LATE STATE GEOLOGIST OF OHIO; LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.All persons interested in American science were surprised and shocked at learning of the death, from heart trouble, on October 16, 1899, of Prof. Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University. The event occurred only little less than two months after Professor Orton had presided, with a simplicity of manner that did not hide but rather heightened the traits of vigor in his character, over the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at his home in Columbus, Ohio. The services he rendered to geology, his long and honorable career as an educator, and his continual and consistent insistence upon the faithful use ofthe scientific method well entitle him to be remembered as one of the most meritorious of American scientific workers.Edward Ortonwas born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., March 9, 1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born in England in 1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and owners of Farmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of the Ortons in the United States are derived, and represented his town in the General Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grandson of Thomas Orton, was one of the original purchasers and settlers of Litchfield, Conn., where he owned a square mile of land known as Orton Hill, on the south side of Bantam Lake. Two of the maternal ancestors of the subject of this sketch fought in the colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the Revolution.Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel G. Orton, D. D., and received further training preparatory for college in the academies of Westfield and Fredonia, N. Y. He entered Hamilton College, whence his father had been graduated in 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore, and was graduated in 1848 in a class among the other members of which were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological Seminary, New York, and the Hon. F. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of Albany, N. Y., and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught for a number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Franklin, N. Y., and Chester, N. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science in the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post-graduate studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the Lawrence Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and Gray as his teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover Seminaries. While teaching at Chester, N. Y., he was called to Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took charge of the preparatory department in 1865; was made Professor of Natural History shortly afterward, and was made president of the college in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at the end of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State University at Columbus.When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken in 1869 under the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton was appointed an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and was continued by reappointment by Governor E. F. Noyes. When Professor Newberry withdrew from the survey in 1881, Professor Orton was appointed State Geologist by Governor Charles Foster, and he was afterward reappointed to the position successively by Governors Hoadley, Foraker, Campbell, and Bushnell. He retainedthe title of State Geologist till his death, although he had not been engaged in any active public work on the survey for a considerable time.The Ohio State University having been established on the basis of the grants of land made to the States for colleges under the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Professor Orton was appointed its president and Professor of Geology. He discharged the duties of this office for eight years, or till 1881. But the executive work of the president's office was irksome to him, since it grew constantly heavier as the young college expanded, and therefore left him less and less time for teaching and research in geology. Being in a measure compelled to make a choice between the two fields of activity, he chose the less ambitious position, resigning the presidency, and assuming the position of Professor of Geology, which he retained for the remainder of his life. The geological building of the university is named after him—Orton Hall. Besides his work on the Geological Survey of Ohio and his participation in the composition of its reports, Professor Orton prepared, for the Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, a paper on the New Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana, and another, only recently published in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States Survey, on the Rock Waters of Ohio; a volume for the Geological Survey of Kentucky on the Petroliferous Production of the Western Part of the State, published in 1891; and a report on petroliferous productions which is in process of publication by the Geological Survey of New York.In the paper on the Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana the discovery of the supply of those materials, the great value of which was only realized in 1884 and afterward, is spoken of as being more surprising and anomalous than any similar discovery that had preceded it, and as a development which experts were hardly more prepared for than others. The oil and gas derived from the Trenton limestone in certain parts of these States were found to differ from the oil and gas in the Pennsylvania wells in chemical composition and physical properties, in the horizons from which they were obtained, in the structural features of the rocks associated with their production, and, most of all, in the kind of rock that produced them. "No facts more unexpected have ever been brought to light in connection with the geology of this country than those with which we are now becoming acquainted." Professor Orton's paper, which fills one hundred and eighty of the large pages of the report of the Geological Survey, includes a sketch of the history of the discovery to July, 1887, when it was prepared; a designation of what was known in regard to the geological scale and geological structureof the regions within which the new fields are embraced, and the tracing of the chief factors that influence or control the productiveness of the oil rock, with the description of the special features and boundaries of the several fields and the setting forth of the leading facts and present development of these lately found sources of power. Two principal conditions under which the new oil rock had proved petroliferous on a large scale were found to be porosity, connected with and apparently dependent on the chemical transformation of the upper portion of the limestone, for a number of feet in thickness, into a highly crystalline dolomite; and a relief resulting from slight warping of the strata, whereby the common contents of the porous portions of the Trenton limestone had been differentiated by gravity, the gas and oil seeking the highest levels, and the salt water maintaining a lower but definite elevation in every field. Professor Orton found nothing in the new experience to make it safe to count the Trenton limestone an oil rock or a gas rock in any locality, unless it could be shown to have undergone the dolomitic replacement by which its porosity was assured; and even in case it had suffered this transformation it would not be found a reservoir of gas or oil in an important sense unless some parts of it had acquired the relief essential to the due separation of its liquid and gaseous contents.The report on the Rock Waters of Ohio concerns, first, those waters, chiefly in the northwestern and western part of the State, that are obtained from a considerable depth as compared with ordinary wells, the knowledge of which was almost wholly derived from wells drilled in the search for oil and gas, and was necessarily fragmentary and incomplete; because water was not included among the objects of search, but was considered a hindrance and obstruction to be got out of the way as well as possible; and, second, flowing wells, including only those having considerable head of pressure and those occurring in considerable areas, all of which belong entirely to the drift. Further, a brief review is given of some facts of unusual interest that were developed in the deep drillings concerning the preglacial drainage system of the part of the State in question. Indications of old river channels, one of which seems to have been extensive, were found at several points. Among the curious results of these studies was the conclusion, "seeming to be already established," "that the Ohio River, as we now know the stream, is of recent origin, and that the main volume of water gathered in it at the present time originally flowed across the State to the northward at least as far as Auglaize and Mercer Counties, where it turned to the westward toward the present lines of Wabash drainage in Indiana." Professor Orton seems to haveplaced considerable emphasis on the value of a study of the rocky floor of the State, concerning which all we know at present is derived from the revelations of deep drillings at haphazard; and he thought it would be a good work for the State to make use of all accessible data of this kind at once in constructing a model of the rocky floor of the region under review. The care and fidelity with which he studied the underground geology are exemplified in a map attached to the paper on the oil and gas fields, in which the horizons of the Trenton limestone are indicated and approximately bounded as they occur by gradations ranging from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, from elevations above the ocean level to one thousand and more feet below. Another contribution of Professor Orton's which may appropriately be given special notice is his part of the article on Ohio in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a succinct, clear, and comprehensive account of the geology of the whole State is given, with its salient features delineated so sharply that one may almost conceive from it a definite geological picture of the region.Of all his scientific work, however, Professor Orton regarded the fixing of the order of the coal measures of Ohio as the most important; and he considered the determination of the order of the subcarboniferous strata, and particularly of the Berea Grit, as constituting a large permanent service to the study of the geology of the State.At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Orton contributed a special paper on the local geology of Columbus, the place of the meeting, in which he dwelt largely on the origin of the drift that marks the superficial geology of the vicinity.Of the work he has done for the increase and advancement of knowledge, the extent of a part of which we have only faintly indicated by the mention of a few particular researches, Professor Orton put the highest value on his labors as a teacher, a calling to which he was devoted for more than half a century. He found peculiar pleasure in instructing the children of the old pupils whom he had taught in his younger days. He was actively concerned in the promotion and extension of sanitary science, his addresses in that field having been one of the factors that led to the establishment of the Ohio State Board of Health. He was also greatly interested in the advancement of agriculture.A theme on which Professor Orton was fond of dwelling in his public addresses was the amount and value of what has been accomplished within a comparatively short time in the world's history by the use of the methods of science. In an address delivered beforethe alumni of Hamilton College in 1888 he maintained that we were living in a revolutionary period, which is marked by a great advance in knowledge and a vastly larger control of the forces of Nature; by a large increase in freedom of thought and action; by a sudden and remarkable addition to the mobility of man, accompanied by an unexampled growth of great cities; and by an incalculable addition to the wealth of the world. Accompanying these great changes in the material and intellectual world were certain moral transformations appearing to grow out of them. All these advances were ascribed to a movement—a new method of investigating Nature—that began, so far as its particular and continuous development is concerned, about three hundred years ago, but to which no date or founder's name could be attached. This new philosophy thoroughly respected Nature, was humble, patient in the accumulation of facts and the trial of its theories, comprehensive, progressive, and hopeful. It has given us the marvelous increase of knowledge which especially marks the nineteenth century; it has impressed its influence upon all branches of study, and has wrought great improvements in methods and results; and has rendered an immense and inestimable service to Christian theology, and done much to broaden and rationalize it and thus to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on the world. Finally, the method of science was pronounced "the best gift that God has given to the mind of man." A similar train of thought as to the material aspects is apparent, though in a somewhat different form, in an address on The Stored (or Fossil) Power of the World, delivered in 1894.A considerable part of Professor Orton's presidential address at the last meeting of the American Association was devoted to a summary of the conclusions derived from Alfred Russell Wallace's book, The Wonderful Century, that the progress accomplished in the present century far outweighs the entire progress of the human race from the beginning up to 1800. In this address, also, the author felicitously spoke of the scope of the American Association as possibly including the whole continent, and its object as the advancement of science, the discovery of new truth. "It is possible that we could make ourselves more interesting to the general public if we occasionally forswore our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of our time in restating established truths." But the discoveries recorded, though often fragmentary and devoid of special interest to the outside world, all had a place in the great temple of knowledge; and the speaker hoped that although no great discoveries should be reported this time, the meeting might still be a memorable one through the inspiration it would give to the multitude of workers in the several fields of science.Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885; received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and that of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected President of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was designated at the Boston meeting of the American Association, 1898, as president for the Columbus meeting, 1899.In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor Orton was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of man on this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, and had recently been made a member of its board of trustees. He was a prominent member of the Old Northwest Genealogical Society, and was the author of a volume, published in 1896, on the Genealogy of the Orton Family in America. The absolute freedom of his character from any desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well shown by the fact that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor, in the spare minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one paragraph of a hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous members of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard.He was stricken with hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was able to do a considerable amount of work in his profession afterward. A few days before his death he said, in a note, that he felt that he had lived out his allotted time, and that his work was done. He never met his classes again, though he continued able to be up and about his home till the hour of his death. He seemed to feel that the solemn event was drawing close, during the last two days of his life, and his mind was always busy with the great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He had formed an affirmative answer apparently, as he read Browning's Prospice repeatedly in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the greatest pleasure and solace. His death was a quiet and painless one—a fitting end to a beautiful life.Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent annual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of incinerations at the Père Lachaise crematory has almost steadily increased since 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513, making 37,068 from the beginning. A fair proportion of the number were women. There are now in Europe and America seventy crematories, twenty-seven of which are in Italy and twenty in the United States. Cremation is making good progress in England, where four crematories are reported from, and two are in course of erection. Germany has six, where 423 incinerations took place in 1898; Switzerland and Sweden have two each, Denmark one, and one has been authorized in Norway.Editor's Table.A COMMISSION IN DIFFICULTIES.The synopsis which has been given to the press of the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is not encouraging reading for those who like to believe in legislation as an infallible panacea for all public and social ills. The tone of the document indeed is very far from being one of triumph. The note struck in the very first paragraph is the need for more legislation to save the copious legislation already passed from proving ineffectual and abortive. Whether it is that Congress does not wish to make the work of the commission successful, or whether it has begun to have a wise distrust of its own powers, we can not say; but the commissioners complain bitterly of its inaction. We can not do better than quote their own words: "The reasons for the failure of the law to accomplish the purposes for which it was enacted have been so frequently and fully set forth that repetition can not add to their force or make them better understood. It is sufficient to say that the existing situation and the developments of the past year render more imperative than ever before the necessity for speedy and suitable legislation. We therefore renew the recommendations heretofore made, and earnestly urge their early consideration and adoption."As the document proceeds, we see the good commissioners at war with the wicked railways, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, on the whole, the wicked railways have the best of it. The commissioners admit that certain cases which have come before the courts have been decided against them, and in favor of the railways; but they are far from disclosing the full extent of the discouragement, not to say mortification, they receive. The business of the commission is to interfere between the railways and their customers—the public—in the interest of the latter. The railways naturally consider this a rather one-sided function, and are not extremely zealous to aid in its performance. They have their own troubles with the public, and have no commission to come to their assistance. Everybody is after cheap railway rates, just as everybody is after cheap goods; and the means sometimes resorted to to get reductions would at least hold their own for astuteness with any that could be concocted in a traffic office for the raising of rates. We give the commissioners full credit for doing their best to protect the interests of the public, but we can not help doubting whether, on the whole, the public has derived much benefit from their efforts. In fact, we are strongly inclined to the opinion that the whole idea of the commission is simply a legislative blunder.The railways undoubtedly possess great powers which theoretically there is nothing to prevent their abusing to almost any extent. But what is theoretically possible is not always practically possible. The President of the United States possesses great powers, which theoretically he might abuse to any extent; so does the Queen of England; so do many other potentates. But of all the evil that is theoretically possible, how much is carried out in practice? All kinds of thingsmighthappen if people were fools enough to do all the harm that it is in their power to do. The great saving fact is that it is not possible to go veryfar in doing harm to others without doing it to yourself. It is this fact which the insatiable legislation-monger ignores. He has an infinite faith in the mischief that will happen if things are left alone. He can not bear to think that somebody is not looking after everybody. He has no faith whatever in natural law or natural actions and reactions, and would hoot the idea of what the poet Wordsworth calls a "wise passiveness." Such people have little conception of the mischief they do, and of the good that fails of realization through their pestilent activity. The readers of Dickens will perhaps remember Mrs. Pardiggle and the admirable system of education she applied to her numerous family of children. The unhappy youngsters were under orders every hour of the day; they were marched round the country with their mother when she went on visits of charity, and compelled to contribute out of their own (nominal) pocket money to all kinds of religious and benevolent schemes. How they kicked and rebelled, and what distressing passions were roused in their youthful breasts, the great novelist has told us; and we think we may take his word for it. The fussy legislator is a Pardiggle. If he would leave things alone, opposing interests would find amodus vivendi, and practical justice would more and more assert itself. The more interference there is between parties who in the last resort are dependent on one another's good will, the less likely they are to recognize their substantial identity of interest. If the interference is wholly in the interest of one of the parties, the other is sure to be forced into an undesirable attitude; while the one whose protection is the object in view will not unnaturally take all the protection he can get, and look for something more.What is wanted to put the relations between the railways and the public upon the most satisfactory footing possible is, in the first place, less legislative interference; and, in the second, a higher tone of business morality throughout the community. We place this second not as underrating its importance, but because we believe it would to some extent flow from the first. It is when the public transfers its right of eminent domain to a railway corporation that it should take adequate measures to protect its own interests; but how can this be done when legislation is sold—when charters are given or withheld, according to the amount of money available for purposes of persuasion? With honest legislators and honest courts there would be very little trouble between the railways and the public, and such as arose could be easily remedied. Commerce commissions are a testimony to the existence of low standards of business morality; and, unfortunately, they tend to keep them low, if not to make them lower.The sooner we make up our minds to trust more to moral influences freely acting in the intercourse of man with man and of interest with interest, and less to legal compulsion, the better it will be for us in every department of our national life. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is a virtual confession of the failure of legislation to accomplish a purpose which was supposed to be easily within its field of action. The confession is coupled with a demand for more legislation, but, were the demand conceded, who can guarantee that more still would not be wanted? The railways are not at the end of their resources, and new laws would, we fear, be only too likely to suggest new means of evasion. No; the remedy lies elsewhere, and if Congress is wise it will give that remedy a trial byallowing the railways and the public a chance to arrange terms between them, with public opinion as the principal court of appeal.THE FUNCTION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.A paper that was read by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Library Club, on the subject of Paternalism in Public Libraries, and which we find in the Library Journal for November last, is one which, in our opinion, deserves to be separately printed and widely circulated. It abounds in good sense, and preaches a doctrine of self-help and self-reliance which is much needed in these days.A question which the author of the paper does not discuss, but which, it seems to us, lies at the threshold of the whole subject, is whether the very existence of a public library—if we understand by the term a library supported by public taxes—is not in itself an exemplification of paternalism. Mr. Swift strikes us as a benevolent bureaucrat who wants to give the people at large a wider liberty in the matter of reading than the ruling influences of time and place are disposed to allow. He sees that liberty is good, that leading strings belong to infancy, and he raises his protest against a paternalism in the management of public libraries which, under the plea of providing only the most approved reading for all classes, would tend to the repression of individuality in the reader and the establishment of the supremacy of commonplace. But what if commonplace insists on being supreme and shutting out whatever is not of one complexion with itself? How are we to resist its demand in the administration of a State-supported, and therefore majority-ruled, institution? "You offer us," say its representatives, "a liberty we do not want for ourselves, and are not prepared to concede to others, as we are sure it can not be for their good. We are not going to consult the tastes of cranks, criminals, intellectual aristocrats, or social mugwumps of any kind. For all practical purposes we are the public, and we mean to run this public library." To the objection that a portion, at least, of the taxes is paid by those whose views and tastes are not going to be consulted, the answer would be ready: "It is for the majority to say how taxes shall be applied." We recognize the excellence of Mr. Swift's intentions and sympathize with his way of looking at things, but we feel that his objections to "paternalism" in connection with public libraries are delivered from a somewhat shaky platform. We observe that a periodical quoted in the Library Journal—the Overland Monthly—makes the remark that "there is nothing to be said for free books that could not be urged in favor of free beefsteaks and free overcoats."Some of the points, however, that are made by Mr. Swift are deserving of attention. The several professions—law, medicine, theology, etc.—would more or less like to have only such books placed upon the shelves of a public library as represent what may be called their respective orthodoxies. But, as Mr. Swift observes, "libraries are as much the depositories of the folly as of the wisdom of the ages." A library, therefore, should tell us what men have thought and attempted in the past, and what they are thinking and attempting now. It is for schools and colleges, for newspapers and reviews, to afford guidance in the wilderness of opinions, not for the library to make a point of putting out of people's reach everything that is not in line with the scientific, literary, or other orthodoxy of the hour."A subtle form of paternalism is the deliberate inculcation of the patriotic spirit, especially in children." Mr. Swift is a brave man to attempt to stem this particular torrent. He thinks there are times when one who loves his country would feel shame for it rather than pride, and that the motto "My country right or wrong" is not the most wholesome sentiment that can be impressed on the mind of youth. "To fill a child with the consummate virtues of Washington, Jefferson, and other of our immortals, and to leave him ignorant of the greatness of Cromwell and of William the Silent, is a serious injustice to the child and to the cause of education." Not only is this done, but, in the domain of literature as well, it seems as if the only names with which public-school pupils obtain any acquaintance are those of national authors. So far as poetry is concerned, Mr. Swift says that almost the only name he hears from the lips of children frequenting the Public Library is "Longfellow." He can not remember ever having had a call from a child for Tennyson, while Wordsworth in the school region is equally unknown.Apart from the studied inculcation of a narrow patriotism, the author of the paper we are considering thinks that there is altogether too much paternalism shown in the choice of children's reading. He has only a limited and feeble faith in "children's rooms" in public libraries. They are very much, he thinks, like Sunday schools—convenient places for parents to unload their offspring. The aim of the censorship is to eliminate everything that is not in accord with the most approved canons of juvenile life and thought, leaving only what is ready for immediate acceptance and assimilation. Such a policy, Mr. Swift holds, is not favorable either to individuality or to intellectual growth. "We must," he says, "take books, like life, as we find them, and learn to distinguish good and bad; learn, as we ought, that the good is not so good as we have been told it is, and that the bad contains a strong infusion of good. No wrecks are so fearful as those which come to the young who have up to a point led 'sheltered lives.'"It is not, however, children only who get the benefit of a benevolent protective policy. Selecting committees are quite prepared to look after grown-up people as well, and keep out of their way books which might prove too exciting, which might reveal depths of passion such as persons leading decorous lives are not supposed to know anything about, or otherwise agitate the tranquil mill pond of their existence. It does not occur to them that thus the salt and savor of human life are expelled, and that, instead of the free play of vital forces, there supervenes a dreary mechanic round of semi-automatic activities unvisited by enthusiasm, untouched by strong desire, without dream or vision or any quickening of the heart or the imagination. Some good people are excessively particular not only as to what may threaten moral disturbance, but as to anything that may encourage departures from conventional modes of speech and deportment. They do not like to admit books that they regard as vulgar, and a great mark of vulgarity in their opinion is the use of slang. Yet so accomplished alittérateuras Mr. William Archer told us lately that he pleads guilty to "an unholy relish" for the talk of "Chimmie Fadden" and his Chicago contemporary "Artie." To him, as to Mr. Swift, the books in which these worthies disport themselvesmean something, and something deserving of attention. That being the case, the vulgarity, which is part ofthe picture, becomes in proportion to its truth an element of value. Mr. Swift, very bold and like the ancient prophet, says plainly: "Harmless books in general are mediocre books; if a new note in morals or society is struck, the suggestion of a possible injuriousness at once arises."Taken as a whole, Mr. Swift's paper is a strong plea for individualism and liberty. As such we have felt it a duty to call attention to it, and we trust that it will in some way obtain a more general circulation than can be afforded by the useful, but somewhat technical, columns of the Library Journal.Fragments of Science.Longevity of Whales.—Some light was thrown, a few years ago, upon the subject of the vitality of whales by finding one of these animals in Bering Sea, in 1890, with a "toggle" harpoon head in its body bearing the mark of the American whaler Montezuma. That vessel was engaged in whaling in Bering Sea about ten years, but not later than 1854. She was afterward sold to the Government, and was sunk in Charleston Harbor during the civil war to serve as an obstruction. Hence, it is estimated, the whale must have carried the harpoon not less than thirty-six years. In connection with this fact, Mr. William H. Dall gives an account, in the National Geographic Magazine, of a discussion with Captain E. P. Herendeen, of the United States National Museum, of cases of whales that have been supposed to have made their way from Greenland waters to Bering Strait, and to have been identified by the harpoons they carried. While it is very likely that the whale really makes the passage, an uncertainty must always be allowed, for ships were often changing ownership and their tools were sold and put on board of other vessels, and harpoon irons were sometimes given or traded to Eskimos. It therefore becomes possible that the animal was struck with a second-hand iron.Solidification of Hydrogen.—As soon as he was able to obtain liquid hydrogen in manageable quantities, in the fall of 1898, Mr. James Dewar began experiments for its solidification. The apparatus he used was like that employed in other solidification experiments, consisting of a small vacuum test-tube, containing the hydrogen, placed in a larger vessel of the same kind, with excess of the hydrogen partly filling the circular space between the two tubes. No solidification was produced, and the effort was suspended for a time, while the author attacked other problems. The experiments were renewed in 1899, with the advantage of more knowledge concerning reductions of temperature brought about by reduction of pressure. A slight leak of air in the apparatus was observed, which was frozen into an air snow when it met the cold vapor of hydrogen coming off, and this leak at a particular point of pressure caused a sudden solidification of the liquid hydrogen into a mass like frozen foam. An apparatus was then arranged that could be overturned, so that if any of the hydrogen was still liquid it would run out. None ran out, but by the aid of a strong light on the side of the apparatus opposite the eye the hydrogen was seen as a solid ice in the lower part, while the surface looked frothy. The melting point of hydrogen ice was determined at about 16° or 17° absolute (-257° or -256° C.). The solid seemed to possess the properties of the non-metallic elements rather than of the metals, among which it has been usual to class hydrogen.The Gegenschein.—Much interest prevails among astronomers at present concerning the question of the nature of theGegenschein. This German word, which means "opposite shine," is applied to designate a small, somewhat oblong, bright spot which is sometimesseen in the sky at night, nearly opposite the point which is at the time occupied by the sun on the opposite side of the globe. It is near the ecliptic, but appears two or three degrees away from exact opposition to the sun. It seems agreed that theGegenscheinis not atmospheric, but rather meteoric, being a reflection from some collection of meteors. The problem set before astronomers is to identify the meteors. A theory that they are connected with the asteroidal zone, or mass of meteors of which the known and numbered asteroids are conspicuous examples, has, according to Professor Barnard, "much in its favor, but there are objections to the theory which can not easily be reconciled with the observed facts." Mr. J. Evershed, of Kenley, England, assumes theGegenscheinto be a tail to the earth, produced by the escape of molecules of hydrogen and helium away from the globe in a direction opposite to the sun—much as a comet's tail is formed. Other observers suppose it to be connected with the zodiacal light or band, which is regarded as a body of meteors connected with the earth and accompanying it, and is plainly visible in the western sky after sunset in the spring, rising from the place of the sun toward the zenith; and Mr. William Anderson, of Madeira, publishes a figure with a demonstration, in The Observatory, to show how its place and appearance may be accounted for on this supposition. TheGegenscheinhas been compared in a homely way to the radiance which may be seen around the shadows of our heads cast by the sun upon the dewy grass early on a bright summer morning.Literature for Children.—Mr. Richard le Gallienne, in an article published in the Boston Transcript, laments the flood of rubbish that is poured out under the guise of children's books. The subject of literature for children is discussed in the Studies of the Colorado Scientific Society by Prof. E. S. Parsons, who remarks that three of the greatest classics of childhood were not written for children at all. "Pilgrim's Progress was a new type of sermon written by the tinker preacher in his prison cell at Bedford; Robinson Crusoe was a pseudo-history from the pen of one of the first great English realists; Gulliver's Travels was a political satire by the greatest of English satirists. The same thing is true of the stories of the Bible, of the Arabian Nights, of the folklore which strikes a sympathetic chord at once in the child's nature.... Child study, then, reveals the fact that the child nature is the counterpart of what is best in books—that children can appreciate literature." A friend of Professor Parsons wrote him of her daughter, nine years old, being very fond of her father's library, and "simply devoted" to the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. Harriet Martineau, when a child, "devoured all of Shakespeare," sitting on a footstool and reading by firelight, and making shirts, with Goldsmith or Thomson or Milton where she could glance at them occasionally. Another of Professor Parsons's friends read "all of Goethe's Faust with his little thirteen-year-old girl, to her great enjoyment," and the little girl afterward read alone all of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. "Many teachers have found young children delighted with Dante." These incidents and others point to the inference that it is not necessary to go outside of the world's great literature for fit material for a child's imaginative and emotional nature. One of Mr. Le Gallienne's main conclusions is that it is very hard to guess beforehand what the child will like.Geography and Exploration in 1899.—No great geographical discoveries were recorded during 1899, but much good work was done in exploration. Considerable interest has been taken in preparing expeditions of antarctic research, of which a Belgian expedition has returned with some important results, and Mr. Borchgrevink has begun work at Cape Adar, on the antarctic mainland. The search for Andrée has helped increase our knowledge of parts of the arctic coast. In Asia, Captain Deasy has laid down the whole of the before unknown course of the Yarkand River, and has furnished other information concerning little-known regions; and other surveys and explorations have been diligently prosecuted. About as much may be said of Africa, where "the want of adequate exploration of the mountainous regions on the borders ofCape Colony and Natal has been only too forcibly brought home" to the English. Expeditions sent out by Canadian surveys are constantly opening up new countries and producing maps of great geographical and industrial value. Mr. A. P. Low finds Labrador not quite so bleak and hopeless a country as had been generally believed. Sir Martin Conway has done some very creditable exploration in the Andes and in Tierra del Fuego, the scientific results of which are of considerable value. In Chile, Dr. Staffer and his colleagues have been exploring the wonderful fiords of the coast and the rivers that come down to them from the Andean range. Dr. Moreno has described the results of twenty-five years' exploration of the great Patagonian plains, and of the lakes and glaciers and mountains on the eastern face of the Andes. One of the most important scientific enterprises during the year, the London Times says, was the German oceanographical expedition in the Valdivia, under Professor Chum, which went south through the Atlantic to the edge of the antarctic ice, and north through the Indian Ocean to Sumatra, and home through the Red Sea.Royal Society Medalists.—The Copley medal was conferred, at the recent anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, upon Lord Rayleigh for his splendid service to physics, his investigations, the president said in presenting the award, having increased our knowledge in almost every department of physical science, covering the experimental as well as the mathematical parts of the subject. "His researches, from the range of subjects they cover, their abundance, and their importance, have rarely been paralleled in the history of physical science." A summary account of the principal ones was given in the sketch of him published in the twenty-fifth volume of the Popular Science Monthly (October, 1884). At the same meeting of the Royal Society the Royal medals were conferred upon Prof. G. F. Fitzgerald, for his brilliant contributions to physics, and Prof. William C. McIntosh, for his very important labors as a zoölogist. Professor Fitzgerald's investigations have been in the field of radiation and electrical theory, and in a manner complementary to those of J. Clerke Maxwell. Among his works is a memoir presenting a dynamic formulation of the electric theory of light on the basis of the principle of least action, which concludes with a remark upon the advantage of "emancipating our minds from the thraldom of a material ether." Professor McIntosh was spoken of as "one of a distinguished succession of monographers of the British fauna, who, beginning with Edward Forbes, have, during the last fifty years, done work highly creditable to British zoölogy." He is author of a great monograph of the British Annelids, which is still in progress of publication by the Royal Society, and of an important contribution to the Challenger reports, and was the founder of the first marine biological station in Great Britain—the Gatty Marine Laboratory at St. Andrews. The Davy medal was bestowed upon Edward Schunck for researches of very high importance in organic chemistry. These works include a remarkable series of contributions to the chemistry of the organic coloring matters, particularly those relating to the indigo plant and to the madder plant. Of late years he has studied, with distinguished success, the chemistry of chlorophyll.Anglo-Saxon Superiority.—The question of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race is at present interesting economists of other stocks, especially of the supposed Latin races. The fact of superiority seems to be conceded. The problem is to account for it. A French writer, M. Dumoulins, attributes it to the superiority of Anglo-Saxon educational institutions. Signor G. Sergi, the distinguished Italian anthropologist, thinks it is a result of the mixture of ethnic elements of which the English people are made up, and he goes over the history of the colonizations which have overtaken Britain, to show how upon the first neolithic settlers of the Mediterranean stocks came a small emigration of the Asiatic Aryan or Indo-European peoples. Cæsar's conquest brought in a Roman infusion with some African elements, which did not last long, but left their mark. Next the Anglo-Saxon tribes of northern Germany made the principal contribution to the formation of the English people. A portion of Scandinavian blood was added tothe composition, and on top of all came the Normans. These elements, none of which were extremely discordant with the others, became thoroughly mixed in the course of time, and matured into the English people as it is. The English resemble the Romans in their methods of colonization, political tact, practical sense, persistence, religious tolerance, the magnitude of their works and the boldness of their undertakings, and in their egotism working together with the principle of social solidarity. Both readily established themselves in new colonies, carrying there the civilization of the mother country and their systems of administration. The great roads and wonderful bridges constructed by the Romans are paralleled by the great Anglo-Saxon railway systems. As the Latin language became almost universal, so the English language is diffusing itself everywhere. But Signor Sergi fails to show why, if the English have taken so much from the Romans, the Italians, their direct descendants, have lost so much of what they once had. He reserves that question, after raising it, for future consideration.Carbonic Acid and Climate.—The great importance of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere as a factor in determining the climate of the earth has been confirmed by the researches of a considerable number of investigators. Its work appears to be that of an absorbent of the sun's radiant heat, retaining it and preventing its passing by us and leaving us in the cold temperature of space. Tyndall computes that it has in this capacity a power eighty times that of oxygen or nitrogen, while it is excelled by water vapor with ninety-two times that of those gases. Lecher and Pretner, on the other hand, believe that carbonic acid is the only agent concerned in the service. Mr. Cyrus F. Talman, Jr., in view of the fact that carbonic acid is an important factor among geological agencies, has published, in the Journal of Geology, a study of the conditions of the content of that gas in the ocean, a study that leads to the consideration of the chemistry of the ocean. It seems to be clear that with falling temperature the ocean will dissolve carbonic acid from the air. Dr. T. C. Chamberlin has shown that the amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere at any one time, and therefore the climate of the earth at that time, depends upon the value of the ratio of the supply of the gas to its depletion. Besides the continuous supply that the atmosphere receives from the interior of the earth and from planetary space and the continuous depletion due to the formation of carbonates in place of the igneous alkali earth silicates, there are variations in the ratio of supply to depletion dependent upon the attitude of the land and the water. A large exposure of land surface is correlated with a rapid solution of calcium and magnesium carbonates, which, becoming bicarbonates, represent a loss of carbonic acid to the atmosphere. On the other hand, the formation of the normal carbonate by lime-secreting animals causes a direct liberation of the second equivalent of the bicarbonate. Therefore extensive oceans and abundant marine life are correlated with warm climate. After a somewhat more minute discussion of the action, Mr. Talman concludes that the ocean very greatly intensifies the secular variation of the earth's temperature, although acting as a moderating agent in the minor cycles.Pearl Mussels.—In his report to the United States Fish Commission on the Pearly Fresh-Water Mussels of the United States, Mr. Charles T. Simpson speaks of the great variety of conditions under which they live. They show great capacity for adaptation. Most of them are found in shallow water, but certain forms live at considerable depths. Some bury themselves among the fibrous roots of trees, some in the muddy, sandy banks just below the surface of the water, and some, as in Lake Tiberias (Palestine) and Lake Tanganyika (Africa), under six hundred or more feet of water. Ordinarily they die in a very short time if taken out of the water—in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, as a rule—and they generally die in a few hours when exposed to the sun. But many species, thus tender in the open air, will lie buried in dried mud for a long time. In June, 1850, a living pond mussel was sent to London, from Australia, which had been out of water for more than a year. Along a small stream near Braidentown,Fla., which runs only during about three months in summer and is dry the rest of the year, thousands of a large colony ofUnio obesusmay be found just buried in the sandy banks or among the flags and rushes of the bottom, where there is very little moisture, all in healthy condition. Mr. Simpson has laid these mussels in the sun for months without killing them. The specimens which live in perennial water seem to die soon if removed from it, while those which inhabit streams or ponds that often dry up will live a long time out of water. Some species in rocky streams live in the crevices of the rocks. In the Big Vermilion River, in La Salle County, Illinois, a swift, rocky stream, the author has found living mussels that had been so washed about that nearly all the epidermis was destroyed. The shells in such streams are usually heavier than those in more quiet water.
LATE STATE GEOLOGIST OF OHIO; LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.All persons interested in American science were surprised and shocked at learning of the death, from heart trouble, on October 16, 1899, of Prof. Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University. The event occurred only little less than two months after Professor Orton had presided, with a simplicity of manner that did not hide but rather heightened the traits of vigor in his character, over the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at his home in Columbus, Ohio. The services he rendered to geology, his long and honorable career as an educator, and his continual and consistent insistence upon the faithful use ofthe scientific method well entitle him to be remembered as one of the most meritorious of American scientific workers.Edward Ortonwas born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., March 9, 1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born in England in 1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and owners of Farmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of the Ortons in the United States are derived, and represented his town in the General Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grandson of Thomas Orton, was one of the original purchasers and settlers of Litchfield, Conn., where he owned a square mile of land known as Orton Hill, on the south side of Bantam Lake. Two of the maternal ancestors of the subject of this sketch fought in the colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the Revolution.Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel G. Orton, D. D., and received further training preparatory for college in the academies of Westfield and Fredonia, N. Y. He entered Hamilton College, whence his father had been graduated in 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore, and was graduated in 1848 in a class among the other members of which were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological Seminary, New York, and the Hon. F. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of Albany, N. Y., and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught for a number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Franklin, N. Y., and Chester, N. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science in the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post-graduate studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the Lawrence Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and Gray as his teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover Seminaries. While teaching at Chester, N. Y., he was called to Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took charge of the preparatory department in 1865; was made Professor of Natural History shortly afterward, and was made president of the college in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at the end of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State University at Columbus.When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken in 1869 under the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton was appointed an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and was continued by reappointment by Governor E. F. Noyes. When Professor Newberry withdrew from the survey in 1881, Professor Orton was appointed State Geologist by Governor Charles Foster, and he was afterward reappointed to the position successively by Governors Hoadley, Foraker, Campbell, and Bushnell. He retainedthe title of State Geologist till his death, although he had not been engaged in any active public work on the survey for a considerable time.The Ohio State University having been established on the basis of the grants of land made to the States for colleges under the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Professor Orton was appointed its president and Professor of Geology. He discharged the duties of this office for eight years, or till 1881. But the executive work of the president's office was irksome to him, since it grew constantly heavier as the young college expanded, and therefore left him less and less time for teaching and research in geology. Being in a measure compelled to make a choice between the two fields of activity, he chose the less ambitious position, resigning the presidency, and assuming the position of Professor of Geology, which he retained for the remainder of his life. The geological building of the university is named after him—Orton Hall. Besides his work on the Geological Survey of Ohio and his participation in the composition of its reports, Professor Orton prepared, for the Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, a paper on the New Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana, and another, only recently published in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States Survey, on the Rock Waters of Ohio; a volume for the Geological Survey of Kentucky on the Petroliferous Production of the Western Part of the State, published in 1891; and a report on petroliferous productions which is in process of publication by the Geological Survey of New York.In the paper on the Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana the discovery of the supply of those materials, the great value of which was only realized in 1884 and afterward, is spoken of as being more surprising and anomalous than any similar discovery that had preceded it, and as a development which experts were hardly more prepared for than others. The oil and gas derived from the Trenton limestone in certain parts of these States were found to differ from the oil and gas in the Pennsylvania wells in chemical composition and physical properties, in the horizons from which they were obtained, in the structural features of the rocks associated with their production, and, most of all, in the kind of rock that produced them. "No facts more unexpected have ever been brought to light in connection with the geology of this country than those with which we are now becoming acquainted." Professor Orton's paper, which fills one hundred and eighty of the large pages of the report of the Geological Survey, includes a sketch of the history of the discovery to July, 1887, when it was prepared; a designation of what was known in regard to the geological scale and geological structureof the regions within which the new fields are embraced, and the tracing of the chief factors that influence or control the productiveness of the oil rock, with the description of the special features and boundaries of the several fields and the setting forth of the leading facts and present development of these lately found sources of power. Two principal conditions under which the new oil rock had proved petroliferous on a large scale were found to be porosity, connected with and apparently dependent on the chemical transformation of the upper portion of the limestone, for a number of feet in thickness, into a highly crystalline dolomite; and a relief resulting from slight warping of the strata, whereby the common contents of the porous portions of the Trenton limestone had been differentiated by gravity, the gas and oil seeking the highest levels, and the salt water maintaining a lower but definite elevation in every field. Professor Orton found nothing in the new experience to make it safe to count the Trenton limestone an oil rock or a gas rock in any locality, unless it could be shown to have undergone the dolomitic replacement by which its porosity was assured; and even in case it had suffered this transformation it would not be found a reservoir of gas or oil in an important sense unless some parts of it had acquired the relief essential to the due separation of its liquid and gaseous contents.The report on the Rock Waters of Ohio concerns, first, those waters, chiefly in the northwestern and western part of the State, that are obtained from a considerable depth as compared with ordinary wells, the knowledge of which was almost wholly derived from wells drilled in the search for oil and gas, and was necessarily fragmentary and incomplete; because water was not included among the objects of search, but was considered a hindrance and obstruction to be got out of the way as well as possible; and, second, flowing wells, including only those having considerable head of pressure and those occurring in considerable areas, all of which belong entirely to the drift. Further, a brief review is given of some facts of unusual interest that were developed in the deep drillings concerning the preglacial drainage system of the part of the State in question. Indications of old river channels, one of which seems to have been extensive, were found at several points. Among the curious results of these studies was the conclusion, "seeming to be already established," "that the Ohio River, as we now know the stream, is of recent origin, and that the main volume of water gathered in it at the present time originally flowed across the State to the northward at least as far as Auglaize and Mercer Counties, where it turned to the westward toward the present lines of Wabash drainage in Indiana." Professor Orton seems to haveplaced considerable emphasis on the value of a study of the rocky floor of the State, concerning which all we know at present is derived from the revelations of deep drillings at haphazard; and he thought it would be a good work for the State to make use of all accessible data of this kind at once in constructing a model of the rocky floor of the region under review. The care and fidelity with which he studied the underground geology are exemplified in a map attached to the paper on the oil and gas fields, in which the horizons of the Trenton limestone are indicated and approximately bounded as they occur by gradations ranging from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, from elevations above the ocean level to one thousand and more feet below. Another contribution of Professor Orton's which may appropriately be given special notice is his part of the article on Ohio in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a succinct, clear, and comprehensive account of the geology of the whole State is given, with its salient features delineated so sharply that one may almost conceive from it a definite geological picture of the region.Of all his scientific work, however, Professor Orton regarded the fixing of the order of the coal measures of Ohio as the most important; and he considered the determination of the order of the subcarboniferous strata, and particularly of the Berea Grit, as constituting a large permanent service to the study of the geology of the State.At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Orton contributed a special paper on the local geology of Columbus, the place of the meeting, in which he dwelt largely on the origin of the drift that marks the superficial geology of the vicinity.Of the work he has done for the increase and advancement of knowledge, the extent of a part of which we have only faintly indicated by the mention of a few particular researches, Professor Orton put the highest value on his labors as a teacher, a calling to which he was devoted for more than half a century. He found peculiar pleasure in instructing the children of the old pupils whom he had taught in his younger days. He was actively concerned in the promotion and extension of sanitary science, his addresses in that field having been one of the factors that led to the establishment of the Ohio State Board of Health. He was also greatly interested in the advancement of agriculture.A theme on which Professor Orton was fond of dwelling in his public addresses was the amount and value of what has been accomplished within a comparatively short time in the world's history by the use of the methods of science. In an address delivered beforethe alumni of Hamilton College in 1888 he maintained that we were living in a revolutionary period, which is marked by a great advance in knowledge and a vastly larger control of the forces of Nature; by a large increase in freedom of thought and action; by a sudden and remarkable addition to the mobility of man, accompanied by an unexampled growth of great cities; and by an incalculable addition to the wealth of the world. Accompanying these great changes in the material and intellectual world were certain moral transformations appearing to grow out of them. All these advances were ascribed to a movement—a new method of investigating Nature—that began, so far as its particular and continuous development is concerned, about three hundred years ago, but to which no date or founder's name could be attached. This new philosophy thoroughly respected Nature, was humble, patient in the accumulation of facts and the trial of its theories, comprehensive, progressive, and hopeful. It has given us the marvelous increase of knowledge which especially marks the nineteenth century; it has impressed its influence upon all branches of study, and has wrought great improvements in methods and results; and has rendered an immense and inestimable service to Christian theology, and done much to broaden and rationalize it and thus to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on the world. Finally, the method of science was pronounced "the best gift that God has given to the mind of man." A similar train of thought as to the material aspects is apparent, though in a somewhat different form, in an address on The Stored (or Fossil) Power of the World, delivered in 1894.A considerable part of Professor Orton's presidential address at the last meeting of the American Association was devoted to a summary of the conclusions derived from Alfred Russell Wallace's book, The Wonderful Century, that the progress accomplished in the present century far outweighs the entire progress of the human race from the beginning up to 1800. In this address, also, the author felicitously spoke of the scope of the American Association as possibly including the whole continent, and its object as the advancement of science, the discovery of new truth. "It is possible that we could make ourselves more interesting to the general public if we occasionally forswore our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of our time in restating established truths." But the discoveries recorded, though often fragmentary and devoid of special interest to the outside world, all had a place in the great temple of knowledge; and the speaker hoped that although no great discoveries should be reported this time, the meeting might still be a memorable one through the inspiration it would give to the multitude of workers in the several fields of science.Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885; received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and that of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected President of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was designated at the Boston meeting of the American Association, 1898, as president for the Columbus meeting, 1899.In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor Orton was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of man on this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, and had recently been made a member of its board of trustees. He was a prominent member of the Old Northwest Genealogical Society, and was the author of a volume, published in 1896, on the Genealogy of the Orton Family in America. The absolute freedom of his character from any desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well shown by the fact that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor, in the spare minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one paragraph of a hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous members of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard.He was stricken with hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was able to do a considerable amount of work in his profession afterward. A few days before his death he said, in a note, that he felt that he had lived out his allotted time, and that his work was done. He never met his classes again, though he continued able to be up and about his home till the hour of his death. He seemed to feel that the solemn event was drawing close, during the last two days of his life, and his mind was always busy with the great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He had formed an affirmative answer apparently, as he read Browning's Prospice repeatedly in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the greatest pleasure and solace. His death was a quiet and painless one—a fitting end to a beautiful life.Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent annual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of incinerations at the Père Lachaise crematory has almost steadily increased since 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513, making 37,068 from the beginning. A fair proportion of the number were women. There are now in Europe and America seventy crematories, twenty-seven of which are in Italy and twenty in the United States. Cremation is making good progress in England, where four crematories are reported from, and two are in course of erection. Germany has six, where 423 incinerations took place in 1898; Switzerland and Sweden have two each, Denmark one, and one has been authorized in Norway.
LATE STATE GEOLOGIST OF OHIO; LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
All persons interested in American science were surprised and shocked at learning of the death, from heart trouble, on October 16, 1899, of Prof. Edward Orton, of the Ohio State University. The event occurred only little less than two months after Professor Orton had presided, with a simplicity of manner that did not hide but rather heightened the traits of vigor in his character, over the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at his home in Columbus, Ohio. The services he rendered to geology, his long and honorable career as an educator, and his continual and consistent insistence upon the faithful use ofthe scientific method well entitle him to be remembered as one of the most meritorious of American scientific workers.
Edward Ortonwas born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., March 9, 1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born in England in 1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and owners of Farmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of the Ortons in the United States are derived, and represented his town in the General Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grandson of Thomas Orton, was one of the original purchasers and settlers of Litchfield, Conn., where he owned a square mile of land known as Orton Hill, on the south side of Bantam Lake. Two of the maternal ancestors of the subject of this sketch fought in the colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the Revolution.
Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel G. Orton, D. D., and received further training preparatory for college in the academies of Westfield and Fredonia, N. Y. He entered Hamilton College, whence his father had been graduated in 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore, and was graduated in 1848 in a class among the other members of which were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological Seminary, New York, and the Hon. F. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of Albany, N. Y., and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught for a number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Franklin, N. Y., and Chester, N. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science in the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post-graduate studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the Lawrence Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and Gray as his teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover Seminaries. While teaching at Chester, N. Y., he was called to Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took charge of the preparatory department in 1865; was made Professor of Natural History shortly afterward, and was made president of the college in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at the end of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State University at Columbus.
When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken in 1869 under the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton was appointed an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and was continued by reappointment by Governor E. F. Noyes. When Professor Newberry withdrew from the survey in 1881, Professor Orton was appointed State Geologist by Governor Charles Foster, and he was afterward reappointed to the position successively by Governors Hoadley, Foraker, Campbell, and Bushnell. He retainedthe title of State Geologist till his death, although he had not been engaged in any active public work on the survey for a considerable time.
The Ohio State University having been established on the basis of the grants of land made to the States for colleges under the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Professor Orton was appointed its president and Professor of Geology. He discharged the duties of this office for eight years, or till 1881. But the executive work of the president's office was irksome to him, since it grew constantly heavier as the young college expanded, and therefore left him less and less time for teaching and research in geology. Being in a measure compelled to make a choice between the two fields of activity, he chose the less ambitious position, resigning the presidency, and assuming the position of Professor of Geology, which he retained for the remainder of his life. The geological building of the university is named after him—Orton Hall. Besides his work on the Geological Survey of Ohio and his participation in the composition of its reports, Professor Orton prepared, for the Eighth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, a paper on the New Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana, and another, only recently published in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States Survey, on the Rock Waters of Ohio; a volume for the Geological Survey of Kentucky on the Petroliferous Production of the Western Part of the State, published in 1891; and a report on petroliferous productions which is in process of publication by the Geological Survey of New York.
In the paper on the Oil and Gas Fields of Ohio and Indiana the discovery of the supply of those materials, the great value of which was only realized in 1884 and afterward, is spoken of as being more surprising and anomalous than any similar discovery that had preceded it, and as a development which experts were hardly more prepared for than others. The oil and gas derived from the Trenton limestone in certain parts of these States were found to differ from the oil and gas in the Pennsylvania wells in chemical composition and physical properties, in the horizons from which they were obtained, in the structural features of the rocks associated with their production, and, most of all, in the kind of rock that produced them. "No facts more unexpected have ever been brought to light in connection with the geology of this country than those with which we are now becoming acquainted." Professor Orton's paper, which fills one hundred and eighty of the large pages of the report of the Geological Survey, includes a sketch of the history of the discovery to July, 1887, when it was prepared; a designation of what was known in regard to the geological scale and geological structureof the regions within which the new fields are embraced, and the tracing of the chief factors that influence or control the productiveness of the oil rock, with the description of the special features and boundaries of the several fields and the setting forth of the leading facts and present development of these lately found sources of power. Two principal conditions under which the new oil rock had proved petroliferous on a large scale were found to be porosity, connected with and apparently dependent on the chemical transformation of the upper portion of the limestone, for a number of feet in thickness, into a highly crystalline dolomite; and a relief resulting from slight warping of the strata, whereby the common contents of the porous portions of the Trenton limestone had been differentiated by gravity, the gas and oil seeking the highest levels, and the salt water maintaining a lower but definite elevation in every field. Professor Orton found nothing in the new experience to make it safe to count the Trenton limestone an oil rock or a gas rock in any locality, unless it could be shown to have undergone the dolomitic replacement by which its porosity was assured; and even in case it had suffered this transformation it would not be found a reservoir of gas or oil in an important sense unless some parts of it had acquired the relief essential to the due separation of its liquid and gaseous contents.
The report on the Rock Waters of Ohio concerns, first, those waters, chiefly in the northwestern and western part of the State, that are obtained from a considerable depth as compared with ordinary wells, the knowledge of which was almost wholly derived from wells drilled in the search for oil and gas, and was necessarily fragmentary and incomplete; because water was not included among the objects of search, but was considered a hindrance and obstruction to be got out of the way as well as possible; and, second, flowing wells, including only those having considerable head of pressure and those occurring in considerable areas, all of which belong entirely to the drift. Further, a brief review is given of some facts of unusual interest that were developed in the deep drillings concerning the preglacial drainage system of the part of the State in question. Indications of old river channels, one of which seems to have been extensive, were found at several points. Among the curious results of these studies was the conclusion, "seeming to be already established," "that the Ohio River, as we now know the stream, is of recent origin, and that the main volume of water gathered in it at the present time originally flowed across the State to the northward at least as far as Auglaize and Mercer Counties, where it turned to the westward toward the present lines of Wabash drainage in Indiana." Professor Orton seems to haveplaced considerable emphasis on the value of a study of the rocky floor of the State, concerning which all we know at present is derived from the revelations of deep drillings at haphazard; and he thought it would be a good work for the State to make use of all accessible data of this kind at once in constructing a model of the rocky floor of the region under review. The care and fidelity with which he studied the underground geology are exemplified in a map attached to the paper on the oil and gas fields, in which the horizons of the Trenton limestone are indicated and approximately bounded as they occur by gradations ranging from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, from elevations above the ocean level to one thousand and more feet below. Another contribution of Professor Orton's which may appropriately be given special notice is his part of the article on Ohio in the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a succinct, clear, and comprehensive account of the geology of the whole State is given, with its salient features delineated so sharply that one may almost conceive from it a definite geological picture of the region.
Of all his scientific work, however, Professor Orton regarded the fixing of the order of the coal measures of Ohio as the most important; and he considered the determination of the order of the subcarboniferous strata, and particularly of the Berea Grit, as constituting a large permanent service to the study of the geology of the State.
At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Professor Orton contributed a special paper on the local geology of Columbus, the place of the meeting, in which he dwelt largely on the origin of the drift that marks the superficial geology of the vicinity.
Of the work he has done for the increase and advancement of knowledge, the extent of a part of which we have only faintly indicated by the mention of a few particular researches, Professor Orton put the highest value on his labors as a teacher, a calling to which he was devoted for more than half a century. He found peculiar pleasure in instructing the children of the old pupils whom he had taught in his younger days. He was actively concerned in the promotion and extension of sanitary science, his addresses in that field having been one of the factors that led to the establishment of the Ohio State Board of Health. He was also greatly interested in the advancement of agriculture.
A theme on which Professor Orton was fond of dwelling in his public addresses was the amount and value of what has been accomplished within a comparatively short time in the world's history by the use of the methods of science. In an address delivered beforethe alumni of Hamilton College in 1888 he maintained that we were living in a revolutionary period, which is marked by a great advance in knowledge and a vastly larger control of the forces of Nature; by a large increase in freedom of thought and action; by a sudden and remarkable addition to the mobility of man, accompanied by an unexampled growth of great cities; and by an incalculable addition to the wealth of the world. Accompanying these great changes in the material and intellectual world were certain moral transformations appearing to grow out of them. All these advances were ascribed to a movement—a new method of investigating Nature—that began, so far as its particular and continuous development is concerned, about three hundred years ago, but to which no date or founder's name could be attached. This new philosophy thoroughly respected Nature, was humble, patient in the accumulation of facts and the trial of its theories, comprehensive, progressive, and hopeful. It has given us the marvelous increase of knowledge which especially marks the nineteenth century; it has impressed its influence upon all branches of study, and has wrought great improvements in methods and results; and has rendered an immense and inestimable service to Christian theology, and done much to broaden and rationalize it and thus to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on the world. Finally, the method of science was pronounced "the best gift that God has given to the mind of man." A similar train of thought as to the material aspects is apparent, though in a somewhat different form, in an address on The Stored (or Fossil) Power of the World, delivered in 1894.
A considerable part of Professor Orton's presidential address at the last meeting of the American Association was devoted to a summary of the conclusions derived from Alfred Russell Wallace's book, The Wonderful Century, that the progress accomplished in the present century far outweighs the entire progress of the human race from the beginning up to 1800. In this address, also, the author felicitously spoke of the scope of the American Association as possibly including the whole continent, and its object as the advancement of science, the discovery of new truth. "It is possible that we could make ourselves more interesting to the general public if we occasionally forswore our loyalty to our name and spent a portion of our time in restating established truths." But the discoveries recorded, though often fragmentary and devoid of special interest to the outside world, all had a place in the great temple of knowledge; and the speaker hoped that although no great discoveries should be reported this time, the meeting might still be a memorable one through the inspiration it would give to the multitude of workers in the several fields of science.
Professor Orton was a member of several learned societies; was President of the Sanitary Association of Ohio in 1884 and 1885; received the degree of Ph. D. from Hamilton College in 1876, and that of LL. D. from the Ohio State University in 1881; was elected President of the Geological Society of America in 1896; and was designated at the Boston meeting of the American Association, 1898, as president for the Columbus meeting, 1899.
In addition to his interests in science and theology, Professor Orton was keenly alive to everything that bore on the history of man on this planet. He was long a member of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, and had recently been made a member of its board of trustees. He was a prominent member of the Old Northwest Genealogical Society, and was the author of a volume, published in 1896, on the Genealogy of the Orton Family in America. The absolute freedom of his character from any desire for display or self-aggrandizement is well shown by the fact that in this volume, compiled, with enormous labor, in the spare minutes of a busy life, he cuts himself off with one paragraph of a hundred words, while devoting pages to contemporaneous members of the family of whom the world has never elsewhere heard.
He was stricken with hemiplegia in December, 1891, but was able to do a considerable amount of work in his profession afterward. A few days before his death he said, in a note, that he felt that he had lived out his allotted time, and that his work was done. He never met his classes again, though he continued able to be up and about his home till the hour of his death. He seemed to feel that the solemn event was drawing close, during the last two days of his life, and his mind was always busy with the great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He had formed an affirmative answer apparently, as he read Browning's Prospice repeatedly in his last hours, and seemed to find in it the greatest pleasure and solace. His death was a quiet and painless one—a fitting end to a beautiful life.
Statistics of cremation, presented by M. Bourneville at the recent annual meeting of the society in Paris, show that the number of incinerations at the Père Lachaise crematory has almost steadily increased since 1889, and that the whole number last year was 4,513, making 37,068 from the beginning. A fair proportion of the number were women. There are now in Europe and America seventy crematories, twenty-seven of which are in Italy and twenty in the United States. Cremation is making good progress in England, where four crematories are reported from, and two are in course of erection. Germany has six, where 423 incinerations took place in 1898; Switzerland and Sweden have two each, Denmark one, and one has been authorized in Norway.
Editor's Table.A COMMISSION IN DIFFICULTIES.The synopsis which has been given to the press of the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is not encouraging reading for those who like to believe in legislation as an infallible panacea for all public and social ills. The tone of the document indeed is very far from being one of triumph. The note struck in the very first paragraph is the need for more legislation to save the copious legislation already passed from proving ineffectual and abortive. Whether it is that Congress does not wish to make the work of the commission successful, or whether it has begun to have a wise distrust of its own powers, we can not say; but the commissioners complain bitterly of its inaction. We can not do better than quote their own words: "The reasons for the failure of the law to accomplish the purposes for which it was enacted have been so frequently and fully set forth that repetition can not add to their force or make them better understood. It is sufficient to say that the existing situation and the developments of the past year render more imperative than ever before the necessity for speedy and suitable legislation. We therefore renew the recommendations heretofore made, and earnestly urge their early consideration and adoption."As the document proceeds, we see the good commissioners at war with the wicked railways, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, on the whole, the wicked railways have the best of it. The commissioners admit that certain cases which have come before the courts have been decided against them, and in favor of the railways; but they are far from disclosing the full extent of the discouragement, not to say mortification, they receive. The business of the commission is to interfere between the railways and their customers—the public—in the interest of the latter. The railways naturally consider this a rather one-sided function, and are not extremely zealous to aid in its performance. They have their own troubles with the public, and have no commission to come to their assistance. Everybody is after cheap railway rates, just as everybody is after cheap goods; and the means sometimes resorted to to get reductions would at least hold their own for astuteness with any that could be concocted in a traffic office for the raising of rates. We give the commissioners full credit for doing their best to protect the interests of the public, but we can not help doubting whether, on the whole, the public has derived much benefit from their efforts. In fact, we are strongly inclined to the opinion that the whole idea of the commission is simply a legislative blunder.The railways undoubtedly possess great powers which theoretically there is nothing to prevent their abusing to almost any extent. But what is theoretically possible is not always practically possible. The President of the United States possesses great powers, which theoretically he might abuse to any extent; so does the Queen of England; so do many other potentates. But of all the evil that is theoretically possible, how much is carried out in practice? All kinds of thingsmighthappen if people were fools enough to do all the harm that it is in their power to do. The great saving fact is that it is not possible to go veryfar in doing harm to others without doing it to yourself. It is this fact which the insatiable legislation-monger ignores. He has an infinite faith in the mischief that will happen if things are left alone. He can not bear to think that somebody is not looking after everybody. He has no faith whatever in natural law or natural actions and reactions, and would hoot the idea of what the poet Wordsworth calls a "wise passiveness." Such people have little conception of the mischief they do, and of the good that fails of realization through their pestilent activity. The readers of Dickens will perhaps remember Mrs. Pardiggle and the admirable system of education she applied to her numerous family of children. The unhappy youngsters were under orders every hour of the day; they were marched round the country with their mother when she went on visits of charity, and compelled to contribute out of their own (nominal) pocket money to all kinds of religious and benevolent schemes. How they kicked and rebelled, and what distressing passions were roused in their youthful breasts, the great novelist has told us; and we think we may take his word for it. The fussy legislator is a Pardiggle. If he would leave things alone, opposing interests would find amodus vivendi, and practical justice would more and more assert itself. The more interference there is between parties who in the last resort are dependent on one another's good will, the less likely they are to recognize their substantial identity of interest. If the interference is wholly in the interest of one of the parties, the other is sure to be forced into an undesirable attitude; while the one whose protection is the object in view will not unnaturally take all the protection he can get, and look for something more.What is wanted to put the relations between the railways and the public upon the most satisfactory footing possible is, in the first place, less legislative interference; and, in the second, a higher tone of business morality throughout the community. We place this second not as underrating its importance, but because we believe it would to some extent flow from the first. It is when the public transfers its right of eminent domain to a railway corporation that it should take adequate measures to protect its own interests; but how can this be done when legislation is sold—when charters are given or withheld, according to the amount of money available for purposes of persuasion? With honest legislators and honest courts there would be very little trouble between the railways and the public, and such as arose could be easily remedied. Commerce commissions are a testimony to the existence of low standards of business morality; and, unfortunately, they tend to keep them low, if not to make them lower.The sooner we make up our minds to trust more to moral influences freely acting in the intercourse of man with man and of interest with interest, and less to legal compulsion, the better it will be for us in every department of our national life. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is a virtual confession of the failure of legislation to accomplish a purpose which was supposed to be easily within its field of action. The confession is coupled with a demand for more legislation, but, were the demand conceded, who can guarantee that more still would not be wanted? The railways are not at the end of their resources, and new laws would, we fear, be only too likely to suggest new means of evasion. No; the remedy lies elsewhere, and if Congress is wise it will give that remedy a trial byallowing the railways and the public a chance to arrange terms between them, with public opinion as the principal court of appeal.THE FUNCTION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.A paper that was read by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Library Club, on the subject of Paternalism in Public Libraries, and which we find in the Library Journal for November last, is one which, in our opinion, deserves to be separately printed and widely circulated. It abounds in good sense, and preaches a doctrine of self-help and self-reliance which is much needed in these days.A question which the author of the paper does not discuss, but which, it seems to us, lies at the threshold of the whole subject, is whether the very existence of a public library—if we understand by the term a library supported by public taxes—is not in itself an exemplification of paternalism. Mr. Swift strikes us as a benevolent bureaucrat who wants to give the people at large a wider liberty in the matter of reading than the ruling influences of time and place are disposed to allow. He sees that liberty is good, that leading strings belong to infancy, and he raises his protest against a paternalism in the management of public libraries which, under the plea of providing only the most approved reading for all classes, would tend to the repression of individuality in the reader and the establishment of the supremacy of commonplace. But what if commonplace insists on being supreme and shutting out whatever is not of one complexion with itself? How are we to resist its demand in the administration of a State-supported, and therefore majority-ruled, institution? "You offer us," say its representatives, "a liberty we do not want for ourselves, and are not prepared to concede to others, as we are sure it can not be for their good. We are not going to consult the tastes of cranks, criminals, intellectual aristocrats, or social mugwumps of any kind. For all practical purposes we are the public, and we mean to run this public library." To the objection that a portion, at least, of the taxes is paid by those whose views and tastes are not going to be consulted, the answer would be ready: "It is for the majority to say how taxes shall be applied." We recognize the excellence of Mr. Swift's intentions and sympathize with his way of looking at things, but we feel that his objections to "paternalism" in connection with public libraries are delivered from a somewhat shaky platform. We observe that a periodical quoted in the Library Journal—the Overland Monthly—makes the remark that "there is nothing to be said for free books that could not be urged in favor of free beefsteaks and free overcoats."Some of the points, however, that are made by Mr. Swift are deserving of attention. The several professions—law, medicine, theology, etc.—would more or less like to have only such books placed upon the shelves of a public library as represent what may be called their respective orthodoxies. But, as Mr. Swift observes, "libraries are as much the depositories of the folly as of the wisdom of the ages." A library, therefore, should tell us what men have thought and attempted in the past, and what they are thinking and attempting now. It is for schools and colleges, for newspapers and reviews, to afford guidance in the wilderness of opinions, not for the library to make a point of putting out of people's reach everything that is not in line with the scientific, literary, or other orthodoxy of the hour."A subtle form of paternalism is the deliberate inculcation of the patriotic spirit, especially in children." Mr. Swift is a brave man to attempt to stem this particular torrent. He thinks there are times when one who loves his country would feel shame for it rather than pride, and that the motto "My country right or wrong" is not the most wholesome sentiment that can be impressed on the mind of youth. "To fill a child with the consummate virtues of Washington, Jefferson, and other of our immortals, and to leave him ignorant of the greatness of Cromwell and of William the Silent, is a serious injustice to the child and to the cause of education." Not only is this done, but, in the domain of literature as well, it seems as if the only names with which public-school pupils obtain any acquaintance are those of national authors. So far as poetry is concerned, Mr. Swift says that almost the only name he hears from the lips of children frequenting the Public Library is "Longfellow." He can not remember ever having had a call from a child for Tennyson, while Wordsworth in the school region is equally unknown.Apart from the studied inculcation of a narrow patriotism, the author of the paper we are considering thinks that there is altogether too much paternalism shown in the choice of children's reading. He has only a limited and feeble faith in "children's rooms" in public libraries. They are very much, he thinks, like Sunday schools—convenient places for parents to unload their offspring. The aim of the censorship is to eliminate everything that is not in accord with the most approved canons of juvenile life and thought, leaving only what is ready for immediate acceptance and assimilation. Such a policy, Mr. Swift holds, is not favorable either to individuality or to intellectual growth. "We must," he says, "take books, like life, as we find them, and learn to distinguish good and bad; learn, as we ought, that the good is not so good as we have been told it is, and that the bad contains a strong infusion of good. No wrecks are so fearful as those which come to the young who have up to a point led 'sheltered lives.'"It is not, however, children only who get the benefit of a benevolent protective policy. Selecting committees are quite prepared to look after grown-up people as well, and keep out of their way books which might prove too exciting, which might reveal depths of passion such as persons leading decorous lives are not supposed to know anything about, or otherwise agitate the tranquil mill pond of their existence. It does not occur to them that thus the salt and savor of human life are expelled, and that, instead of the free play of vital forces, there supervenes a dreary mechanic round of semi-automatic activities unvisited by enthusiasm, untouched by strong desire, without dream or vision or any quickening of the heart or the imagination. Some good people are excessively particular not only as to what may threaten moral disturbance, but as to anything that may encourage departures from conventional modes of speech and deportment. They do not like to admit books that they regard as vulgar, and a great mark of vulgarity in their opinion is the use of slang. Yet so accomplished alittérateuras Mr. William Archer told us lately that he pleads guilty to "an unholy relish" for the talk of "Chimmie Fadden" and his Chicago contemporary "Artie." To him, as to Mr. Swift, the books in which these worthies disport themselvesmean something, and something deserving of attention. That being the case, the vulgarity, which is part ofthe picture, becomes in proportion to its truth an element of value. Mr. Swift, very bold and like the ancient prophet, says plainly: "Harmless books in general are mediocre books; if a new note in morals or society is struck, the suggestion of a possible injuriousness at once arises."Taken as a whole, Mr. Swift's paper is a strong plea for individualism and liberty. As such we have felt it a duty to call attention to it, and we trust that it will in some way obtain a more general circulation than can be afforded by the useful, but somewhat technical, columns of the Library Journal.
The synopsis which has been given to the press of the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is not encouraging reading for those who like to believe in legislation as an infallible panacea for all public and social ills. The tone of the document indeed is very far from being one of triumph. The note struck in the very first paragraph is the need for more legislation to save the copious legislation already passed from proving ineffectual and abortive. Whether it is that Congress does not wish to make the work of the commission successful, or whether it has begun to have a wise distrust of its own powers, we can not say; but the commissioners complain bitterly of its inaction. We can not do better than quote their own words: "The reasons for the failure of the law to accomplish the purposes for which it was enacted have been so frequently and fully set forth that repetition can not add to their force or make them better understood. It is sufficient to say that the existing situation and the developments of the past year render more imperative than ever before the necessity for speedy and suitable legislation. We therefore renew the recommendations heretofore made, and earnestly urge their early consideration and adoption."
As the document proceeds, we see the good commissioners at war with the wicked railways, and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, on the whole, the wicked railways have the best of it. The commissioners admit that certain cases which have come before the courts have been decided against them, and in favor of the railways; but they are far from disclosing the full extent of the discouragement, not to say mortification, they receive. The business of the commission is to interfere between the railways and their customers—the public—in the interest of the latter. The railways naturally consider this a rather one-sided function, and are not extremely zealous to aid in its performance. They have their own troubles with the public, and have no commission to come to their assistance. Everybody is after cheap railway rates, just as everybody is after cheap goods; and the means sometimes resorted to to get reductions would at least hold their own for astuteness with any that could be concocted in a traffic office for the raising of rates. We give the commissioners full credit for doing their best to protect the interests of the public, but we can not help doubting whether, on the whole, the public has derived much benefit from their efforts. In fact, we are strongly inclined to the opinion that the whole idea of the commission is simply a legislative blunder.
The railways undoubtedly possess great powers which theoretically there is nothing to prevent their abusing to almost any extent. But what is theoretically possible is not always practically possible. The President of the United States possesses great powers, which theoretically he might abuse to any extent; so does the Queen of England; so do many other potentates. But of all the evil that is theoretically possible, how much is carried out in practice? All kinds of thingsmighthappen if people were fools enough to do all the harm that it is in their power to do. The great saving fact is that it is not possible to go veryfar in doing harm to others without doing it to yourself. It is this fact which the insatiable legislation-monger ignores. He has an infinite faith in the mischief that will happen if things are left alone. He can not bear to think that somebody is not looking after everybody. He has no faith whatever in natural law or natural actions and reactions, and would hoot the idea of what the poet Wordsworth calls a "wise passiveness." Such people have little conception of the mischief they do, and of the good that fails of realization through their pestilent activity. The readers of Dickens will perhaps remember Mrs. Pardiggle and the admirable system of education she applied to her numerous family of children. The unhappy youngsters were under orders every hour of the day; they were marched round the country with their mother when she went on visits of charity, and compelled to contribute out of their own (nominal) pocket money to all kinds of religious and benevolent schemes. How they kicked and rebelled, and what distressing passions were roused in their youthful breasts, the great novelist has told us; and we think we may take his word for it. The fussy legislator is a Pardiggle. If he would leave things alone, opposing interests would find amodus vivendi, and practical justice would more and more assert itself. The more interference there is between parties who in the last resort are dependent on one another's good will, the less likely they are to recognize their substantial identity of interest. If the interference is wholly in the interest of one of the parties, the other is sure to be forced into an undesirable attitude; while the one whose protection is the object in view will not unnaturally take all the protection he can get, and look for something more.
What is wanted to put the relations between the railways and the public upon the most satisfactory footing possible is, in the first place, less legislative interference; and, in the second, a higher tone of business morality throughout the community. We place this second not as underrating its importance, but because we believe it would to some extent flow from the first. It is when the public transfers its right of eminent domain to a railway corporation that it should take adequate measures to protect its own interests; but how can this be done when legislation is sold—when charters are given or withheld, according to the amount of money available for purposes of persuasion? With honest legislators and honest courts there would be very little trouble between the railways and the public, and such as arose could be easily remedied. Commerce commissions are a testimony to the existence of low standards of business morality; and, unfortunately, they tend to keep them low, if not to make them lower.
The sooner we make up our minds to trust more to moral influences freely acting in the intercourse of man with man and of interest with interest, and less to legal compulsion, the better it will be for us in every department of our national life. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission is a virtual confession of the failure of legislation to accomplish a purpose which was supposed to be easily within its field of action. The confession is coupled with a demand for more legislation, but, were the demand conceded, who can guarantee that more still would not be wanted? The railways are not at the end of their resources, and new laws would, we fear, be only too likely to suggest new means of evasion. No; the remedy lies elsewhere, and if Congress is wise it will give that remedy a trial byallowing the railways and the public a chance to arrange terms between them, with public opinion as the principal court of appeal.
A paper that was read by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Library Club, on the subject of Paternalism in Public Libraries, and which we find in the Library Journal for November last, is one which, in our opinion, deserves to be separately printed and widely circulated. It abounds in good sense, and preaches a doctrine of self-help and self-reliance which is much needed in these days.
A question which the author of the paper does not discuss, but which, it seems to us, lies at the threshold of the whole subject, is whether the very existence of a public library—if we understand by the term a library supported by public taxes—is not in itself an exemplification of paternalism. Mr. Swift strikes us as a benevolent bureaucrat who wants to give the people at large a wider liberty in the matter of reading than the ruling influences of time and place are disposed to allow. He sees that liberty is good, that leading strings belong to infancy, and he raises his protest against a paternalism in the management of public libraries which, under the plea of providing only the most approved reading for all classes, would tend to the repression of individuality in the reader and the establishment of the supremacy of commonplace. But what if commonplace insists on being supreme and shutting out whatever is not of one complexion with itself? How are we to resist its demand in the administration of a State-supported, and therefore majority-ruled, institution? "You offer us," say its representatives, "a liberty we do not want for ourselves, and are not prepared to concede to others, as we are sure it can not be for their good. We are not going to consult the tastes of cranks, criminals, intellectual aristocrats, or social mugwumps of any kind. For all practical purposes we are the public, and we mean to run this public library." To the objection that a portion, at least, of the taxes is paid by those whose views and tastes are not going to be consulted, the answer would be ready: "It is for the majority to say how taxes shall be applied." We recognize the excellence of Mr. Swift's intentions and sympathize with his way of looking at things, but we feel that his objections to "paternalism" in connection with public libraries are delivered from a somewhat shaky platform. We observe that a periodical quoted in the Library Journal—the Overland Monthly—makes the remark that "there is nothing to be said for free books that could not be urged in favor of free beefsteaks and free overcoats."
Some of the points, however, that are made by Mr. Swift are deserving of attention. The several professions—law, medicine, theology, etc.—would more or less like to have only such books placed upon the shelves of a public library as represent what may be called their respective orthodoxies. But, as Mr. Swift observes, "libraries are as much the depositories of the folly as of the wisdom of the ages." A library, therefore, should tell us what men have thought and attempted in the past, and what they are thinking and attempting now. It is for schools and colleges, for newspapers and reviews, to afford guidance in the wilderness of opinions, not for the library to make a point of putting out of people's reach everything that is not in line with the scientific, literary, or other orthodoxy of the hour.
"A subtle form of paternalism is the deliberate inculcation of the patriotic spirit, especially in children." Mr. Swift is a brave man to attempt to stem this particular torrent. He thinks there are times when one who loves his country would feel shame for it rather than pride, and that the motto "My country right or wrong" is not the most wholesome sentiment that can be impressed on the mind of youth. "To fill a child with the consummate virtues of Washington, Jefferson, and other of our immortals, and to leave him ignorant of the greatness of Cromwell and of William the Silent, is a serious injustice to the child and to the cause of education." Not only is this done, but, in the domain of literature as well, it seems as if the only names with which public-school pupils obtain any acquaintance are those of national authors. So far as poetry is concerned, Mr. Swift says that almost the only name he hears from the lips of children frequenting the Public Library is "Longfellow." He can not remember ever having had a call from a child for Tennyson, while Wordsworth in the school region is equally unknown.
Apart from the studied inculcation of a narrow patriotism, the author of the paper we are considering thinks that there is altogether too much paternalism shown in the choice of children's reading. He has only a limited and feeble faith in "children's rooms" in public libraries. They are very much, he thinks, like Sunday schools—convenient places for parents to unload their offspring. The aim of the censorship is to eliminate everything that is not in accord with the most approved canons of juvenile life and thought, leaving only what is ready for immediate acceptance and assimilation. Such a policy, Mr. Swift holds, is not favorable either to individuality or to intellectual growth. "We must," he says, "take books, like life, as we find them, and learn to distinguish good and bad; learn, as we ought, that the good is not so good as we have been told it is, and that the bad contains a strong infusion of good. No wrecks are so fearful as those which come to the young who have up to a point led 'sheltered lives.'"
It is not, however, children only who get the benefit of a benevolent protective policy. Selecting committees are quite prepared to look after grown-up people as well, and keep out of their way books which might prove too exciting, which might reveal depths of passion such as persons leading decorous lives are not supposed to know anything about, or otherwise agitate the tranquil mill pond of their existence. It does not occur to them that thus the salt and savor of human life are expelled, and that, instead of the free play of vital forces, there supervenes a dreary mechanic round of semi-automatic activities unvisited by enthusiasm, untouched by strong desire, without dream or vision or any quickening of the heart or the imagination. Some good people are excessively particular not only as to what may threaten moral disturbance, but as to anything that may encourage departures from conventional modes of speech and deportment. They do not like to admit books that they regard as vulgar, and a great mark of vulgarity in their opinion is the use of slang. Yet so accomplished alittérateuras Mr. William Archer told us lately that he pleads guilty to "an unholy relish" for the talk of "Chimmie Fadden" and his Chicago contemporary "Artie." To him, as to Mr. Swift, the books in which these worthies disport themselvesmean something, and something deserving of attention. That being the case, the vulgarity, which is part ofthe picture, becomes in proportion to its truth an element of value. Mr. Swift, very bold and like the ancient prophet, says plainly: "Harmless books in general are mediocre books; if a new note in morals or society is struck, the suggestion of a possible injuriousness at once arises."
Taken as a whole, Mr. Swift's paper is a strong plea for individualism and liberty. As such we have felt it a duty to call attention to it, and we trust that it will in some way obtain a more general circulation than can be afforded by the useful, but somewhat technical, columns of the Library Journal.
Fragments of Science.Longevity of Whales.—Some light was thrown, a few years ago, upon the subject of the vitality of whales by finding one of these animals in Bering Sea, in 1890, with a "toggle" harpoon head in its body bearing the mark of the American whaler Montezuma. That vessel was engaged in whaling in Bering Sea about ten years, but not later than 1854. She was afterward sold to the Government, and was sunk in Charleston Harbor during the civil war to serve as an obstruction. Hence, it is estimated, the whale must have carried the harpoon not less than thirty-six years. In connection with this fact, Mr. William H. Dall gives an account, in the National Geographic Magazine, of a discussion with Captain E. P. Herendeen, of the United States National Museum, of cases of whales that have been supposed to have made their way from Greenland waters to Bering Strait, and to have been identified by the harpoons they carried. While it is very likely that the whale really makes the passage, an uncertainty must always be allowed, for ships were often changing ownership and their tools were sold and put on board of other vessels, and harpoon irons were sometimes given or traded to Eskimos. It therefore becomes possible that the animal was struck with a second-hand iron.Solidification of Hydrogen.—As soon as he was able to obtain liquid hydrogen in manageable quantities, in the fall of 1898, Mr. James Dewar began experiments for its solidification. The apparatus he used was like that employed in other solidification experiments, consisting of a small vacuum test-tube, containing the hydrogen, placed in a larger vessel of the same kind, with excess of the hydrogen partly filling the circular space between the two tubes. No solidification was produced, and the effort was suspended for a time, while the author attacked other problems. The experiments were renewed in 1899, with the advantage of more knowledge concerning reductions of temperature brought about by reduction of pressure. A slight leak of air in the apparatus was observed, which was frozen into an air snow when it met the cold vapor of hydrogen coming off, and this leak at a particular point of pressure caused a sudden solidification of the liquid hydrogen into a mass like frozen foam. An apparatus was then arranged that could be overturned, so that if any of the hydrogen was still liquid it would run out. None ran out, but by the aid of a strong light on the side of the apparatus opposite the eye the hydrogen was seen as a solid ice in the lower part, while the surface looked frothy. The melting point of hydrogen ice was determined at about 16° or 17° absolute (-257° or -256° C.). The solid seemed to possess the properties of the non-metallic elements rather than of the metals, among which it has been usual to class hydrogen.The Gegenschein.—Much interest prevails among astronomers at present concerning the question of the nature of theGegenschein. This German word, which means "opposite shine," is applied to designate a small, somewhat oblong, bright spot which is sometimesseen in the sky at night, nearly opposite the point which is at the time occupied by the sun on the opposite side of the globe. It is near the ecliptic, but appears two or three degrees away from exact opposition to the sun. It seems agreed that theGegenscheinis not atmospheric, but rather meteoric, being a reflection from some collection of meteors. The problem set before astronomers is to identify the meteors. A theory that they are connected with the asteroidal zone, or mass of meteors of which the known and numbered asteroids are conspicuous examples, has, according to Professor Barnard, "much in its favor, but there are objections to the theory which can not easily be reconciled with the observed facts." Mr. J. Evershed, of Kenley, England, assumes theGegenscheinto be a tail to the earth, produced by the escape of molecules of hydrogen and helium away from the globe in a direction opposite to the sun—much as a comet's tail is formed. Other observers suppose it to be connected with the zodiacal light or band, which is regarded as a body of meteors connected with the earth and accompanying it, and is plainly visible in the western sky after sunset in the spring, rising from the place of the sun toward the zenith; and Mr. William Anderson, of Madeira, publishes a figure with a demonstration, in The Observatory, to show how its place and appearance may be accounted for on this supposition. TheGegenscheinhas been compared in a homely way to the radiance which may be seen around the shadows of our heads cast by the sun upon the dewy grass early on a bright summer morning.Literature for Children.—Mr. Richard le Gallienne, in an article published in the Boston Transcript, laments the flood of rubbish that is poured out under the guise of children's books. The subject of literature for children is discussed in the Studies of the Colorado Scientific Society by Prof. E. S. Parsons, who remarks that three of the greatest classics of childhood were not written for children at all. "Pilgrim's Progress was a new type of sermon written by the tinker preacher in his prison cell at Bedford; Robinson Crusoe was a pseudo-history from the pen of one of the first great English realists; Gulliver's Travels was a political satire by the greatest of English satirists. The same thing is true of the stories of the Bible, of the Arabian Nights, of the folklore which strikes a sympathetic chord at once in the child's nature.... Child study, then, reveals the fact that the child nature is the counterpart of what is best in books—that children can appreciate literature." A friend of Professor Parsons wrote him of her daughter, nine years old, being very fond of her father's library, and "simply devoted" to the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. Harriet Martineau, when a child, "devoured all of Shakespeare," sitting on a footstool and reading by firelight, and making shirts, with Goldsmith or Thomson or Milton where she could glance at them occasionally. Another of Professor Parsons's friends read "all of Goethe's Faust with his little thirteen-year-old girl, to her great enjoyment," and the little girl afterward read alone all of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. "Many teachers have found young children delighted with Dante." These incidents and others point to the inference that it is not necessary to go outside of the world's great literature for fit material for a child's imaginative and emotional nature. One of Mr. Le Gallienne's main conclusions is that it is very hard to guess beforehand what the child will like.Geography and Exploration in 1899.—No great geographical discoveries were recorded during 1899, but much good work was done in exploration. Considerable interest has been taken in preparing expeditions of antarctic research, of which a Belgian expedition has returned with some important results, and Mr. Borchgrevink has begun work at Cape Adar, on the antarctic mainland. The search for Andrée has helped increase our knowledge of parts of the arctic coast. In Asia, Captain Deasy has laid down the whole of the before unknown course of the Yarkand River, and has furnished other information concerning little-known regions; and other surveys and explorations have been diligently prosecuted. About as much may be said of Africa, where "the want of adequate exploration of the mountainous regions on the borders ofCape Colony and Natal has been only too forcibly brought home" to the English. Expeditions sent out by Canadian surveys are constantly opening up new countries and producing maps of great geographical and industrial value. Mr. A. P. Low finds Labrador not quite so bleak and hopeless a country as had been generally believed. Sir Martin Conway has done some very creditable exploration in the Andes and in Tierra del Fuego, the scientific results of which are of considerable value. In Chile, Dr. Staffer and his colleagues have been exploring the wonderful fiords of the coast and the rivers that come down to them from the Andean range. Dr. Moreno has described the results of twenty-five years' exploration of the great Patagonian plains, and of the lakes and glaciers and mountains on the eastern face of the Andes. One of the most important scientific enterprises during the year, the London Times says, was the German oceanographical expedition in the Valdivia, under Professor Chum, which went south through the Atlantic to the edge of the antarctic ice, and north through the Indian Ocean to Sumatra, and home through the Red Sea.Royal Society Medalists.—The Copley medal was conferred, at the recent anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, upon Lord Rayleigh for his splendid service to physics, his investigations, the president said in presenting the award, having increased our knowledge in almost every department of physical science, covering the experimental as well as the mathematical parts of the subject. "His researches, from the range of subjects they cover, their abundance, and their importance, have rarely been paralleled in the history of physical science." A summary account of the principal ones was given in the sketch of him published in the twenty-fifth volume of the Popular Science Monthly (October, 1884). At the same meeting of the Royal Society the Royal medals were conferred upon Prof. G. F. Fitzgerald, for his brilliant contributions to physics, and Prof. William C. McIntosh, for his very important labors as a zoölogist. Professor Fitzgerald's investigations have been in the field of radiation and electrical theory, and in a manner complementary to those of J. Clerke Maxwell. Among his works is a memoir presenting a dynamic formulation of the electric theory of light on the basis of the principle of least action, which concludes with a remark upon the advantage of "emancipating our minds from the thraldom of a material ether." Professor McIntosh was spoken of as "one of a distinguished succession of monographers of the British fauna, who, beginning with Edward Forbes, have, during the last fifty years, done work highly creditable to British zoölogy." He is author of a great monograph of the British Annelids, which is still in progress of publication by the Royal Society, and of an important contribution to the Challenger reports, and was the founder of the first marine biological station in Great Britain—the Gatty Marine Laboratory at St. Andrews. The Davy medal was bestowed upon Edward Schunck for researches of very high importance in organic chemistry. These works include a remarkable series of contributions to the chemistry of the organic coloring matters, particularly those relating to the indigo plant and to the madder plant. Of late years he has studied, with distinguished success, the chemistry of chlorophyll.Anglo-Saxon Superiority.—The question of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race is at present interesting economists of other stocks, especially of the supposed Latin races. The fact of superiority seems to be conceded. The problem is to account for it. A French writer, M. Dumoulins, attributes it to the superiority of Anglo-Saxon educational institutions. Signor G. Sergi, the distinguished Italian anthropologist, thinks it is a result of the mixture of ethnic elements of which the English people are made up, and he goes over the history of the colonizations which have overtaken Britain, to show how upon the first neolithic settlers of the Mediterranean stocks came a small emigration of the Asiatic Aryan or Indo-European peoples. Cæsar's conquest brought in a Roman infusion with some African elements, which did not last long, but left their mark. Next the Anglo-Saxon tribes of northern Germany made the principal contribution to the formation of the English people. A portion of Scandinavian blood was added tothe composition, and on top of all came the Normans. These elements, none of which were extremely discordant with the others, became thoroughly mixed in the course of time, and matured into the English people as it is. The English resemble the Romans in their methods of colonization, political tact, practical sense, persistence, religious tolerance, the magnitude of their works and the boldness of their undertakings, and in their egotism working together with the principle of social solidarity. Both readily established themselves in new colonies, carrying there the civilization of the mother country and their systems of administration. The great roads and wonderful bridges constructed by the Romans are paralleled by the great Anglo-Saxon railway systems. As the Latin language became almost universal, so the English language is diffusing itself everywhere. But Signor Sergi fails to show why, if the English have taken so much from the Romans, the Italians, their direct descendants, have lost so much of what they once had. He reserves that question, after raising it, for future consideration.Carbonic Acid and Climate.—The great importance of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere as a factor in determining the climate of the earth has been confirmed by the researches of a considerable number of investigators. Its work appears to be that of an absorbent of the sun's radiant heat, retaining it and preventing its passing by us and leaving us in the cold temperature of space. Tyndall computes that it has in this capacity a power eighty times that of oxygen or nitrogen, while it is excelled by water vapor with ninety-two times that of those gases. Lecher and Pretner, on the other hand, believe that carbonic acid is the only agent concerned in the service. Mr. Cyrus F. Talman, Jr., in view of the fact that carbonic acid is an important factor among geological agencies, has published, in the Journal of Geology, a study of the conditions of the content of that gas in the ocean, a study that leads to the consideration of the chemistry of the ocean. It seems to be clear that with falling temperature the ocean will dissolve carbonic acid from the air. Dr. T. C. Chamberlin has shown that the amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere at any one time, and therefore the climate of the earth at that time, depends upon the value of the ratio of the supply of the gas to its depletion. Besides the continuous supply that the atmosphere receives from the interior of the earth and from planetary space and the continuous depletion due to the formation of carbonates in place of the igneous alkali earth silicates, there are variations in the ratio of supply to depletion dependent upon the attitude of the land and the water. A large exposure of land surface is correlated with a rapid solution of calcium and magnesium carbonates, which, becoming bicarbonates, represent a loss of carbonic acid to the atmosphere. On the other hand, the formation of the normal carbonate by lime-secreting animals causes a direct liberation of the second equivalent of the bicarbonate. Therefore extensive oceans and abundant marine life are correlated with warm climate. After a somewhat more minute discussion of the action, Mr. Talman concludes that the ocean very greatly intensifies the secular variation of the earth's temperature, although acting as a moderating agent in the minor cycles.Pearl Mussels.—In his report to the United States Fish Commission on the Pearly Fresh-Water Mussels of the United States, Mr. Charles T. Simpson speaks of the great variety of conditions under which they live. They show great capacity for adaptation. Most of them are found in shallow water, but certain forms live at considerable depths. Some bury themselves among the fibrous roots of trees, some in the muddy, sandy banks just below the surface of the water, and some, as in Lake Tiberias (Palestine) and Lake Tanganyika (Africa), under six hundred or more feet of water. Ordinarily they die in a very short time if taken out of the water—in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, as a rule—and they generally die in a few hours when exposed to the sun. But many species, thus tender in the open air, will lie buried in dried mud for a long time. In June, 1850, a living pond mussel was sent to London, from Australia, which had been out of water for more than a year. Along a small stream near Braidentown,Fla., which runs only during about three months in summer and is dry the rest of the year, thousands of a large colony ofUnio obesusmay be found just buried in the sandy banks or among the flags and rushes of the bottom, where there is very little moisture, all in healthy condition. Mr. Simpson has laid these mussels in the sun for months without killing them. The specimens which live in perennial water seem to die soon if removed from it, while those which inhabit streams or ponds that often dry up will live a long time out of water. Some species in rocky streams live in the crevices of the rocks. In the Big Vermilion River, in La Salle County, Illinois, a swift, rocky stream, the author has found living mussels that had been so washed about that nearly all the epidermis was destroyed. The shells in such streams are usually heavier than those in more quiet water.
Longevity of Whales.—Some light was thrown, a few years ago, upon the subject of the vitality of whales by finding one of these animals in Bering Sea, in 1890, with a "toggle" harpoon head in its body bearing the mark of the American whaler Montezuma. That vessel was engaged in whaling in Bering Sea about ten years, but not later than 1854. She was afterward sold to the Government, and was sunk in Charleston Harbor during the civil war to serve as an obstruction. Hence, it is estimated, the whale must have carried the harpoon not less than thirty-six years. In connection with this fact, Mr. William H. Dall gives an account, in the National Geographic Magazine, of a discussion with Captain E. P. Herendeen, of the United States National Museum, of cases of whales that have been supposed to have made their way from Greenland waters to Bering Strait, and to have been identified by the harpoons they carried. While it is very likely that the whale really makes the passage, an uncertainty must always be allowed, for ships were often changing ownership and their tools were sold and put on board of other vessels, and harpoon irons were sometimes given or traded to Eskimos. It therefore becomes possible that the animal was struck with a second-hand iron.
Solidification of Hydrogen.—As soon as he was able to obtain liquid hydrogen in manageable quantities, in the fall of 1898, Mr. James Dewar began experiments for its solidification. The apparatus he used was like that employed in other solidification experiments, consisting of a small vacuum test-tube, containing the hydrogen, placed in a larger vessel of the same kind, with excess of the hydrogen partly filling the circular space between the two tubes. No solidification was produced, and the effort was suspended for a time, while the author attacked other problems. The experiments were renewed in 1899, with the advantage of more knowledge concerning reductions of temperature brought about by reduction of pressure. A slight leak of air in the apparatus was observed, which was frozen into an air snow when it met the cold vapor of hydrogen coming off, and this leak at a particular point of pressure caused a sudden solidification of the liquid hydrogen into a mass like frozen foam. An apparatus was then arranged that could be overturned, so that if any of the hydrogen was still liquid it would run out. None ran out, but by the aid of a strong light on the side of the apparatus opposite the eye the hydrogen was seen as a solid ice in the lower part, while the surface looked frothy. The melting point of hydrogen ice was determined at about 16° or 17° absolute (-257° or -256° C.). The solid seemed to possess the properties of the non-metallic elements rather than of the metals, among which it has been usual to class hydrogen.
The Gegenschein.—Much interest prevails among astronomers at present concerning the question of the nature of theGegenschein. This German word, which means "opposite shine," is applied to designate a small, somewhat oblong, bright spot which is sometimesseen in the sky at night, nearly opposite the point which is at the time occupied by the sun on the opposite side of the globe. It is near the ecliptic, but appears two or three degrees away from exact opposition to the sun. It seems agreed that theGegenscheinis not atmospheric, but rather meteoric, being a reflection from some collection of meteors. The problem set before astronomers is to identify the meteors. A theory that they are connected with the asteroidal zone, or mass of meteors of which the known and numbered asteroids are conspicuous examples, has, according to Professor Barnard, "much in its favor, but there are objections to the theory which can not easily be reconciled with the observed facts." Mr. J. Evershed, of Kenley, England, assumes theGegenscheinto be a tail to the earth, produced by the escape of molecules of hydrogen and helium away from the globe in a direction opposite to the sun—much as a comet's tail is formed. Other observers suppose it to be connected with the zodiacal light or band, which is regarded as a body of meteors connected with the earth and accompanying it, and is plainly visible in the western sky after sunset in the spring, rising from the place of the sun toward the zenith; and Mr. William Anderson, of Madeira, publishes a figure with a demonstration, in The Observatory, to show how its place and appearance may be accounted for on this supposition. TheGegenscheinhas been compared in a homely way to the radiance which may be seen around the shadows of our heads cast by the sun upon the dewy grass early on a bright summer morning.
Literature for Children.—Mr. Richard le Gallienne, in an article published in the Boston Transcript, laments the flood of rubbish that is poured out under the guise of children's books. The subject of literature for children is discussed in the Studies of the Colorado Scientific Society by Prof. E. S. Parsons, who remarks that three of the greatest classics of childhood were not written for children at all. "Pilgrim's Progress was a new type of sermon written by the tinker preacher in his prison cell at Bedford; Robinson Crusoe was a pseudo-history from the pen of one of the first great English realists; Gulliver's Travels was a political satire by the greatest of English satirists. The same thing is true of the stories of the Bible, of the Arabian Nights, of the folklore which strikes a sympathetic chord at once in the child's nature.... Child study, then, reveals the fact that the child nature is the counterpart of what is best in books—that children can appreciate literature." A friend of Professor Parsons wrote him of her daughter, nine years old, being very fond of her father's library, and "simply devoted" to the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. Harriet Martineau, when a child, "devoured all of Shakespeare," sitting on a footstool and reading by firelight, and making shirts, with Goldsmith or Thomson or Milton where she could glance at them occasionally. Another of Professor Parsons's friends read "all of Goethe's Faust with his little thirteen-year-old girl, to her great enjoyment," and the little girl afterward read alone all of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. "Many teachers have found young children delighted with Dante." These incidents and others point to the inference that it is not necessary to go outside of the world's great literature for fit material for a child's imaginative and emotional nature. One of Mr. Le Gallienne's main conclusions is that it is very hard to guess beforehand what the child will like.
Geography and Exploration in 1899.—No great geographical discoveries were recorded during 1899, but much good work was done in exploration. Considerable interest has been taken in preparing expeditions of antarctic research, of which a Belgian expedition has returned with some important results, and Mr. Borchgrevink has begun work at Cape Adar, on the antarctic mainland. The search for Andrée has helped increase our knowledge of parts of the arctic coast. In Asia, Captain Deasy has laid down the whole of the before unknown course of the Yarkand River, and has furnished other information concerning little-known regions; and other surveys and explorations have been diligently prosecuted. About as much may be said of Africa, where "the want of adequate exploration of the mountainous regions on the borders ofCape Colony and Natal has been only too forcibly brought home" to the English. Expeditions sent out by Canadian surveys are constantly opening up new countries and producing maps of great geographical and industrial value. Mr. A. P. Low finds Labrador not quite so bleak and hopeless a country as had been generally believed. Sir Martin Conway has done some very creditable exploration in the Andes and in Tierra del Fuego, the scientific results of which are of considerable value. In Chile, Dr. Staffer and his colleagues have been exploring the wonderful fiords of the coast and the rivers that come down to them from the Andean range. Dr. Moreno has described the results of twenty-five years' exploration of the great Patagonian plains, and of the lakes and glaciers and mountains on the eastern face of the Andes. One of the most important scientific enterprises during the year, the London Times says, was the German oceanographical expedition in the Valdivia, under Professor Chum, which went south through the Atlantic to the edge of the antarctic ice, and north through the Indian Ocean to Sumatra, and home through the Red Sea.
Royal Society Medalists.—The Copley medal was conferred, at the recent anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, upon Lord Rayleigh for his splendid service to physics, his investigations, the president said in presenting the award, having increased our knowledge in almost every department of physical science, covering the experimental as well as the mathematical parts of the subject. "His researches, from the range of subjects they cover, their abundance, and their importance, have rarely been paralleled in the history of physical science." A summary account of the principal ones was given in the sketch of him published in the twenty-fifth volume of the Popular Science Monthly (October, 1884). At the same meeting of the Royal Society the Royal medals were conferred upon Prof. G. F. Fitzgerald, for his brilliant contributions to physics, and Prof. William C. McIntosh, for his very important labors as a zoölogist. Professor Fitzgerald's investigations have been in the field of radiation and electrical theory, and in a manner complementary to those of J. Clerke Maxwell. Among his works is a memoir presenting a dynamic formulation of the electric theory of light on the basis of the principle of least action, which concludes with a remark upon the advantage of "emancipating our minds from the thraldom of a material ether." Professor McIntosh was spoken of as "one of a distinguished succession of monographers of the British fauna, who, beginning with Edward Forbes, have, during the last fifty years, done work highly creditable to British zoölogy." He is author of a great monograph of the British Annelids, which is still in progress of publication by the Royal Society, and of an important contribution to the Challenger reports, and was the founder of the first marine biological station in Great Britain—the Gatty Marine Laboratory at St. Andrews. The Davy medal was bestowed upon Edward Schunck for researches of very high importance in organic chemistry. These works include a remarkable series of contributions to the chemistry of the organic coloring matters, particularly those relating to the indigo plant and to the madder plant. Of late years he has studied, with distinguished success, the chemistry of chlorophyll.
Anglo-Saxon Superiority.—The question of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race is at present interesting economists of other stocks, especially of the supposed Latin races. The fact of superiority seems to be conceded. The problem is to account for it. A French writer, M. Dumoulins, attributes it to the superiority of Anglo-Saxon educational institutions. Signor G. Sergi, the distinguished Italian anthropologist, thinks it is a result of the mixture of ethnic elements of which the English people are made up, and he goes over the history of the colonizations which have overtaken Britain, to show how upon the first neolithic settlers of the Mediterranean stocks came a small emigration of the Asiatic Aryan or Indo-European peoples. Cæsar's conquest brought in a Roman infusion with some African elements, which did not last long, but left their mark. Next the Anglo-Saxon tribes of northern Germany made the principal contribution to the formation of the English people. A portion of Scandinavian blood was added tothe composition, and on top of all came the Normans. These elements, none of which were extremely discordant with the others, became thoroughly mixed in the course of time, and matured into the English people as it is. The English resemble the Romans in their methods of colonization, political tact, practical sense, persistence, religious tolerance, the magnitude of their works and the boldness of their undertakings, and in their egotism working together with the principle of social solidarity. Both readily established themselves in new colonies, carrying there the civilization of the mother country and their systems of administration. The great roads and wonderful bridges constructed by the Romans are paralleled by the great Anglo-Saxon railway systems. As the Latin language became almost universal, so the English language is diffusing itself everywhere. But Signor Sergi fails to show why, if the English have taken so much from the Romans, the Italians, their direct descendants, have lost so much of what they once had. He reserves that question, after raising it, for future consideration.
Carbonic Acid and Climate.—The great importance of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere as a factor in determining the climate of the earth has been confirmed by the researches of a considerable number of investigators. Its work appears to be that of an absorbent of the sun's radiant heat, retaining it and preventing its passing by us and leaving us in the cold temperature of space. Tyndall computes that it has in this capacity a power eighty times that of oxygen or nitrogen, while it is excelled by water vapor with ninety-two times that of those gases. Lecher and Pretner, on the other hand, believe that carbonic acid is the only agent concerned in the service. Mr. Cyrus F. Talman, Jr., in view of the fact that carbonic acid is an important factor among geological agencies, has published, in the Journal of Geology, a study of the conditions of the content of that gas in the ocean, a study that leads to the consideration of the chemistry of the ocean. It seems to be clear that with falling temperature the ocean will dissolve carbonic acid from the air. Dr. T. C. Chamberlin has shown that the amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere at any one time, and therefore the climate of the earth at that time, depends upon the value of the ratio of the supply of the gas to its depletion. Besides the continuous supply that the atmosphere receives from the interior of the earth and from planetary space and the continuous depletion due to the formation of carbonates in place of the igneous alkali earth silicates, there are variations in the ratio of supply to depletion dependent upon the attitude of the land and the water. A large exposure of land surface is correlated with a rapid solution of calcium and magnesium carbonates, which, becoming bicarbonates, represent a loss of carbonic acid to the atmosphere. On the other hand, the formation of the normal carbonate by lime-secreting animals causes a direct liberation of the second equivalent of the bicarbonate. Therefore extensive oceans and abundant marine life are correlated with warm climate. After a somewhat more minute discussion of the action, Mr. Talman concludes that the ocean very greatly intensifies the secular variation of the earth's temperature, although acting as a moderating agent in the minor cycles.
Pearl Mussels.—In his report to the United States Fish Commission on the Pearly Fresh-Water Mussels of the United States, Mr. Charles T. Simpson speaks of the great variety of conditions under which they live. They show great capacity for adaptation. Most of them are found in shallow water, but certain forms live at considerable depths. Some bury themselves among the fibrous roots of trees, some in the muddy, sandy banks just below the surface of the water, and some, as in Lake Tiberias (Palestine) and Lake Tanganyika (Africa), under six hundred or more feet of water. Ordinarily they die in a very short time if taken out of the water—in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, as a rule—and they generally die in a few hours when exposed to the sun. But many species, thus tender in the open air, will lie buried in dried mud for a long time. In June, 1850, a living pond mussel was sent to London, from Australia, which had been out of water for more than a year. Along a small stream near Braidentown,Fla., which runs only during about three months in summer and is dry the rest of the year, thousands of a large colony ofUnio obesusmay be found just buried in the sandy banks or among the flags and rushes of the bottom, where there is very little moisture, all in healthy condition. Mr. Simpson has laid these mussels in the sun for months without killing them. The specimens which live in perennial water seem to die soon if removed from it, while those which inhabit streams or ponds that often dry up will live a long time out of water. Some species in rocky streams live in the crevices of the rocks. In the Big Vermilion River, in La Salle County, Illinois, a swift, rocky stream, the author has found living mussels that had been so washed about that nearly all the epidermis was destroyed. The shells in such streams are usually heavier than those in more quiet water.