Part 13

Although Mr. Selous did not determine latitudes or longitudes, his long-distance compass bearings enabled him to lay down a network of triangles connecting Fort Salisbury with Masikesi. These triangles included Fort Charter, Sengedza, and Mavanka's in the south, Mount Mtemwa in the north, and Mount Dombo in the east; and it turns out that the distance between Fort Salisbury and Masikesi, as resulting from this triangulation, differs to the extent of only about a mile from that obtained by careful astronomical observations made at the two terminal points. The greater part of Mr. Selous's compass bearings were taken during the rainy season, when the air was very clear and landmarks could be seen at great distances. Mr Selous's determinations of altitude were not so accurate, and those obtained with the aneroid were characterized by himself as "of little value."

During all of his twenty years' wanderings Mr. Selous represented in his address to the Royal Geographical Society, with the exception of a treacherous night attack made upon his camp by the Mashuku-Sumbwe, led by a few hostile Marotse, in 1888, he had never had any serious trouble with the natives. He had gone among many tribes who had never previously seen a white man, and was always in their power, as he seldom had more than from five to ten native servants, none of whom were ever armed. Mr. Selous's pioneer work began in 1889, when he conducted a gold-prospecting company through eastern Mashonaland. The journey took the party to the Portuguese settlements on the Zambezi, where those people were found to have a full appreciation of the richness of the gold region.

The British South Africa Company, or "Chartered Company," as it is sometimes called, was incorporated about the same time (October, 1889), with power to occupy and possess the large domains that constitute what is now called Rhodesia. The return of Mr. Selous to the Cape of Good Hope with the report of what he had observed had the effect of determining the company to speed its operations so as to anticipate the Portuguese. Mr. Selous entered the service of the company, and, although he was not yet an explorer in the scientific sense, the accurate memory of his early wanderings over the region enabled him to guide successfully the pioneer expedition that took possession of Mashonaland.

One of the sensational incidents of this campaign was the refusal of Lobengula to allow the pioneer force to use the road that led through Buluwayo, his capital, the only existing wagon road from the British frontier to the Mashonaland plateau. A new road was cut, under the guidance and superintendence of Mr. Selous, through four hundred and sixty miles of wilderness, the whole work being accomplished in two months and a half.

Among the chiefs who submitted to the British occupation after the seizure of Gonvola was Moloko, ruler of the country north of Manica, who made a treaty with Mr. Selous. After two years spent in various operations for opening up the country and securing treaties with the native chiefs, Mr. Selous returned to England in December, 1892, and put the narrative of his adventures to press, but was called back in August, 1893, returning at very short notice, on account of the threatening attitude of the Matabele chief Lobengula and the consequent risk of interruption in the development of the country. The tribes had risen against the assumption of the company to claim as a territorial cession what they had regarded as simply a grant of mining and exploiting privileges. Mr. Selous engaged actively in the campaign, in which he is credited with having fought with great gallantry by the side of the colonists, and was wounded while protecting some negroes who had been surprised by the enemy.

Returning again to Mashonaland, he reached there in time to witness a second outbreak of the natives, vexed by the triple plague of locusts, rinderpest, and the stringent regulations of the Chartered Company's government with respect to cattle. His own cattle were stolen, and he headed a company of volunteers that went out to check the insurgents and protect the people who were still on their farms.

The fruits, in acquisition to geographical knowledge, of Mr. Selous's adventures and explorations are to be found, mingled with much about sporting and exciting incident, in his books: A Hunter's Wanderings in South Africa, already mentioned; Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa (1893); Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia (1896); and in lectures to the Geographical Society and periodical contributions concerning Mashonaland.

These books abound in observations on natural history, often constituting real contributions of new facts or new demonstrations to the science, usually occurring incidentally in the narrative of adventure, but sometimes given in more formal shape. The author avows that his conclusions respecting animals are drawn from personal experience of the beasts, and are not influenced in any way by the stories of old hunters, Dutch or native. Among these notices are original observations on the giraffe and its habits, notes on buffaloes and their disposition, and remarks on variations in the types of South African lions. Of this animal, while some authors would make three species, the author believes there is only one. "As out of fifty male lion skins," he says, "scarcely two will be found exactly alike in the color and length of the mane, I think it would be as reasonable to suppose there are twenty species as three." So in Notes upon South African Rhinoceroses, a paper read before the Zoölogical Society of London in June, 1881, and reprinted in this volume, Mr. Selous gives his reasons for affirming that there are only two species of rhinoceros in South or in all Africa--the square-mouthed or white _Rhinoceros simus_ and the prehensile-lipped or black _Rhinoceros bicornis_--while the supposed _Rhinoceros keitloa_, or blue rhinoceros of the Boers, is merely a variety of the _bicornis_, the distinction between the two being based only on differences in the relative length of the horns. Another paper from the Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society, reprinted here, is Notes on the South Central African Antelopes, embodying again only the results of the author's own observations. In this paper twenty-two species are described by their scientific, native, Dutch, and English names, and their characteristics, habits, appearance, and distinctions are indicated.

In the preface to his Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa Mr. Selous tells how he had determined, in 1881, upon visiting the ostrich farm of his friend Frank Mandy, to settle down in Africa for a quiet life. Then he went home and spent a few months in England. Visiting the Natural History Department of the British Museum, he was shown by Dr. Gunther and his associate how old and dilapidated some of the specimens were, and how many noble forms were not represented at all. He took note of what he ought to get should he visit the interior of Africa again. Next we find him in South Africa, not quiet on a farm as he had intended to be, but in the wilderness, where he spent six years (1882-'87) engaged principally in collecting specimens "of the magnificent fauna which once abounded throughout the land," but many forms of which were now becoming scarce and some were verging on extinction. He shot and preserved a great many fine specimens of the larger antelopes, some of which may be seen in the New Natural History Museum at South Kensington, while others are in the collection of the South African Museum at Cape Town. Besides the stories of specimen hunting and adventures with the lions that are always to be found where game is abundant, the volume contains much matter of more general interest, such as notes of personal experiences among the Boers; accounts of two expeditions sent against the Batauweni by Lobengula; the devastations committed by the Matabele in Mashonaland; valuable notes on the Bushmen or Masarwas; accounts of journeys beyond the Zambezi to the countries of the Machukulumbwi and Barotsi tribes; and a review of the past history and present condition of Mashonaland. We find here also a notice of the caves of Sinola, with a subterranean lake in the principal cave having water marked by a deep-blue color like that of the blue grotto of Capri, an account of which was published by Mr. Selous in the Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London for May, 1888. An account of Mr. Selous's Twenty Years in Zambezia was published in the Geographical Journal in 1893.

Mr. Selous has done more than any other man to bring Mashonaland into notice, and is credited, together with Cecil Rhodes, with having contributed most to the creation of Rhodesia. The first comprehensive account of Mashonaland was given by him in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1889, when he described the country as a land of perennial streams in which thirst is an unknown quantity; with its high plateau, standing at an elevation of from four thousand to forty-six hundred feet and forming a very important watershed, endowed with a network of important streams, the springs supplying which, welling out from the highest parts of the downs, were capable of being applied to the irrigation of an enormous area, and having a salubrious climate, the continuous southwest wind giving cool breezes in summer and cold ones in winter. The high plateaus were further of much ethnological interest, in that they gave shelter to the very few remnants of the peaceful Mashonas who had escaped extermination at the hands of the Matabele.

Editor's Table.

_SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC MIND._

The address delivered by Prof. Michael Foster, as president this year of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, was not as long or elaborate as such addresses are wont to be, but it contained many thoughts of great value. After sketching the vast advances in scientific knowledge made within the present century, he observed, with great truth, that "the very story of the past which tells of the triumphs of science puts away all thoughts of vainglory." Why? In the first place, because no one can study the history of science without being made to feel how very near, in many cases, the men of the past came to anticipating some of the most famous discoveries and generalizations of later years. Translate the language of an earlier age into modern terms, and you often find that you have expressed the most advanced scientific doctrine of to-day. In the second place, if we find a certain lack of definiteness and truth to fact in the ideas of the past, how can we be at all sure how _our_ ideas will look when confronted with the fuller knowledge which doubtless our successors will possess? Lastly, "there is written clearly on each page of the history of science the lesson that no scientific truth is born anew, coming by itself and of itself. Each new truth is always the offspring of something which has gone before, becoming in turn the parent of something coming after." However great the work of a man of science may be, "it is not wholly his own; it is in part the outcome of the work of men who have gone before." In this respect Professor Foster sees a striking difference between the man of science and the poet. We always know whence the former came, but the latter is almost as devoid of visible ancestry as Melchizedek. When the man of science dies the results which he achieved remain, and his work is taken up where he left it off; whereas the poet, strictly speaking, has no continuators. The Homeridæ do not represent Homer, nor do Dryden and Congreve take the place of Shakespeare.

The story of natural knowledge or science, we are reminded, is a story of continued progress. "There is in it not so much as a hint of falling back--not even of standing still." The enemies of science sometimes seek to turn against it the fact that each age revises the conclusions of the preceding one. They ask, What dependence can be placed upon opinions or theories that are thus subject to change? The answer is that the science of each age is the nearest approximation which that age can make to the truth, and upon some points represents the truth with a great approach to finality of interpretation. The law of gravitation, for example, as formulated by Newton, lies at the foundation of the physics of to-day. The circulation of the blood was discovered once for all by Harvey. The true theory of the solar system was given once for all by Kepler. It is the glory of science that whatever of imperfection may lurk in a scientific theory is sure to be brought to light and corrected by subsequent observation and analysis.

The learned professor dwelt briefly but forcibly upon the qualities of the scientific mind. In the first place, the scientific mind must "vibrate in unison with that of which it is in search." It is in search of truth, and it must therefore vibrate in unison with truth. The follower of science must have a truthfulness beyond that of the ordinary man, who does not set a great price upon exactness in his observations or conclusions, and readily confounds things which, superficially similar, are fundamentally different. Nature resents even the most trifling inexactness, and the careless student will find that the further he carries his inquiries the further he goes astray. The scientific mind must also be alert. The indications and hints which Nature gives are sometimes very slight, and only one who is watchful in the extreme and attentive to the smallest things will catch them. Then the problems which Nature sets are often complicated, and call for a high degree of courage and perseverance. An inquiry which seemed easy at first will suddenly become overcast by what seems the most hopeless obscurity, and the scientific worker, unless he possesses the necessary moral as well as intellectual qualities, will fail in his quest. Considering the characteristics which the pursuit of science tends to develop in its votaries, and considering that scientific method is now and has been for many years past a wonderfully devised system for carrying on research, Professor Foster is surprised that the progress of science is not even more rapid than it is. He fears that perhaps Science does not get the best minds enrolled in her service, and rather hints that our institutions of education are responsible for turning aside many who might lend great aid in the advancement of real knowledge to less profitable pursuits. In words of almost precisely similar import to some that we used in these columns not very long ago, he observes that "that teaching is one-sided, and therefore misleading, which deals with the doings of man only and is silent about the works of Nature, in the sight of which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing." The whole address is stamped with the high thoughtfulness which so eminently distinguishes its author, and deserves to be carefully pondered by all who would understand the character and mission of science and the intellectual needs of the present age.

_THE LATE WILLIAM H. APPLETON._

As many of our readers will have learned through the daily press, Mr. William H. Appleton, long the head of the well-known publishing house of D. Appleton and Company, passed away at his home in Riverdale on the Hudson, October 19, 1899, having reached the advanced age of eighty-five years. As one of the founders of this magazine, who from the start was in close sympathy with its aims, kept up an active interest in its management, and was ever ready to aid its conductors with advice and encouragement, it is fitting that a few memorial words should be spoken of him in these columns.

The career of Mr. Appleton was a marked one in many respects. Entering the book business of his father, Mr. Daniel Appleton, at an unusually early age, he soon developed such an aptitude for affairs that at twenty-one he went abroad for the purpose of making the acquaintance of the leading foreign publishers and paving the way for closer relations with them in the importation and sale of their books in this country. Three years later, or at the age of twenty-four, his father made him a partner in the business, which had previously been extended so as to include the publication as well as the sale of books, and had now so increased in volume as to compel removal to more commodious quarters. Ten years of growth and uninterrupted prosperity followed, when Mr. Daniel Appleton, in 1848, retired from the now well-established firm, William H. Appleton, at the age of thirty-four, becoming its head, with his brothers John A. and Daniel Sidney as partners. In co-operation with these and other brothers who afterward entered the business, Mr. Appleton guided the operations of the firm for a period of nearly fifty years, successfully piloting it through several financial crises and carrying it to a foremost place among the publishing houses of America.

Besides the routine of an extensive publishing business, the history of the house during this time includes a number of large undertakings involving the expenditure of vast sums of money, and years of labor by many workers, and attended with risks that only the most far-seeing business sagacity could justify. We may presume that the several members of the firm shared a common faith in the success of these great enterprises, but it is fair to infer that as the head of the house William H. Appleton took a leading part in their origin and execution. One of these ventures was the publication of the American Cyclopædia, which in its present revised form represents an outlay of over a million dollars and some ten years of time. Another undertaking, and the one that we wish more particularly to speak of here, was the extension of the business in the line of popular scientific publications.

Scientific circles in this country have never realized the debt they owe to D. Appleton and Company, and especially to William H. Appleton, in this regard. It is no exaggeration to say that the advance of science in the United States was hastened by more than a quarter of a century by the enlightened and courageous policy which led the firm to add this class of books to their lists at the time they did. Everything apparently was against it--nothing in its favor. Our scientific literature consisted mainly of a few text-books having only a limited sale. Science itself was an affair of laboratories and bug collectors, the one to be shunned and the other commiserated. The few utterances of scientific men having a bearing on the great questions of the right interpretation of Nature, man's relations to his fellows and to the world at large, social betterment, etc., that here and there arrested public attention were received with contemptuous sneers or scouted as the rankest infidelity. Few who are not past middle life will find it possible now to realize that this was the general attitude toward science forty years ago, but we have only to refer the reader to the writings of the time for abundant confirmation of our statements.

It was such conditions as these that the firm was called upon to face when considering the question of entering this new field of publication. All ordinary business instincts were against it. Scarcely a publisher either here or abroad would even listen to the proposal to risk his capital in such an enterprise. Nevertheless, Mr. Appleton, lending an appreciative ear to the arguments of the former editor of this journal and displaying his usual foresight, finally decided in favor of the project, which afterward resulted in the introduction of the works of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Bain, Romanes, and other distinguished writers to American readers. A further step in the same direction, taken later, was the publication of the International Scientific Series, now numbering some eighty volumes. The scheme as originated and shaped by Professor Youmans was heartily seconded by Mr. Appleton, as was also the plan of the Popular Science Monthly.

A distinctive feature of the arrangements for the issue of all these foreign books, and one which redounds in no small degree to the credit of the firm, was the voluntary agreement, in the absence of an international copyright law, to pay their authors the usual royalties, making no distinction between them and authors at home. Mr. Appleton had been a lifelong advocate of international copyright, founding his contention on the simple justice of recognizing the property rights of the author, no matter where he lived. Although to adopt such a course was to expose themselves to the possibility of heavy loss through the issue of reprints by irresponsible parties, a thing which actually happened in the case of a good many of the volumes, the principle was faithfully adhered to, thus anticipating by many years the central provision of our present law.

The storm of denunciation raised abroad by the appearance of the earlier installments of these writings might well have deterred the boldest from repeating the experiment of giving them currency in America. But in spite of solemn warnings that dire consequences would be visited on the publisher who ventured to issue them here, the books continued to appear, while the predicted evils never came to pass.

It must not be inferred from the foregoing, however, that Mr. Appleton was either unmindful or wanting in respect for the opposition which his course aroused. Much of this had its origin in the religious convictions of the community, not a little of the criticism, be it said, emanating directly from the Church or its leading representatives. But, being a strong churchman himself, actively furthering the work of the Church with his private means and personal co-operation, in full sympathy with its purposes, and rejoicing in its beneficent influence, he was the last one who would wantonly outrage the sacred beliefs of his fellow-men. Yet, gifted with a large-mindedness that is at least unusual in the walks of business, he was enabled to see that the onward march of natural knowledge which had so often before excited alarm among men of narrow views could have nothing in it that was inconsistent with a truly religious life; while, on the other hand, to promote its advance and diffusion was to contribute by so much to the highest human welfare.

The wisdom of Mr. Appleton's course has been fully justified by the event. As we look over the last half of the century, which has been so fruitful in discovery and has witnessed the development of so many agencies for the amelioration of human ills and so manifold an increase in man's power for right living, we can see at the various stages of this evolution how large a part the broadening of thought fostered by these authors and the new aims and methods in inquiry suggested by them have contributed to the advance. It could not, in short, have been made so rapidly or effectively without the stimulus they gave. For what has been done in this line in this country we think--when we reflect that it was he who had the courage to bring the works of those thinkers here, and who made them accessible to students and the reading public, who constituted the agency through which the new thoughts and aims were spread--a very important part in the achievement may fairly be ascribed to Mr. William H. Appleton.

Scientific Literature.

Owing to the increasing demands upon our space, authors and publishers are notified that hereafter the department of Scientific Literature, with the exception of Publications Received, will be discontinued.

SPECIAL BOOKS.