Part 11

Thirdly, they demand a sufficient amount of evidence. True science is the enemy of wildcat theories and reckless generalizations. “The United States has always come out on top in every war!” cries one. “There’s no danger that we’ll ever be whipped.” “I don’t like foreigners,” says another. “I had a Frenchman for a neighbor once, and he was dishonest. I’m in favor of shutting out foreigners.” Such reasoning as this--and how astoundingly common it is!--must be cut down at the root by the habit of trained induction.

Fourthly, the love of truth and appeal to reason, which are in the very grain of the scientific mind and heart, laugh at credulity. They do not scoff at authority, or reject it. But they say: “We must know. If we learn from you, we must know that you know. Who are you? How do you know? If you know, you will not offer us absurd contradictions of reason and accepted truth.”

Again, they make their abode with the man who can receive them at his own intellectual fireside. They require that his mind be his own, that his opinions be his own, that his acts be his own, and that he defend his property in them, have pride in them, and stand by them.

Again, they demand sufficient time for care, for securing the evidence and for weighing it, and for considering its effect. They demand the completed work, and they reject all results which do not come from time employed, but are hasty guesses.

And they are not tossed about like a wave of the sea. They do command to prove all things, but they also exhort to hold fast that which is good. First, to what is good of our own and in ourselves. It is well enough to throw away our guesses, quickly made and often wrong. But the fruit of honest investigation, the conclusions of careful reasoning on sufficient information, these are the science student’s riches. He may add to them or replace some of them by better, but he will not throw them away at a suggestion, or trade them to the first speculator who offers something else. He will not have a supply of new beliefs for every day, or for every month, or for every year. Second, we should hold fast the proved good which we have received from others. And we should honor and revere those who have opened the way for us to the truth--those who have above other men possessed the power of reason and beneficently used it for the world. The spirit of science, which sets infinite value on knowledge, can not fail to teach reverence for those who have made it possible for us to know.

At every point, then, the scientist opposes the tendencies I have deplored. Against them all he must stand, by training and by instinct. Against them all he would teach others to stand, by giving to them his own training. Against them all we science teachers may arm our countrymen if we are faithful to our duty. But this end of our work is defeated if our students are allowed to indulge in careless statements of what they see and do; if they are permitted to use exaggerated description or inaccurate terms. Right here is the crucial test of the teacher’s honesty of purpose. The careful examination of written descriptions and reports, the enforced correction of every inaccurate detail, the personal consultation--all require untiring labor, and time never allotted in the schedule. But such work carried out has its own reward. The student first respects the truth, then learns to love it. He conscientiously avoids the vague, the doubtful, the unsubstantiated. If in our schools we might insure to every boy and girl this attitude of mind, this desire for strict veracity, we should have started him well on the way to correct judgments and wise conduct; we should have implanted in his nature the first elements of good citizenship. As Tennyson says:

“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncalled for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear, And because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”

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The fish called Lepidosiren (_Lepidosiren paradoxica_) is one of the only three still existing survivors of the once prominent group of _Dipnoi_, or lung fishes, which are characterized by the possession of well-developed lungs in addition to their gills. Mr. Graham Kerr, who spent several months in the swamps of the Gran Chaco, South America, a habitat of these fishes, describes them as living among the dense vegetation of the swamp, swimming in eel fashion, or clambering through the mass of vegetation by means of their leglike limbs. In the dry season they retire into the mud, and breathe entirely by means of their lungs. When the wet season begins they are set free, and at once prepare to spawn. They lay their eggs in burrows at the bottom of the swamp, where the eggs develop into larvæ. The phenomena of their development are of special interest, because it takes place in seclusion, away from the disturbing features due to adaptation to varied surroundings. It has been discovered that the young lepidosirens become white and transparent during the hours of darkness.

Editor’s Table.

_THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES._

Good use was made of a Washington celebration at Oberlin College, Ohio, by the chief speaker of the occasion, the Rev. A. A. Berle, to utter words that are peculiarly needed at the present time. His subject was Popular American Fallacies, and among these he noted the following: That Anglo-Saxondom is identical with the kingdom of God; that national glory and power can supply the place of national character; that new occasions always teach _new_ duties; and that political alliances may do away with the necessity for “a dual alliance,” as he expressed it, “between the people and God.”

These particular fallacies, in our opinion, were happily chosen. There is a great deal of silly talk current about the incomparable glories and unimaginable destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race; and it never seems to occur to those who indulge in such talk that a profound sense of one’s greatness is very far from being a sure sign of greatness. The greatest characters are the simplest and least boastful. Their greatness is so native to them that they are scarcely conscious of it; and they leave it to others to sing their praises. It is presuming altogether too intimate an acquaintance with the designs of Providence to claim that any race in particular is charged, above all others, with carrying those designs into effect. Who knows what reservoirs of moral and intellectual force may reside in nations and tribes whose world-action has been very obscure as yet? Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, thought that much of high value for civilization lay dormant in the negro race, and it is too soon to say he was mistaken. Then, who knows what the Slavonic race may bring forth? Who can calculate the future of the vast human hive known as China? And, after all, what has any nation got to do except to behave itself, be it great or small, famous or of no great repute? How is it in the community? Do we admire great men who swagger, who boast of their wealth, their strength, their courage, or their virtue? A little quiet consideration will persuade any man that there is one law for all nations alike--the law of justice and humanity--and that the greatest nation, according to any true conception of greatness, is the one which exemplifies that law most perfectly in its domestic and foreign policy. The surest sign of greatness in a nation, we venture to say, is that it should hate war--not dread it, but hate it.

It is a singular thing that any but the most light-headed portion of the community should fall into the second fallacy which the speaker mentioned--that national glory and power can take the place of national character. A nation requires a true heart, an honest self-consciousness, just as much as an individual, and time will avenge national misdoings just as surely as it will those of individuals. No numbers, nor any amount of huzzaing or factitious enthusiasm, can make a vicious policy safe. You may win victories with chariots and horsemen, but to enjoy the fruits of peace there must be a dominant love of justice, and that is what war does not tend to promote. It is also very true, as the speaker said, that there are not many _new_ duties to be learned in this age of the world. There is enough of moral truth taught in old Hesiod’s Works and Days to make any society now existing a good deal better than it is. When people talk of new duties they generally mean some new harum-scarum enterprise. The old duty would be good enough if they would only consider it closely and follow it faithfully. The Rev. Mr. Berle has spoken words in season; and it would be well if all who are like minded would unceasingly proclaim the same doctrines, if perchance they may sink into the heart of the masses, and give to this great people a public policy founded on righteousness and the love of peace.

_A HUMILIATING SITUATION._

“How far, O Catiline, when all is said and done, are you going to abuse our patience?” So said the great Roman orator on a certain famous occasion. Our Catiline is no individual man; it is the party system which has inflicted on us the Puerto Rican disgrace. It was obvious to the common sense of every one that, having laid our hands on the island of Puerto Rico, there was no decent course to take save to make it, for all practical purposes, an integral portion of the Union. We had cut it off from the market it enjoyed in Spain, and left it to contend with the hostile tariffs of other countries--were we going, in addition to that, to make it a stranger to the land that had seized it, and subject its products to our own high scale of duties? The President, in his message to Congress, conceiving the proposition to be almost self-evident, had declared that it was “our plain duty to abolish all customs tariffs between the United States and Puerto Rico, and give her products free access to our markets.” So thought nearly every disinterested citizen, and yet what have we since seen? The President, terrorized by the cry of party unity in danger, repudiates his former emphatic declaration, and gives his approval to a measure which virtually makes our unfortunate possession a foreign country. With the “free access to our markets” which the President had promised, the island would have entered on a new career of prosperity; but with its leading industries weighed down under an impost of fifteen per cent, there is nothing in view but commercial stagnation and general poverty. That the island has already languished under American rule--our revolutionary forefathers did not expect that their descendants would so soon go into the “ruling” business--the most disinterested witnesses attest. A leading journal of this city, The Herald, prints in heavy-faced type the following statement of a correspondent:

“American military officials told me at the outset that the year and a half of American sovereignty had been a blight on the island. This was not the echo of Spanish or of Puerto Rican feelings. They spoke their own views with soldierly frankness and sometimes with a word of regret for their own position. Their talk was more pointed than when filtered through official channels.”

It is in these circumstances that our Legislature, at the instance of a benevolent President, decides to refund to the people of the island two million dollars of duties collected in our ports on their products. Our tariff system breeds poverty in the population it oppresses, and then we rush to their assistance with a largess. They ask for justice and we offer them alms--alms for which the correspondent already quoted says he can not find a single individual who is grateful. We rob the Puerto Rican Peter to pay our own tobacco-growing Paul; and then we rob the whole community in order to pay back Peter. And, strange to say, some of us feel very virtuous over the business. The countenance of the President glows with satisfaction over the thought of all the good he is doing. For our part, we view the matter in a different light. The money will, of course, meet certain expenses of government in Puerto Rico; but there is reason to fear that it will do as much to pauperize the island in one direction as the restriction of its trade will do in another. What the Puerto Ricans want is not alms, but commercial liberty. The repayment of this money will not stimulate their trade; it will not stimulate anything except their helplessness. It is an open question whether they will suffer more by our protectionist greed or by our wishy-washy sentimentality. Meantime what are we to think of the party system whose exigencies place us in so ridiculous a position before the world? How long shall it abuse our patience?

Fragments of Science.

=Ventilation of Tunnels.=--The question of the ventilation of tunnels forms the subject of a series of articles, by M. Raymond Godfernaux, published recently in _Le Génie Civil_. The principal sources of definite information, upon which the discussion of M. Godfernaux is based, are the reports of the committee on ventilation of tunnels of the Metropolitan Railway of London, and of the commission appointed by the Italian Minister of Public Works to investigate the tunnels of the railways of the department of the Adriatic. Although the vitiation of the air in a tunnel may proceed from three sources--i. e., the lighting, the respiration of the passengers, and the combustion of the fuel in the engines--yet the two former sources are insignificant compared with the latter, which alone need be considered. The principal products of combustion which are injurious are carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, and sulphurous acid. Of these it is found that the proportion of carbonic oxide should not exceed 0.01 per cent, which corresponds to 0.13 per cent of carbonic acid in excess of the normal proportion of 0.03 per cent and to 0.00027 per cent of sulphurous acid. In practice it is found that if the total proportion of carbonic acid be limited to 0.15 per cent the proportions of the other gases will be well within the comfort and danger limits. This is much lower than is often attained in crowded auditoriums, where the proportion of carbonic acid sometimes reaches 0.4 to 0.5 per cent, but in such cases there is no carbonic oxide produced, while in the case of tunnels traversed by steam locomotives we may assume that the carbonic oxide will be about 1 to 13 of the carbonic acid, and the sulphurous acid about 1 to 440. Assuming a given limit of deterioration of the air, it would be easy to devise a system of ventilation if it were possible to treat the tunnel as if it were a closed room or controllable space. In practice, however, the conditions are peculiar. The space to be ventilated is a long, narrow passage, usually open only at the ends, and traversed periodically often almost continuously, by trains in one or both directions, these trains emitting the objectionable gases and also disturbing the air currents best adapted to proper ventilation. How best to reconcile these conflicting conditions forms the problem under consideration. Where there are but few trains it has been proposed to close the ends of the tunnel by doors, and provide a fan exhaust or pressure system, but this method is obviously limited in its applications. The practical conditions which must be considered are those in which frequent trains in opposite directions pass through the tunnel, and these conditions M. Godfernaux has analyzed graphically in a very interesting manner. Assuming a double-track tunnel eight hundred metres (a metre contains 39.37 inches) in length, with an exhausting ventilator placed in the middle and with trains of a given gas-producing capacity passing on each track every three minutes, he constructs a diagram showing how the composition of the atmosphere of the tunnel varies at successive points, and how, by an examination of the diagram thus made, it is possible to discover the maximum vitiation of the air, and consequently the extent to which the conditions are satisfied. By one or two such constructions any such problem may be solved to a degree quite within the limits of practical work, and the effect of various systems of ventilation compared. M. Godfernaux discusses various systems of ventilation, including those involving the use of shafts, fan blowers and exhausters, and air jets, and concludes with a description of the Saccardo system, in use in the Apennine tunnel of the Bologna-Pistoia line, and to the St. Gothard Tunnel. While all this investigation and discussion is of much value, it certainly seems as if the true remedy lies not so much in the removal of deleterious gases as in the absence of their production. The substitution of electric traction avoids altogether the fouling of the air of tunnels and subways, and electric locomotives are already used in the Baltimore Tunnel in the United States and elsewhere, and it seems as if this remedy is the true one to be applied in all cases.

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=Liquid Air.=--The following warning appears in The Engineering and Mining Journal of March 3d: “The advertisements which are now appearing in the papers all over the country of companies which are to furnish liquid air on a large scale must be accepted with a great deal of caution. The public mind has been very adroitly worked up for the reception of these by lectures, paragraphs in the press, and other well-understood methods. Undoubtedly liquid air possesses some valuable properties, and many striking experiments can be performed with it. It is not by any means certain yet that it can be prepared, transported, and used economically on a commercial scale, or that the difficulties in the way have been overcome. We do not say that they may not be overcome in the future; but to talk, as the advertisements do, of the certainty that liquid air will soon largely replace steam in furnishing motive power is going entirely too far. Such assertions have no present basis of fact to warrant any one in making them. The liquid-air people have a great deal to do yet before they can establish their claims or carry on business on a scale that will warrant the organization of ten-million-dollar companies. The question of validity of patents is also quite an open one. It is doubtful if there is any valid patent on this subject.”

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=Taka-Diastase.=--The following is taken from an interesting article, by W. E. Stone and H. E. Wright, in The Journal of the American Chemical Society: “Taka-diastase is, so far as known, somewhat similar to malt-diastase in its chemical character, viz.: a highly nitrogenous substance, readily soluble in water, and dependent upon certain conditions of temperature for its maximum activity. Its action is also affected by alkalies and acids. It is produced as the result of the growth of a species of mold (_Eurotium oryzæ_, Ahlberg) upon rice, maize, wheat bran, etc. For its production, as at present practiced in this country, wheat bran is steamed and, after cooling, is sown with the spores of the fungus. After twenty-four hours in culture rooms, at a temperature of about 25° C., the fungous growth becomes visible. In forty or fifty hours the content in diastatic material has reached the maximum, and further growth of the fungus is checked by cooling. The material, now consisting of the bran felted together with fungus mycelium, is called ‘taka-koji.’ It may be mixed with grain or starchy materials in the same manner as malt is used, and, like malt, will speedily convert the starch into fermentable sugars. An aqueous extract of the mass may be used for a similar purpose. For the preparation of a pure product, which, however, is not necessary for ordinary industrial purposes, the aqueous extract is concentrated by evaporation, and on the addition of alcohol the diastatic substance may be precipitated as a yellowish powder, easily soluble in water, of stable keeping qualities, and possessed of an unusual power of converting starch into sugar. The medicinal preparation above mentioned is obtained in this way, and represents a fairly pure form of the diastatic principle. This bears the name of ‘taka-diastase.’”

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=Professor Agassiz’s Investigations on Coral Islands.=--Having steamed and observed for twenty-five hundred miles among the Paumotu Islands, Prof. Alexander Agassiz says, in a second letter from the Albatross Expedition, published in the American Journal of Science, that he has seen nothing tending to show that there has anywhere been a subsidence, but that the condition of the islands does not seem to him capable of explanation on any theory except that they have been formed in an area of elevation. All the islands examined are composed of a tertiary coralliferous limestone, which has been elevated to a greater or less extent above the level of the sea, and then planed down by atmospheric agencies and submarine erosion, and the appearance of this old rock is very different from that of the modern reef rock. In these islands the rims of the great atolls, after having been denuded to the level of the sea, are built up again from the material of their two faces, so that a kind of conglomerate, or breccia, or pudding stone, or beach rock is found on all the reef flats. On the lagoon side sand bars grow into small islands and gradually become covered with vegetation. Whenever the material supplied from both sides is very abundant the land ring becomes more or less solid; the islets become islands, separated by narrow or wider cuts, until they at length form the large islands, which seem at first to be a continuous land around the rim of the lagoon, while they are often really much dissected. In time water ceases to pass through the channels, and only the marks of them are left. Few if any of the lagoons appear to be shut off from the sea as Dana and other writers have supposed. They simply have not boat passages. Unlike other coral regions, the Paumotu reefs seem to bear only a scanty life.

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