From what we have said, it is evident that the Penycuik experiments are of the highest interest, both practical and theoretical, and the public spirit and self-devotion shown by the Edinburgh professor in carrying them out can not be too widely recognized.
COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. (I.)
By JAMES COLLIER.
We may conceive a country, with its colonies and dependencies grouped round it at unequal distances and in different directions, as a giant organism, which has its laws of growth and development, its phases of expansion, activity and decay, like all other organisms. We see it enlarging in mass, but to the last remaining amorphous, or assimilable to no known forms. We observe the heart and brain fostering, helping and sometimes hindering, directing, controlling and guarding the evolution of the nearer or remoter portions. We perceive on scrutiny threads of relationship being woven, new nervous, muscular and circulatory systems being developed, which connect the extremities with the center and unite both into an organic whole. We are struck at times with the rupture of the mass and the permanent separation of parts of it; at times we are impressed by an unexpected augmentation in previously unknown areas, as if to repair the loss of the old. We witness the extremities reacting on the original nucleus, to some extent remodeling the heart and brain and thus creating a type of organism unprecedented in Nature. And we find that of a limited number of such colossal types, ever battling for predominance, one or another gains an ascendency and the rest are reduced to a secondary rank, or, being lopped of their colonial extensions, cease to be world-wide organisms and shrink into the merely national organisms from which they sprang.
Snails put out their feelers as they go. The bolder insects and the more adventurous birds fly small or great distances in search of a feeding ground; some are carried out to sea, and become involuntary ‘discoverers’ of new lands.[C] The social organism puts out its feelers and extends in mass. The community pushes out its scouts, and a portion of it, at longer or shorter intervals, follows their lead. Thus the mother country discovers many of the territories it colonizes. Cadiz was unknown to the Eastern world till a Phœnician merchant ship was blown thither. The West African coast and the mouth of the Rhone were discovered by the Carthaginians. Libya (west of Egypt) was a terra incognita to the Greeks till a Greek sailor who had been driven on its inhospitable coast informed the emigrant Theræans of its existence. The Portuguese discovered the Azores. The Spaniards discovered the West India Islands, Mexico, Peru and Florida. France discovered the country lying along the basin of the St. Lawrence and the valley of the Mississippi. Holland, through an English navigator, discovered the Hudson River and the future site of New York. England, through another alien, discovered the New England coast and that of Virginia; it discovered, or rediscovered, vast Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and other South Sea islands; in quite recent years it discovered the sources of the Nile. All these countries have been or are about to be colonized by the peoples that discovered them.
[C] Examples of insects are given in Darwin’s ‘Journal,’ and of birds in Wallace’s ‘Malay Archipelago.’
Discovery is chiefly the work of private enterprise. It was Phœnician and Greek traders who explored the northern and western coasts of Africa, of Spain, of Gaul, and of Britain. Scandinavian mariners, Norman and English fishermen, discovered North America. Spanish adventurers found the Canaries. The host of travelers have explored on their private account. Yet there are animals, like Mr. Thompson’s Lobo, the wolf, and Spot, the crow, able generals and leaders of large bands, who seem to direct exploratory movements. So after a while governments lend their aid when they have ends of their own or their aid is needed. The two most memorable exploring expeditions of modern times, and the most momentous in their results, were either in great part or wholly equipped by their respective governments. Two of the vessels of Columbus were impressed ships, and the equipment proceeded from the Castilian treasury, the third being fitted out by merchant mariners of Palos. The expedition of Captain Cook, which practically added a new continent to the globe, was altogether a state enterprise, and its celebrated commander was not, like Columbus, its designer and organizer, but only its director. The Portuguese discoveries of the Azores and the Cape were also state-aided. From this time forward Spanish and Portuguese adventurers received a royal license to discover, and the South American continent, with Mexico and Peru as its brightest jewels, was discovered by just such adventurers. Where a government refuses itself to discover, it may, like the States-General of Holland, assure to the enterprising a terminable monopoly of trade with newly discovered lands, and to this assurance the exploration of New York and its neighborhood and the discovery of Connecticut were due. Merchant companies have naturally a keen eye to the main chance, but those English and Dutch merchants can not be accused of timidity who chartered Cabot, Gilbert, Hudson and other daring mariners to seek a northwest passage to the East. Kings, in their private capacity, newspaper proprietors and rich individuals, from generous motives, sometimes equip and support explorers like Stanley and Winwood Reade.
Geographical, like scientific, discovery is often accidental. Phœnician and Greek traders, Spanish adventurers, Norman and English fishermen were blown by a succession of gales to Cadiz and Cyrene, the Canaries, Mexico and Newfoundland. Diaz was storm-carried southward to the Cape, where two shipwrecked mariners long afterward induced the Dutch to settle. Columbus, Cabot and Hudson sought a passage to India or China. The day comes, however, when chance gives way to a systematic art of discovery. The voyage of Columbus was the first where the end was deliberately aimed at and patiently worked up to. Under Ferdinand the Catholic maritime discovery was raised to an art. A board of eminent Spanish navigators, with Vespucci at its head, sat to construct charts and trace out routes for projected voyages. The primary object of Cook’s first voyage was astronomical, and he was scientifically equipped for discovery on that, as of course also on the two later voyages, whose sole end was the one so gloriously gained.
Prior discovery confers an indefeasible title to occupy as against any other colonizing power. Misled by a false statement, a British man-of-war entered the Mississippi presumably to take possession of Louisiana, but turned aside on being informed of the earlier French occupation. In the thirties two naval expeditions were exploring at the same time in Spencer Gulf, South Australia. Though the French gracefully yielded the pas to the prior English ship, they left a mark on a number of points that still bear French names. There seems to be now no doubt that Brazil had been discovered and rediscovered by Spanish navigators before the Portuguese carbajal set foot on it, but, owing to an international agreement, the discoverers ceded their claim.