EVOLUTION OF EARTH FORMS.
The idea of the progressive development of the earth in its greater features throughout all geologic time by the action of forces resident in the earth itself preceded the acceptance of the evolution of organic forms. We have said that the fundamental idea of geology is that of the evolution of the earth through all time. Now, it was Dana who first studied geology wholly from this point of view. For him geology was the development of the earth as a unit. Before him, doubtless, geology was a kind of history—i. e., a chronicle of thrilling events—but Dana first made it a philosophic history. Before Dana, geology was an account of the succession of formations and their fossil contents. Dana made it an account of the evolution of earth forms and the concomitant and resulting evolution of organic forms. It is true that first and for a long time his evolutional conception was incomplete. It is true that while he attributed the evolution of earth forms to natural causes and processes, he still shrank from applying similar causes to the changes in life forms, but this was the almost necessary result of the then universal belief in the supernatural origin and the unchangeableness of organic forms. He lived to make his conception of evolution as a natural process, both of the earth and of organic forms, complete.
Ocean Basins and Continents.—If we divide geological causes and processes into two general kinds as to their origin—viz., internal, or earth-derived, and external, or sun-derived—evidently the former is the original and fundamental kind. These determine earth forms, while the other only modify them; these determine the great features, the other only the lesser features; the former rough-hews the earth features, the latter shapes them. It is the effects of these interior earth forces which are the most important to study. And among these effects the most fundamentally important of all is the formation of those greatest features—the ocean basins and continental arches. The most probable view is that they are formed by unequal radial contraction in the secular cooling of the earth. The earth was certainly at one time an incandescently hot mass, which gradually cooled and contracted to its present temperature and size. Now, if it were perfectly homogeneous both in density and in conductivity in all parts, then, cooling and contracting equally in every part, it would retain its symmetric oblate-spheroid form, though diminishing in size. But if there were any, the least, heterogeneity either in density or especially in conductivity over large areas, then the more conductive areas, contracting more rapidly toward the center radially, would form hollows or basins, and the less conductive areas would stand out as higher arches. Thus were formed the oceanic basin and the continental arches of the lithosphere. The same causes which produced would continue to increase them, and thus the ocean basins would increase in depth and the continents in height.
The hydrosphere is still to be added. In the beginning of this process doubtless the lithosphere was hot enough to maintain all the water in the form of vapor in the atmosphere. But when the surface was cool enough the water would precipitate and partly or wholly cover the earth—whether partly or wholly would depend on the amount of precipitated water and the amount of inequality which had already taken place. The amount of water, as we know, is sufficient, if the inequalities were removed, to cover the whole surface two and a half miles deep. Inasmuch as the forming of the inequalities is progressive and still going on, it seems improbable that the inequalities had become sufficiently great, at the time of precipitation, to hold the waters. If this be so, then the primeval ocean was universal and the future continents existed only as continental banks in the universal ocean.
However this may have been, there seems little doubt that the same cause which produced the inequalities continued to operate to increase them. The ocean basins, so far as these causes are concerned, must have become deeper and deeper, and the continents larger and larger. In spite of many oscillations producing changes mostly on the margins, but sometimes extending over wide areas in the interior of the continent, this, on the whole, seems to be in accordance with the known geological history of the earth. If so, then the oceanic basins have always been oceanic basins, and the places of the continents have always been substantially the same. This introduces a subject on which there has been much discussion recently—viz.:
The Permanency of Ocean Basins.—Closely associated with the Lyellian uniformitarianism was the doctrine of extreme instability of earth features, especially the forms and places of sea and land. Crust movements were irregularly oscillating to such a degree that in the course of geologic history sea and land frequently and completely changed places. Abundant evidence of this was supposed to be found in the unconformities so frequent in the stratified series. The tendency of that time was toward a belief in up-and-down movements, back-and-forth changes, without discoverable law, rather than progressive onward movement. On first thought it might seem that such lawless movement was rather in keeping with catastrophism than uniformitarianism. But not so, for the movements are supposed to be very slow. Again, it might seem on first thought that gradual progressive change—in a word, evolution—would be peculiarly in accord with uniformitarian ideas. But again not so, because this doctrine was, above all, a revulsion from the idea of supernatural purpose or design or goal contained in catastrophism. Uniformitarianism strongly inclined toward purposelessness, because of its supposed identity with naturalism. Thus for a long time, and still with many geologists, the tendency is toward a belief in irregular movements without discoverable law, toward instability of even the greatest features of the earth—viz., sea basins and continental arches. Geology for them is a chronicle, not a life history.
The contrary movement of thought may be said to have commenced with Dana. Dana studied the earth as a unit, as in some sense an organism developing by forces within itself. The history of the earth is a life history moving progressively toward its completion. The forces originating oceanic basins and continental arches still continue to deepen the former and enlarge the latter. From this point of view, oceanic basins and continental arches must have always been substantially in the same places. Oscillations there have been at all times and in all places, but they affect mainly the outlines of these great features, though sometimes affecting also the interior of continents and mid-sea bottoms, but not sufficiently to change greatly their general form, much less to interchange their places.
Such is the doctrine of permanency of oceanic basins. It is undoubtedly a true doctrine, but must not be held in the rigid form characteristic of early thought. The forces originating oceanic basins still continue to deepen them and to increase the size and height of continents, but other forces are at work, some antagonizing (i. e., cutting down the continents and filling up the ocean beds), and still others determined by causes we little understand, by oscillations over wide areas, greatly modifying and often obscuring the effects of the basin-making movements. Here, then, we have two kinds of crust movements: the one fundamental and original, determining the greatest features of the earth and moving steadily onward in the same direction, ever increasing the features which it originates; the other apparently lawless, uncertain, oscillating over very wide areas, modifying and often obscuring the effects of the former. The old uniformitarians saw only the effects of the latter, because these are most conspicuous; the new evolutionists add also the former and show its more fundamental character, and thus introduce law and order into the previous chaos. The former is the one movement which runs ever in the same direction through all geologic time. The latter are the most common and conspicuous now and in all previous geologic time. The former underlies and conditions and unifies the history; the latter has practically determined all the details of the drama enacted here on the surface of the earth. Of the causes of the former we know something, though yet imperfectly. Of the causes of the latter we yet know absolutely nothing. We have not even begun to speculate profitably on the subject, and hence the apparent lawlessness of the phenomena. A fruitful theory of these must be left to the coming century.
Mountain Ranges.—If oceanic basins and continental domes constitute the greatest features of the earth’s face, and are determined by the most fundamental movements of the crust, surely next in importance come great mountain ranges. These are the glory of our earth, the culminating points of scenic beauty and grandeur. But they are so only because they are also the culminating points, the theaters of greatest activity, of all geological forces, both igneous and aqueous—igneous in their formation, and aqueous both in the preparatory sedimentation and in the final erosive sculpturing into forms of beauty. A theory of mountain ranges therefore lies at the bases of all theoretical geology. To the pre-geologic mind mountains are the type of permanence and stability. We still speak metaphorically of the everlasting hills. But the first lesson taught by geology is that nothing is permanent; everything is subject to continuous change by a process of evolution. Mountains are no exception. We know them in embryo in the womb of the ocean. We know the date of their birth; we trace their growth, their maturity, their decay, their death; we even find in the folded structure of the rock, as it were, the fossil bones of extinct mountains. In a word, we are able now to trace the whole life history of mountains.
Mountains, therefore, have always been a subject of deepest interest both to the popular and the scientific mind—an interest intensified by the splendors of mountain scenery and the perils of mountain exploration. The study of mountains is therefore coeval with the study of geology. As early as the beginning of the present century Constant Prevost observed that most characteristic structure of mountains—viz., their folded strata—and inferred their formation by lateral pressure. All subsequent writers have assumed lateral pressure as somehow concerned in the formation of mountains. But that the whole height of mountains is due wholly to this cause was not generally admitted or even imagined until recently. It was universally supposed that mountains were lifted by volcanic forces from beneath, that the lifted strata broke along the top of the arch, and melted matter was forced through between the parted strata, pushing them back and folding them on each side. And hence the typical form of mountain ranges is that of a granite axis along the crest and folded strata on each flank. But attention has lately been drawn to the fact that some mountains, as, for example, the Appalachian, the Uintah, etc., consist of folded strata alone, without any granite axis. In such ranges it is plain that the whole height is due not to any force acting from below, but to a lateral pressure crushing and folding the strata, and a corresponding thickening and bulging of the same along the line of crushing. Then the idea was applied to all mountain ranges. So soon as the prodigious amount of erosion suffered by mountains, greater often than all that is left of them, was fully appreciated, it became evident that the granite axis so characteristic of mountains was not necessarily pushed up from beneath and protruded through the parted strata, but was in many cases only a sub-mountain core of igneous matter slowly cooled into granite and exposed by subsequent erosion greatest along the crest.
Next, attention was drawn to the enormous thickness of the strata involved in the folded structure of mountains. From this it became evident that the places of mountains before they were formed were marginal sea bottoms off the coasts of continents, and receiving the whole washings of the continents. Thus the steps of the process of mountain formation were (1) accumulation of sediments on offshore sea bottoms until by pari passu subsidence an enormous thickness was attained. This is the preparation. (2) A yielding along these lines to the increasing lateral pressure with folding and bulging of the strata along the line of yielding, until the mountain emerges above the ocean and is added to the land as a coast range. This is mountain birth. (3) As soon as it appears above the water it is attacked by erosive agents. At first the rising by continuance of the crushing and bulging is in excess of the erosion, and the mountain grows. This is mountain youth. (4) Then supply and waste balance one another, and we have mountain maturity. (5) Then the erosive waste exceeds the growth by up-bulging, and mountain decay begins. (6) Finally, the erosive forces triumph and the mountain is clean swept away, leaving only the complexly folded rocks of enormous thickness to mark the place of a former mountain. This is mountain death. Such briefly is the life history of a mountain range.
In all this we have said nothing about causes. In this connection there are two points of especial importance: (1) Why does the yielding to lateral pressure take place along lines of thick sediments? (2) What is the cause of the lateral pressure?
1. Cause of Yielding to Lateral Pressure along Lines of Thick Sediments.—The earth was once very hot. It is still very hot within, and still very slowly cooling. If sediments accumulate upon a sea bottom the interior heat will tend to rise so as to keep at the same distance from the surface. If the sediments are very thick, say five to ten miles, their lower parts will be invaded by a temperature of not less than 500° to 1,000° F. This temperature, in the presence of water (the included water of the sediments), would be sufficient to produce softening or even fusion of the sediments and of the sea floor on which they rest. This would establish a line of weakness, and therefore a line of yielding, crushing, folding, bulging, and thus a mountain range. In the first formation of a range, therefore, there would necessarily be a sub-mountain mass of fused or semifused matter which by the lateral crushing might be squeezed into cracks or fissures, forming dikes. But in any case the sub-mountain mass would cool into a granite core which by erosion may be exposed along the crest. The explanation seems to be satisfactory.
2. Cause of the Lateral Pressure.—No question in geology has been more discussed than this, and yet none is more difficult and the solution of which is more uncertain. But the most obvious and as yet the most probable view is that it is the result of the secular contraction of the earth which has gone on throughout its whole history, and is still going on.
It is admitted by all that in an earth cooling from primal incandescence there must come a time when the surface, having become substantially cool and receiving heat also from the sun, would no longer cool or contract, but, the interior being still incandescently hot, would continue to cool and contract. The interior, therefore, cooling and contracting faster than the exterior crust, the latter following down the ever-shrinking nucleus, would be thrust upon itself by a lateral or tangential pressure which would be simply irresistible. If the earth crust were a hundred times more rigid than it is, it still must yield to the enormous pressure. It does yield along its weakest lines with crushing, folding, bulging, and the formation of mountain ranges.
This is the barest outline of the so-called “contractional theory of mountain formation.” Very many objections have been brought against it, some of them answerable and completely answered, but the complete answer to others must be left to the next century. Perhaps the greatest objection of all is the apparent insufficiency of the cause to produce the enormous amount of folding found not only in existing mountains but in the folded structure of rocks where mountains no longer exist. But it will be observed that I have thus far spoken only of contraction by loss of heat. Now, not only has this cause been greatly underestimated by objectors, but, as shown by Davison and especially by Van Hise, there are many other and even greater causes of contraction. It would be out of place to follow the discussion here. The subject is very complex, and not yet completely settled.
We have given the barest outline of the history of mountain ranges and of the theory of their formation as worked out in the last third of the present century, and, I might add, chiefly by American geologists. So true is this, that by some it has been called the “American theory.”
Oscillatory Movements of the Earth’s Crust over Wide Areas.—We have already spoken of these as modifying the effect of the ocean-basin-making movements, and therefore now touch them very lightly. These differ from the movements producing oceanic basins on the one hand and mountain ranges on the other, by the fact that they are not continuously progressive in one direction, but oscillatory—now up, now down, in the same place. Again, they do not involve contraction of the whole earth, but probably are always more or less local and compensatory—i. e., rising in one place is compensated by down-sinking in some other place. Nevertheless, they often affect very wide areas—sometimes, indeed, of more than continental extent—as, for example, in the crust movements of the Quaternary period or ice age.
These are by far the most frequent and most conspicuous of all crust movements—not only now, but also in all geological times. If ocean-basin-forming movements are the underlying cause and condition of the evolution of the earth, these wide oscillations, by increasing and decreasing the size and height of continents and changing greatly their contours, have determined all the details of the drama enacted on the surface, and were the determining cause of the varying rates and directions of the evolution of the organic kingdom. These were the cause of the unconformities and the corresponding apparent wholesale changes in species so common in the rocky strata, and which gave rise to the doctrine of catastrophism of the early geologists. These also have so greatly modified the contours of the continents and their size by temporary increase or decrease that they have obscured the general law of the steady development of these, and therefore their substantial permanency.
Although the most important of all crust movements in determining the whole history of the earth, and especially of the organic kingdom, we shall dwell no further on them, because no progress has yet been made in their explanation. This, too, must be left to the workers of the twentieth century.
The Principle of Isostasy.—The principle of static equilibrium as applied to earth forms was first brought forward (as so many other valuable suggestions and anticipations in many departments of science) by the wonderfully fertile mind of Sir John Herschel, and used by him in the explanation of the sinking of river deltas under the increasing weight of accumulating sediments.[C] It was afterward applied to continental masses by Archbishop Pratt[D] and by the Royal Astronomer Professor Airy.[E] But for its wide application as a principle in geology, its clear definition, and its embodiment in an appropriate name, we are indebted to Major Dutton, United States Army.[F]
[C] Philosophical Magazine, vol. ii, p. 212, 1837; Quarterly Journal of Geological Society, vol. ii, p. 548, 1837.
[D] Philosophical Magazine, vol. ix, p. 231, and vol. x, p. 240, 1855.
[E] Philosophical Trans., 1855, p. 101.
[F] Philosophical Society of Washington, 1892.
The principle may be briefly stated as follows: A globe so large as the earth, under the influence of its own gravity, must behave like a very stiffly viscous body—that is, the general form of the earth and its greatest inequalities must be in substantial static equilibrium. For example, the general form of the earth is oblate spheroid, because that is the only form of equilibrium of a rotating body. Rotation determines a distribution of gravity with latitude which brings about this form. With any other form the earth would be in a state of strain to which it must slowly yield, and finally relieve itself by becoming oblate. If the rotation stopped, the earth would accommodate itself to the new distribution of gravity and become spherical.
The same is true of the large inequalities of surface. Oceanic basins and continental arches must be in static equilibrium or they could not sustain themselves. In order to be in equilibrium the sub-oceanic material must be as much more dense than the continental and sub-continental material as the ocean bottoms are lower than the continental surfaces. Such static equilibrium, by difference of density, is completely explained by the mode of formation of oceanic basins already given.
So also plateaus and great mountain ranges are at least partly sustained by gravitative equilibrium, but partly also by earth rigidity. It is only the smaller inequalities, such as ridges, peaks, valleys, etc., that are sustained by earth rigidity alone.
These conclusions are not reached by physical reasonings alone, but are also confirmed by experimental investigations. For example, a plumb line on the plains of India is deflected indeed toward the Himalayas, as it ought to be, but much less than it would be if the mountain and sub-mountain mass were not less dense and the sub-oceanic material more dense than the average.[G] Again, gravitative determinations by pendulum oscillations, undertaken by the United States along a line from the Atlantic shore to Salt Lake City, show that the largest inequalities, such as the Appalachian bulge, the Mississippi-basin hollow, and the Rocky Mountain bulge, are in gravitative equilibrium—i. e., the mountain and sub-mountain material is as much lighter as the mountain region is higher than the Mississippi-basin region.
[G] Pratt, Philosophical Magazine, vol. ix, p. 231, 1855; vol. x, p. 340, 1855; vol. xvi, p. 401, 1858.
Now, so sensitive is the earth to changes of gravity that, given time enough, it responds to increase or decrease of pressure over large areas by corresponding subsidence or elevation. Hence, all places where great accumulations of sediment are going on are sinking under the increased weight, and, contrarily, all places where excessive erosion is going on, as, for example, on high plateaus and great mountain ranges, are rising by relief of pressure.
This principle of isostasy is undoubtedly a valuable one, which must be borne in mind in all our reasonings on crust movements, although its importance has been exaggerated by some enthusiastic supporters. Its greatest importance is not as a cause initiating crust movements or determining the features of the earth, but rather as conditioning and modifying the results produced by other causes. The idea belongs wholly to the latter half of the present century. Commencing about 1840, it has grown in clearness and importance to the present time.
[To be concluded.]
THE APPLICATIONS OF EXPLOSIVES.
By CHARLES E. MUNROE,
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY.
[Concluded.]
Gun Cotton Shell after Impact.
It is apparent that the range of even the most highly perfected torpedo is comparatively short, while their accuracy of travel is low. Besides, their propelling, controlling, and discharging mechanisms are complicated, delicate, and easily deranged, they are very expensive, and not only the explosive chamber but the entire system is destroyed in use. The superiority of gunpowder guns as a means of throwing projectiles to great distances with accuracy is well known, and their capacity for safely and efficiently projecting shells filled with gunpowder has long been demonstrated. It was obvious that as the superior destructive power of dynamite, gun cotton, and other high explosives became known and their commercial manufacture was assured, attempts would be made to employ them as bursting charges for shells. Experiments to demonstrate how this might be done and what effects could be expected were begun more than forty years ago, and have been continued in many different places from time to time ever since; but while it has proved that small charges might be fired with low velocities and pressures in ordinary shell, and large charges in specially constructed shell or in specially prepared forms of charge, with comparative safety so far as the premature explosion of the explosive charge itself is concerned, yet these bodies are so sensitive to the shock resulting from the discharge of the propellant, the heat generated by its combustion, and that arising from friction in the “set-back” of the shell charge and the rotation imparted by the rifling, that they can not be safely fired from modern high-power guns under service conditions, particularly as these explosives all require that the shell shall be fitted with a detonator in order that the charge may be fully exploded. The most promising results with explosives of this class have been obtained with compressed wet gun cotton, which has been packed directly in the shell in rigid blocks completely filling the shell cavity, or cut in cubes and cemented in the cavity with carnauba wax, for shell filled in the former manner, but unfused, were repeatedly fired, in 1887 and 1888, at Newport, R. I., from 24-pounder Dahlgren howitzers and 20-pounder muzzle-loading rifles with service charges of powder, and though they were fired point blank into the masonry escarpment of the old fort on Rose Island, but fifty yards distant from the muzzle, so that the shells were broken up or distorted and the gun cotton in them subjected to a powerful compression, yet not only was there no premature explosion, but none of the shell exploded by impact. About the same time fused shell containing cemented gun cotton were fired in Germany, with an initial velocity of fourteen hundred feet per second, and they passed completely through four inches and three quarters of compound armor, backed with twenty-four inches of oak, and burst inside the bombproof, while in 1897 fused armor-piercing shells containing wet gun cotton were fired from the six-inch quick-firing gun, with a muzzle velocity of nearly nineteen hundred feet per second, which completely perforated three inches of steel and burst behind the plate. Encouraged by these results, this system was adopted by our army officials, but, on trial in larger calibers at Sandy Hook, it gave rise to premature explosions, and the tale of disaster reached its climax on April 29, 1899, when Captain Stuart, of the Ordnance Corps, was superintending the loading of a twelve-inch torpedo shell with wet gun cotton by compressing it into the shell, for an explosion resulted which killed four men instantly and fatally wounded two others, Captain Stuart being one of them.
Sims-Dudley Pneumatic Gun, limbered up.
(Courtesy of the Scientific American.)
Sims-Dudley Pneumatic Gun, in Battery.
(Courtesy of the Scientific American.)
Tyndall’s Bronze Bell-mouthed Gun.
The history of the attempts made to use nitroglycerin, dynamite, explosive gelatin, and explosives of this class as bursting charges for shell fired from service guns is even less satisfactory than that given for gun cotton. It is not surprising, therefore, that inventors should have proposed catapults, slings, rotary wheels, and other means for projecting these powerful agents into the enemy’s midst, but the Mefford air gun, as mounted on the United States steamship Vesuvius, and the Sims-Dudley gun, in which a reduced charge of powder is fired in a chamber exterior to the gun proper, were deemed to possess sufficient merit to warrant their trial in the field. These devices were employed in the recent war with Spain, the pneumatic guns on the Vesuvius being used to throw shells containing three hundred pounds of gun cotton, while the Sims-Dudley guns were used on land to throw small charges of dynamite or explosive gelatin; but, beyond frightening the enemy by the startling character of their reports, these superficial charges produced no serious effect.
Mirror or Reflector in which to fire Gun Cotton.
There is a widespread misapprehension in regard to the devastating effect of these high explosives, for when unconfined the effect even of large charges of them upon structures is comparatively slight. At the Naval Ordnance Proving Ground, so long ago as 1884, repeated charges of dynamite, varying from five pounds to one hundred pounds in weight, were detonated on the face of a vertical target consisting of eleven one-inch wrought-iron plates bolted to a twenty-inch oak backing, until 440 pounds of dynamite had been so detonated in contact with it, and yet the target remained practically uninjured; while at Braamfontein the accidental explosion of fifty-five tons of blasting gelatin, which was stored in railway vans, excavated but 30,000 tons of soft earth. This last may seem a terrible effect, but the amount of explosive involved was enormous and the material one of the most energetic that we possess, while if we compare it with the action of explosives when confined its effect becomes quite moderate. Thus at Fort Lee, on the Hudson, but two tons of dynamite placed in a chamber in the rock and tamped brought down 100,000 tons of the rock; at Lamberis, Wales, two tons and a half of gelatin dynamite similarly placed threw out 180,000 tons of rock; and at the Talcen Mawr, in Wales, seven tons of gunpowder, placed in two chambers in the rock, dislodged from 125,000 to 200,000 tons of rock. We might cite many such examples, but on comparing these we find that the gunpowder confined in the interior at the Talcen Mawr was over forty-two times as efficient as the explosive gelatin on the surface at Braamfontein, while the dynamite at Fort Lee was over ninety times as destructive.
Railroad Torpedoes fastened on Rail.
Steel Disks upon which Gun Cotton has been detonated to test their Resistance to Shock. Midvale steel disks after second fire.
Considerations similar to these led me, in 1885,[H] to point out that high explosives for use in shells must be strongly confined, and in the attack on armored ships they should be fired in projectiles that can “either penetrate the armor partially and explode in place or pierce it completely and burst inside the ship” to secure the greatest efficiency. This requires that the projectiles shall be fired at higher velocities than can be imparted to them by guns of the kind just described, and which can only be realized at present in modern breech-loading rifles. Although experience has shown the futility of all our efforts to use gun cotton and nitroglycerin explosives in this manner, it has been proved that the nitro-substitution explosives can be employed with safety and effect.
[H] Van Nostrand’s Engineering Magazine, vol. xxxii, pp. 1–9, 1885.
The nitro-substitution explosives are made from nitrobenzenes, nitrotoluenes, nitronaphthalenes, nitrophenols, and bodies of a similar character, and one of them, called joveite, has given excellent results in this country. After having demonstrated that the destructive effect of joveite was greater than that of gunpowder, smokeless powder, or gun cotton, and, by repeated trials under severe conditions, that service shell loaded with it could be fired from service guns under service conditions with safety, on November 3, 1897, the naval officials at Indian Head fired a fused ten-inch Carpenter armor-piercing projectile containing 8.25 pounds of joveite, with a velocity of 1,960 foot-seconds, at a Harveyized nickel-steel plate taken from the armor for the United States steamship Kentucky. The shell passed completely through the armor plate, where it was 14.5 inches in thickness, and burst immediately behind the plate. In a second round an unfused ten-inch Midvale semi-armor-piercing shell containing twenty-eight pounds of joveite was fired with a velocity of 1,925 foot-seconds at the same plate where it was sixteen inches thick. The shell penetrated to a depth of twelve inches, and the heat produced by the upsetting of the shell was so great as to explode the joveite, which broke the plate and burst the shell with tremendous violence. In fact, the explosion was so very severe that the heavy base plug of the shell was sheared longitudinally, an effect never observed before with any explosive fired at the proving ground.
Shooting an Oil Well with Nitroglycerin.
Notwithstanding that no accident occurred in any of the many firings, that the stability and safety of the explosive are assured, and that the explosion has been effected with a well-known and long-used form of fuse, no provision has yet been made to supply the service with charges for its costly armor-piercing projectiles.
Happily, the force resident in explosives may be applied to the saving as well as to the destruction of human life, advantage having long since been taken of the penetrating power of the report from the discharge of a gun to employ them as signals of distress at sea or as warnings in foggy weather. The English Lighthouse Board, under Professor Tyndall’s guidance, some years ago sought to find the form of gun best suited to this purpose, and their experiments led them at first to a bronze gun with a bell-shaped mouth. Subsequently, their attention being called to the sharpness and carrying power of the report from detonating gun cotton, an apparatus was devised in which the gun cotton was detonated in the focus of a parabolic mirror. The best results, however, were attained with rockets carrying gun cotton charges arranged to be exploded in mid air.
Safe to be opened by Detonation of Nitroglycerin. Before the charge was fired.
After firing Charge.
Guns have also been arranged for projecting life-lines between stranded ships and the adjacent shore, and are now employed on a smaller scale for conveying lines to the upper stories of our monumental buildings when they are on fire. By means of guns or rockets, projectiles filled with oil may be cast to considerable distances from a vessel in a raging sea, so that the oil, as it diffuses, may still the waters in her course; while sounding-lines may be thrown far in advance of a vessel while she is still under way, and the soundings taken without her laying-to.
Inclosed in shallow tin boxes, which are fixed by lead strips to the top of the rail, explosives are used as torpedoes in the railroad service to give warning, by the report of their explosion as an engine runs over them, that another train is on the same track and but a short distance ahead, and by this means collisions in fogs or on curves are frequently prevented.
Explosives find applications in many industries. The farmer uses them in breaking bowlders, grubbing stumps and felling trees, in shaking the soil to fit it for deep-soil cultivation, and, in the wine-growing districts, to free it from phylloxera, while the farmer’s friend has tried by this means, in times of drought, to shake the nerves of Jove and to divert the hailstorm from its course.
Safe perforated by Hollow Dynamite Cartridge.
The iron founder uses them in breaking up large castings. The iron smelter employs them to clear out obstructions in blast furnaces while the latter are still in operation, the dynamite, protected by a clay envelope, being inserted in the red-hot mass which clogs the furnace. The author has proposed to use the detonating explosives for testing the integrity of large masses of metals and their resistance to shock.
Dynamite has been employed in fishing, since submarine explosions of it will kill or stun fish for a long distance about the charge. This method of fishing, which threatened to deplete the waters, has very properly been prohibited by law, but guns are employed for projecting harpoons in the whale fishery, and have reduced very much the danger attending this extra-hazardous occupation.
Nitroglycerin, inclosed in tin cans three to five inches in diameter and five to twenty-five feet in length, is used for shooting oil wells to free them from the solid paraffins with which they become choked, or to shake the oil-bearing sandstone so as to produce a greater yield. In this work the loaded can, having a detonating cap attached to its top, is lowered by a wire to the bottom of the well, which is often fifteen hundred feet or more in depth. A perforated weight is then strung on the wire, and when the torpedo is in place the weight is allowed to fall, strike the cap, and explode the charge.
Dynamite has been used to knock out the blocking from the ways when launching ships. Fired on an iron plate placed on the top of a pile and covered with a tamping of earth or clay, it has successfully and economically replaced the pile driver. It has been found efficient in excavating holes in which to plant telegraph and telephone poles; in driving water out of quicksands in which foundations are to be laid or shafts to be driven; in slaughtering cattle; in breaking down ice dams to prevent inundations; in blowing up buildings to prevent the spread of conflagrations; in razing unsafe walls of burned buildings; in destroying wrecks which endanger navigation, and even in freeing vessels which are hard aground on shoals.
Hollow Dynamite Cartridge; Elevation.
An especially notable instance was in the blasting out of the débris in the river at Johnstown after the frightful flood that occurred there, which formed an enormous dam above the bridge and threatened its existence, and which was successfully and expeditiously removed by blasting after all other means had been tried in vain.
Hollow Dynamite Cartridge.
View from below.
In fact, the amount of explosives consumed in the industries is so great that the quantity employed for military purposes sinks into insignificance. Yet we have failed to refer to those industries—quarrying and mining, and the engineering operations—in which they are most extensively and commonly used, being employed so largely in mining alone that it is an almost daily occurrence for blasts containing twenty, thirty, and even fifty thousand pounds of explosives to be used in a single charge; and the system of large blasts has even become common in hard-rock excavations, such as quarries and railroad cuttings, while in the blast at the blowing up of Flood Rock, in New York Harbor, October 10, 1885, over one hundred and forty-one tons of rack-a-rock, dynamite, and mercury fulminate were used in a single shot.
Nor have I alluded to the use of explosives by the anarchists in their dastardly outrages, through which the safety of the old and young, feeble and strong, the innocent and the offending, are alike endangered; but I will touch briefly upon the applications of these powerful agents in the too-much cultivated industry of safe-robbing, since I was called upon some years ago to demonstrate, before a Government commission, how safes might be successfully attacked either in a burglarious way or by a mob with explosives, meaning by the burglarious operation that the safe should be made accessible within twenty-four hours with means such as a party of men could smuggle into a bank and which might be used without attracting attention or doing material damage to the building, and by “mob violence,” meaning that the vaults are supposed to be in the hands of a mob which has ample time and quantities of explosives at command, and does not care how much noise is made or destruction is wrought, provided the treasure is secured.
Firing on Iron Disk, resting on Lead Disk, in testing the Efficiency of Gun Cotton.
Gun Cotton Disk. With indented inscription, and iron plate upon which the indented inscription has been reproduced.
In the experiments made in a burglarious way, among others, a three-thousand-dollar square safe of the most approved construction was attacked by inserting in the crevice about the locked door four and eight tenths ounces of nitroglycerin, and in eight minutes after the operation of loading was begun the charge was fired, with the result that the whole of the jamb below the door was blown out and a hole made in the door of sufficient size to admit the hand and arm, while the doors and divisions of the interior compartments were completely shattered. On repeating the operation with four ounces and a quarter of forcite dynamite the door was completely torn off.
Among experiments made to demonstrate the resistance of structures to attack by a mob was one upon a safe twenty-nine inches cube, with walls four inches and three quarters thick, made up of plates of iron and steel, which were re-enforced on each edge so as to make it highly resisting, yet when a hollow charge of dynamite nine pounds and a half in weight and untamped was detonated on it a hole three inches in diameter was blown clear through the wall, though a solid cartridge of the same weight and of the same material produced no material effect. The hollow cartridge was made by tying the sticks of dynamite around a tin can, the open mouth of the latter being placed downward, and I was led to construct such hollow cartridge for use where a penetrating effect is desired by the following observations:
Holes produced in Iron Plates by bored Gun Cotton.
In molding the gun cotton at the torpedo station, as stated above, a vertical hole was formed in each cylinder or block in which to insert the detonator, and in the final press a steel die was laid upon the cake so that an inscription in letters and figures was forced upon it. This inscription was indented in the cylinders and was raised upon the surfaces of the blocks. When the gun cotton was fired untamped, in testing it, the cylinder or block was usually placed with the inscribed face resting on a polished iron plate or iron disk, and after firing, if the gun cotton had detonated it was invariably found that not only was a vortex-like cavity produced below the detonator, but that the inscription on the gun cotton was reproduced on the iron plate, and, what was most singular, when the inscription was indented in the gun cotton it was indented in the iron plate, and when the inscription was raised on the surface of the gun cotton it was reproduced raised on the surface of the iron plate. In experimentally investigating this phenomenon I eventually soaked several cylinders in water, so that I could bore them without danger, and then bored holes of various diameters and depths in them, until in the last instance I bored a vertical hole an inch and three quarters in diameter completely through the cylinder. These wet cylinders were each placed on a similar iron plate, a similar dry disk was placed on each as a primer, and they were successively fired, when it was found that the deeper and wider the hole in the gun cotton the deeper and wider were the holes produced in the iron plate, until when the completely perforated gun cotton cylinder, from which at least half of the weight of explosive had been removed by the boring, was fired, the iron plate was found to be completely perforated.
Advantage was taken of this action of the rapidly moving molecules to produce some beautiful effects by interposing laces, coins, leaves from the trees, and stencils with various devices cut in them between the base of the gun cotton and the iron plate, for after the detonation of the gun cotton the objects were found to be reproduced upon the iron with the utmost fidelity and in their most delicate parts, and the impressions were raised upon the iron as the objects had been before the explosion.
In one instance a disk of gun cotton was placed in a tin which had been used in canning peas. The disk was covered with water so as to be completely immersed in it, and a second dry disk, with which to fire it, was placed upon the wet one. The face of the can resting in contact with the iron plate was originally the top of the can, through which the vegetable had been introduced, and it was consequently grooved where the cover was soldered on, and it also had an irregular drop of solder over the vent hole, the solder being raised, therefore, above the general level of the face. On firing, the can was completely volatilized or comminuted as usual, but the face of the can was reproduced in every feature and with the original values of the surface, the groove being indented in the iron, and the solder being raised above the rest of the impression.
Maple Leaf reproduced on Iron Plate.
In another instance a disk of gun cotton three inches in diameter was placed in a tin can five inches in diameter, and the can, which had a smooth bottom, placed on the face of an iron I-beam. The can was filled with water so as to just cover the gun cotton, a second dry gun cotton disk was placed on the wet disk of a primer, both being in constant contact with one side of the can, and the system detonated. As a result the can and water disappeared and the face of the beam was torn off, but on recovering the pieces and matching them it was found that not only was the smooth base of the gun cotton and the face of the can reproduced in the iron, but in the space between the gun cotton and the side of the can, occupied by the water, three distinct sets of waves were produced, having an increasing amplitude from the center proceeding outward. It is evident that many curious effects can be produced with explosive substances, and I do not doubt that useful applications will be found through a close study of the phenomena attending them.
A YEAR’S PROGRESS IN THE KLONDIKE.
By Prof. ANGELO HEILPRIN.
Note.—Acknowledgment is here made to Mr. E. A. Hegg for the use of most of the photographs accompanying this article.
Two years ago the difficulties of reaching the Klondike were thought to be of such a nature as to preclude the probability or even possibility of Dawson ever becoming a place of permanent habitation. The trials of the Chilkoot and White Passes were exploited in magazine and journal from one end of the continent almost to the other, and the wrecks of humanity, and particularly of the thousands of beasts that lay scattered along the trail—the tribute to the Sahara turned to shame—were appealed to as grim testimony of the almost insuperable barrier which separated man from the object of his search. To-day, and since July 6th of the past year (1899), a steam railway traverses the full forty-two miles of the White Pass trail, and the traveler enjoys the beauties of the subarctic landscape in much the way that he enjoys the trip through the Alleghany Mountains in the East, or of the prairies in the West. Deposited at Bennett, on Lake Bennett, at virtually the head of navigation of the mighty Yukon River (otherwise known as the Lewes), he engages passage on one of several commodious steamers heading down stream or northward, and with one change—at the Miles Cañon and White Horse Rapids, where there is a five-mile portage—reaches Dawson after a voyage, delightful in its change of scene and novelty of experience, of from four to six days. It is a fact, therefore, that with a strict timing of departures the traveler from New York may make the journey to Dawson in summer time in twelve days, and exceptionally even in less; and the journey has indeed been made in eleven days and a half. Such is the change which the effort of less than two years has accomplished.
Bartlett Brothers’ Pack Train, Dawson.
The Dawson of 1899 is no longer the Dawson of 1898, and much less that of the year previous. The thousands of bateaux that were formerly lined up against the river front, in rows six deep and more, and comprising all manner of craft from the small canoe to sliced sections of scows, have mostly disappeared, and in their place we now find the graceful and ungraceful forms of varying types of steamboat. It is no uncommon thing to find five or more of these larger craft tied up at one time to the river front, and the amplitude and majesty of the Mississippi boats gain but little in a comparison with some of the larger craft of the Yukon River. Overhung signs call attention to the flying queens of the river, the Bonanza King, Canadian, and Sibyl, and thousands are offered upon the result of the race to the White Horse Rapids. So here, as in the olden days of the Mississippi, the struggle for supremacy has led to the opening of the throttle and to the scraping of the fire box. Upward of a hundred arrivals from down the river were registered at Dawson during the season of open water of 1899.
Dawson has been further put into comparatively close touch with the outer world by the entry of the telegraph, and since the early days of October messages have been freely going to the seaboard at Skaguay. It is true that a cableless stretch of hundreds of miles still separates this town from the nearest port of importance on the continent, but doubtless before very long even this blank in the line of communication will have been supplied. It may be first by means of wireless telegraphy, as it is mooted that the Canadian Government looks with favor upon experimentation with the Marconi system; or, what is more likely, the desired end will be brought about by the laying of a continuous wire. The extraordinary rapidity with which the five hundred to six hundred miles of land wire were laid—five and seven miles per day—speaks well for the morale of the Canadian sapper and engineering service.
In its commercial and residential aspects the city has made vast progress. The days of ingulfing mires are virtually over, and from one end of the town almost to the other, one may safely tread the streets on secure board sidewalks. Not alone the main street is furnished in this way, but also several of the streets running parallel with it, and parts of streets that run across at right angles. A wise enactment, not perhaps absolutely just in its details, has swept off the shacks and booths from the river side of the front street, and one now enjoys an almost uninterrupted view of the opposing bank of the stream, already marred by giant advertising letters announcing bargain sales in merchandise, and directing to particular shops in the metropolis of the North.
Dawson’s Great Fire, April 26, 1899.
The shops of Dawson have risen to the dignity of establishments having corrugated-iron covers, plate-glass fronts, and redwood shelves and counters. Following closely upon the pioneer constructions—department stores, they might be classed—of the Alaska Commercial Company are the depots of the North American Trading and Transportation Company, the Alaska Exploration Company, Ames Mercantile Company, and the Yukoner Company, several with retaining warehouses placed beyond the reach of a city fire and with dimensions that would lend dignity to locations of much larger size than the emporium of the North. Many of the smaller shops also carry a varied line of goods, but others are restricted to a specialty, and their wares are now offered at rates which are in the main only reasonably in advance of the “high” rates of the Western coast towns. There are exceptions to this rule, however, especially where skilled local labor is called into requisition in a manufacture. Thus fourteen dollars for a pair of trousers made to order strikes the imagination rather forcibly, when a first-grade quality of boot or shoe can be obtained for five dollars and six dollars. Really good meals may be procured almost everywhere for from a dollar to a dollar and a half, and the best hotels supply twenty-one meals for twenty-five dollars, and these do not absolutely reject delicacies of one kind or another. Cow’s milk can now be had as a regular adjunct to coffee, since the milcher is no longer a stranger to the country. The price of rooms in the hotels still remains high—from four to six dollars per night, without meals—but the character of these rooms has materially improved, even though they would be considered with us decidedly third rate. In a few establishments of a more private character, lodging for a certain amount of permanency may be had for fifteen dollars the week, or, where the condition of the surroundings is not closely scanned, for even less. A new and capacious hotel, the Hotel Metropole, reared from the wealth of the “King of the Klondike”—Alexander MacDonald—has recently been added to those of less pretentious design which served the community last year. A heavy cut in rates is promised.
The conflagration of April 26th, through which perhaps one quarter of the business portion of Dawson was burned to the ground, has given opportunity for the introduction of improvements, and the most important of these is that which has resulted in the removal of houses and resorts of evil repute from the heart of the city and consigned them and their inmates to a localized area or “tenderloin” district. Women of refinement may now parade the streets without having their finer sensibilities offended through the public intrusion of the immorals of the lower world. The tone of the public places of amusement, the theaters and dance houses, has also been in a measure elevated, even if far from sufficiently so, and some real talent occasionally sparkles behind the footlights. A new “opera house,” with a seating capacity of perhaps seven hundred or eight hundred, but advertised for two thousand, was thrown open to the public last August, after a construction, it is claimed, of only two weeks. Its season’s répertoire included, among other plays, Michael Strogoff and Camille, both of which, even in their crudest type of presentation, felt well of the public pulse.
School education plays as yet little part in the morals of the Dawsonites. The greed of fortune has left scant time for the consideration of educational matters, and what little of school training is imparted to the youth of tender years comes largely in the shape of a beneficence from private hands. If the issuance of newspapers be properly classed as belonging to education, then Dawson has made material advances during the past year, for, in addition to the three weeklies which more than supplied all the information that was needed to the inhabitants of 1898, it has now a daily (the Dawson Daily News) and a Sunday paper (The Gleaner), while the pioneer Nugget has been converted into a semi-weekly. Some of these journals, which in typographical detail stand fully equal to many of the foremost journals of the United States, are devoted largely to a vilification of the Yukon government, and secondarily to the nonpartisan interests of the community. But little space is given over to murders and daring deeds of robbery, since occurrences of this kind, thanks to the continued vigilance and efficiency of the Northwest Mounted Police, are all but unknown, and the safety of possessions is as well established as that of the person. The shooting of an actress by her lover, followed by the suicide of the murderer, furnished the sensation for the year; but previous suicides, also in the ranks of the theatrical profession, had already paved a way to this form of excitement.
Two or more lines of telephone unite Dawson with the nearer mining region, and a partial city service has also been established. The city remains as yet without an electric-light plant, but it is by no means unlikely that before the present season has passed the darkness of the winter night will be lifted by the arc light, and much of the oppressiveness of the closed season thereby removed. After two winters of experience, the Dawsonites continue to think lightly of the “terrors” of the cold, and to but few apparently is the extreme of temperature a deterrent to exercise. Sleighing continues to be a pastime, with the temperature marking 40° to 50° below zero, but only with this season does it enter into the category of a fashionable recreation. Hitherto dog-sled teams performed the full service of winter travel, and divided with skating and “ski”-ing the winter exercise; but this year the snow causeways will be lively with the jingling of cutter bells and the rapid pacing of the horse.
One can not help remarking the vast improvement in the general tone of Dawson society, if by that term we may include all that constitutes the population of the city. More particularly is this marked in the case of women, among whom it is no longer a rarity to meet with strict refinement and culture. Musical soirées register among the events of the week, and literary recitals are not exceptional. The male portion of the population has also undergone a refining process through the departure of hundreds or even thousands of “bums,” who only too late for their comfort discovered that their presence was neither a necessity to Dawson nor a mainspring to the extraction of gold from the soil. By their departure the city has probably suffered a decrease in its population of some three thousand to four thousand, but has more than received compensation in that stability of purpose which such elimination always insures. As a city of about thirteen thousand inhabitants, it enters upon its history in the year 1900 with principles cast largely upon a pure business basis, and with a future that is bound in with the product of the soil.
Midnight View of Dawson, June 21, 1899.
The gold resource of the Klondike region seems fully to sustain the anticipations which had been put forth touching the product of 1899. The better-known creeks, such as the Bonanza, Eldorado, and Hunker, have kept well up with their record of the previous year, and give indications of continuing as important factors in the calculation of output for some time to come in the future. The introduction of a certain amount of mining machinery, such as steam drills, thawers, and powerful pumps—applied more particularly to the deposits of the benches and hillsides—coupled with a more definite method of conducting extensive operations on a comparatively economic basis, has given fresh impetus to the work of mine holders, and made largely remunerative that which had promised to be little profitable. A more just administration of the mining laws has helped to a considerate feeling among the miners, and reduced very materially the grievances which formerly fell with thick force upon the offices of the Recorder and Gold Commissioner. Access is now easily had to the records of claims, and individual “cases” receive an early and proper hearing. Electric plants have been introduced on some of the claims, so that there need be no interruption in work for the full twenty-four hours of the day.
Apart from the discovery of rich pay-dirt on creeks and gulches, such as Last Chance (tributary to Hunker), Gold Bottom (tributary to Sulphur), and American, Magnet, and Adams (tributary to the Bonanza), concerning which much skepticism was expressed last year, the filling in of assumed barren gaps in the general line of creeks has done much to inspire the feeling that more of the broad area is gold-bearing than the first surveys and explorations “indicated”—a feeling to which particular confidence has been given by the surprising wealth which has been washed out from the hillsides. For a nearly continuous four miles of the “left limit” of the Bonanza, extending northward from Gold Hill at the confluence of the Eldorado to the “forties below discovery,” the crests of the hills at an elevation of some one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet above the creek are laid bare with the work of the shovel, pick, and drill, and the same or a corresponding stratigraphical height is pierced elsewhere along the stream. Gold Hill (and French Hill, on the Eldorado side), Skookum, Adams, Magnet, and American Hills, and Monte Cristo, all have their summits capped by what is now familiarly known as the “white layer”—a feature in the landscape as interesting to the casual tourist as the construction is important to the more fortunate claim holders who are located here.
Up to this time no quartz locations determined to be of positive value have been located, although a goodly number of “quartz reefs,” “lodes,” and kidney masses have been staked, restaked, and recorded. Some of these have shown gold in small quantity, but in by far the greater number of cases they have proved absolutely barren, and are without promise of yielding anything. The anticipation of many, naturally fostered by individual wish and hope, that an originating or “mother” lode must be present and found somewhere rests without any geological support so far as evidence has been accumulated up to the present time, and there is nothing that looks like a promise to the geological eye. At the same time, it would be premature to assert that such a reef or series of reefs may not be discovered in the future. The hill crests that have furnished so much of the white material of the high benches of the Bonanza and the Eldorado may perhaps be searched with best advantage in this direction, and thence extended to the water parting which surrounds or incloses the upper waters of Gay Gulch.
The Columbian and the Eldorado starting from Dawson, July 4, 1899, on a Race to White Horse Rapids.
No estimate, naturally, can yet be put to the total gold supply of the Klondike region, but to inquiry that is frequently put regarding the future existence of Dawson as an energetic mining camp one can unhesitatingly answer that this existence is assured for many years to come, and there are indications that point to a permanence independent of the simple supply of gold.
Street Scene, Dawson, July, 1899.
The earlier conceptions of the extreme severity of the climate of the Yukon Valley forbade the hope of agricultural possibilities, but a more intimate knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the summer time—a season of four to five months’ duration, with daylight and day heat protracted far into the normal hours of night—and a comparison of these conditions with somewhat similar conditions prevailing elsewhere, have given hope not alone of a possibility, but of a probability, and there are few to-day who doubt that agriculture may not be practiced with at least a legitimate amount of success in many parts of the Yukon basin. This probability has, indeed, been already emphasized by Prof. George Dawson, and the more recent examinations of Alaskan territory, made by Colonels Ray and Abercrombie, confirm with a conviction the reference to American soil. The feeble but more than promising efforts in agriculture and gardening that were made in the region about Dawson in 1898 have borne surprising fruit in 1899, and while the results may not, for various reasons, have proved in all cases remunerative to the “prospector,” they at least clearly demonstrate the possibilities to which the future may lay claim. Cabbages, turnips, peas, radishes, lettuce, and beans are now raised to perfection in favored spots along the Yukon and Klondike, and on scattered hillsides of the Bonanza and Eldorado, and a good promise is also held out for the potato. In the charming spot known as the Acklin Garden, situated on the Klondike about two miles from Dawson, oats and barley, sown on April 26th and May 22d respectively (1899), were grown to beautiful heads, and harvested in the middle of August. No wheat had ripened up to that time, and I suspect that, owing to a light frost which took place on the 19th of the same month, none of this grain came to maturity. Radishes sown on April 24th were collected on May 20th, and string beans, whose seed was scattered on May 26th, were collected on August 1st. Other successful crops were those of beets, onions, and spinach.
The exquisite beauty of the flower garden in this spot rivets the attention of all passers-by, and few there are who do not for a moment lay aside their packs to enjoy the feast of color that is presented to them. Poppies of the size and brilliance of those which adorn the fields about Naples, chrysanthemums, gorgeous dahlias, pansies, the cornflower, mignonette, and centaurea are part of the outside bloom, to which Nature “beyond the fence” has fittingly added the wild rose, anemone, fireweed, and forget-me-not. Such is the aspect of the region which to-day illumines the far North, and carries with itself a hopeful promise to many and the certainty of disappointment to many more.
THE DECLINE OF CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE IN AMERICA.
By GINO C. SPERANZA.
The rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property have been called the “rights of the people of England,” and may be said to constitute the richest heirloom in the Anglo-Saxon family. While, in a certain sense, they belong to all civilized people, yet, in their practical application, they are peculiarly the creation of Anglo-Saxon common sense and love of order. The underlying principle of these rights, clothed by the Latins in the seductive garb of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, gave us a Reign of Terror, a Commune, and finally a doubtful republicanism; but the same principle, embodied in the less dazzling formula, “That no man shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” produced in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons more enduring democracies “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
With the instinct of a race born for self-government, the Anglo-Saxons have ever sought and almost always found the highest safeguard for their ancient rights in the courts of law. Between a partisan Legislature and a tyrannical Executive an honest judiciary has generally been found ready to annul the excesses of the one and to prevent any infringement by the other; so that it has become a belief, having the force of faith, that in our courts will be found the bulwark of those liberties which we consider essential to the full enjoyment of life.
Laws and courts, however, are after all the creation of men, and, like all such creations, they are necessarily imperfect and fallible; or, more correctly, they are organisms which develop and improve. In other words, justice and law are only relatively immutable and perfect. They do, indeed, represent, in a sense, abstract perfection, and at any given time they must be considered the highest criterion of human conduct. But justice and law are not such divinities that they can withdraw themselves from the operation of those forces which we call progress. Seriousness, dignity, and venerability are not sufficient to sustain the majesty of the law; it needs also adaptation to those higher conditions and broader views which mark the growth of human thought. The more we come to look upon law as the standard and gauge of upright human action, the more do we grow to expect it in consonance with the highest dictates of human knowledge and reason, for what is above us must represent what is best in us, else it will be neither respected nor obeyed. Whenever this consonance is not found, human belief in the dignity of the law and in the efficacy of justice ceases. For, theoretically at least, law is so near ideal perfection that the least defect destroys it entirely; and by this “ideal perfection” is meant that laws must reflect the highest and soundest thought of every age. Laws that fail in this cease to be a power for good; they are then looked upon either as ridiculous or as oppressive. If the former, they defeat their ends by becoming dead laws; if the latter, they become a source of disorder and discontent. Hence we see that jurisprudence is essentially evolutionary and progressive, and that the majesty of the law does not lie in its age but in its perennial youth, or, more correctly, in its successive rejuvenescence. It is true that in China the antiquity of a law is its highest prestige, but, as a consequence, Chinese justice is proverbially inefficient and barbarous. It therefore follows that the constant study and improvement of what we have called the safeguards of our fundamental rights should be our highest duty, and the object of the care and solicitude of the State. It is not enough to rest contentedly in the thought that a Magna Charta, a Petition of Rights, and sundry written constitutions protect us. Their very existence is but an argument for our eternal vigilance. Now, the question to be here examined is whether we have exercised that care and vigilance which are essential to the free enjoyment of our rights.
Let me premise the statement that the protection of the rights of life, liberty, and property is peculiarly within the province of the criminal law. What constitutes the right of life, liberty, and property can not be defined or described, except negatively by a definition of what will be deemed its infringements. These we call crimes. To declare what acts come within the definition of such crimes is the function of the criminal courts.
It is upon the criminal law, therefore, that we must rely for the enunciation of what acts shall constitute a breach of the right of life, liberty, and property, and it is to the criminal bench and bar that we must turn for the correct interpretation and application of such enunciations. Hence the more time and attention we devote to the study of criminal legislation and to the enlightenment of the criminal bench and bar, the more will the safety of our rights be increased and strengthened. Likewise, the more we allow criminal legislation to be the product of hasty consideration and the criminal bar to drift into disrepute, the more the safety of our rights will be proportionally weakened.
The first question that presents itself is, “What is done by our law schools for the study of criminal law?” The answer is not very encouraging. Let us take those law schools which are of most importance, either by reason of their curriculum or of their attendance. Harvard, with a three years’ course, devotes two hours a week for one year to criminal law (including criminal procedure). Allowing nine months of four weeks each to the scholastic year, and a weekly average of eighteen hours, it will be found that the time devoted to the study of criminal law (including procedure) is a little over three per cent of the entire course. By a similar computation we find that Columbia devotes to criminal law (and procedure) a little over four per cent of the entire course, which is about the percentage given by Yale and a little lower than that of the Universities of Michigan, Cornell, and New York respectively.
These computations are based upon figures given in the catalogues of those universities, or kindly furnished by the deans. Nothing more eloquent of the decline of the study of criminal jurisprudence in our country could be cited. But the catalogues of these law schools add further proof. At none of them is there a professor whose instruction is confined solely to criminal law. Nearly all the instructors in criminal law devote but a small part of their time (and probably of their study) to the teaching of this subject. In Columbia the instructor in criminal law is professor of international law and diplomacy;[I] at Harvard the incumbent of the chair of criminal law teaches the law of carriers; that of Michigan teaches the law of bills and notes and of public corporations; that of the New York University the law of sales and wills. It is, moreover, a significant fact that the faculties of the above-named institutions, while recommending to law students the optional study of political economy, constitutional history, taxation, physical science, English literature, and modern languages as conducive to a higher standard of legal culture, utterly fail to advise them to pursue courses in criminal anthropology, criminology, or penology. In other words, it is deemed advisable that the future lawyer should bring to the aid of his civil practice the complementary knowledge of French and history, for instance, but it is of no importance that he should be acquainted with the results of modern criminologic and penologic research. Thus the conclusion is forced upon us that the study of criminal law, whose importance I have endeavored to set forth, has become a subject at sufferance in our universities, a practically optional course of little consequence to the student, and of no interest to the teacher.
[I] This has since been changed; but the change makes the case worse, as the new instructor in criminal law teaches not only two branches of the law (as under last year’s course), but five—viz., Criminal Law, Wills and Administration, Common-Law Practice and Pleading Bankruptcy, and Bailments and Carriers.
From the very beginning of his legal career the future lawyer is made to feel that the field of criminal law is not the one in which to exercise his best talents. Both the school curriculum and popular sentiment strengthen this prejudice. To the community at large our criminal courts have come to mean places where criminals are sentenced or rogues saved on technicalities; they have ceased to be centers of justice, where innocent men are saved and guilty men tried according to the law of the land. Hence has arisen the popular belief (despite the rule that the accused shall be considered innocent until his guilt is proved), shared in a measure by the bench and bar, that every man accused of crime is criminal and depraved, and that, therefore, contact with him should be avoided. Thus the criminal lawyer, who necessarily must come in touch with such alleged crime and depravity, is practically ostracized not only from the community but also from the civil forum.
The existence of such prejudice against the criminal bar is most deplorable. Men of ability and position will shun criminal practice, leaving the field clear to unscrupulous shysters. Let it be remembered that to a man charged with the commission of a crime and deprived of his liberty the lawyer appears a savior; that the accused is practically at his lawyer’s mercy, being under most trying duress and very easily influenced. The temptation for unprofessional dealing is here at its highest, because of the manifest advantage of the lawyer who is able, or whom the client believes to be able, to unlock the prison doors. It takes men of more than ordinary fiber to persistently resist such temptation in all its forms. Hence the necessity of upright and learned men at the criminal bar. But how few are our great criminal practitioners! How often have I heard lawyers, too young and clientless to allow themselves preferences, declare most decidedly that they were willing to do anything “except criminal law”! They had been trained to look upon it not merely as inferior but as degrading practice. Yet it is common knowledge that in European countries, where less boast is made of inalienable rights, it is the ambition of all lawyers to get a reputation at the criminal bar. It is there, in fact, that reputations are made.
It is likewise in those countries where many would make us believe that life, liberty, and property are not as sacredly guarded as in our own country, that the criminal laws are a constant object of scholarly study and investigation. The great progress made in the study of crime, the building up of a criminal science and a criminal sociology, is almost exclusively the work of Continental criminologists. Penology has indeed engaged our attention, but criminology has been almost practically ignored by us.
Of criminal law it was long ago said that, “by reason of the numberless unforeseen events which the compass of a day may bring forth,” the knowledge of its provisions “is a matter of universal concern.” Yet, despite this “universal concern,” our criminal law has been and still is inferior to our civil law. I have pointed out at the beginning of this article how the majesty of the law depended essentially upon its ever-recurring rejuvenescence; that law was a living organism, subject to change and the forces of evolution.
The theories on criminal responsibility and on crime in general, in the light of modern medical, anthropologic, and sociologic sciences, have completely supplanted the old doctrines, yet criminal legislation has apparently taken no notice of them. Modern science tells us that our antiquated tests of criminal responsibility result in sending hundreds of men to prison who ought to be sent to asylums, but we do nothing to avoid this scandal. Under our system the courts are obliged to let the conclusions of the learned judges who occupied the bench three hundred years ago have more weight than the positive investigations of the men of science of our day, and so, consciously or unconsciously, numberless crimes are committed in the name of stare decisis. True it is that in some jurisdictions, and notably in New York, the courts have recognized to some extent the progress of science and its influence upon juridic theories. But even in these cases the concession has been made only in civil cases. Thus Mr. Bishop, in his Criminal Law, is obliged to point out that our courts recognize two kinds of insanity—to wit, civil and criminal irresponsibility. Why the test to be applied in the case of the validity of a will should be different from that applied in the case of murder does not seem very clear. The scientific test as to insanity has been oftentimes recognized and applied by our civil tribunals, but the criminal judges still cling with unabashed attachment to the unscientific and unprogressive rule in McNaughten’s case. The Guiteau trial, which followed that celebrated decision, added fresh authority to the English view, and practically made the rule to be applied in criminal trials a legal dogma.
In an able and exhaustive paper by Mr. J. H. Dougherty on this very subject, before the Society of Medical Jurisprudence, the evils of such dogmatism in criminal law are strikingly set forth. “Life,” he said, “should be as sacred as property. While society needs protection from the criminal, it does not require that the protection should be insured through the application of a fallacious and discredited legal dogma.”
This is but one example of the unprogressiveness of our criminal jurisprudence. Yet, if we really have the ancient principle of the right of life and liberty at heart we ought to recognize that this legal dogma is a greater menace to the practical abrogation of the right than the despotism of an unscrupulous executive. For while the latter is an infringement of a right which the law forbids, the former is a breach of a right which the law sanctions. Again, the theories regarding the object of penal provisions have entirely changed. Punishment has been scientifically shown to be practically useless either as a deterrent or as a correctional remedy. Yet our penal codes are confessedly based on the idea of punishment and retribution. We have indeed made some little headway, such as indeterminate sentences and suspension of judgment, but only in a scattered and tentative way.
The additions to or changes in our criminal codes have been unimportant and unprogressive. What additions are made are slipshod in their make-up, at times partisan in intent, seldom in harmony with the teachings of modern science, and oftentimes in disregard of fundamental principles. Our legislators grant “hearings” before passing a law affecting the business of a few privileged men and give it due weight; but criminal bills, which may affect the public, are generally “rushed through,” probably because of an absolute lack of interest. This is but a repetition of Blackstone’s complaint against criminal legislation in his day. “It is never usual in the House of Commons,” he wrote, “even to read a bill which may affect the property of an individual without first referring it to some of the learned judges and hearing their report thereon. And surely equal precaution is necessary when laws are to be established which may affect the property, liberty, and perhaps the lives of thousands.” And he thus concludes his observations: “The enacting of penalties to which a whole nation should be subject ought not to be left as a matter of indifference to the passions or interests of a few, who upon temporary motives may prefer or support such a bill.”
The lack of public interest and of intelligent consideration by the people and the bar in criminal problems and criminal legislation are clearly shown by the paucity of criminal statistical data furnished by various States.
Penological research is based on an intelligent study of statistics, and civilized nations, recognizing this fact, have provided elaborate systems of records based on the suggestions of statistical science. But with us statistical facilities in the field of crime are not merely primitive or old-fashioned, but in many cases shamefully absent. In reply to requests addressed to the Secretaries of State of various States for official statistics of crimes committed in their respective jurisdictions, the answers I received were in a number of cases negative. The officials mentioned replied that no statistics were published by the State in Illinois, Georgia, New Jersey, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Vermont, California, Idaho, Missouri, South Carolina, Connecticut, Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Mississippi, Virginia, Colorado, and Kansas. It is true that in some of these States this lacuna is filled in by special prison reports or reports of commissioners or of the attorneys-general. But even in these cases, as well as in those published officially by the State (Ohio, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, and Louisiana), the information furnished is a monument of antiquated methods and of very little value to the student of criminology. How, then, can we study the grave questions of crime and criminals without a basis of computation?
It may be true, as some claim, that Continental jurists have refined the criminal law to an unpractical degree and too much on classic and theoretic lines, but it will not be claimed that by adhering to an old-fashioned and obsolete criminal jurisprudence the Anglo-Saxons are safeguarding their fundamental liberties. That there is something essentially wrong, or at least antiquated, with our criminal law is evidenced by the popular discontent against it, which is too widespread and insistent to be the result of ignorance or sentiment. If there is inertia as to changes in the law it is probably because, while feeling that there is something wrong, the people either can not define it or the conservatism of centuries in this field is unconsciously affecting their better intentions. Who will deny (and I address this question to lawyers and judges) that, under our system, guilty men escape and innocent men suffer in larger numbers than it should be, even allowing for the defects inherent in all human systems?—that technicalities and not facts often save scoundrels; that unscrupulous lawyers do not avoid them, and the best of judges are obliged by legal dogmas to respect them? Who will deny (and I address this question to sociologists and penologists) that the penal provisions of our present laws are inappropriate, inelastic, and unscientific; that they neither prevent nor reform; and that the basic principle of our penal codes is still retribution and punishment? Can it be that the right of life, liberty, and property is becoming a pious fraud? Of course, it is not claimed that we have less liberty now than our fathers had three centuries ago; progress never stops, and each day is something gained; but it seems clear that the juridic basis and form of our liberties have not kept up with the progress of those very liberties. Yet, what we call rights must have a counterpart or reflection in our laws. We may, while enjoying those rights, forget that the juridic basis on which they stand is crumbling with age. Unless that basis is rejuvenated the entire edifice must eventually fall. While we are in full possession of our rights we need no laws to guarantee them; but it is when those laws are encroached upon that there arises the necessity of juridic sanction for them.
The right of life, liberty, and property constitutes the essence of the “law of the land.” But the conception of rights, as we have seen, changes and progresses. The law of the land must likewise change and progress.
Laws may be the highest and best creation of man’s intellect, but they are not “hedged in by any divinity.” That is why they are neither infallible nor unchangeable. Yet, as the highest and best creation of man’s intellect, and as the final criterion of human public conduct, they should conform to the best thought and to the highest scientific progress. If they do not approach this standard they are worse than useless, for they become legalized means of oppression. It is then that Justice needs a bandage over her eyes, not to avoid partiality, but to hide her shame.
THE BLIND FISHES OF NORTH AMERICA.
By CARL H. EIGENMANN,
PROFESSOR OF ZOÖLOGY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY.
“An investigation into the history of degenerate forms often teaches us more of the causes of change in organic Nature than can be learned by the study of the progressive ones.”—Weismann.
The caves of the United States are inhabited by three cave salamanders, two of them with degenerate eyes; by six cave fishes, all with impaired vision—five of them with rudimentary eyes, one with eyes the most degenerate among vertebrates; and by several mammals. It is thus seen that among the interesting features of the North American fauna the blind vertebrates are not the least. Yet during the past twenty-five years the only additions to our knowledge, aside from diagnoses of new species, have been a few random notes on the habits and a short account of the eye of Troglichthys by Kohl.
Various classes of vertebrates have blind members, but no large vertebrate has become blind or permanently taken up its home in caves. Blatchley reports that a number of cats have established themselves in Wyandotte Cave, where they bring forth and rear their young. They have exterminated the cave rats, and now station themselves in a narrow passage of the cave and capture bats as they fly through.
Among the permanent residents in dark places we have, among mammals, the moles, which habitually live in burrows of their own make. In Mammoth Cave lives a rat—Neotoma pennsylvanica. In Marengo Cave, Indiana, white-footed mice have established themselves. Although with unimpaired eyes, they have acquired ears and whiskers longer than the rest of their kind living outside.
In Florida occurs a blind lizard—Rhineura floridana. It burrows in the ground, and is colorless and blind.
Fig. 1.—The cave salamander of the Mississippi Valley
(Spelerpes maculicauda).
Of salamanders, one blind species lives in European caves. In the large caves of the eastern United States no blind salamanders have been found, although other species, especially Spelerpes maculicauda, abound. In the caves of Missouri a veiled-eyed salamander, Typhlotriton, has been described within recent years by Stejneger. Still another salamander, Typhlomolge, having rudimentary eyes, has been cast up from an artesian well at San Marcos, Texas, and occurs in the cave streams about that place.
The most abundant of the blind vertebrates, both in individuals and in species, are the blind fishes. These, from their geographical distribution, may be separated into three groups: (1) Those inhabiting the depths of the ocean; (2) those inhabiting dark places along the shores of the ocean; (3) those inhabiting the underground fresh waters.
The fishes, blind or partially blind, living in the depths of the ocean bordering the American continents, are as follows: 1. Ipnops Murrayi Günther lives at depths varying from 955 fathoms to 2,158 and has the very wide distribution suggested by the localities from which specimens have been secured—viz., off the coast of Brazil, near Tristan da Cumba, near Celebes, latitude 24° 36′ north, longitude 84° 51′ west, and off Bequia. This is the only vertebrate in which no vestige of an eye has been found. Ipnops stands alone in a family. 2. The Brotulidæ have several members blind or with very much reduced eyes in various parts of the globe. Aphyonus mollis G. and B., 955 fathoms, and Alexeterion parfaiti Vaillant, 5,005 metres, are the only ones found in the neighborhood of America. 3. The Lophiidæ are represented by Mancalias Schufeldtii Gill, from a depth of 372 fathoms. Other blind species are found in foreign waters, while others with small eyes are found in American waters. The majority of deep-sea fishes have well-developed eyes.
The shore fishes have their blind representative in Typhlogobius californiensis St., which lives under rocks between tide water on the coast of southern and Lower California. I have elsewhere described the habits of this form. In the fresh-water caves of Cuba two blind fishes—Stygicola denta Poey and Lucifuga subterraneus Poey—have been found. Their relatives live in the ocean, Brotula barbata in Cuban waters; some of the others are blind and inhabitants of deep water.
The inland fresh-water fishes are represented by Gronias nigrilabris Cope, a catfish from cave streams of eastern Pennsylvania, and by members of the Amblyopsidæ, concerning which a more detailed account is given below.
The Amblyopsidæ.—The Amblyopsidæ are a small family of fishes allied to the Cyprinodontidæ. They are found in the Mississippi drainage basin and in certain southeastern streams. Three of the members of the family, the Chologasters, are provided with well-developed eyes, while four other species are cave fishes in the strictest sense, being blind and colorless. The distribution of the different members of the Amblyopsidæ is as follows:
Fig. 2.—The larva and adult of the Missouri cave salamander (Typhlotriton).
Chologaster cornutus is found in lowland swamps of the Southern States from the Dismal Swamp to the Okefinokee Swamp. Chologaster Agassizii is found in subterranean streams in Tennessee and Kentucky. Chologaster papilliferus has so far been found only in southwestern Illinois.
Amblyopsis is abundant in the cave streams of the Ohio Valley south of the east fork of White River.
Typhlichthys subterraneus inhabits the region south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. A single specimen of another Typhlichthys has been found north of the Ohio River in a well at Corydon, Indiana. Troglichthys rosæ inhabits the caves west of the Mississippi in Arkansas and Missouri.
Chologaster.—Mr. E. B. Forbes secured a school of Chologaster papilliferus for me, and he wrote: “The little fishes were found under stones at the edges of the spring very close to the bluff, and when disturbed they swam back under the cliff.... None were found at any considerable distance from the face of the cliff.” I found the Chologaster Agassizii to act similarly in the river Styx, in Mammoth Cave. As soon as my net touched the water they darted in under the ledge of rock at the side of the little pool in which I found them.
Fig. 3.—Blind salamander from an artesian well at San Marcos, Texas (Typhlomolge).
Chologaster papilliferus detects its food entirely by the sense of touch. Two which were kept in an aquarium for over a year were starved for a few days. They became very nervous, continually swimming along the sides of the aquarium. Asellus was introduced. These, even if quite near, produced no effect if moving in front of the Chologaster. The moment one came in close proximity to the fish from any direction, by a flashlike motion it was seized. None of them were swallowed. The fish became very alert after the introduction of the sowbugs, and when swimming forward would strike at a part of a leaf if it came in contact with the head of the fish. It seemed evident that the eye gave no information of the character of the object. As Asellus was not altogether to their taste, Gammarus was introduced. One of these swimming rapidly toward the chin of the Chologaster from behind and below was instantly seized when it came in contact with the fish. The eye could not have located the Gammarus at all. The action is in very strong contrast to the action of a sunfish, which detects its food by the sight. It is undoubtedly this peculiar method of locating and securing food which has enabled the Amblyopsidæ to establish themselves in caves.
The Chologaster in general make-up is like Amblyopsis, but is somewhat longer-jointed. It sits with its pectorals extended. When it moves horizontally for some distance the pectorals are usually pressed to the sides, the propelling being done largely by the tail very much after the manner of a salamander, which it resembles. In swimming toward the surface it uses its pectoral fins chiefly, and the fish usually sinks to the bottom as soon as its efforts to raise itself are stopped.
Individuals kept in aquaria with one end darkened either collected in the darkened area floating about, or under leaves or sticks in any part of the aquarium. They are frequently found under a floating board, where they float with the tops of their heads in contact with the board, their bodies slanting downward. They seek the dark, regardless of the direction of the rays of light. These characteristics they have, in great part, in common with the blind members of the family. The adult Amblyopsis frequently floats with its head to the top of the water, the tail sloping downward, and in swimming along ledges of rock the top of the head is applied to the ledge. I have captured many specimens simply by scraping my net along the surface of a ledge.
Typhlichthys, living in total darkness, has retained the habit of staying under floating boards, sticks, and stones. Miss Hoppin noticed that Troglichthys swims with its back to the sides of the aquarium, and I have repeatedly noted the same in the young of Amblyopsis up to fifty millimetres, and the still younger Amblyopsis frequently hides under rocks.
Amblyopsis.—The general impression given by Amblyopsis is that of a skinned catfish swimming on its back. The expressions, “They are catfish”; “They look as though they were skinned”; “They are swimming on their backs,” are heard from those who see these fishes for the first time.
The largest individual secured by me measured 135 millimetres in total length. Individuals as large as this are rare. The usual length of an adult is about 90 millimetres. One individual was mentioned to me at Mammoth Cave having a length of 200 millimetres!
Amblyopsis is found in pools in the cave streams it inhabits. I have secured as many as twelve from a pool perhaps ten by fifty feet in size. Very rarely they are to be found in the riffles connecting the pools. I have seen them lying at the bottom, or swimming, or rather gliding, through the water like “white aquatic ghosts.” In the aquarium they lie at the bottom or at various depths in the water, their axes making various angles with the horizontal, their pectorals folded to their sides. When swimming slowly it is chiefly by the use of the pectorals. The strokes of the pectoral are lazily given, and the fish glides on after a stroke till its impetus is exhausted, when another stroke is delivered. The fishes frequently roll slightly from side to side at the exhaustion of the result of a stroke. When swimming rapidly the pectorals are folded to the sides, and their locomotion is then similar to that of a salamander—by the motion of the tail. They readily adjust themselves to different depths, and are usually perfect philosophers, quiet, dignified, unconcerned, and imperturbed, entirely different from such eyed species as minnows and sunfishes which are sometimes found in caves and which are much more readily disturbed by any motion in the water, making it almost impossible to capture them when found in the caves. The pectorals are also almost exclusively used when quietly rising in the water. At such times the pectorals are extended laterally and then pressed to the sides, beginning with the upper rays. A downward stroke is delivered in this way not quickly, but with apparent lazy deliberation. In swimming the pectorals are brought forward upper edge foremost. The center of gravity seems to be so placed in regard to their various axes that the fish does not lose its balance whatever its position. They float horizontally in the water without any apparent effort to maintain their position, or with the main axis inclined upward, with the snout sometimes touching the surface of the water, apparently lifeless. Once one was seen resting on its tail in a nearly vertical position, and one while quietly swimming was once seen to leisurely turn a somersault and swim on undisturbed. At another time the same individual rolled completely over. When one of them is kept out of the water for a short time it frequently goes in a corkscrew-shaped path through the water, continually spinning around its long axis. In their quiet, floating position it is difficult to determine whether they are alive or not.
Fig. 4.—Ipnops Murrayi, living at a depth of 1,500 to 2,100 fathoms.
Fig. 5.—Chlorophthalmus gracilis, from 1,100 fathoms, off New Zealand.
I have not found the slightest difficulty in capturing Amblyopsis with a small dip net, either from a boat or while wading through the subterranean stream, and I have caught one in the hollow of my hand. At such a time all the noise I could make did not affect the fishes found swimming in the water. Frequently they were taken in the dip net without apparently noting the vibrations produced in the water until they were lifted out of it; very rarely a fish became evidently scared. Such a one would dart off a few feet or a few inches, and remain on the qui vive. If not pursued, it soon swam off quietly; if pursued, it not infrequently escaped by rapidly darting this way and that; when jumping out of the water, often an abrupt turn in the opposite direction from which it started would land it in the net, showing that their sense of direction was not very acute. At other times, if disturbed by the waves produced by wading, one or another individual would follow a ledge of rock to the bottom of the stream, where it would hide in a crevice. But very frequently, much more frequently than not, no attention was paid either to the commotion produced by the wading or by the boat and dip net. In general, it may be said that the fishes in their natural habitat are oblivious to disturbances of the water until frightened by some very unusual jar or motion, probably a touch with the net, when they become intensely alert. The fact that they are not easily frightened suggests the absence of many enemies, while their frantic behavior if once scared gives evidence either that occasional enemies are present and that they are very dangerous, or that the transmission of the instinct of fear is as tenacious as the transmission of physical characters.
Fig. 6.—Brodula barbata from Havana, Cuba.
Fig. 7.—Stygicola dentatus from the caves of Cuba.
Contrary to Sloan’s observation, that they detect the presence of a solid substance in their path, I have never noticed that those in confinement became aware of the proximity of the walls of the aquarium when swimming toward it. Instead, they constantly use the padded, projecting lower jaw as bumpers. Even an extremely rapid dart through the water seems to be stopped without serious inconvenience by the projecting jaw.
The first observations on the feeding habit of Amblyopsis are those of Cope. He remarks that “the projecting lower jaw and upward direction of the mouth render it easy for the fish to feed at the surface of the water, where it must obtain much of its food.... This structure also probably explains the facts of its being the sole representative of the fishes in subterranean waters. No doubt many other forms were carried into the caverns since the waters first found their way there, but most of them were like those of our present rivers—deep-water or bottom feeders. Such fishes would starve in a cave river, where much of the food is carried to them on the surface of the stream.”
Fig. 8.—Aphyonus gelatinosus, 1,400 fathoms, between Australia and New Guinea.
Fig. 9.—Aphyonus mollis, 955 fathoms, 24° 36′ north, 84° 5′ west.
Fig. 10.—Tauredophidium hextii, 1,310 fathoms, Bay of Bengal.
Fig. 11.—Acanthonus armatus, 1,050 fathoms, mid Pacific, off the Philippines.
Fig. 12.—Typhlonus nasus, 2,150 to 2,440 fathoms, north of Australia and north of Celebes.
Fig. 13.—Hephthacara simum, 902 fathoms, Coromandel coast.
Fig. 14.—Alexeterion parfaiti, 5,005 metres, North Atlantic.
The observations of Cope are entirely erroneous, as we shall see, and the speculations based on them naturally fall to the ground.
Dr. Sloan recorded one Amblyopsis which he kept twenty months without food. “Some of them would strike eagerly at any small body thrown in the water near them, rarely missed it, and in a very short time ejected it from their mouths with considerable force. I tried to feed them often with bits of meat and fish-worms, but they retained nothing. On one occasion I missed a small one, and found his tail projecting from the mouth of a larger one.”
Wyman found a small-eyed fish in the stomach of an Amblyopsis.
Hoppin was struck by the fact that, if not capable of long fasts, Troglichthys must live on very small organisms that the unaided eye can not discern. Garman found, in the stomachs of Troglichthys collected by Hoppin in Missouri, species of Asellus, Cambarus, Ceuthophilus, and Crangonyx.
All the specimens of Amblyopsis so far taken by me contained very large fatty bodies in their abdominal cavity, a condition suggesting abundance of food. The stomachs always contained the débris of crustaceans, a closer identification of which was not attempted. One young Amblyopsis disappeared on the way home from the caves, and had evidently been swallowed by one of the larger ones. A few old ones, kept in an aquarium from May to July, were seen voiding excrement toward the last of their captivity, and their actions at various times suggested that they were scraping the minute organisms from the side of the aquarium. The young Amblyopsis reared in the aquarium seemed to feed on the minute forms found in the mud at the bottom of its aquarium. Some Cœcidotæa placed in the aquarium of the young soon disappeared, and the capture of one of these was noted under a reading glass. The fish was quietly swimming along the side of its aquarium; when it came within about an inch of the crustacean it became alert, and with the next move of the Cœcidotæa it was captured with a very quick, well-aimed dart on the part of the young fish. Others were captured while crawling along the floor of the aquarium. From all things noted, it seems very probable that Amblyopsis is a bottom feeder, and that it also picks food from the walls of the caves. It is not at all improbable or impossible that food should be captured at the surface or in open water, but there seems no warrant for Cope’s supposition that Amblyopsis is a top feeder. I have frequently seen larger specimens, which had been in captivity for several weeks, nosing about the bottom of the aquarium, with their bodies inclined upward in the water and quietly taking in the organic fragments at the bottom. An Asellus stirring about at such a time always produced an unusual alertness.
The number of respiratory movements of Amblyopsis averaged nineteen a minute in five observations, reaching a maximum of thirty in a small individual and a minimum of fourteen in a large one. This is in strong contrast to Chologaster, the number of whose respiratory motions reached an average of eighty per minute in five observations, with a minimum of fifty-six and a maximum of one hundred and eight in a small specimen. Dr. Loeb has called my attention to the more rapid absorption of oxygen in the light than in the dark; this extended would probably mean the more rapid absorption of oxygen through the skin of light-colored animals, a matter of doubtful value, however, to species living in the dark.
The gill filaments are small as compared with the gill cavity.
Oxygenation probably takes place through the skin. Ritter[J] has suggested the same for Typhlogobius.
[J] Ritter, Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, vol. xxiv, p. 92.
“Cutaneous respiration is not unique in Typhlogobius and the Amblyopsidæ. In the viviparous fishes of California the general surface, and especially the fins, which have become enormously enlarged, serve as respiratory organs during the middle and later periods of gestation; the fins are a mass of blood-vessels, with merely sufficient cellular substance to knit them together. There is, however, no pink coloration.”
Fig. 15.—Mancalias Schufeldtii, 372 fathoms.
Skin respiration would account for the extreme resistance to asphyxiation in Amblyopsis and Typhlogobius. About forty-five examples of Amblyopsis were carried in a pail of water four hundred miles by rail, with only a partial change of water three times during twenty-four hours. A smaller number may be kept for days or weeks—probably indefinitely—in a pail of water without change. The characteristics of Typhlogobius along this line have been set forth elsewhere.
Sticks, straws, etc., are never avoided by the fishes even when perfectly imperturbed. By this I mean that they are never seen to avoid such an object when it is in their path. They swim against it and then turn. An object falling through the water does not disturb them, even if it falls on them. A pencil gently moved about in front of them does not disturb the fishes much, but if the pencil is held firmly in the hand it is always perceived, and the fish comes to a dead halt ten or fifteen millimetres before it reaches such an object. On the other hand, they may be touched on the back or tail before they start away. They glide by each other leisurely and dignified, and if they collide, as they sometimes do, they usually show no more emotion than when they run against a stick. But this indifference is not always displayed, as we shall see under the head of breeding habits.
A number kept in an aquarium with a median partition, in which there was a small opening, were readily able to perceive the opening, swimming directly for it when opposite it. This observation is in direct contrast to their inability to perceive solid substances in their path. A sharp tap on the sides of an aquarium in which six blind fishes were swimming, where they had been for a number of days undisturbed, in a dark room, caused nearly all of them to dart rapidly forward. A second tap produced a less unanimous reaction. This repeated on successive days always brought responses from some of the inmates of the aquarium. Those responding were not necessarily the nearest to the center of disturbance, but sometimes at the opposite side of the aquarium or variously distributed through it. After a few days the fishes took no notice of the tapping by any action observable in the artificially lighted room.
Such tapping on a well-lighted aquarium containing both Chologaster and Amblyopsis was always perceived by the Amblyopsis, but the only response from these imperturbable philosophers was a slight motion of the pectorals, a motion that suggested that their balance had been disturbed and that the motion was a rebalancing. Chologaster, on the other hand, invariably darted about in a frantic manner. One individual of Amblyopsis floating on the water was repeatedly pushed down by the finger without being disturbed. If, however, they are touched on the side they always rapidly dart away.
From everything observed, it is quite evident that Amblyopsis is not keener in perceiving objects or vibrations than other fishes, and ordinarily pays much less attention to them. Whether it possesses a greater power of discrimination of vibrations it would be difficult to say. It certainly possesses very elaborate tactile organs about the head. These tactile organs are probably more serviceable in detecting and precisely locating prey in the immediate neighborhood than for anything else. Some observations on young Amblyopsis are of interest in this connection.
The young, with a large amount of yolk still attached, show a well-developed sense of direction. A needle thrust into the water near their heads and in front of them causes a quick reaction, the young fishes turning and swimming in the opposite direction. They will do this two or three times, then, becoming exhausted, will remain at rest. Sometimes an individual will not move until it is actually touched by the needle. The needle must come within about three or four millimetres of the fish before it is noticed. Then, if it produces any result, it causes the fish to quickly turn and swim some distance, when it falls to the bottom again and remains at rest. If the needle is placed behind the fish, it will swim directly forward; if at the side or about the middle, it causes the fish to swim directly forward or to turn and swim in a direction opposite the origin of the disturbance. Younger specimens have, as yet, no power over the direction of their progress; the wiggling of the tail simply produces a gyration, with the yolk as pivot.
A young blind fish, six months old, swims about in a jerky manner, chiefly by the use of its pectoral fins. It keeps close to the side of the vessel, usually with its back to the glass. (The aquarium was a cylindrical jar three hundred millimetres in diameter and three hundred millimetres high.) It perceives a stick thrust toward it as readily as a seeing fish can. It always perceives from whatever direction it may be approached, and will invariably dart away a short distance, sometimes making sharp turns to avoid the stick, and always successfully. It can be approached from the top nearer than from the sides or from in front. It does not avoid the sides of the aquarium, which it frequently strikes. It is a bottom feeder; its intestinal canal is always partially full.
A long series of experiments was made on Amblyopsis and Chologaster to determine their reaction to white and monochromatic light. Without going into the details of these experiments, it may be stated that Amblyopsis avoids the light, regardless of the direction or the color of the rays. The same is true of Chologaster, except that they were positively attracted by the red rays of the spectrum as against the blue.
We owe the first observations on the breeding habits of Amblyopsis to Thompson, who states that a fish “was put in water as soon as captured, where it gave birth to nearly twenty young, which swam about for some time, but soon died; ... they were each four lines in length.” Little or nothing has been added to our knowledge of this subject since that time, but the highly interesting supposition of Thompson that they were viviparous has gained currency, and it is therefore unfortunate that in this respect he was in error.
Putnam adds to the above that, judging from some data in his possession, the young are born in September and October, and further along remarks that they are “undoubtedly” viviparous.
The eggs are laid by the female in under her gill membrane. Here they remain for perhaps two months, till the yolk is nearly all absorbed. If a female with young in her gill pouches is handled, some of the young are sure to escape. This was observed, and gave rise to the idea that this fish is viviparous. Eggs have been obtained as early as March 11th and as late as September, and the indications are that the breeding season extends throughout the year. The eggs are large—2.3 millimetres in diameter from membrane to membrane—and about sixty to seventy are laid at one time.
Certain structures gain an entirely new significance in the light of the breeding habits. These are the enlarged gill cavities, with the small gills, the closely applied branchiostegal membrane, and the position of the anus and sexual orifices. The latter are placed just behind the gill membrane in such close proximity to it that they can be covered by it. It is probable, therefore, that the membrane is drawn over the sexual orifice and the eggs deposited directly into the gill cavity. In an individual thirty-five millimetres long the anus is situated between the origin of the pectorals; in one twenty-five millimetres long it lies between the pectorals and ventrals. In the young it lies behind the ventrals, as in other fishes.
Fig. 16.—The embryo of Typhlogobius, showing the well-developed eye.
Fig. 17.—A young Typhlogobius, times 4-2/9.
Fig. 18.—Adult Typhlogobius.
Fig. 19.—Adult Gillichthys-y-cauda living in crab holes in San Diego Bay.
Fig. 20.—Young Gillichthys mirabilis under the same magnification as Fig. 17.
In an aquarium containing six Amblyopsis two took a great antipathy to each other. Whenever they touched, a vigorous contest began. Frequently they came to have a position with broadside to broadside, their heads pointing in opposite directions. At such a time the fight consists in quick lateral thrusts toward the antagonist to seize him with the mouth. The motion is instantly parried by a similar move by the antagonist. This blind punching may be kept up for a few seconds, when, by their vigorous motions, they lose each other and jerk themselves through the water from side to side, apparently hunting for each other. At this time they are very agile, and move with precision. When the belligerents meet one above the other, the snapping and punching is of a different order. While jerking through the water immediately after a round, if one of the belligerents touches one of the neutrals in the aquarium it frequently gives it a punch, but does not follow it up, and the unoffending fellow makes haste to get out of the road, the smaller ones doing so most quickly. If, after an interval of a few seconds, a belligerent meets a neutral they quietly pass each other without paying any further attention, whereas if the two belligerents meet again there is an immediate response. Whether they recognize each other by touch or by their mutual excitability I do not know. At one time, in another aquarium, I saw one belligerent capture the other by the pectorals. After holding on for a short time it let go, and all differences were forgotten. The thrust is delivered by a single vigorous flip of the tail and caudal to one side. These fights were frequently noticed, and always occurred between males.
The absence of secondary sexual differences in the cave fishes is a forcible argument in favor of sexual selection as the factor producing high coloration in the males. The absence of secondary sexual differences in cave animals opposes the idea of Geddes and Thompson that the differences are the external expression of maleness and femaleness.
Attempts at acclimating Amblyopsis in outside waters have so far failed.[K] A few were placed in Turkey Lake, Indiana. They were surrounded by a fine wire net, to keep off other fishes. They died in a few days, as the result of attacks of leeches, saprolegnia, or fish mold, and from unknown causes. Others were kept in an elongated box sunk into the ground, where fresh spring water flowed through it constantly. Saprolegnia sooner or later destroyed all of them. They live longest in quiet aquaria, where the water is rarely changed. The young I have secured died, with one exception, within a few weeks. The difficulty of rearing the young is not at all insurmountable. They eat readily. Their aquaria must be kept free from green plants, and have a layer of fine mud, with a few decaying leaves, in the bottom. They will feed on minute crustaceans and other micro-organisms. When they have reached a sufficient size, examples of Asellus are greedily devoured. Fish mold is the bane of the larvæ. Many of them were found with tufts of the hyphæ growing out of their mouths and gill openings.
[K] Since the above was written an apparently successful attempt has been made to colonize them in a pool at Winona Lake. A record of this colony will be published later.
THE MAN OF SCIENCE IN PRACTICAL AFFAIRS.
By F. W. CLARKE.
The human mind is addicted to the creation of types, a process which implies classification and generalization of a somewhat low order. Some prominent feature of the thing classified is selected for emphasis, and there is often a degree of exaggeration which leads, in the end, to caricature. John Bull, Brother Jonathan, the Jew of the comic papers, and the stage Irishman are examples of this tendency. So, too, a profession or occupation is summed up in one conventional character, with a little truth distorted as if seen reflected from the surface of a curved mirror. The likeness is there, but unlike the reality. The individual embodiment of the type is rarely, if ever, encountered.
The man of science deals with questions which commonly lie outside of the range of ordinary experience, which often have no immediately discernible relation to the affairs of everyday life, and which concentrate the mind upon apparent abstractions to an extraordinary degree. Accordingly, the scholar, the scientific investigator, is typified as an elderly dreamer in spectacles, who is so uncouth, so self-forgetful, so absent-minded, and so ignorant of practical matters as to be hardly more than a child. He is one to be cared for and humored, like an imbecile—treated with some consideration, perhaps, on account of his learning, but never to be trusted in the transaction of business nor in the administration of public affairs. With him, as an antithesis, is contrasted the practical man, who knows whither his steps are tending, who has learned to control others, and who never dreams of abstractions during office hours, if indeed he troubles himself about them at all. The one is thought to be vague, visionary, and unpractical; the other is deemed efficient, precise, prompt, and clear. Has this distinction any basis in reality? Do scientific pursuits disqualify a man for administrative responsibility?
These questions, like all other legitimate questions, are to be answered by evidence, and the popular impression is entitled to no weight whatever. This evidence is to be found by a study of the thing itself, the man of science as he actually is; by an examination of the training which he receives, the character of the work which he does, and the results which he accomplishes. By this method it will be found that the supposed type is purely imaginary, that the workers in science exhibit all the variations which are found in any other group of occupations, that the human race as a whole is their only symbol or representative. The man of science may be grave or gay, moral or immoral, social or unsocial, keen or visionary—in short, he may exemplify any trait of human nature, except the traits of ignorance and stupidity. He must be intelligent and educated, methodical and exact; apart from these qualifications he may resemble any other man, chosen from any other vocation. Indeed, his nearest analogue is the so-called man of business, and the chief distinction between the two is that one deals with unfamiliar, the other with familiar things.
The direct tendency of the scientific training is to develop as fully as possible the positive traits which have been mentioned. Each science is a body of systematic, well-organized knowledge, with clear fundamental principles and distinct outlines. The study of science is a continual discouragement of obscurity or vagueness; it is a discipline in the statement and solution of definite problems, and it trains one to see things as they are, apart from all irrelevancies. The technicalities of science, so bewildering to the layman, are merely aids to exactness, avoidances of circumlocution—in short, they are practical devices whereby labor is saved. Economy of effort is one of the features in which the scientific training excels.
The results of such a training vary, of course, with the individual, and depend upon his personal peculiarities. A broad man is broadened by it; a narrow man shuts himself up within the limits of a specialty. To some extent specialization is necessary, but there is a wide difference between the man who sees only his own province and one who realizes its relations to other fields. The same distinction is found in commercial life, and with the same results. The specialist in money, in stocks, in iron, or in cotton may be just as narrow as the specialist in stars, or reactions, or insects, and know little or nothing of any subject outside his own. Neither narrowness nor breadth of view is monopolized by any vocation. The mere fact that men of science rarely devote their attention to accumulating wealth does not prove them to be unpractical. They are not, as a rule, careless or thriftless in money matters; they are as likely to handle their financial affairs intelligently as any one else, but their main business lies in other directions. If seldom a millionaire, the man of science is still more seldom a bankrupt. In wild speculation the so-called practical man takes the lead, and anything which bears the trade mark of electricity, from the electrical refining of sugar to the extraction of gold from sea water, can secure from otherwise shrewd financiers the support which a worker in science would contemptuously refuse to give. A few years ago the would-be rain-makers obtained the money for their experiments from men of business, and from Congress even, in spite of advice based upon scientific knowledge, and failure was the inevitable end. In that borderland between business and research, which is known as applied science, the scientific student is more practical than the financier. When both work together, wealth is produced, but the seedtime of abstract investigation always precedes the harvest. The commercial value of exact knowledge is often very great, but to the prospective investor this truth is not always evident.
The practical value of the scientific training is perhaps most fully recognized in Germany. There the importance of the investigator, the apparently abstract scholar, is thoroughly understood, and to his work the great industrial advance of Germany is largely attributable. In chemical and electrical industries this is particularly true, and their growth can be directly traced to the influence of the universities. The German professor is a man trained to research, and from among his students many of the best investigators are chosen for service in the factories. German competition in the commercial world is to-day the bugbear of other European countries, and its success is due, first of all, to the utilization of trained intelligences. In our own country the importance of applied science is fully realized and its achievements are beyond dispute, but the scholar as yet receives less consideration than the commercial expert. The latter is practical, the former is regarded as visionary. Accurate knowledge is a good thing, but rule-of-thumb experience is often thought to be better. It is only when knowledge and experience join hands that the highest practical results are attainable, the one factor tending to advance, the other to perpetuate, industry. The man of affairs is not a practical man until he appreciates the force of these propositions.
At bottom the scientific training is a training in clear thought, precise statement, accurate observation, the verification of evidence, and the ascertainment of truth. Why should its recipient be unfitted for practical things? Good administration, the effective transaction of business, implies system, exactness, the judgment of evidence upon its merits, and the prompt solution of problems as they arise, and to each of these requisites the scientific education is directly related. What other training is less likely to produce dreamers, or more likely to develop efficient men? The main distinction between the workers in science and men of other vocations is one of aim, a difference in ambition, perhaps a difference in the point of view. The scientific scholar seeks to discover and possibly to apply new truth; and after that his ambition is to win the recognition of his fellows, to gain reputation, rather than to acquire wealth. He may not be indifferent to the latter purpose, but it is not his chief end. It is difficult to do both things well.
For the administration of large interests, involving the control of men and the building-up of great institutions, men of science have over and over again demonstrated their fitness. In the scientific societies of the world they have shown their capacity for organization, and in the management of schools and colleges their ability has often been proved. Among the presidents of universities and technical schools who have been drawn from the ranks of science I may mention Eliot, of Harvard; Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins; Drown, of Lehigh; Jordan, of the Leland Stanford; Chamberlin, of Wisconsin; Morton, of the Stevens Institute; and Mendenhall, of the Worcester Polytechnic. The Institute of Technology in Boston has been directed successively by Rogers, Runkle, Walker, and Crafts; the Columbia School of Mines was built up by a group of scientific workers, aided by President Barnard; and the list might be lengthened almost indefinitely. Have these men fallen below the average of their fellows? Have they not shown at least as high administrative ability as has been found elsewhere? The mere statement of their names is a sufficient answer, and renders argument unnecessary. With them the scientific training has not been a disqualification, nor even a handicap; it has rather been to their advantage, for to it they owe much of the insight, the power to grasp great problems intelligently, the ability to interpret evidence, and the tendency to prompt and decisive action, without which successful administration is impossible.
Again, consider the scientific institutions of the world, the museums and observatories, and the various governmental organizations in which science is recognized. In our own country, the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum were built up by Henry and Baird, in spite of great and varied difficulties; the Coast Survey was created by Hassler and Bache; and the Geological Survey was developed by a group of men among whom Hayden, King, and Powell were pioneers. The last-named organization has been controlled from the beginning by men of science, and the Coast Survey has been weak only when under nonscientific management. The Commission of Fish and Fisheries owes its existence and a great part of its effectiveness to its creator, Baird; the Army Medical Museum and Library represents the executive genius of Billings; and in none of these institutions has partisan politics ever exerted an appreciable influence. No bureaus of the Government have been more wisely or more efficiently handled than those which men of science have controlled; in none have there been fewer errors or scandals; there is not one in which the essential purpose of its existence has been better fulfilled.
Instead, then, of excluding the scholar, the investigator, the man who knows, the man of scientific training, from his fair share of public responsibility, we should do well to call him into service more and more. He may be, he often is, averse to administrative work, for the reason that it interferes with his chosen occupation, and hinders the prosecution of research. But his training and his mental bias are both needed in public affairs, wherein the scientific method is too often unapplied. In European countries men of high scientific rank are frequently found in legislative bodies and ministries; men like Playfair, Roscoe, and Lubbock in England, Virchow in Germany, Quintino Sella in Italy, and Berthelot in France. With us in America the maker of speeches outranks the thinker in popular esteem, and is given duties to perform in which he may become ridiculous. Both in legislation and in diplomacy many questions arise which demand the most careful scientific treatment, or which can be answered only by thorough scientific knowledge, and many of these have been intrusted for settlement to men of no specific training whatever. Of late years we have had the fur-seal controversy, the question of forest reserves, the irrigation of our arid lands, problems of sanitation and water supply, and in each of these the man of science has played a part which was too often subordinate to that of the politician. In an ideal government the two should work together, each supplementing the peculiar ability of the other. Many details of the tariff, and a notable part of the coinage question, require scientific data for their proper settlement, but the true expert has not always been consulted. The result of this neglect is sometimes seen in courts of law, where questions of interpretation arise which might have been averted, obscurity in legislation being often due to the careless use of scientific terminology or to ignorance of the relations in science between two branches of industry. The voice of the trained investigator might well be heard in Congress, but his testimony now is limited to the committee room. Even there it is received with an attention which is too often mingled with incredulity. The myth of the dreamer, the visionary, is more than half believed.
The supposed type, then, is not a type, but an exception—a man of straw, which is hardly worth overthrowing. But the belief in it has been and still is mischievous, a hindrance to wise action, an obstacle to progress. The misconception has worked injury to science. These words of protest, therefore, are not wholly superfluous.
FORENOON AND AFTERNOON.
By CHARLES F. DOWD, Ph. D.
It is a fact of common observation, at different times of the year, that the forenoon and afternoon, as to daylight, are of unequal length. Along in later autumn the shortness of the afternoons is very noticeable, and the shortness of forenoons along in later winter. Whatever makes common facts more intelligible adds to the general intelligence and to the general good. It is to this end that the following brief statements are made.
Nothing is more evident than that the sun requires just as much time to go from the eastern horizon to the midday meridian as to go from that meridian to the western horizon. But, strange to say, there are but four days during the whole year in which the sun reaches the midday meridian at just twelve o’clock. The true noon point varies from about fifteen minutes before to about sixteen minutes after twelve o’clock. These extreme points in one set of variations fall in the first week of November and in the second week of February, not to designate exact days for years in general.
The calendars show that in the latitude of Saratoga (essentially Boston latitude) on November 3, 1898, the sun rose at 6.30 and set at five o’clock, thereby making the forenoon a half hour longer than the afternoon. On that day the sun reached the midday meridian at 11.45. On February 13, 1899, the sun rose at just seven o’clock and set at 5.30, thereby making the afternoon a half hour longer than the forenoon, and on this day the sun reached the midday meridian at 12.15. These are facts plainly open to general view, and therefore need no verifying.
The causes of the foregoing are not so apparent to common observation. It must be borne in mind that the mean or average solar day is the basis for all time measurements, therefore its exact length is of the greatest importance. Yet the general solar day, from which the average one is derived, is a very indefinite term as to its length. Its length in general may be defined, under view of the sun’s apparent motion, as the time extending from the instant that the sun’s center crosses any given meridian of the earth on one day to the instant that center crosses the same meridian on the following day—i. e., the time intervening between these two instants is the length of a solar day.
The motion of the sun, however, is only apparent; the actual motion is in the earth’s revolution upon its axis. We should have one day a year long if the earth did not revolve on its axis at all, since the revolution of the earth around the sun once a year would in the course of the year bring all sides facing the sun. Consequently the earth makes one more revolution upon its axis each year than the number of solar days in that year, and a little consideration of this fact will show that in each solar day the earth makes one full revolution on its axis and about 1/365 of another, which fractional addition is occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit.
Another fact needs to be considered. Since the earth’s orbit is in the form of an ellipse, with the sun at one of the foci, the earth must pass nearer the sun in some parts of its orbit than in others. By the laws of gravity, when nearer, the attraction between the earth and sun is greater, and if this were not balanced by increased velocity along its orbit the earth would fall into the sun; and, on the other hand, when farther off this attraction is less, and if this were not balanced by a diminution of velocity along its orbit the earth would fly off into space. This varying velocity, together with other complications too technical for a magazine article, gives varying lengths of orbit to the several solar days of the year. If the earth’s orbit were laid out upon paper and, by astronomical calculations, an exact proportionate section were marked off for each solar day of the year, the variable lengths of orbit for the different days of the year would plainly appear to the eye.
But, as before explained, the time of a solar day is the time of one revolution of the earth upon its axis, together with the fractional part of another revolution occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit. Then it must follow that as the daily sections of the orbit vary in length, the time of the solar day must vary in length. No clock could be made to keep the variable time of true solar days, and if this were possible, the hour, minute, etc., would be variable of length, and hence no standard for time measurements. But by working a simple arithmetical problem of addition and division an average length of day for the year may easily be found. This average day is the mean solar day adopted. Its time is arbitrary and exact, forming a perfect standard for all time measurements. From this the term mean time gains its significance.
By referring to the foregoing earth’s orbit laid out on paper, with the true solar days marked off in sections of mathematical exactness, it will be seen that by dividing each section into two equal parts and marking the division point with red ink, the true noon point of each solar day in the year will be conspicuous upon the drawing, and in its proportionate relations in every way. If now we set a pair of dividers or compasses so that the opening shall reach over the exact space on the orbit of one half of the mean solar day, and beginning at the red noon point of one of the four days in the year when the true noon falls at just twelve o’clock—say December 24th—and step the dividers around on the orbit, making a blue point mark at each second step, then as the blue points vary from the red so will the mean time which our clocks keep vary from the true noon of each day of the year.
Variation in length of forenoon and afternoon, therefore, may be viewed by common intelligence not only as a fact but as a necessity.