physiological activity, and was the medium through which the phenomena of life were displayed.

More accurate conceptions of the nature of the cell plasm soon began to be entertained. Brücke recognized that the body of the cell was not simple, but had a complex organization. Hemming observed that the cell plasm contained extremely delicate threads, which frequently formed a network, the interspaces of which were occupied by a more homogeneous substance. Where the threads crossed each other, granular particles (milkrosomen) were situated. Bütschli considered that he could recognize in the cell plasm a honeycomb-like appearance, as if it consisted of excessively minute chambers in which a homogeneous more or less fluid material was contained. The polar and spindle-like radiations visible during the process of karyokinesis, which have already been referred to, and the presence of the centrosome, possibly even during the resting stage of the cell, furnished additional illustrations of differentiation within the cell plasm. In many cells there appears also to be a difference in the character of the cell plasm which immediately surrounds the nucleus and that which lies at and near the periphery of the cell. The peripheral part (ektoplasma) is more compact and gives a definite outline to the cell, although not necessarily differentiating into a cell membrane. The inner part (endoplasma) is softer and is distinguished by a more distinct granular appearance and by containing the products specially formed in each particular kind of cell during the nutritive process.

By the researches of numerous investigators on the internal organization of cells in plants and animals, a large body of evidence has now been accumulated, which shows that both the nucleus and the cell plasm consist of something more than a homogeneous, more or less viscid, slimy material. Recognizable objects in the form of granules, threads, or fibers can be distinguished in each. The cell plasm and the nucleus respectively are therefore not of the same constitution throughout, but possess polymorphic characters, the study of which in health and the changes produced by disease will for many years to come form important matters for investigation.

(To be concluded.)

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.
By FREDERICK G. NOVY, Sc.D., M.D.,
JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

The province of Yunnan in China adjoins French Tonkin and British Burmah. It is of interest to the student of epidemiology because from this mountainous and difficultly accessible region there has issued but recently a disease which has been considered as practically extinct. Frightful as have been the ravages of the pest in the middle ages, it is noteworthy that during the past hundred years, with the exception of two slight outbreaks (Noja in Italy in 1815, and Vetlianka in Russia in 1878), the disease has been unknown in Europe. During this time the pest has not been extinct, but has existed to a greater or less extent in certain parts of Asia and in Africa. Four and possibly five of these endemic foci are known to-day. The province of Yunnan is one of these regions. The mountainous district of Gurhwal, lying along the southern slope of the Himalayas, is another center where the pest has continued to prevail. The recent travels of Koch in eastern Africa have brought to light a third region about Lake Victoria, in the British province of Uganda, and the German Kisiba, where the plague has existed from time immemorial, cut off as it were from the outer world. Only last year Sakharoff called attention to a fourth focus in northeastern China, and it is quite likely that a fifth focus exists in Arabia. These regions are of great importance in so far as the existence of permanent endemic foci sheds not a little light upon the development and spread of those great epidemics which, like great tidal waves, have in the past swept over whole countries and even continents.

It is not known when or from whence the pest was first introduced into Yunnan. Unquestionably, it has existed in the extreme western parts of the province for many decades. Eventually the disease spread throughout the province, and frightful ravages are known to have occurred in 1871–73. Repeated visitations of this dread disease have taught the natives of Yunnan, as well as those of Gurhwal and of Uganda, to desert their villages as soon as an unusual mortality is found to prevail among the rats. In spite of the frequent recurrence of the plague, it did not spread to neighboring provinces, largely because of the fact that little or no communication exists between Yunnan and the adjoining Chinese states. Recently, however, the plague did succeed in crossing the frontier, and, in so doing, it has given rise to an epidemic which, as will be presently seen, has already made an unenviable record and has a future that no one can foretell.

The way in which the disease spread from Yunnan has been quite clearly established. Along the Tonkin frontier, throughout the provinces of Quan-si and Yunnan, the Chinese maintain a large number of military posts. Mule supply-trains for these posts passed from province to province over the difficult mountain paths. The mule-drivers were natives of Yunnan. In 1892 the plague existed in Yunnan, and it was in the summer of 1893 that the disease appeared at Long-Cheou in Quansi among the Yunnan mule-drivers. These drivers arriving at the post of Lieng-Cheng, after one of their journeys from Yunnan, repaired to the city of Long-Cheou, about ten miles distant. During their sojourn in this city the muleteers developed the first known cases of the plague. From these men the disease spread throughout the city and to the neighboring posts and villages.

From Long-Cheou the plague descended the Canton River and reached Naning-Phu. From thence it followed overland to the seaport Pakhoi, some hundred and fifty miles distant. A few months later, in February, 1894, it reached Canton, either by descending the river from Naning-Phu or by boat from Pakhoi. That the plague at Canton, in 1894, had not lost any of its old-time destructiveness is seen in the fact that it is estimated to have caused not less than one hundred thousand deaths in Canton in the short space of two months.

From Canton the plague spread to Hong Kong in April, 1894. It was during the existence of this epidemic that the first bacteriological studies of the disease were made and resulted in the discovery of the plague bacillus. In the fall of 1894, the disease died out in Hong Kong, but it reappeared in 1895 and 1896. Considering the fact that Hong Kong is one of the most important maritime centers, it is not surprising to find that in the spring of 1896 the plague was carried by shipping to the Island of Formosa. It is quite certain that about the same time the plague was carried from Hong Kong to Bombay. At all events, the existence of this disease was recognized in Bombay in September, 1896, by Doctor Viegas. Previous to this date, the mortality in Bombay was abnormally high, undoubtedly due to the very unsanitary condition of the overcrowded city.

The existence of famine in India, together with the filthy, overcrowded condition of the population, enabled the plague to gain a firm foothold in a relatively short time. Indeed, there can be no doubt but that the disease was well established at the time it was first recognized. It is no wonder, then, that in spite of the most stringent precautions, it spread like wildfire, so that in a short time the weekly deaths from the plague rose to nearly 2,000. In the face of such a relentless enemy, it is but natural that a large proportion of the population should seek safety in flight. It is believed that fully 300,000 people left Bombay shortly after the plague developed. There can be no doubt but that these refugees, directly or indirectly, carried the disease to the neighboring villages, and thus contributed to the enormous dissemination of the pest throughout Western India. In the Presidency of Bombay there were reported, in less than three years, more than 220,000 cases, with more than 164,000 deaths. When it is furthermore recognized that the natives concealed the existence of the disease as much as possible, it will be evident that these figures reveal a partial but, nevertheless, a grim truth.

With Bombay and the surrounding country thus seriously infected, it became merely a question of time when the disease would be carried to other ports and countries, by vessels and by overland routes. In spite of the sanitary perfection which we may flatter ourselves on having attained in recent years, it is nevertheless a fact that the disease is slowly but steadily and, as it were, stealthily invading port after port. That the sanitary methods, however, are not at fault is seen in the fact that when an early and prompt recognition occurred, the disease has been held in check. The insidious spread of the disease is rather due to the enormous development of commerce and to the rapid means of communication with distant countries.

From Bombay the plague has spread to ports on the Persian Gulf, on the Red Sea, and has reached Alexandria. Aden, Djeddah, Port Said, Cairo, have all had outbreaks of the disease. Beirut and Smyrna have each developed straggling cases. Isolated cases have been met with in London, at St. Petersburg and in Vienna. However, only three appreciable outbreaks have as yet occurred on European soil. The first was that at Oporto in Portugal, where one hundred and sixty cases, with fifty-five deaths, have developed up to the present time. The second outbreak occurred at Kolobovka, a village near Astrakhan. Of the twenty-four cases that developed there in July and August, 1899, twenty-three died. The last outbreak is that at Glasgow, where the disease made its appearance but a few weeks ago.

In addition to following the great international highway of Suez, the disease has insidiously spread to the countries of East Africa. Mauritius and Madagascar, with the adjoining mainland of Mozambique and Lorenzo Marquez, have become more or less infected, and, if reports are to be credited, it has also appeared in one of the Boer towns and also on the Ivory Coast in Western Africa. Last fall the disease reached South America. It apparently was first recognized at Santos, in Brazil, during October, although early in September, according to reports, a peculiar disease, causing swelling of the glands and death within forty-eight hours, was reported at Asunçion, the capital of Paraguay. At the present time Rio Janeiro is infected. The sanitary condition of these South American cities is far from being the best, and, consequently, there is but little hope that the disease will be eradicated or even held in check. With South America more or less thoroughly infected, it is evident that the United States, as well as Europe, are now threatened from all sides. The gravity of the situation is seen in the fact that already last November two cases of the plague were found in New York harbor aboard a coffee ship from Santos. Several cases have also developed on ships bound from the latter city for Mediterranean ports.

The United States is threatened not merely from the East Atlantic and South Atlantic, but also from the Pacific. As a matter of fact, the danger to our Pacific ports is greater, owing to the direct communication with the Orient. It has been already indicated that Hong Kong has continued to be infected ever since 1894. On several occasions it disappeared during the winter months, only to reappear in spring. With the more or less constant prevalence of the plague at this great seaport, it necessarily will lead directly or indirectly to a dissemination of the disease along the entire Pacific. Already it has prevailed at Amoy, and has even extended to other Chinese ports as far as Niu-Chwang. For several years it has already persisted on the island of Formosa. Japan was invaded last fall at Kobe and at Osaka, and although it disappeared during the winter, yet only a few weeks ago it has reappeared at the latter city. Sidney in Australia, and Noumea in New Caledonia, are also infected at the present time.

Manila, Honolulu and San Francisco have successively become infected. In all these places the disease, with but very few exceptions, has attacked the native or Oriental population. The extinction of the plague in the Hawaiian Islands since the end of March is a splendid demonstration of what energetic, vigorous measures can accomplish. The presence of the plague since March 8 in Chinatown, in San Francisco, is readily recognized as a most serious condition, especially after the courts have granted an injunction restraining the health officers from carrying out the necessary vigorous preventive measures.

A few words should be given here to the overland dissemination of the disease. Europe is not merely threatened by infected ships which may come from China, India, Eastern Africa or South America. The overland routes from China and India are fully as grave a source of danger. Indeed, as will be presently shown, these are the routes along which the great epidemics of cholera and plague have always traveled in the past.

One of these great caravan routes leads from Lahore in Punjab through Afghanistan into the Russian province of Turkestan, where it meets the Trans-Caspian railway. This railway begins at Samarcand in Turkestan, and passes through Bokhara, Merv, Askabad and ends at Uzun Ada on the Caspian Sea opposite Baku. Early in 1899 an outbreak of the plague occurred near Samarcand, undoubtedly brought up from India. The precautions taken to prevent the spread were entirely successful, and although no accounts have been officially published as to the means employed, nevertheless it will be seen that the radical procedure employed by Loris Melikoff some twenty years ago was again resorted to. Inasmuch as the entire village was said to be afflicted it was surrounded by troops, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. The village and all that it contained was destroyed by fire. With this route open continually it is evident that fresh importation must be expected sooner or later.

Apparently a new plague focus, independent of that in Yunnan and Hong Kong, has been recently discovered in Manchuria. The plague seems to have existed in this province for more than ten years under the name of Tarabagan plague, and is believed to be spread by a rodent, the Arctomis cobuc, which is subject to a hemorrhagic pneumonia. The presence of such an independent endemic focus in Manchuria indicates the possibility of the spread of the disease by caravan to Lake Baikal, and thence by the Siberian railroad to Russia. Indeed, the epidemic of pneumonic type which began July, 1899, at Kolobovka, in Astrakhan, while it may have been imported from Persia, might also owe its origin to the Mongolian focus.

Russia, however, is not the only country endangered by the overland transmission of the disease. There are commercial highways which lead from Northwestern India through Baluchistan and Persia to the Caucasus, and through Turkey to Constantinople. Grave danger threatens from this source, and more especially from the cities along the Persian Gulf. Two important cities here are already infected, namely, Bushire, in Persia, and Bassorah on the Tigris, in Turkey. It would appear as if Turkey and Persia would escape with difficulty from a visitation of this dread disease.

Such, then, is the geographical distribution of the present outbreak of the plague. This, an apparently extinct disease, has suddenly reappeared and given evidence of its power to spread death and desolation. Fortunately, however, modern sanitary precautions are quite able to restrict its progress, provided they be applied at the proper time and place. Filth and overcrowding, protracted wars and famine, have been the powerful allies of the plague in the past. Through their aid this disease has made a deep impression upon the pages of history. It may not be out of place, therefore, to turn from the present outbreak of the disease and trace its grewsome past.

In ancient writings references are found which would seem to indicate the existence of the plague at a very early date. The Bible contains several such references (Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, paragraph 27. Samuel I, Chapter 5, paragraphs 6, 9). The latter especially deals with the plague which attacked the Philistines after they took the ark. The rôle of rats in the dissemination of the disease is, as some believe, apparently referred to in the trespass offering of “five golden emerods and five golden mice.” The return of the ark, together with this trespass offering, brought also the plague, “because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men.” Poussin’s painting of this Philistine plague, exhibited in the Louvre, shows several dead rats on the streets. It is evident that the susceptibility of the rat to the plague had been noticed even at this early date. The plague of boils visited upon the Egyptians as related in Exodus (Chapter 9, paragraphs 9 and 10) has also been taken to indicate the pest of today, but neither of these scriptural references can be said to be sufficiently definite.

The Attic plague, which ravaged the Peloponnesus 430 years before Christ, has been accurately described by an eye-witness, the historian Thucydides. His narration may be considered the earliest exact record of an epidemic. Like all the great epidemics of subsequent ages, it was ushered in by the overcrowding, the misery and the famine consequent upon prolonged wars. The combustible material was there, and all that necessary was the spark to begin the work of death and devastation. It is noteworthy that the origin of the pest was traced by Thucydides to Egypt or Ethiopia, from whence it spread gradually overland to Asia Minor and thence by boat to Athens. The nature of this first great historic epidemic is and will remain uncertain. There are those who consider the Attic pestilence as one of bubonic plague, but the fact that in the very careful description of the disease no mention is made of buboes and the statement that death occurred from the seventh to the ninth day would indicate that the disease was something else. Buboes are characteristic, it is true, of the plague, but it should be remembered that outbreaks of the pneumonic form, with little or no glandular enlargement are not uncommon. Death, however, in the case of plague is very common on the second or third day, and is less liable to occur in more protracted cases. These facts lead to the commonly accepted belief that the Attic pest was not the bubonic plague. It may have been typhus fever, possibly smallpox.

The great pestilence which devastated Rome and its dependencies in 166, Anno Domini, is known as the plague of Antoninus or of Galen. This prolonged epidemic was brought to Rome by the returning legions from Seleucia. It was not characterized by buboes, and it is very probable that it was largely smallpox. On the other hand, the plague of Saint Cyprian, which prevailed from 251 to 266 Anno Domini, may have been partly bubonic in nature, since, it prevailed during the fall and winter months and ceased during the hot summer. The disease was said to be communicated by means of clothing and by the look. It spread from Ethiopia to Egypt and thence through the known world.

Although the above early epidemics cannot be identified with the bubonic plague, there is nevertheless excellent evidence of the existence of this disease in remote antiquity. The first undoubted testimony on this point is that furnished by Rufus of Ephesus, who lived in the first century of the Christian era. The writings of this author are no longer extant, but they are quoted by Oribasius, the physician and friend of Julian the Apostate, who lived in the fourth century. The writings of Oribasius were discovered in the Vatican Library and were published early in this century by Cardinal Mai. In the forty-fourth “Book of Oribasius” occurs the extract taken from Rufus of Ephesus, from which it appears that “the so-called pestilential buboes are all fatal and have a very acute course, especially when observed in Libya, Egypt and in Syria. Dionysius mentions it. Dioscorides and Posidonius have described it at length in their treatise upon the plague which prevailed during their time in Libya.” The description which then follows of the buboes and of the disease is an exact counterpart of the present plague. The writings of the authors quoted by Rufus are no longer extant, but one thing is certain, and that is that the Dionysius referred to lived not later than 300 years before Christ. The other two physicians lived in Alexandria contemporaneous with the birth of Christ. It may, therefore, be considered as an established fact that the plague existed in Egypt, Libya and Syria as early as 300 years before Christ. This is of especial interest in view of the recent discovery by Koch of an endemic plague focus in British Uganda and German Kisiba, at the headwaters of the Nile. Whether it ever invaded European territory prior to the sixth century is unknown.

The great plague of Justinian which broke out in 542, Anno Domini, appeared first in Egypt, and from thence it spread east and west throughout the known world and persisted for more than a half century. So unknown was the plague in Europe at that time that the physicians of Constantinople considered it a new disease. Procopius, who was an eye-witness of the plague at Constantinople, states that the daily mortality in that city was at times over 10,000.

The pandemic of Justinian resulted in the distribution of the plague for the first time throughout the length and breadth of known Europe. From that time on the early chroniclers make repeated mention of devastating plagues consequent upon the miseries of war and famine. The descriptions of these pestilences are, as a rule, insufficient to identify them with the bubonic plague. Typhus, scurvy, smallpox and other diseases undoubtedly alternated in the work of destruction. Of the scores of epidemics thus recorded during the eight centuries following this first visitation few, indeed, can be identified to a certainty with the bubonic plague, and yet there can be no doubt but that this disease occupied no second rank during the dreary darkness of the middle ages. This era in history may be said to have been ushered in by the Justinian plague, and it was closed by an even more disastrous outbreak of this same disease. All the ravages and slaughter consequent upon the great historic battles, when taken together, pale into insignificance on comparison with that dread visitation of the fourteenth century, the ‘black death’.

It is noteworthy that this great historic epidemic did not originate in Egypt, as did many of its predecessors. Without exception the contemporaneous writers ascribe its origin to Cathay, or the China of today. This fact is of interest when it is borne in mind that at the present time we know of the existence of two endemic foci in China, besides that of Gurhwal in India, of Beni Cheir in Arabia and of Uganda and Kisiba in Africa. Whatever may have been its source, the fact is that it advanced from the Orient along the three principal routes of travel. One of these led from the Persian Gulf through Bassorah and Bagdad along the Euphrates, across Arabia to Egypt and Northern Africa. Another route passed from India through Afghanistan, and skirting the southern borders of the Caspian and Black Seas, eventually reached Asia Minor. A third route from Turkestan and China led around the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to Crimea, and thence to Constantinople. It was along these several routes that the plague advanced and spread over most of Western Asia and Northern Africa.

The European black death, however, can be traced with accuracy to the Crimean peninsula. Gaffa, a town in Crimea, now known as Theodosia, had been founded and fortified by the Genoese. It, as well as other cities along the Black Sea, was largely populated by Italians. One of these, Gabriel de Mussis, a lawyer in Gaffa, has left a faithful account of his experience and share in the introduction of the plague into Europe. In 1346 in the Orient numberless Tartars and Saracens were attacked with an unknown disease and sudden death. In the city of Tanais, through some excess, a racial struggle ensued between the Tartars and the Italian merchants. The latter eventually escaped and took refuge in Gaffa, which in time was besieged by the Tartars. During the siege, which lasted three years, the Tartar hordes were attacked by the plague, which daily carried off many thousands. The besiegers, despairing of reducing the city by direct attack, attempted to do so in another way. By means of their engines of war they projected the dead bodies into the beleaguered city, which, as a result, soon became infected. The Christian defenders took to their ships, and abandoning Gaffa, sailed westward, touching at Constantinople, Greece, Italy and France.

Wherever the infected vessels touched they left the plague. Constantinople thus became infected early in 1347. During the summer Greece, Sardinia, Corsica and parts of the Italian coast developed the disease. In the fall it reached Marseilles. The following year it spread inland into Italy, France, Spain, and even into England. In another year or two it spread over Germany, Russia, and crossed to the Scandinavian peninsula. Within four years it had completed the circuit of Europe, spreading untold death and misery. No greater catastrophe has been recorded in the history of the world.

The rapidity with which the disease spread among the fugitives from Gaffa, and in the cities visited by their ships, is despairingly narrated by De Mussis, who, returning in one of the ships to Genoa, says: “After landing we entered our homes. Inasmuch as a grave disease had befallen us, and of the thousands that journeyed with us scarcely ten remained, the relatives, friends and neighbors hastened to greet us. Woe to us who brought with us the darts of death, who scattered the deadly poison through the breath of our words.” According to this writer 40,000 died in Genoa, leaving scarcely a seventh of the original population. Venice was said to have lost 100,000, Naples 60,000, Sienna 70,000, Florence 100,000. All told, Italy lost half of its population.

Of the contemporaneous writers none has printed the horrors of the plague more vividly than does Boccaccio in his introduction to the ‘Decameron.’

“What magnificent dwellings, what notable palaces were then depopulated to the last person! What families extinct! What riches and vast possessions left, and no known heir to inherit! What numbers of both sexes in the prime and vigor of youth, whom in the morning either Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius himself but would have declared in perfect health, after dining with their friends here have supped with their departed friends in the other world!”

From Marseilles the plague spread through Provence with disastrous results. In some monasteries not even a single survivor was left. In one of these Petrarch’s brother buried thirty-four of his companions. At Avignon, the seat of the Pope, 1,800 deaths occurred in three days. In Paris more than fifty thousand died of the plague.

In England the black death appeared in August, 1348, and continued till the autumn of 1349, when it disappeared. London, which at that time probably had a population of 45,000, had a mortality of about 20,000. No exact statement can be made of the relative mortality in England, although many undoubtedly extravagant guesses are recorded by contemporaneous writers.

It is estimated that the population of Europe previous to the outbreak of the black death was about one hundred and five millions. One quarter of the population, or about twenty-five millions, are said to have died of the plague. This may be but a mere estimate, it may be grossly inaccurate, but it nevertheless indicates the deadly character of the pestilence. According to a report made to Pope Clement VI, the total mortality for the known world was placed at forty-three millions. One-half the population of Italy succumbed. The Order of Minorites in Italy lost 300,000 members. The Order of Capuchins in Germany lost 126,000 members, while the total of deaths in Germany was placed at 1,200,000.

The invasion of Europe by the black death was sudden and rapid. The seeds of the disease, once planted on European soil, persisted, as might be expected, for no little time. Although the great epidemic was said to have lasted till 1360, it must not be inferred that it then ceased altogether. Diverse localities retained the infection, and, as a result, new outbreaks, though to a less extent, continued to outcrop during the following years. From that time on every decade or two witnessed more or less pronounced outbreaks of the disease in France, England and Italy. The chroniclers of those local outbreaks during the latter half of the fourteenth and during the entire fifteenth century did not always make it clear that the pestilence described was the real plague. It was but natural to include typhus and other diseases under the dreaded term of pest. Nevertheless, the frequency of these outbreaks indicates the persistence and the wide dissemination of the plague during those years.

During the sixteenth century the plague apparently began to show a decrease in its frequency, although during this period, as before, other epidemic diseases were mistaken for it. Germany, Holland, certain cities in France, and especially in Italy were scourged by the plague during this century. The noteworthy outbreak in Italy in 1575–77 was due to fresh importation from the Orient. The disease spread throughout Italy, and the devastation it caused was not inferior to that of the great plague two centuries before. For example, in 1576 in Venice 70,000 died of the disease.

During the seventeenth century the plague asserted itself with great severity. Following a famine, it prevailed in Russia in 1601–1603, and some idea of its destructiveness may be gained when it is stated that in Moscow alone 127,000 lives were taken. During the following decade even greater epidemics prevailed in Western Europe. France and England were invaded, and in Switzerland it even penetrated to the highest Alps. Basel in 1609–1611 had 4,000 deaths, while London in 1603 yielded 33,000.

The terrible epidemic which ravaged Northern Italy in 1629–1631 deserves more than a passing notice. During those years more than a million died of the disease. Scarcely a town in Northern Italy escaped. The city which, perhaps, suffered the most was Milan, where, in 1630, the deaths from all diseases are said to have amounted to 186,000. The Milan outbreak has been graphically described by Manzoni, in his celebrated ‘I Promessi Sposi.’ Unrecognized, the disease entered Milan in October, 1629. The mild cases which were met with during the winter months lulled the fears of the people and encouraged the mass of physicians to deny the existence of the plague. But in April the disease began to assert itself in terrible earnest. The frenzied populace, blind to the contagiousness of the disease, were possessed with the strange hallucination that obtained during former plague epidemics in other Italian cities, that the pest spread because of poison scattered about by evil-minded persons. Suspicious strangers were, as a result, stoned in the streets, imprisoned and even put to death by legal process because of such fanatical beliefs. To offset the growing pestilence, the people demanded of the Archbishop that a solemn religious procession be held, and that the holy relics of Saint Charles be exposed. At first this was refused, but eventually it was granted. The procession bearing the saintly body was solemnly held on the 11th of June. The fanatical security which these devotions engendered was rudely shattered when, a few days later, the disease burst forth with renewed activity among all classes in all parts of the city. Nevertheless, as Manzoni observes, the faith was such that none recognized that the procession itself was directly the cause of the new outburst of the disease by facilitating the spread of the contagion. Again the belief asserted itself that the ‘untori,’ or poisoners, mixed with the crowd and with their unguents and powders had infected as many as possible. From that day the fury of the contagion continued to grow to such an extent that scarcely a house remained exempt from the disease. The number of patients in the pesthouse rose from 2,000 to 12,000, and later reached 17,000. The daily mortality rose from 500 to 1,200, then 1,500, and is even said to have reached 3,500. Milan, before the epidemic, was said to have had a population of from 200,000 to 250,000. The loss by death has been variously estimated at from 140,000 to 186,000. All these deaths were not due to the plague. Thus, large numbers of children died as a result of starvation consequent upon the death of their parents from the plague.

The horrors attendant upon such a dreadful visitation can well be imagined. Scarcity of help in removing the dead and in taking care of the sick made itself felt, to say nothing of the lack of food. Enormous trenches, one after another, were filled with the bodies of the victims, carried thither by the hardened monatti, the counterpart of the Florentine becchini, so well portrayed by Lord Lytton in his ‘Rienzi.’ These bearers of the sick and dead were naturally recruited from the lowest criminal classes, and it can, therefore, cause but little wonder that an epidemic of the worst of crimes was associated with that of the plague.

In 1656 Italy was again invaded by the plague, and on that occasion Genoa lost 65,000 of its population by death. About the same time terrible epidemics of the disease ravaged Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

London, in 1665, suffered dreadfully from the plague. The disease appears to have been imported from Holland, where it was known to have existed for some time. The progress of the disease in London has been vividly portrayed by Defoe in the ‘Journal of the Plague Year’ and in the ‘Due Preparations for the Plague.’

It is supposed that the pest had been imported in bales of goods from Smyrna into Holland in 1663. From thence it crossed over to London, where the first deaths were reported about the first of December in 1664. Toward the end of that month another death occurred in the same house, but during the following six weeks no new case developed. About the middle of February, however, a person died of the plague in another house. From that time only occasional cases of plague were reported, although the weekly mortality was rapidly rising and was greatly in excess of the usual rate. Thus, while the ordinary weekly mortality ranged from two hundred and forty to three hundred, this was gradually increased, so that in the third week in January it had risen to four hundred and seventy-four. After a slight remission, the mortality again rose, so that early in May plague cases were reported more frequently. It soon became evident that the plague, as in Milan in 1630, had slowly but surely gained a firm foothold. The increased mortality was undoubtedly due to unsuspected plague cases of either the pneumonic or the septicemic type.

During May, and especially during the hot weather in June, the disease continued to spread. At the same time, the panic-stricken people began to leave the city in large numbers. In July the condition was truly deplorable. To quote Defoe:

“London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets, indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed in the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation; for toward the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the next hour.”

London at this time had a population of nearly half a million. The deaths from the plague during 1665, as reported in the bills of mortality, are 68,596. By far the larger number of these occurred in August, September and October. The weekly mortality from the disease rose from a few cases in May to over 7,000 per week in September. It may, indeed, be close to the truth when Defoe states that 3,000 were said to have been buried in one night.

The great plague of London in 1665 was by no means the only visitation of that kind. From the time of the black death in 1348, London had a continuous record of plague infection. On an average it had an epidemic of plague every fifteen years. Some of these were fully as severe as that of 1665. Thus, in 1603, with a population of 250,000, there were over 33,000 reported deaths from the plague. In 1625, 41,000 died of pest out of a population of 320,000.

One of the most remarkable facts in connection with the great plague is this—that it was the last in England. The great fire of 1666 is supposed to have extinguished the plague, but this cannot be said to be true. The disease continued to a slight extent in 1666 and isolated cases were reported as late as 1679, but after that date it disappeared completely and from that time until this year England has been absolutely free from the plague. The sudden extinction of the plague in England after it had become domesticated, so to speak, for nearly three centuries, is indeed difficult to explain. Creighton sees an inhibiting influence in the growth of the practice of burial in coffins. But the absence of famine, together with the cessation of domestic wars and strife and the abeyance of want and misery, had not a little effect. As will presently be seen, the extinction of the plague in England was no more remarkable than its disappearance from Western Europe.

The history of plague in the seventeenth century does not close with the London epidemic. From 1675–1684 the disease ravaged Northern Africa, Turkey, and from thence invaded Austria and even reached Southern Germany. The Vienna outbreak of 1679 can be said to have been no less terrible than that of Milan or of London. The deaths from the plague in Vienna in that year have been variously estimated at from 70,000 to double that number.

From Vienna the plague reached Prague, where in 1861 it is said to have caused no less than 83,000 deaths. It is not to be wondered at that a nation scourged by thirty years of relentless warfare, by religious persecution and finally tried thus severely by the plague should inscribe upon the equestrian statue of their patron saint the heart-rending appeal, ‘Lord, grant that we do not perish.’

The close of the seventeenth century saw the disappearance of the plague from Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, however, the disease continued to exist even during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, a change had taken place for the better, and as the years went on the retrogression of the plague became more and more distinct.

During the first two decades of the eighteenth century the plague was widely distributed in Eastern Europe. It was present especially in Constantinople and in the Danubian provinces. From the latter it extended to Russia (Ukraine), and from thence to Poland. The disastrous invasion of Russia by Charles XII. of Sweden, ending in his defeat at Poltawa in 1709, led to its further dissemination to Silesia, Eastern Prussia, the Baltic provinces and seaports, and even to Scandinavia. It was during this epidemic that Dantzic, in 1709, lost 33,000, and Stockholm 40,000 by the plague. During the years 1709 and 1710 the plague mortality in the Baltic provinces exceeded 300,000. Three years later, in 1713, the plague spread up the Danube and reached Vienna, Prague and even Bavaria.

During these two decades Western Europe was entirely free from the dread disease. In 1720 the disease suddenly developed in Marseilles and extended from thence to neighboring towns and the country districts of Provence. Terrible as was this visitation it is of interest, inasmuch as it was the last occurrence of the plague on French soil, and the last in Western Europe until the recent outbreak in Portugal.

The plague was said to have been imported into Marseilles by a merchant vessel, the ‘Grand Saint Antoine’, from Syria. On its way to Marseilles several deaths occurred on shipboard, but the cause was overlooked. On the 25th of May, 1720, two days after the arrival of the vessel, another death occurred among the crew. The disease was still not believed to be the plague, and although quarantine was instituted, new cases appeared among the crew and the dock laborers employed in unloading the vessel, and it was not until the disease reached the city that its true nature was recognized. The germs of the disease had then been scattered broadcast. Unsanitary a city as Marseilles is to-day, it must have been vastly more so in 1720. The result of the addition of plague germs to the want, misery and filthy condition was at once evident. During August the mortality averaged four and even five hundred per day. In September the daily mortality rose to 1,000. So great was the terror of the populace that it became impossible to secure bearers of the dead, to obtain nurses and attendants. The dead were left in heaps upon the streets, so that it became necessary to transfer to the city 700 galley slaves, who were required to remove the bodies. These same galley slaves were even pressed into service as nurses. The diseased were abandoned by friends and relatives, and under such conditions it need not be wondered at that they received little or no attention from others. Food and water were denied to the unfortunates, and when food was administered to the pesthouses it was thrown into the windows by machinery.

The disease continued in Marseilles until December, 1721, but isolated cases persisted until April, 1722. During the fifteen months of its duration it carried off 40,000 of the population. According to Defoe, there died of the plague in Marseilles and within a league of its walls 60,000.

From Marseilles the plague reached Aix, and in the winter of 1720 and 1721 it carried off 18,000 of its people. It also reached Arles, where, in 1721, out of a population of 23,000, 10,000 died (forty-five per cent). The same year, in Toulon, which had a population of 26,000, the plague attacked 20,000 of the population, and of these 13,000, or about one-half of the original population, died.

The country districts about Marseilles were likewise invaded. Out of a population of 248,000, there died of the plague 88,000, or fully thirty-five per cent.

It is evident from this description that the plague of 1720 was in nowise inferior to that of 1348. Fortunately, the disease did not spread beyond Provence. It is noteworthy that in many instances, in Marseilles, people secluded themselves in their houses, avoiding all communication with the outer world, and in this way escaped. Similar isolation of cloisters, insane asylums, likewise resulted in freedom from the disease which stalked so freely throughout the stricken city. It was experience of this kind in isolation of the healthy which led Defoe to write his ‘Due Preparations for the Plague.’

Toward the middle of the century the plague reasserted itself in the Danubian provinces, the constant battleground between the Turks and Russians and Austrians. In 1738 it not only prevailed in Russia but also invaded Hungary. Of more importance than this occurrence is the outbreak of the plague in 1743 in Sicily. The last epidemic of plague had occurred in Messina in 1624. After a lapse of one hundred and twenty years, it reappeared with terrible results. In Messina, as in Marseilles and in London, the first cases were not recognized as plague cases and, as a result, the infection spread until, like a veritable explosion, the disease developed all over the city. The plague, with its attendant misery of lack of food, and even of water, was in vain combated by religious processions. The plague corpses were in heaps in the streets, as in Marseilles, and cremation was resorted to in order to effect their removal. That year 30,000 died of plague in the city of Messina. With the exception of a slight epidemic at Noja in 1815, this outbreak in Messina in 1743 was the last one to appear in Italy.

In 1755, the plague was introduced into Transylvania by an Armenian merchant from the Black Sea. Before it was extinguished, 4,300 deaths were recorded.

Next to that of Marseilles and of Messina, the most noteworthy outbreak of plague was that which occurred in 1771 in Moscow. The disease was introduced by troops returning from the Danubian provinces. As so often has been the history of plague, the first cases were not recognized, and the existence of pest was denied. When the plague was demonstrated to be present, it is said by Haeser that three-fourths of the populace deserted the city. The disease began early in March and increased during the early summer months. In August over 7,000 deaths resulted, while in September the records show that 21,000 died. In October the plague decreased, but still 17,000 deaths attested to its fearful power. Early in January it became extinct, after a duration of ten months, and after having caused the death of more than 52,000 people.

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt and Syria, the French armies came into contact with the plague. Bonaparte’s visit to the pest-stricken soldiers at Jaffa has been perpetuated in the historic canvas which is to be seen at Versailles.

During the nineteenth century the plague ravaged Northern Africa on diverse occasions. Constantinople was invaded in 1802, 1803, 1808. It was also present to a slight extent in the Caucasus and in Astrakhan. A notable plague epidemic appeared in Egypt in 1812, and soon spread through Turkey and Southern Russia. Constantinople and Odessa were severely scourged. In Odessa out of a population of 28,000 there died 12,000.

It is a noteworthy fact that the Napoleonic wars, with all their incident hardships and misery, did not develop or spread the plague in Europe. The outbreaks of the disease were limited during this period to Africa and to Turkey, Bosnia, Roumania, Dalmatia and to Southern Russia. Two exceptions, however, are to be noted. In 1812 the Island of Malta was infected and more than 6,000 of its people yielded to the disease. The epidemic of 1815 at Noja, in Apulia, was the first recurrence of the plague on Italian soil since 1743, and thus far it has been the last.

The Balkan Peninsula and Southern Russia were visited from time to time by the plague up to about 1841. For nearly forty years Europe was wholly free from the disease, which, however, continued its existence in Northern Africa, in Mesopotamia and in India. The Russo-Turkish war of 1878 brought the Russian troops into contact with the disease in the Caucasus, and the epidemic at Vetlianka on the lower Volga was unquestionably introduced by such returning soldiers.

Such, then, has been the history of the bubonic plague. No other epidemic disease can be traced authentically as far back as the ‘Black Death.’ The characteristic symptoms, the rapid death, the excessive mortality are all features which have been noted through more than twenty centuries. The plague bacillus discovered in 1894 by Yersin, judged by its effect, is neither more nor less virulent than its early progenitors. It has often died out in a given locality or country, it has even been forced back to its original ancestral home, but still the same type, the same species has perpetuated itself unchanged. If the plague on its present world-wide journey does not cause such terrible outbreaks as it has in the past, it will be not because the germ has been altered by time, but because man has changed in so far as he has slowly learned and profited by the lessons of previous epidemics.

GASOLINE AUTOMOBILES.
By WILLIAM BAXTER, Jr.

To understand the operation of a gasoline vehicle it is necessary to be somewhat familiar with the principle on which gasoline motors act. Briefly stated, it is as follows: The gasoline is converted into a vapor, and in this state is mixed with a sufficient amount of air to cause it to ignite when heated to a proper temperature. This mixture of air and vapor is admitted into a cylinder in which a piston moves freely, this part being substantially the same as in a steam engine. By means of an electric spark or a hot tube, the mixture is ignited, burning so violently as to expand the products of the combustion with such rapidity as virtually to become an explosion. The force of this explosion pushes the piston to the further end of the cylinder, and by means of a connecting rod and a crank this movement imparts a rotary motion to a shaft.

Fig. 1. Gasoline Motor.

The entire operation is made perfectly clear by the aid of [Fig. 1], which is a simple diagram of a single cylinder motor. The chamber R contains the gasoline. Air enters this chamber through tube b, as indicated by the arrow, and passes out between the plate c and the surface of the gasoline. The float d keeps the plate c in the proper position regardless of the amount of liquid in the reservoir. The heated gases exhausted from the cylinder pass through the pipe r, and thus heat the gasoline so that it vaporizes freely and the air passing under c becomes charged with the necessary proportion of vapor. The mixed air and vapor enter a valve chamber S, from which the flow into pipe e is regulated by the movement of handle a. In this chamber there is another valve, operated by an independent handle, and by means of this more air can be admitted into the mixture when desired. Through the pipe e and the valve f the vapor enters chamber Q, which connects with the top of the cylinder. Suppose the shaft G is rotating, then the piston will be drawn down from the position in which it is shown and thus a vacuum will tend to form in chamber Q. This action will cause the valve f to open and the mixture of air and vapor will flow into Q until the piston reaches its lowest position and begins to ascend. At this instant the valve f will close, and then the upward movement of the piston will compress the mixture in the chamber Q. When the piston reaches the upper position, after completing the down and up strokes, the lever l and the contact point p will come together, and an electric current developed in the induction coil M will pass through the wires j and k and produce a spark at i between the ends of the metallic terminals passing through the plug of insulating material, which is shown in dark shading. This spark will cause the mixed air and vapor to ignite, producing an explosion that will force the piston down for the second time. On the second upward movement of the piston the gases produced by the combustion of the vapor will be forced out through the valve h into the chamber T and the pipe r. The valve h and the lever l are operated by cams mounted on the shaft m, and they are so set that the spark at i occurs when the chamber Q is full of the explosive mixture and the piston is at the top of the cylinder. The valve opens when the piston begins to move upward after the explosion has forced it to the bottom position.

As will be seen, the piston must move down to draw in a supply of the explosive mixture; it then moves upward to compress it, and on the second down stroke it is pushed by the force of the explosion. From this action it can be clearly realized that the power developed by the motor comes from the force exerted by explosions at every alternate revolution of the shaft. On that account the cams that move the valve h and the lever l are placed on a separate shaft, which is geared to the main shaft in the ratio of two to one; that is, the wheel K is twice the diameter of the wheel J. As the force of the piston acts on the shaft only once in every two revolutions it is necessary to provide a heavy fly wheel O, which will store up enough momentum to continue the rotation of the motor through the ineffective revolution. Before the motor can put forth an effort it is necessary for the piston to move downward so as to draw in a supply of explosive gases and then to move up so as to compress them and produce an explosion; therefore, the motor will not start of its own accord, but must be set in motion. In the act of starting the wheel O is turned by hand.

The combustion of the gasoline vapor within the chamber Q and the upper end of the cylinder develops a large amount of heat, and unless means are provided for dissipating it the temperature will soon rise to a point that will interfere with the proper action of the motor. Two ways are employed to carry off the heat. One is by surrounding the cylinder with a water jacket, as shown in the diagram at NN; and the other is to provide the exterior of the cylinder with numerous thin ribs so as to increase the surface exposed to the air and thus increase the radiation.

Fig. 2. Petroleum Spirit Motor.

The electric spark is a very effective igniter for the explosive mixture, and, by properly setting cam n the explosion can be made to take place just at the position of the piston that may be found the most desirable; but the points at i are liable to get out of order, and the battery that actuates the induction coil M and the coil itself can become a source of more or less trouble, and on that account the igniting is effected in some motors by means of a hot tube. When this is used the cam n, the lever l and the electrical parts of the apparatus are not required. In their stead a tube is placed on the upper side of the chamber Q and this tube is maintained at a red heat by means of a flame impinging against its outer surface. When the explosive mixture is compressed it rises in the interior of the hot tube, and when it reaches the portion that is hot enough to produce combustion an explosion takes place. By many engineers this arrangement is regarded as superior to the electric spark on account of its simplicity.

Gasoline motors are made with one, two or more cylinders, but in each cylinder the action that takes place is that described above. The actual construction of a motor is not so simple as might be assumed from the appearance of [Fig. 1]; many details are required which are not here shown. A more perfect idea of the actual construction of a gasoline motor can be had from [Fig. 2], which is a working drawing of a recent European invention. In this design it will be noticed that the cylinder is cooled by radiation into the surrounding air, the exterior surface being increased by numerous circular ribs and also by extending a hollow trunk from the upper side of the piston, so as not only to increase the radiating surface, but also to allow the hot air to escape from the chamber T in which the crank discs revolve. In this drawing E is the explosion chamber, corresponding to Q in [Fig. 1], and the valve s is the counterpart of f, while s’ corresponds to the valve h. The upper pipe t is the pipe e of [Fig. 1] and the lower pipe t’ is the pipe r of the same figure. Although the crank discs, connecting rods and other details are different in shape, it will readily be seen that their relation to each other is the same.

Fig. 3. Reversing Mechanism.

Since a gasoline motor cannot start of its own accord, it is necessary in vehicles in which they are used so to arrange the driving gear that the motor may be kept in motion all the time and always in the same direction, hence, to reverse the direction of the carriage, reversing mechanism, independent of the motor, must be provided. The most simple mechanism for a gasoline vehicle employing spur gearing exclusively is shown in diagrammatic form in [Fig. 3]. In this figure A represents the cylinder of the motor, B the crank disc chamber and M the vaporizing receptacle, which is generally called the carburator. The pinion C, on the end of the motor shaft, meshes into a gear D which is mounted upon a sleeve E which revolves freely round shaft G. This sleeve has its ends formed so as to engage with the gears mounted upon shaft G, and by means of a lever, which is not shown, but which works in groove a, the clutch either s or ss can be thrown into engagement with its corresponding gear. If s is thrown into gear, as shown in the drawing, the wheel F will turn H and the pinion I will rotate the gear J which is mounted upon the axle of the carriage. If the clutch ss is thrown into engagement, the gear G will turn K and this wheel will turn l; but, as can be clearly seen, the direction in which l will revolve will be opposite to its motion when driven through F and H, therefore, if when F drives the carriage runs forward, when G drives it will run backward, and when E is moved to the central position, so that neither s nor ss engages with their respective gears, the vehicle will stand still, but the motor will continue to revolve.

Fig. 4. Plan and Elevation of Underberg Motor Voiturette.

This diagrammatic arrangement is more simple than the gearing actually used and is not as complete in action as many of the devices, as it only provides means whereby the direction of rotation of the axle may be changed, while in many carriages the gearing also varies the ratio between the speed of the motor and the driving wheels. It is also quite common to combine in the train of gearing spur gears and sprocket wheels, and in some instances even belts. [Fig. 4] illustrates a French gasoline automobile made by Underberg, of Nantes. The first figure is a side view, and the second is a plan of the truck and driving mechanism.

Fig. 5. Cherrier Two-speed Gear.

The motor, which is of the single cylinder type, cooled by radiation into the air, is located at N. The pinion on the end of the motor shaft engages with the wheel on the end of shaft A. This shaft carries four gears, which can be moved by means of lever C, so as to engage with corresponding gears on shaft B, thus providing four different speeds. The motion of B is transmitted to the rear axle by means of a belt that runs over the pulleys p and P, the latter being carried by a differential gear, so as to run the two driving wheels at proper velocities. The circular ribs surrounding the motor cylinder are well shown in the figure, in which the carburator of C is also seen. The housing for the motor is open at the sides so as to give air currents free access. In [Fig. 4] the speed changing gears are shown, the reversing train being omitted; but if it were also drawn in, the diagram would be far more elaborate than [Fig. 3].

Another form of variable speed gear is shown in [Fig. 5]. This provides for two speeds. The large wheel E is on the carriage axle, and it is driven either by a pinion F, or by J. Upon the shaft O there are two friction clutches C D, and when C acts the pinion F drives E, and when D acts the pinion G drives H, which in turn drives I, and this wheel is mounted on the same shaft as J.

Some of the best-known makers of gasoline vehicles do not employ variable gears and depend for changes in the speed wholly upon variation in the velocity of the motor. The De Dion carriages are made in this way, the gearing being substantially as illustrated in [Fig. 3].

Fig. 6. Panhard & Levassor Vehicle.

Fig. 7. Motor of Vehicle.

[Fig. 6] shows a gasoline vehicle made by Panhard & Levassor, who are perhaps the best known French manufacturers of automobiles, as their vehicles have been the winners in all the notable races held within the past few years. The motor they use is shown in [Fig. 7], and, as can be readily seen, is of the two-cylinder type, cooled by a water jacket, just as in [Fig. 1]. The explosion is produced by means of a hot tube, as explained in connection with the last-named figure. This motor is placed under the body of the vehicle, and is connected with the rear axle by means of a train of gearing which terminates in sprocket wheels and chains that connect with driving wheels, each one being operated by a separate chain. In [Fig. 6] the sprocket wheel and chain are well defined, and forward of these can be seen the outline of the casing enclosing the gearing.

Fig. 8. General View of Renault Voiturette.

Fig. 9. Plan of the Truck.

Fig. 10. Variable Speed Gear.

[Fig. 8] shows another European design, in which a variable-speed gear is used. The plan of the truck, showing the general arrangement of the mechanism, is presented in [Fig. 9], and the details of the variable-speed gear are shown in [Fig. 10]. The motor is located at A, and through a friction clutch B, and the variable speed gear C, it rotates the shaft H, which runs lengthwise of the vehicle. Motion is imparted to the hind axle by means of bevel gears contained within the casing D. The large bevel gear on the axle is of the differential type, so as to drive the wheels R R at the proper velocities.

When a high speed is desired, the variable speed gear, [Fig. 10], is set so that shaft M drives N direct, the clutch at E being moved so as to interlock. N is the end of shaft H, so that with this connection the bevel pinion, which meshes into the axle gear at D, revolves at the same velocity as the motor shaft. By moving the handle V, [Fig. 9], to the right, an intermediate speed is obtained, and by moving it to the left, the carriage is run at the lowest velocity. When the handle V is turned to the right, the ends M and N, which form the clutch E, [Fig. 10], are separated, and at the same time the lower shaft H is moved toward M, so as to cause gear 1 to mesh into gear 2, and also 3 into 7. By this means the end N of the axle-driving shaft is rotated through the train of gears 1, 2, 3 and 7. If the handle V is turned to the left, the shaft I is moved toward M, so as to cause gear 1 to mesh into gear 4, and gear 6 into 8, the latter being secured to end N of the axle-driving shaft. The speeds obtained by these changes are in the ratio of nearly 1, 2 and 4.

Fig. 11. Plan of the Türgan-Foy Voiturette.

[Fig. 11] shows the plan of a light French carriage, which is equipped with a double cylinder motor, set in a horizontal position above the front axle, and arranged to impart motion to the hind axle by means of belts. The motor, which is located at A, turns a vertical shaft, and this, through spur gears, rotates a horizontal fly wheel, B. Two pulleys are mounted upon the motor shaft, and from these belts run to tight and loose pulleys on a countershaft, S. From the latter the rear axle is driven through two sets of spur gearing, which give two different speeds. By means of the belts, two other speeds are obtained, thus giving, in all, four different velocities. To stop and start, the belts are shifted from the tight to the loose pulleys by a belt-shifter, f. At h, a muffling chamber is located, into which the motor exhausts, so as to reduce the noise.

The elevation and plan of one of the celebrated French racing-machines, the Vallée car, is shown in [Fig. 12]. The motor of this machine is of sixteen horse-power capacity, has four cylinders, and is connected so as to impart motion to the hind axle by means of a single wide belt, which is marked G in both the line drawings. The driving-pulley on the motor shaft is located at H, and the axle pulley at H’. Within the latter there is a train of gears for reversing the direction of rotation of the axle, and also for obtaining the differential velocities of the two driving wheels. There is no mechanism for variable speed, this being obtained wholly by changes in the velocity of the motor. The motor speed can be made to vary through a wide range by using four cylinders, with which it is possible to reduce the velocity so low that it would be likely to bring the machine to a standstill if provided with one, or even two, cylinders. The change in the motor velocity is obtained in part by the action of a governor located in a chamber at A, and in part by the action of the electric ignition device which is arranged so that the time when the spark is produced can be varied. The rear axle is so held that it can be moved through a short distance, horizontally, by manipulating the lever D, and in this way the belt G can be made tight or loose, thus affording another means for varying the speed. A brake is provided which presses against the inner side of the axle pulley, H. This brake is used ordinarily, but in the case of an emergency another brake can be operated which presses against the outside of the wheel in the space between the two sides of the belt. It is claimed for this vehicle that by the elimination of mechanical speed-changing devices, a great deal of weight is saved, and that this is more than enough to compensate for the extra weight of the motor, arising from the use of four cylinders. In most gasoline carriages it is necessary to provide a slow-speed gear for hill-climbing, as the motor cannot put forth a sufficient effort to ascend a steep grade at the normal velocity. With this racing-machine such a gear is not required owing to the enormous power of the motor.

Fig. 12. Elevation and Plan of Vallee Car.

There are quite a number of gasoline automobiles manufactured in this country, and, as in the case of the steam and the electric carriages, they compare most favorably with the best European products, in so far as the artistic effect is concerned. That such is the case can be realized at once by an examination of [Figs. 13] and [14]. We regret our inability to illustrate the mechanism of these vehicles, but the truth is, that the manufacturers appear to be unwilling to make public the details of their designs. In the phaeton shown in [Fig. 13], a single-cylinder motor is used, and it is so arranged that it can run at different velocities, so that no variable speed mechanism is required, except a single train of gears, which is thrown into action when running uphill. The motor itself can be run at any velocity from 200 to 800 revolutions per minute, thus giving a speed variation of four to one. A carriage of this make competed in the last international automobile race from Paris to Lyons, France, and although it failed to come in first, it made a remarkable showing, which might have been considerably improved if it had not been for an accident which compelled it to retire from the contest.

Fig. 13. Winton Phaeton.

Fig. 14. Oakman Vehicle.

The vehicle shown in [Fig. 14] is of small size and light construction, although amply strong for the purpose for which it is intended. The power of the motor, which is located under the seat, is transmitted through friction wheels. In looking at the illustration it will be noticed that the hind wheels have a circular rim attached to the inner side, and of a diameter somewhat smaller than the wheel itself. Two small friction wheels are placed so that either one may be pressed against the inner surface of this rim. The shape of the rim, as well as that of the small wheels, is such that they hug each other firmly, so that the rim is carried around in a direction which corresponds with the direction of rotation of the friction wheel. In operating the carriage the motor is set in motion, and then one or the other of the two friction wheels is pressed against the rim on the driving wheel, according to whether it is desired to run forward or backward. While this arrangement might not operate with entire success if applied to a heavy vehicle, it appears to be all that could be desired for a light carriage.

Three-wheel vehicles have been used, but there is a difference of opinion as to their value, as the construction has disadvantages as well as advantages. It is evident that such a vehicle can be steered with greater ease than one running on four wheels, but on country roads, where the wagon wheels roll down a smooth surface, and leave the space between in a rough condition, it is equally evident that the third wheel, in passing over this uneven surface, would jolt the vehicle to a considerable extent. On a smooth pavement the three-wheel vehicle will run fully as well as the four-wheel; but, on the other hand, on such a pavement the latter can be steered with as little effort as the former, so that the question of superiority of design is one that probably depends upon individual taste.

From the descriptions of automobiles given in this and the two preceding articles, it will be seen that although many of them are used, especially in France, they are not entirely free from objectionable features. The electrical vehicles are provided with the most simple and durable machinery, and, being noiseless, odorless and free from smoke, are all that could be desired in so far as their operation is concerned; but they are heavy and can only be used in places where the batteries can be recharged. The steam vehicles are light, have simple mechanism and can run anywhere; but they exhaust steam into the air, which is clearly visible in cold or wet weather, and the heat from the engine and boiler is an objection, at least in summer time. The gasoline vehicles run well, but are noisy, and the odor of the gasoline is disagreeable as well.

SOME SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF WARFARE.
By WILLIAM J. ROE.

As in boxing, fencing, saber and bayonet exercises, there are comparatively few postures, guards, thrusts and strokes, so in warfare, whether the numbers be large or small, the arms most modern or ancient, there are just a few principles to whose steady adherence and skilful manipulation all success is due. In order that these may become apparent without irksome study of military details, let us imagine a command of say a thousand men, fairly well drilled, of good ordinary intelligence and engaged in a cause worthy of being fought for. We have been in camp for some time, but an order has now come to join the main army. This is a long distance off, the railway communications have been broken, and the intervening country, though possessed of good roads, is more or less in the hands of the enemy.

Our scouts have kept us informed as to the condition of the country for several miles around; our first day’s march is, therefore, not hampered with any especial dread of surprise. We move quickly and at ease. Safe as everything appears to be, the commander relaxes none of the needful precautions; at least fifty men, under command of an experienced officer, are sent quite far to the front, the distance varying with the nature of the country—the farther, the more broken it may be. The best roads are followed; the men are allowed to march at ease, though always preserving-their company organization, while the officers are always more or less on the alert. There is a small rear guard, but it is upon the advance that the main responsibility falls. Of the fifty thrown forward, about half will remain together; the rest are scattered; some far to the front along the highway; others on either side of the route, riding up the hills on either hand, making sure that no deep gorge, dense growth of forest or thicket, nor even a field of grain conceals an enemy. It is upon the alertness of those vedettes on front and flanks that the safety of the force in great measure depends. History records many relaxations of this principle of precaution, and for lack of it sudden ambushes and deplorable disasters. It was thus, in spite of Washington’s repeated warnings, that Braddock fell into a cunning ambuscade, and thus (not to multiply examples) that Custer and his command were massacred to a man among the high Rockies.

On the annexed map the men may be located at ‘A’ marching from ‘D’ in the direction of the village, ‘F’. The advance is at ‘B’, the rear guard at ‘C’. The commander rides with the main column, near the front. The black dots, with pennons, indicate the general position of the vedettes at this point, though, of course, they are continually advancing. The commander has noted on his map a foot path, beginning at ‘D’, leading over the rugged hills. By taking this path a considerable distance could be saved; but it is quite impracticable for the wagons, and the troops, therefore, continue along the high road. The valley is gently undulating, with a gradual slope from the low hills towards the stream.

The projecting hills near the head of the column form an especially dangerous point. What easier than for an enemy to plant batteries here on either side of the road. A sudden, heavy fire would throw a negligent force at once into disorder; a situation to be taken instant advantage of by a vigorous adversary; a charge of horse concealed behind the hill at ‘O’, and nothing might be left except flight, with great loss of life, and surrender with loss—if not of honor, at least of reputation as a safe leader.

Happily, we shall avoid both alternatives. Our scouts have explored most thoroughly every possible vantage ground. They have not been content with any mere glances; their instructions are to take nothing for granted. That field, marked ‘G’, looks innocent enough, but the tall, thick rye or corn may cover a skilfully placed battery. The plot marked ‘M’ may be simply a vineyard; but it does no harm to inquire. The inhabitants of the country are friendly, and, therefore, the chances are not favorable to this sort of surprise; but in war it is often not the likely, but the unexpected that happens; the commander who knows his business guards against the remote possibility.

Though we have imagined a force of a thousand, it must not be lost sight of that the same kind of precautions should be employed for very much larger numbers; indeed, you need only alter the scale of the map, imagine additional roads, a railway line or two, increase to thousands, if necessary, the fifty of our vanguard, and the result is but an application of the very first principle of warfare: Eternal vigilance is the price of safety as well as of liberty.

The troops have been in camp for some time; their condition is excellent for a long march. As the corn and rye are not yet gathered, the time is early summer. The roads are in prime condition. They set out by sunrise and halted for perhaps two hours at noon. It is by thus sparing his troops during the heat of the day that the colonel will have a body of men fresh enough at nightfall to march, if necessary, all night. But no such urgency exists; it is nearing sunset, and preparations are now being made to encamp. By his map the colonel has informed himself in the matter of distances, and has decided that they shall pitch their tents somewhere in the vicinity of the village (‘F’). The scouts report an eligible location for camp at ‘S’, and this is finally chosen. It has several advantages, being comparatively level, and yet upon high ground, and has in close proximity several wells of good water. The train containing provisions and ammunition is parked in the safest locality, the horses picketed, and the guns—perhaps two or three field pieces and machine guns—placed where they can be most easily handled.

By all means, give the men as good a supper as the neighborhood affords. It will be wise not to encroach upon the rations, but rather draw supplies from the village; there are, no doubt, purveyors of one sort or another to be found ready enough to supply us, the more so that they will be amply paid.

Refreshed by their supper the men are ready to turn in at tattoo; by the time ‘taps’ have sounded most are soundly sleeping. But some are awake; if doing their full duty, wider awake than ever they are likely to be in times of peace. The same attention to the bodily comfort of his men which impelled the colonel to give them a long rest at midday and a comfortable meal, applies with increased force to those detailed early in the morning for the night’s guard; during the march these have been spared as far as possible, even being allowed a lift now and then in an ambulance. Such privileges are not granted by a commander who knows his craft as a concession to the laziness, but rather as a preparation for the effectiveness of his men. This is a principle of action, and may apply to business as well as war, that the strong head never withholds reasonable and proper indulgence; the better, it may be said, to enforce at needful times reasonable and proper exertions.

As soon as the camp is established the guards are posted. If great precautions were needed during the day, much more are they by night. If fifty were sufficient on the march we need a hundred during the hours of darkness. In the case of a large army an elaborate system of night guards is necessary: First, ‘advanced guards’, occupying strong positions at some distance from the main body; beyond these are the picket guards; further still towards the front what are called ‘grand guards’, from which are thrown forward the outposts, to which the line of sentinels is directly attached. In case of alarm, the sentinels fall back upon the outposts; these upon the grand guards; they, in turn, if necessary, upon the pickets; the necessities of the case and the strength of the enemy’s demonstration determining the movements of the defense, even perhaps to the ‘long roll’ and rousing of the entire army.

In our case, no such elaborate system is possible; we content ourselves with outposts and the line of sentinels, all that will be needed, if vigilant, to guard against surprise. The colonel, attended by the officer in command of the guard, will select the sites for outposts. These, five in number, are marked by stars upon the map. The direction from which an attack is most probable is from the ridge (‘R’, ‘R’).

The men are usually on the sentinel line for two hours at a time, with opportunity for four hours’ sleep; that is, with shifts, or, as they are called, ‘reliefs’ of three parties, two hours on and four off. This is not, however, invariable, it being sometimes wiser to relieve the men oftener or not so often, this being regulated by circumstances—the state of weather, distance of posts apart, fatigue of the men, etc., etc. The sentinels will be posted on clear nights generally upon high ground; in bad or foggy weather the foot of the slope is preferable. The officer will see that no obstacle prevents the sentinel from retreating upon his outpost if attacked. The men will be directed to take advantage of any cover that offers, always to keep in easy touch with one another and watchful, never to raise a false alarm, but quickly and decidedly a real one, and while not failing to discover the meaning of anything unusual in their front, never to expose themselves from mere bravado.

What measures shall be taken in case of an attack in force must, of course, depend entirely upon circumstances. A night attack, intended merely as an annoyance, or ‘feeler’, or at most to stampede some of the cattle, or to gather information as to strength, resources, etc., is quite a different affair from one planned for the purpose of complete victory, either the destruction, dispersal or capture of the command.

A mere night foray is generally executed by comparatively few. The opposing chief may be desirous of getting information concerning the force that his scouts have reported is advancing down the valley. A little expedition like ours sometimes serves as a disguise for a momentous strategical movement. The chief determines to find out all he can as to our purpose. He has found us vigilant by day; he resolves to try what the night may disclose. This sort of surprise is apt to produce better results than the project of some dashing subaltern, anxious for the bauble reputation.

For such an attack an hour near midnight is usually selected, that the information may be gathered or the mischief done and a retreat effected under cover of darkness. A dark, wet, blustering, or—if the time be winter—an especially cold night is chosen. The degree of success to be attained depends naturally upon the element of surprise. Unless this be complete the attacking party will find their attempt usually quite futile.

The other sort of attack—that which has for its object the capture of the position—is usually planned to take place during the extreme darkness just preceding daybreak. The enemy has perhaps crawled on hands and knees up the slopes towards the line of sentinels. The van of this force is composed entirely of picked men, officered by the coolest heads. Signals are agreed upon, exact times for action arranged, and everything calculated to a nicety to insure that suddenness which is the very soul of success.

It is in the planning of such an expedition that true qualities of generalship are shown. It is the fashion rather to decry the military merits of Washington; yet I know of few events in history that show more sagacity than the swift crossing of the wintry Delaware and the surprise of Trenton. It was sagacious chiefly for the accurate comprehension of the probabilities. Washington knew the convivial habits of Rahl’s Hessians, especially at Christmas-tide; he reckoned upon finding them in the midst of carousals, and the result proved the value of his forethought.

Under ordinary circumstances, on the march, to quarter a command inside four walls is never advisable. The men are not as readily under the eye of their officers; in case of surprise they cannot be called into the ranks as quickly; discipline insensibly relaxes, and the machine (for an armed force ought to be that, however intelligent its units) fails to respond instantaneously to the word of the chief. In case of a serious attack, however, the village may serve a most important purpose. Should the houses be substantial ones of stone or brick, each may become a most efficient, if temporary fortification. One consideration which might have prevented its occupation has now no longer any weight. Apart from any natural feeling of good will for our fellow citizens, how unwise it would be to unnecessarily exasperate them. But now in the face of the enemy, it will be surprising if any soul is churl enough to grudge a patriotic hospitality. Most of the denizens will, indeed, make haste to hide their precious persons in the cellar, but will seldom grumble at the necessity.

With the utmost celerity the baggage and horses are moved to the most sheltered spot; the guns, under strong guards, posted where they may be best utilized; some of the men, previously detailed for just such an emergency, are engaged in throwing up earthworks, piling logs, stones, anything that can be utilized for barricades. The officer charged with that duty, if possible a skilled engineer, goes quickly from place to place, hurriedly indicating the lines of defense; these connecting the several buildings in such a manner as to enclose the entire command within lines of quite formidable intrenchments. All this time the troops, having taken possession of the houses, have poured an uninterrupted fire upon the assailants, obliging them to retire, or at least giving the diggers—or sappers, as they are called—time to complete their labor of defense. Surrounded by a force sufficiently large to make resistance in the field quite hopeless, we are at least in position to protract the struggle, and one capable of defense, except against an assault in overwhelming numbers, or against heavy artillery. The latter they are not provided with, or the measures we are taking might all go in the end for nothing. Several assaults are attempted during the day, but are easily repulsed with no small loss. The enemy at last withdraws, and we now see that he is busy throwing up intrenchments. Meanwhile, we have not been idle. To facilitate communication, and to enable us to concentrate our forces under cover, passageways have been constructed between the various buildings, inner partitions preventing free access from room to room within the houses have been broken through, and the débris, together with beds broken up, mattresses and ‘any old thing’ capable of arguing with a bullet, piled in the window embrasures, leaving loopholes here and there, as occasion offers, while galleries may be constructed with loopholes in the floor to fire downwards.

One of the most important matters to be attended to is the securing of as many good positions as possible, from which fire may be concentrated upon exposed points. In a regular siege the points of attack selected will always be those most exposed, on account of their projecting beyond the line of defense. In the case of a village like this resisting an attempt at capture the principles are identical; it will certainly be the points that project that will be danger spots and which will therefore require especial attention.

You observe on the enlarged map of the village that there are double lines between the outer buildings; these are the improvised intrenchments. Notice that they have not been constructed flush with the face of the outer walls in any instance; but always considerably retired. The object of this arrangement is more effectually to defend the barricades. In the annexed sketch (No. 3) ‘A’ and ‘B’ represent the two adjacent buildings and the lines ‘CD’ the breastwork. In the buildings are windows—‘E’ and ‘F’—from which a heavy fire can be concentrated upon the assailants, as may be seen from the direction of the arrow heads. On the outer line are several projecting, and, therefore, especially exposed points; such as those at ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. The arrow heads show the direction of protective fire. As additional protection, it might be wise to hold the two buildings (‘H’, ‘H’) outside the village. If not held, they ought, if possible to be destroyed, as also those marked ‘JJ’, not included in the defensive lines, as they offer excellent cover for the enemy. The utmost care should be taken to provide a safe magazine for the ammunition and to cover well the place selected for a hospital. The wagons and horses would be best protected in the space marked ‘LLL’.

Should our defense prove too obstinate for direct assault, it may be that the enemy will construct regular intrenchments from which to dig a trench deep enough to protect, and large enough to hold a body of troops, thus enabling them to approach sufficiently near to assail some weak point, without too great risk. The modern repeating rifle, dangerous at a thousand yards, and fatal at a hundred, has given the defense so great preponderance that it requires quick work indeed to capture a stronghold. Observe the broken lines ‘OF and ‘PF’; these show the direction of possible trenches dug by the enemy. But ‘OF’ would be raked by the fire from the outlying house, ‘H’; the other is, therefore, the only feasible mode of approach.

The principle of defense, shown by the direction of the arrow heads in the case of the beleaguered village, is applicable to all conditions where ramparts are used. Suppose the command whose fortunes we have followed had been attacked while on the march at the point ‘A’ on [Map 1]. The opposing force was manifestly too strong for resistance in the field; they retreat to the rocky eminence ‘K’ and there proceed to fortify the position. A glance at [Diagram 4] will show what they will try at least to accomplish. In military language that shaded portion of the work to be constructed is called a bastion; it consists of two faces (‘AX’ and ‘AY’), and the two flanks (‘JY’ and ‘HX’). The faces of this bastion are defended (as the arrow heads indicate) by the flanks of adjacent bastions; that is, the face ‘AY’ is swept by a raking fire from ‘ZE’, and the face ‘AX’ from ‘FG’. Reciprocally, ‘HX’ rakes the face ‘BG’, and ‘JY’ the face ‘ED’, and so on round the intrenchment.

All that has been said as to protecting the ammunition and stores will apply to this work as it did to the village. If a spring of water can be included, as at ‘O’, this will be found of incalculable advantage. Of all forms of defensive ramparts the straight line is the worst; if time does not permit a work with bastions, however irregular, an enclosure shaped somewhat like a star is serviceable (shown in [Diagram 6], Figs. ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’). Should an enclosed work be impracticable, the line should have its ends (or ‘flanks’) strongly guarded, and be broken up, as in [Diagram 5] ‘D’ into short straight lines nearly at right angles, to serve for mutual support. This principle of mutual support, however achieved, is called that of ‘defensive relations’, and is capable of adaptation to all kinds of defensive works, whether of a few men beleaguered in an improvised fortification, a considerable number in a scientifically constructed work—permanent or field fortification—a fortress with an entire army behind its ramparts, or a cordon of forts surrounding a great city.

The ground plan of the work having been decided upon and staked out the men start in with pick and shovel, digging, if possible, a ditch, and throwing the material into the shape of the shaded portion of Diagram 7. The ditch, outside the fort, indicated by the figure ‘FGHJ’ serves the twofold purpose of getting material for the parapet ‘ABCDEF’, and for embarrassing an enemy in any attempt at assault. To further embarrass him every sort of obstacle that may be at hand should be put to use—trees, butts turned our way, boughs interlacing; stakes driven deep into the soil close together; barbed wires wound in and out; in short, every expedient that may delay his advance and keep him as long as possible exposed to our most effective fire.

The drawing (7) was made with no attempt at exactness of proportion, and simply to show the essentials; the slope ‘EF’ is made as steep as the nature of the soil will permit; ‘DE’ slopes enough to enable a soldier standing upon ‘BC’ to fire upon an enemy entangled among the obstacles at ‘J’, but never enough to weaken the mass of earth at and near ‘D’.

Observe how common-sensible all these arrangements are; not one too many or too few; just the things that a practical man, if he could think as he felt, would do if suddenly called to command with an enemy advancing upon him. Unfortunately, perhaps, for the purposes of a patriotic and peaceful people, men are inclined, even though brave as courage itself, to get nervous or nerveless in the immediate presence of danger. This is the reason, rather than for any especial erudition involved in war’s art, that we need trained soldiers—men trained to think mechanically and to act automatically amid the uproar of battle.

We have carefully, if briefly, considered the requirements of the first maxim of strategy—CAUTION—the need of it, and the practical methods of securing it; and also of the second maxim—DEFENSIVE RELATIONS—their necessity, and how to secure them. It now remains to consider the meaning of that phrase, ‘turning a position’, or ‘flanking’ an enemy, as to which of late we read so much in the daily press. The map (marked 8) gives an idea of a section of country where two armed bodies meet under conditions that permit one flank to be completely guarded from attack; these are the left flank of the force ‘A’, and the right flank of ‘B’. Both rest upon a lake or broad river. A steep precipice or deep morass, as at ‘H’, would serve as well. Suppose our force has advanced from the direction ‘C’, the enemy down the road from ‘E’ to ‘G’. Soon they form opposed lines facing each other, the reserve somewhat to the rear and sheltered by some inequality of ground, the ‘thin blue line’, almost, but not quite, touching elbows, stretched along the crest of the ridge in front, taking advantage of every chance to protect themselves—trees, stone walls, ditches; kneeling, crawling, lying face down, eyes along the rifle barrel, finger on trigger, keen and murderous, but prudent, and parsimonious of life. The solid formations, such as went out of vogue with old-time weapons, would melt away before machine guns and Krag-Jörgensens like frost before an August sun. It seems as if all chivalry had departed; it has but changed its ways.

The object of ‘flanking’ a position is to so manage as to turn that attenuated line into a mass of men upon which to let loose with dire effect either the quick-firing guns or the sharp edges of our horsemen’s sabers.

Notice those long, bent, black lines, bending like fish hooks. The arrow heads indicate the direction of a flanking attack; from ‘F’, through the woods, up the ravine, to fall upon the exposed end of the enemy’s front at ‘K’. Such would be our most feasible method of flanking; the foe might, however, have anticipated us, either by providing a bloody hospitality somewhere in that ravine, or by a flank movement of his own, as the bent black line shows, around the woods, to fall upon our right flank at ‘F’. Such an operation, if successful for them, would be utterly disastrous to us.

Surprised by a sudden and unexpected attack upon the weakest point and unable to change front in time, men lose heart, forget discipline, huddle in masses, confused and disorganized, or fly like sheep, in either case food for firearms, gluttonous of such occasions. It requires sometimes but a very small force upon a flank to produce great results; the appearance upon the field, even at a distance, of Joseph E. Johnston’s corps at the first Bull Run was sufficient to demoralize the whole Union army, and at the battle of Arcola, Bonaparte completely flanked the Austrians with a few flourishes of his trumpets.

So we have for a third maxim of war the necessity of PROTECTED FLANKS. If we know or think that a Johnston lurks on either hand, we ought to be sure of our Pattersons; if we apprehend an unfriendly visit from a Blucher, we should see to it that our Grouchy is trustworthy.

Let us now broaden our view of operations, that we may see how the principles established for a limited number of men on the march, in the field, or behind fortifications, may apply upon a larger scale. To this end a brief study of the map (9) will show four contiguous countries—‘A’, very populous, powerful and wealthy, having a navy capable of control of the high seas, and a large and efficient army; ‘C’ represents a country even more populous, but not aggressive, ‘D’ an insignificant power, while ‘B’ is a country considerable in extent, but largely mountainous, and sparsely inhabited by a rude but warlike people.

A cause of war comes up between ‘A’ and ‘B’. In ancient times the ruder nation would have been the aggressor, tempted by the wealth and invited by the enervated populace of the larger civilization. Now the conditions are likely to be reversed. However, war begins; the forces of ‘A’ move hastily towards the frontier, while his fleet blockades ‘B’s’ solitary seaport at the point ‘E’. The maxim of CAUTION now naturally expands; instead of information culled by a few daring riders from a narrow circuit, it should be made to embrace the widest area of country and the utmost latitude of information—the condition of the enemy as to armament, resources, position of forces, possible disaffection among the people—everything. In war no item comes amiss. The wealthier country will here have a manifest advantage; it can afford to hire spies, and can even (as England did during the Revolution) purchase the treason of some disaffected chief. Caution for the lesser country will—if good generalship prevails—take the shape of occupying and strengthening the natural strategic positions. These are nothing but flanks of a bastion on a large scale. Upon the map round black dots represent strategic positions along the frontier. They are points susceptible of thorough fortification which control the several passes in the mountain range between the two nations; also heads of valleys, where several meet, and from which attacks could be made at will in a number of directions. This entire frontier, which may be hundreds of miles broad, is mountainous, capable of being fortified at countless points, and having natural ‘defensive relations’ needing only the art of warcraft to render them almost impregnable. Modern murderous arms lend their services more readily to defense than to offense. It is even possible that the country ‘B’, warned in due season of the purposes of her powerful rival, may have plotted out each rod of ground among those mountain passes, and that artillery service, once a matter of gunnery, has now become a matter of mathematics.

We now come to the fourth maxim of war; it is that of efficient SUPPLY. An army, as the saying is, moves on its belly. An invading force must ordinarily provide for all its needs from some safe place in the rear, called a ‘base of operations’; it must also provide that the line of transit of its provisions and ammunition to the front shall not be liable to interference. Assuming that at ‘F’ is a strongly fortified city, the railway line or the adjacent rivers would furnish ‘A’ with a practical base; his line of advance would be in the direction ‘FG’, called the ‘line of operations’; ‘G’, a fortified pass, the proximate, and ‘J’, the capital of ‘B’, the ultimate objective point of the campaign. But it will be noted with what facility a determined enemy could fall upon ‘A’s’ communications from the point ‘H’, which would also be the case were the advance made from ‘K’ towards ‘L’.

Of course, in the end, the larger resources will prevail; but it may be that ‘A’, baffled and exasperated by a stubborn resistance, and finding that ‘B’ is being supplied through the neutral and insignificant country ‘D’, may finally conclude, “in the interests of a higher civilization,” to violate their territory, seize the port ‘M’, and thus, by a far-reaching and bold flank movement, gain entrance into ‘B’s’ country. Such devices are not unknown in the history of war. Such a course would be a distinct violation of the ‘law of nations’; but there would be apologies and ample indemnity to ‘D’, with which, doubtless, she would be satisfied.

In imagining such a campaign no account has been taken of the attitude of the country ‘C’, or of that of any foreign nation. In war these things must be reckoned with. Neutral nations are always liable, however disposed to maintain neutrality, to be touched at some sensitive point by one or the other of the contending parties.

MODERN MONGOLS.
By F. L. OSWALD, M.D., A.M.

The political supremacy of the Caucasian race was supposed to have been decided by the fall of Carthage, more than two thousand years ago, but was thrice afterwards imperiled by an encounter with a rival of long-unsuspected resources.

The Scythians of Strabo were probably not Tartars, but Slavs (‘Sarmatians’), or, like their allies, the Getæ, Slavs, mingled with Teutons. Parthia, too, had a semi-Aryan population; but the campaign of Attila gave the champions of Europe a chance to measure their strength with that of a new foe, as shifty as the Semites, and of far greater staying-power. His Huns were undoubtedly Mongols, and came so near overpowering the inheritors of Roman strategy that at one time the fate of western civilization hung upon the issue of a single battle. The western coalition triumphed, yet its victory on the plains of Chalons (October, 451), was due to the numerical inferiority of their enemies as much as to the predominance of their own skill or valor. The very retreat of the vanquished chief established his claim to the prestige of a superlative tactician.

Again, in 1402, only the accidental quarrel of two Mongol conquerors saved Europe from the fate of its ravaged borders. Sultan Bajazet had vanquished all his western foes, and the union of his forces with those of Tamerlane would undoubtedly have sealed the doom of the Mediterranean coast lands, if not all of Christendom.

A hundred years later the generals of Solyman II. came very near retrieving the neglected chance. They vanquished Austrian, Hungarian and Italian armies, and in 1560 defeated the combined armadas of the Christian sea-power at Port Jerbeh—so completely, indeed, that the allies were eager to make peace by betraying each other.

And it would be a great mistake to ascribe these victories to a mere triumph of brute strength. That same Solyman, with all his fanaticism, was a patron of every secular science, and at a time when western princes had to sign their names by proxy, Mohammed Baber Khan, the conqueror of India, wrote essays in four different languages and published memoirs abounding with shrewd comments on social and ethical questions and problems of political economy. He was a poet, too, and liberal enough to compose a dirge in memory of a prince whom he had slain in single combat.

Ethnologically, there is, therefore, nothing abnormal in the outburst of intellectual vigor that has lifted Japan to the front rank of civilized nations. It is merely a revival, analogous to the dambreak of pent-up energies that followed the collapse of mediæval despotism. Instead of having to work out their salvation by tentative efforts, the Japanese, it is true, had the advantage of ready-made patterns, but that difference has perhaps been more than offset by achievements affecting the reforms of four centuries in as many decades, and by modifications which, in more than one instance, have improved upon Caucasian models.

“The organization of the Japanese transport system,” says a press dispatch from Taku, “was a revelation to western staff officers; bodies of troops, with their equipments of stores and camping outfit, were landed without a hitch, in quick succession, and moved to the front without a moment’s loss of time. No delay, no confusion, no blockades of wharf-boats and baggage carts; everything worked in smooth grooves and in evident conformity with a prearranged and oft-rehearsed plan.”

And in 1897, after the affront of the Russian intervention, the victorious islanders, compelled to forfeit half the rewards of their valor, proceeded to make the very best of the other half, and their provoked diplomats managed to preserve their dignity, as well as their complete presence of mind. The Japanese police enforces law and order without waging Blue-Law wars against harmless amusements; there are no associations for the prosecution of bathing youngsters, no anti-concert crusades, no suppression of outdoor sports on the day when ninety-nine of a hundred wage-earners find their only chance for leisure.

The ‘Yankees of the Orient’ have a code of honor without duellos, trade syndicates without ‘trusts’, giant cities and ghetto suburbs without anarchists. Their labor riots are settled by a dispassionate court of appeal. Their schools, Professor Arnold informs us, are hampered by ‘fads’ and experiment committees, but not by boards of bigot trustees. In spite of Buddhist conventicles, the emergence of the educated classes from the shadows of religious feudalism is a complete emancipation. The Japanese ‘Council of Finance’ has adopted American custom-house methods and Belgian systems of graded taxation. There is, indeed, a good deal of eclecticism in the supposed surrender of indigenous institutions; foreign methods have been adopted only on the evidence of their efficiency, and always with a view to making them subservient to national purposes. The key to the distinctive characteristics of the North Mongols can be found in Sir Edwin Randall’s definition of ‘Perseverance combined with shiftiness.’ The Asiatic Yankees can turn, dodge and deviate while keeping a pre-determined aim steadily in view, and it is by no means improbable that Mongol influences have impressed similar peculiarities on the character of the northeastern Slavs. Muscovy was a Tartar Khanate for a number of centuries, and Russian diplomats, since the days of Czarina Katherine, have accommodated themselves to emerging circumstances by crawling or strutting, without ever losing sight of the road to Constantinople.

In the shaggy Ainos of Yesso (probably the original home of our ‘Shetland’ ponies), that perseverance takes the form of mulish stubbornness. They strenuously object to foreign imports and stick to their sheepskin cloaks like Scotch Highlanders to their kilts, but in stress of famine seem now to take an interest in the harpoon-guns of their Russian neighbors, and now and then sell specimens of their poodle-faced youngsters to the agents of a transpacific museum.

Japan still produces athletes, as well as unrivaled acrobats, partly, no doubt, on account of bracing climatic influences, but partly, also, of a vice-resisting worship of physical prowess. About sixty years ago the slums of the large seaport towns were expurgated by a national revolt against the spread of the opium habit, and the consequent reform movement appears to have kept step with the Swedish crusade against the spread of the alcohol curse.

China may be forced into the arena of regeneration, but thus far seems to view the collapse of her ring-wall only as a blessing in a rather effective disguise. The policy of non-intercourse, indeed, had the sanction of a physical necessity in the opinion of as shrewd a statesman as the vizier of the great Kooblai Khan, who conquered rebels from Mantchooria to Siam, but recognized the hopelessness of ordinary measures for protecting the peaceful toilers of the eastern provinces against the predatory hordes of the northwest. A standard army of home-guards, he argued, would have to be composed either of natives who could not fight, or of foreign auxiliaries who might revolt; so, all things considered, it was deemed best to bar a foe that could not be beaten. Strategically, the plan succeeded, stone walls being then so inexpugnable to spear-armed besiegers that the proprietors of a stone-built robber castle could defy the wrath of the public for a series of generations. The Tartar marauders were kept at bay, but so were trading caravans and traveling philosophers; the disadvantages of all obstacles to free competition began to assert themselves. The nation, as it were, sickened in a marasmus of intellectual inbreeding. Protected incompetence propagated its species; monopolies flourished. The survival of the fittest no longer favored the brave; cowards and weaklings could find refuge under the telamonian shield of the big wall.

Within the last hundred years that process of degeneration has been hastened by two incidental afflictions—spring floods and summer droughts. The rapid increase of population has driven home-seekers into the highlands of the far west, and the destruction of land-protecting forests avenged itself in the usual manner. Every heavy snowfall in the mountains became a menace to the settlers of the lowlands; a sudden thaw was always apt to turn brooks into rivers and rivers into raging seas. The summers, at the same time, became warmer and drier. Famines, such as only India had seen before, crowded the cities with refugees. Charitable institutions were managed by agents of a paternal government, and paupers were rarely suffered to perish in wayside ditches, but hundreds of thousands were huddled together in parish suburbs and fed on minimum rations of the cheapest available food.

It was then that the masses were forced to apostatize from the dietetic tenets of Buddhism; abstinence from animal food became impossible; sanitary scruples had to be disregarded; whole settlements of famine victims were compelled to subsist exclusively on offal.

Millions of mechanics had to fight to struggle for existence by reducing their wants. The prices of food had doubled, and in order to pay the cost of one daily meal all luxuries had to be relinquished. Sleep and oblivion of misery became the only alternatives of hopeless toil, and those who could save a few taels yielded to the temptation of supplementing those blessings by means of chemical anodynes. Opium-smoking became a national vice.

The ‘opium war’ did not rivet the yoke of that curse. It merely clinched the grip of a British trading company. The Chinese government had attempted to cancel their franchise, but only with a view to diverting its profits into the pockets of their own speculators. The total suppression of the traffic would have been not only difficult, but practically impossible. We might as well try to prohibit tobacco in North America.

Yet the results of these coöperating factors of degeneracy have stopped short of the extremes that might have been expected in a land of earth-despisers. Buddhism in its orthodox Chinese form is radically pessimistic. It inculcates a belief in the worthlessness of all terrestrial blessings, and considers life a disease, with no cure but death. And not death by suicide, either; the victims of misery must drain life’s cup to the dregs, to cure the very love of existence, and thus prevent the risk of re-birth.

The value of health and wealth is thus depreciated in a manner that might tend to aggravate the recklessness of life-weariness; yet the South Mongol is conservative, even in his vices. An inalienable instinct of thrift makes him shrink from senseless excesses. Tavern brawls are less frequent in Canton than in Edinburgh; the topers of the Flowery Kingdom get less efflorescent than ours, their love-crazed swains less extravagant. Absolute imbecility, as a consequence of poison habits, is a rare phenomenon in Mongoldom; nine out of ten sots remain self-supporting; the heritage of industrial habits is hardly ever lost altogether.

Nor should we forget to distinguish the primitive rustics of the inland provinces from the vice-worn population of the coast plains. Degeneration has not left its marks far above tide-water, and has hardly begun to affect the natives of the highlands, the Yunan hunting tribes, for instance, who, though South Mongols, have renounced the tenets of Buddha and adopted those of militant Mohammed.

Their chieftains welcomed war for its own sake, while the lowland conscripts were in the predicament of desert dwellers, caught in the flood of a sudden cloudburst. Thousands at first succumbed almost without a struggle; the levies drilled to oppose the Japanese invasion stood to be slaughtered like sheep, being, moreover, morally handicapped by a misgiving that the war with the champions of the north had been wantonly provoked.

Discipline has begun to break the spell of that apathy, but the desperate valor that surprised the veterans of the allies at Taku and Yangtsun had a very different significance. Fury supplied the defects of military training; the listless life-renouncers had at last been goaded into a frenzy of nationalistic resentment. It was the same delirium of retributive wrath that rallied a million Frenchmen around the standards of the invaded Republic, and hurled a horde of Russian volunteers into the bullet-storm of Borodino.

‘A united nation of fifteen millions is not vincible’, wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau, in reply to an appeal of the Polish patriots. South Mongols were supposed to be hardly worth an expedition of Caucasian regulars, but even a world coalition might find use for intrenchments if the vendetta rage of a war for national existence should arouse a land of 385,000,000 inhabitants.

Whether that storm will purify the social atmosphere of the vast empire or subside into the calm of exhaustion, is a different question. It would even be premature to accept the appearance of a few able leaders as a propitious omen of regeneration. In a land ten times the size of France the crisis of a fearful peril will always evolve a Carnot, a Danton and a Dumouriez, if not a storm-compelling Bonaparte.

The days of the West Mongol Empire, the dominion of the turbaned Turk, are undoubtedly numbered, but not as a result of national decrepitude. The successor of Sultan Bajazet will succumb, not as a ‘sick man’, but as a cripple; an invalid worn out in a fight against hopeless odds. Within the last hundred years the stadtholders of the Prophet had to defend their throne against Russian, Austrian, Greek, French and British attacks, and more than once against a West-European alliance, backed by African and Asiatic insurgents. Within that period 3,000,000 Mongol Mussulmans have perished on the battlefield, a million for every generation of an impoverished and not specially reproductive race. Their empire will collapse, but its defenders are still the hardiest soldiers of Europe, the most unconquerable by hardships, wounds and hunger. The burden-carriers of Constantinople are still the stoutest men of our latter-day world. We might as well impeach the degeneracy of the Circassian highlanders, who resisted the power of the Russian monarchy for sixty-five years, and in their last stronghold stood at bay with drawn hunting knives—after blunting their sabres and exhausting a stock of ammunition purchased by the sacrifice of their herds and harvests. For these heroic mountaineers, too, were Mongols, kinsmen of the martial Turkomans and chivalrous Magyars. The Turanian race—a synonym of the Pan-Mongolians—comprises as many different types as the Aryans and Semites taken together.

In 1863 some twenty clans of the vanquished highlanders left the Caucasus en masse to settle in the mountains of the Turkish province of Adrianople. They will share the fate of their protectors, and may soon be obliged to follow their flight across the Hellespont.

But the final expulsion of the West Mongols will, after all, mean only that the Caucasians have recovered lost ground, and freed at least Europe from an intrusive tribe of their most persistent and most formidable rivals.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE CENTRAL ESKIMO.[B]
By Professor FRANZ BOAS.

[B] A description of the religious beliefs of the Central Eskimo, based upon observations made by the writer, was published in the Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. The following account embodies observations which Capt. James S. Mutch, of Peterhead, Scotland, following a suggestion of the writer, had the kindness to make. The material for this study was collected by Capt. Mutch during a long-continued stay in Cumberland Sound.

The Eskimo who inhabit the coasts of Arctic America subsist mainly by the chase of sea-mammals, such as seals of various kinds, walruses and whales. Whenever this source of supply is curtailed, want and famine set in. The huts are cold and dark—for heat and light are obtained by burning the blubber of seals and whales—and soon the people succumb to hunger and to the terrors of the rigorous climate. For this reason the native does everything in his power to gain the good-will of the sea-mammals and to insure success in hunting. All his thoughts are bent upon treating them in such a manner that they may allow themselves to be caught. On this account they form one of the main subjects of his religious beliefs and customs. They play a most important part in his mythology, and a well-nigh endless series of observances regulates their treatment.

The mythological explanation of all the prevailing customs in regard to sea-mammals is contained in a tale which describes their origin:

“A girl named Avilayuk refused all her suitors, and for this reason she was also called ‘She who does not want to marry.’ There was a stone near the village where she lived. It was speckled white and red. The stone transformed itself into a dog and took the girl to wife.

“She had many children, some of whom became the ancestors of various fabulous tribes. The children made a great deal of noise, which annoyed Avilayuk’s father, so that he finally took them across the water to a small island. Every day the dog swam across to the old man’s hut to get meat for his family. His wife hung around his neck a pair of boots that were fastened to a string. The old man filled the boots with meat, and the dog took them back to the island.

“One day, while the dog was gone for meat, a man came to the island in his kayak[C] and called the young woman. ‘Take your bag and come with me,’ he shouted. He had the appearance of a good-looking, tall man, and the woman was well pleased with him. She took her bag, went down to the kayak, and the man paddled away with her. After they had gone some distance, they came to a cake of floating ice. The man stepped out of the kayak on to the ice. Then she noticed that he was quite a small man, and that he appeared large only because he had been sitting on a high seat. Then she began to cry, while he laughed and said, ‘Oh, you have seen my seat, have you?’ [According to another version, he wore snow-goggles made of walrus-ivory, and he said, ‘Do you see my snow-goggles?’ and then laughed at her because she began to cry.] Then he went back into his kayak, and they proceeded on their journey.

[C] The one-man hunting canoe of the Eskimo.

“Finally they came to a place where there were many people and many huts. He pointed out to her a certain hut made of the skins of yearling seals, and told her that it was his, and that she was to go there. They landed. The woman went up to the hut, while he attended to his kayak. Soon he joined her in the hut, and staid with her for three or four days before going out sealing again. Her new husband was a petrel.

“Meanwhile her father had left the dog, her former husband, at his house, and had gone to look for her on the island. When he did not find her, he returned home, and told the dog to wait for him, as he was going in search of his daughter. He set out in a large boat, traveled about for a long time, and visited many a place before he succeeded in finding her. Finally he came to the place where she lived. He saw many huts, and, without leaving his boat, he shouted and called his daughter to return home with him. She came down from her hut, and went aboard her father’s boat, where he hid her among some skins.

“They had not been gone long when they saw a man in a kayak following them. It was her new husband. Soon he overtook them, and when he came alongside he asked the young woman to show her hand, as he was very anxious to see at least part of her body, but she did not move. Then he asked her to show her mitten, but she did not respond to his request. In vain he tried in many ways to induce her to show herself; she kept in hiding. Then he began to cry, resting his head on his arms, that were crossed in front of the manhole of the kayak. Avilayuk’s father paddled on as fast as he could, and the man fell far behind. It was calm at that time and they continued on their way home. After some time they saw something coming from behind toward their boat. They could not clearly discern it. Sometimes it looked like a man in a kayak. Sometimes it looked like a petrel. It flew up and down, then skimmed over the water, and finally came up to their boat and went round and round it several times and then disappeared again. Suddenly ripples came up, the waters began to rise, and after a short time a gale was raging. The boat was quite a distance away from shore. The old man became afraid lest they might be drowned; and, fearing the revenge of his daughter’s husband, he threw her into the water. She held on to the gunwale; then the father took his hatchet and chopped off the first joints of her fingers. When they fell into the water they were transformed into whales, the nails becoming the whalebone. Still she clung to the boat; again he took his hatchet and chopped off the second joints of her fingers. They became transformed into ground seals. Still she clung to the boat; then he chopped off the last joints of her fingers, which became transformed into seals. Now she clung on to the boat with the stumps of her hands, and her father took his steering-oar and knocked out her left eye. She fell backward into the water and he paddled ashore.

“Then he filled with stones the boots in which the dog was accustomed to carry meat to his family, and only covered the top with meat. The dog started to swim across, but when he was halfway the heavy stones dragged him down. He began to sink and was drowned. A great noise was heard while he was drowning. The father took down his tent and went down to the beach at the time of low water. There he lay down and covered himself with the tent. The flood tide rose and covered him, and when the waters receded he had disappeared.”

This woman, the mother of the sea-mammals, may be considered the principal deity of the Central Eskimo. She has supreme sway over the destinies of mankind, and almost all the observances of these tribes are for the purpose of retaining her good-will or of propitiating her if she has been offended. Among the eastern tribes of this region she is called Sedna, while the tribes west of Hudson Bay call her Nuliayuk. She is believed to live in a lower world, in a house built of stone and whale-ribs. In accordance with the myth, she is said to have but one eye. She cannot walk, but slides along, one leg bent under, the other stretched forward. Her father lives with her in this house, and lies covered up with his tent. The dog watches the entrance, being stationed on the floor of the house.

The souls of seals, ground seals and whales are believed to proceed from her house. After one of these animals has been killed its soul stays with the body for three days. Then it goes back to Sedna’s abode, to be sent forth again by her. If, during the three days that the soul stays with the body, any taboo or prescribed custom is violated, the violation becomes attached to the animal’s soul. Although the latter strives to free itself of these attachments, which give it pain, it is unable to do so, and takes them down to Sedna. The attachments, in some manner that is not explained, make her hands sore, and she punishes the people who are the cause of her pains by sending to them sickness, bad weather and starvation. The object of the innumerable taboos that are in force after the killing of these sea animals is therefore to keep their souls free from attachments that would hurt their souls as well as Sedna.

The souls of the sea animals are endowed with greater powers than those of ordinary human beings. They can see the effect of the contact with a corpse, which causes objects touched by it to appear of a dark color; and they can see the effect of flowing blood, from which a vapor rises that surrounds the bleeding person and is communicated to every one and every thing that comes in contact with such a person. This vapor and the dark color of death are exceedingly unpleasant to the souls of the sea animals, that will not come near a hunter thus affected. The hunter must therefore avoid contact with people who have touched a body, or with such as are bleeding. If any one who has touched a body or who is bleeding should allow others to come in contact with him he would cause them to become distasteful to the seals and therefore also to Sedna. For this reason the custom demands that every person must at once announce if he has touched a body or if he is bleeding. If he does not do so, he will bring ill luck to all the hunters.

These ideas have given rise to the belief that it is necessary to announce the transgression of any taboo. The transgressor of a custom is distasteful to Sedna and to the animals, and those who abide with him will become equally distasteful through contact with him. For this reason it has come to be an act required by custom and morals to confess any and every transgression of a taboo, in order to protect the community from the evil influences of contact with the evil-doer. The descriptions of Eskimo life given by many observers contain records of starvation which, according to the belief of the natives, was brought about by some one transgressing a law and not announcing what he had done.

I presume this importance of the confession of a transgression with a view to warning others to keep at a distance from the transgressor has gradually led to the idea that a transgression, or we might say a sin, can be atoned for by confession. This is one of the most remarkable religious beliefs of the Central Eskimo. There are innumerable tales of starvation brought about by the transgression of a taboo. In vain the hunters try to supply their families with food; gales and drifting snow make their endeavors fruitless. Finally the help of the angakok[D] is invoked, and he discovers that the cause of the misfortune of the people is due to the transgression of a taboo. Then the guilty one is searched for. If he confesses, all is well, the weather moderates, and the seals will allow themselves to be caught; but if he obstinately maintains his innocence, his death alone will soothe the wrath of the offended deity.

[D] The medicine-man or shaman of the Eskimo.

While thus the reason appears clear why the taboos are rigorously enforced by public opinion, the origin of the taboos themselves is quite obscure. It is forbidden, after the death of a sea mammal or after the death of a person, to scrape the frost from the window, to shake the beds, or to disturb the shrubs under the bed, to remove oil-drippings from under the lamp, to scrape hair from skins, to cut snow for the purpose of melting it, to work on iron, wood, stone, or ivory. Women are, furthermore, forbidden to comb their hair, to wash their faces and to dry their boots and stockings.

A number of customs, however, may be explained by the endeavors of the natives to keep the sea mammals free from contaminating influences. All the clothing of a dead person, more particularly the tent in which he died, must be discarded; for if a hunter should wear clothing made of skins that had been in contact with the deceased, these would appear dark and the seal would avoid him. Neither would a seal allow itself to be taken into a hut darkened by a dead body, and all those who entered such a hut would appear dark to it and would be avoided.

While it is customary for a successful hunter to invite all the men of the village to eat of the seal that he has caught, they must not take any of the seal meat out of the hut, because it might come in contact with persons who are under taboo, and thus the hunter might incur the displeasure of the seal and of Sedna.

It is very remarkable that the walrus is not included in this series of regulations. It is explicitly stated that the walrus, the white whale and the narwhal are not subject to these laws, which affect only the sea animals that originated from Sedna’s fingers. There is, however, a series of laws that forbid contact between walrus, seal and caribou. It is not quite clear in what mythical concept these customs originate. There is a tradition regarding the origin of walrus and caribou which is made to account for a dislike between these two animals. A woman created both these animals from parts of her clothing. She gave the walrus antlers and the caribou tusks. When man began to hunt them, the walrus upset the boats with his antlers and the caribou killed the hunter with his tusks. Therefore the woman called both animals back and took the tusks from the caribou and gave them to the walrus. She took the antlers, kicked the caribou’s forehead flat and put the antlers on to it. Ever since that time, it is said, walrus and caribou avoid each other, and the people must not bring their meat into contact. They are not allowed to eat caribou and walrus meat on the same day except after changing their clothing. The winter clothing which is made of caribou-skin must be entirely completed before the men will go to hunt walrus. As soon as the first walrus has been killed, a messenger goes from village to village and announces the news. All work on caribou-skins must cease immediately. When the caribou-hunting season begins, all the winter clothing, and the tent that has been in use during the walrus-hunting season, are buried, and not used again until the following walrus-hunting season. No walrus hide, or thongs made of such hide, must be taken inland, where is the abode of the caribou.

Similar laws, although not quite so stringent, hold good in regard to contact between seal and walrus. The natives always change their clothing or strip naked before eating seal during the walrus season.

The soul of the salmon is considered to be very powerful. Salmon must not be cooked in a pot that has been used for boiling other kinds of meat. It is always cooked at some distance from the hut. Boots that were used while hunting walrus must not be worn when fishing salmon, and no work on boot-legs is allowed until the first salmon has been caught and placed on a boot-leg.

The fact that these taboos are not restricted to caribou and walrus suggests that the mythical explanation given above does not account for the origin of these customs, but must be considered as a later effort to explain their existence.

The transgressions of taboos do not affect the souls of game alone. It has already been stated that the sea mammals see their effect upon man also, who appears to them of a dark color, or surrounded by a vapor which is invisible to ordinary man. This means, of course, that the transgression also affects the soul of the evil-doer. It becomes attached to it and makes him sick. The shaman is able to see, by the help of his guardian spirit, these attachments, and is able to free the soul from them. If this is not done the person must die. In many cases the transgressions become attached also to persons who come in contact with the evil-doer. This is especially true of children, to whose souls the sins of their parents, and particularly of their mothers, become readily attached. Therefore when a child is sick the shaman, first of all, asks its mother if she has transgressed any taboos. The attachment seems to have a different appearance, according to the taboo that has been violated. A black attachment is due to removing oil-drippings from under the lamp. As soon as the mother acknowledges the transgression of a taboo, the attachment leaves the child’s soul and the child recovers.

The souls of the deceased stay with the body for three days. If a taboo is violated during this time the transgression becomes attached to the soul of the deceased. The weight of the transgression causes the soul pain, and it roams about the village, endeavoring to free itself of its burden. It seeks to harm the people who, by their disobedience to custom, are causing its sufferings. It causes heavy snows to fall and brings sickness and death. Such a soul is called a tupilak. Toward the middle of autumn it hovers around the doors of the huts. When a shaman discovers the tupilak he advises the people, who assemble, and prepare to free it of its burden. All the shamans go in search of it, each a knife in hand. As soon as they find it, they stab it with their knives, and thus cut off the transgressions. Then the tupilak becomes a soul again. The knives with which it was stabbed are seen by the people to be covered with blood.

The Central Eskimo believe that man has two souls. One of these stays with the body, and may enter temporarily the body of a child which is given the name of the departed. The other soul goes to one of the lands of the souls. Of these there are several. There are three heavens, one above another, of which the highest is the brightest and best. Those who die by violence go to the lowest heaven. Those who die by disease go to Sedna’s house first, where they stay for a year. Sedna restores their souls to full health and then she sends them up to the second heaven. Those who die by drowning go to the third heaven. People who commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark and where they go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature births go to Sedna’s abode and stay in the lowest world.

The other soul stays with the body. When a child has been named after the deceased, the soul enters its body and remains there for about four months. It is believed that its presence strengthens the child’s soul, which is very light and apt to escape from the body. After leaving the body of the infant, the soul of the departed stays nearby, in order to re-enter its body in case of need. When a year has elapsed since the death of the person, his soul leaves the grave temporarily and goes hunting, but returns frequently to the grave. When the body has entirely decayed it may remain away for a long time.

Evidently the Eskimo also believe in the transmigration of souls. There is one tradition in which it is told how the soul of a woman passed through the bodies of a great many animals, until finally it was born again as an infant. In another story it is told how a hunter caught a fox in a trap and recognized in it the soul of his departed mother. In still another tale the soul of a woman, after her death, entered the body of a huge polar bear in order to avenge wrongs done to her during her lifetime.

Almost the sole object of the religious ceremonies of the Eskimo is to appease the wrath of Sedna, of the souls of animals, or of the souls of the dead, that have been offended by the transgressions of taboos. This is accomplished by the help of the guardian spirits of the angakut. The most important ceremony of the Eskimo is celebrated in the fall. At this time of the year the angakut, by the help of their guardian spirits, visit Sedna and induce her to visit the village, and they endeavor to free her of the transgressions that became attached to her during the preceding year. One angakok throws her with his harpoon, another one stabs her, and by this means they cut off all the transgressions. The ceremony is performed in a darkened snow-house. After the ceremony the lamps are lighted again and the people see the harpoon and the knife that were used in the ceremony covered with blood. If the angakut should fail to free Sedna from the transgressions, bad weather and hunger would prevail during the ensuing winter. On the following day Sedna sends her servant, who is called Kaileteta, to visit the tribe. She is represented by a man dressed in a woman’s costume and wearing a mask made of seal-skin. On this day the people wear attached to their hoods pieces of skin of that animal of which their first clothing was made after they were born. It seems that the skins of certain animals are used for this purpose, each month having one animal of its own. It is said that if they should not wear the skin of the proper animal, Sedna would be offended and would punish them.

The angakut also cure sick persons and make good weather with the help of their guardian spirits. They discover transgressions of taboos and other causes of ill luck. One of the most curious methods of divination applied by the angakut is that of ‘head-lifting.’ A thong is placed around the head of a person who lies down next to the patient. The thong is attached to the end of a stick which is held in hand by the angakok. Then the latter asks questions as to the nature and outcome of the disease, which are supposed to be answered by the soul of a dead person, which makes it impossible for the head to be lifted if the answer is affirmative, while the head is raised easily if the answer is negative. As soon as the soul of the departed leaves, the head can be moved without difficulty.

Amulets are extensively used as a protection against evil influences and to secure good luck. Pregnant women wear the teeth of wolves on the backs of their shirts. These same teeth are fastened to the edge of the infant’s hood. The string which passes under the large hood of the woman who carries her child on her back is fastened at one end to a bear’s tooth, which serves to strengthen the child’s soul. When the child begins to walk about, this string and the bear’s tooth are attached to its shirt and worn as amulets. Pyrites, when thrown upon a spirit, are believed to drive it away.

As compared with the beliefs of the Greenlanders, the beliefs of the Central Eskimo are characterized by the great importance of the Sedna myth and the entire absence of the belief in a powerful spirit called Tonarssuk, which seems to have been one of the principal features of Greenland beliefs. There is an evident tendency among the Central Eskimo to affiliate all customs and beliefs with the myth of the origin of sea animals. This tendency seems to have been one of the principal causes that molded the customs and beliefs of the people into the form in which they appear at the present time.

MENTAL ENERGY.[E]
By EDWARD ATKINSON.

[E] Presented before the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

According to the common conception, political economy is held to deal with material forces only; with land, labor and capital; with the production, distribution and consumption of the materials of human existence. These are food, clothing and shelter. It, therefore, bears the aspect of a purely material study of material forces. Yet no more purely metaphysical science exists, and there can be, in my view of the subject, no more ideal conceptions than those which are derived from the study of these purely material forces. Many of the errors commonly presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.

We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. In a material sense all that any one can get in or out of life, be he rich or poor, is what we call our board and clothing. Such being the fact, what a man consumes is his cost to the community; what he spends yields to others the means of buying the supplies for their own wants; their consumption is then their cost to the community.