Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

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FROM AN EASY CHAIR

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

EXTINCT ANIMALS

By SIR E. RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S. With a Portrait of the Author, and 218 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. Second Edition, Price =7s. 6d.= net.

_NATURE._--“We give the book a hearty welcome, feeling sure that its perusal will draw many young recruits to the army of naturalists, and many readers to its pages.”

THE KINGDOM OF MAN

By SIR E. RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S. With about 60 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. Second Edition. Price =3s. 6d.= net.

_DAILY NEWS._--“Forms one of the most stimulating and suggestive books of recent times. We feel that we cannot praise it too highly.”

_OUTLOOK._--“This fascinating and inexpensive book ... in which much knowledge is imparted in a manner that attracts.”

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FROM AN EASY CHAIR

BY SIR RAY LANKESTER, K.C.B., F.R.S.

“_The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings._”

R. L. STEVENSON

LONDON

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO., LTD.

1909

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RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

_Published October, 1908._ _Reprinted January, 1909._

PREFACE

This little book is a reproduction, with some emendations, of articles which appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_ in the six months between the beginning of last October and the end of April. If it should meet with success, further collections of the same kind will be published from time to time.

E. R. L.

_August, 1908._

CONTENTS

PAGE

1. Science and the Study of Nature 1

2. The Desire to Know the World of Nature 3

3. Scares and Wonders 5

4. Work at the Pasteur Institute 9

5. The Sea Serpent 10

6. Giraffes and the Okapi 11

7. The Great Geologists of Last Century 14

8. Experiments with Precious Stones 19

9. Diamonds 23

10. Science and Fisheries 27

11. Discoveries as to Malaria 29

12. Malta Fever 34

13. A Cure for Sleeping Sickness 36

14. Tsetse-Flies and Disease 38

15. Monkeys and Fleas 41

16. The Jigger Flea 42

17. Public Estimate of the Value of Science 43

18. The Common House-fly and Others 45

19. Cerebral Inhibition 48

20. Colour-photography and Photographs of Mars 49

21. Origin of Names by Errors in Copying 50

22. False News as to Extinct Monsters 51

23. Mistletoe and Holly 52

24. The Cattle Show 55

25. The Experimental Method 59

26. Hypnotism and an Experiment on the Influence of the Magnet 60

27. Luminous Owls and Other Luminous Animals and Plants 65

28. Reminiscences of Lord Kelvin 68

29. The So-called Jargon of Science 70

30. Rats and the Plague 73

31. Ancient Temples and Astronomy 78

32. Alchemists of To-day and Yesterday 84

33. A Story of Sham Diamonds and Pearls 88

34. The Nature of Pearls 89

35. A King Who was a Zoologist 93

36. The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities 97

37. Variation and Selection Among Living Things 103

38. The Movement, Growth, and Dwindling of Glaciers 108

39. Votes for Women 117

40. Tobacco and the History of Smoking 124

41. Cruelty, Pain, and Knowledge 131

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FROM AN EASY CHAIR

1. _Science and the Study of Nature_

This volume consists of brief notes in plain language on a variety of scientific matters. I speak of new discoveries, real or so-called by mistake; of old well-established facts and explanations of strange occurrences which are more familiar to men of science than to people who have not had the time and opportunity to ascertain what is, and what is not proved and known about Nature and her ways. I do not address my reader from the professor’s chair, but from an easy chair. Just as in the club or my friend’s smoking-room, I might talk of these things, so do I propose to talk here. My hope is that what I have to say will interest those who are not experts in science, and yet have a desire for trustworthy information and opinion on the vast variety of topics which come up day by day for consideration and discussion, and can only be explained or rightly understood by the aid of that systematised knowledge which is called science.

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Science and the scientific point of view have a very wide, indeed, an unlimited range. Though the making of discoveries of real importance and the full understanding of the steps by which they are made involves, as a rule, long study and special training, yet there is a vast deal of healthy excitement and pleasure connected with the progress of science, in which all can share by receiving, as it were, messages from the front. By contributing true records and observations of fact which serve, in however small a way, as ammunition and material of war for the use of the fighting line, we can all help and take part in the advance of science.

A great feature of what is called science is that it is true. The actual result achieved by science is the record of “that which is”--it can be examined, tested, and proved. But science does not merely collect accurate records of fact. In order to discover new things, new relations, and hidden causes she has to make use of guesses and flights of imagination. The “hypotheses” or guesses are not wild ones, but reasonable suppositions based on careful consideration of existing knowledge. They are never mistaken by trained workers in science for “facts,” nor put forward as such. On the contrary, they are tested and so confirmed or rejected by experiment or trial. Hence the necessity of accuracy in observation for the purposes of science; hence the proverbial “scientific accuracy.” It is of no use to form a guess based upon erroneous statements. It is mere waste of time to accept and build theories upon loose wonder-mongers’ gossip. And, further, the evidence which you obtain in order to confirm or dismiss your “guess” must be equally beyond suspicion as to its accuracy. It must be an observation of fact free from prejudice and illusion.

Your guess, if proved to be true, adds to the solid record of science new facts and new proofs of relationships, which again lead on the imagination of men of science to new guesses, and so to new confirmation or rejection, and to the growth of the vast record of accurate knowledge. To seek out in the endless whirling complexity of things which surround us in earth, sky, and sea, the truth, the knowledge of “that which is,” of the relation of these things to one another as cause and effect and their action and influence on ourselves--this is the aim of science. To substitute real understanding and the power of control of the surrounding world for the misleading and cruelly harmful conceptions existing in the minds of simple unskilled mankind--this is the daily achievement of science.

2. _The Desire to Know the World of Nature_

The practical value of science in securing the happiness of human communities is not, however, the reason which operates most strongly in exciting men and women to give themselves to the cultivation and improvement of this or that branch of it. A rich banker one day was looking round the Natural History Museum with me. It was his first visit. After a time he said, “It’s very fine! wonderful! But what’s it all for? Where does the money come in? That’s what I can’t understand. Why does the Government spend money on this if it don’t lead to making money?” I tried to convince him that there exists in us all a divine “curiosity,” a desire to know regardless of profit or loss, a thirst which we may cultivate and satisfy, in the full assurance that whilst its satisfaction is a delight in itself, we are all the while fulfilling the destiny of man, helping in the conquest of Nature. My friend had apparently lost that instinctive thirst which is the primary impulse to the pursuit of science, that capacity for pleasure which Robert Louis Stevenson truly notes in the words of the child of his “Garland of Verse”:

“The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings!”

The existence of that little child and of numberless “grown-ups” who have become or have never ceased to be, in this matter, even as he, is the reason why science has its helpers and workers of all ranks, and it is of them that I chiefly think in writing these notes.

At a dinner of the Savage Club a year or so ago my friend Dr. Nansen, the Norwegian Minister, quoted some lines from a Scandinavian poet, which he translated somewhat as follows: “As you journey through life do not go too fast, do not press on blindly; there are so many beautiful things by the way. Turn your head, stay a few minutes. Leave the dusty road. Take in and enjoy the wonders and delights which are at your feet.” Motorists, please take note!

For those who can enter more thoroughly into the pursuit of science there are even greater joys. To the very few there is the privilege not merely of realising well-established truths, and of perhaps assisting in securing their foundations or extending their application, but of discovering vast unexplored regions, new possibilities, new revelations of the unfathomed depths of Nature’s workings. Though few can hope to be leaders in these enthralling adventures, yet we can be close to those who are, and, holding their hands, sympathise with their soul’s vision.

“Then felt I like some watcher from the skies, Or the stout Cortes, when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific.... Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

Such a one need have none of the conventional setting of romantic enterprise. He may be standing before a much-stained table, covered with bottles, in an atmosphere of acrid fumes, with a test-tube in his hand, or he may be just raising his head with a far-off gaze, as he sits, bent o’er a microscope, in London.

3. _Scares and Wonders_

There are certain subjects which come within my ken upon which paragraphs are published in the papers nearly every other day of a wildly romantic and misleading character. These subjects may be classified as: (1) Living and extinct monsters. (2) Cures for cancer and tubercle. (3) Unsuspected dangers of infection by disease-germs. It would hardly be pleasant for me to quote these paragraphs in order to deny their statements. They are often headed, “For the Little Ones,” or “From a Foreign Correspondent.” The old-established and better title for such announcements is “For the Marines.” I shall endeavour to mention as they occur to me, among other things, new and duly-certified facts relating to monsters, and to the investigation of disease. With reference to reports which have been seriously put forward during the past year, I may say that the alleged discovery of a mammoth in North America 71ft. long and 40ft. tall is nonsense. In the announcement to which I allude, the measurements have been altered from some original and more correct statement and made to appear astonishing by error or design.

No new facts of importance bearing upon the treatment of either cancer or tubercle have been lately discovered which can be explained to the general public. Work is proceeding nevertheless. No new source of danger from disease-germs has been detected since this time last year. It is true that the dust in railway carriages, and especially in sleeping-cars, which are not properly cleaned every day after occupation by travellers, is full of microbes, and, like the dust of rooms which have been crowded by human beings, may be a source of disease infection. The remedy for this is careful cleansing after each journey, and a special construction of the cars like a tiled bath-room, so as to avoid the accumulation of dirt. At present this is, and long has been, neglected.

Another serious and more recent danger is that arising from the crowding of passengers in underground railway tubes. Both in Paris and London this has been recognised as a real and pressing danger. Trouble has been given by the dust raised in the Paris Tube, but the danger caused by dust has been avoided in London. It is a definitely-ascertained fact that many bacteria, including disease-producing kinds, are rapidly killed by exposure to strong sunlight. Hence underground tubes and the chinks and recesses of railway carriages are more liable to harbour disease-germs than the open-air roadways and the carriages which ply on them. Great cleanliness and the use of germicide washing fluids are the obvious precautions to be taken in the absence of sunlight.

As to mammoths and elephants--the former is a misspelling of the word “mammont,” the name given by the natives of Northern Siberia to the extinct elephant, hairy, but otherwise closely similar to the Indian elephant, which within the period of prehistoric man (50,000 to 150,000 years) was abundant over the whole of the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere. Mammoths’ tusks (ivory) are still largely imported from Siberia. The biggest African elephant may, perhaps, stand 13ft. at the shoulder. No mammoth or other extinct elephant seems to have exceeded this. The stuffed African elephant in Cromwell road measures 11ft. 2in. at the shoulder. Mr. Carnegie’s great extinct reptile Diplodocus is only 12ft. 9in. from the ground at the highest part of its back. The biggest tusk of a recent elephant ever seen was bought by me for the Natural History Museum seven years ago. It weighs 228lb., and measures 10ft. 2in. along the curve. It was recognised three years ago by Mr. Jephson (one of Stanley’s companions) as one of a pair which he had weighed in Central Africa. It was in the possession of Emin Pasha when that unfortunate gentleman was “rescued” by Stanley and Jephson. After the subsequent assassination of Emin, his ivory treasure found its way to Zanzibar, and this tusk being part of it, was sold and brought to London.

A real new monster of great size is the carnivorous reptile described by Professor Osborne, of New York, as Tyrannosaurus. There is no mistake or exaggeration about this report. The specimen is in the New York Museum, and has been described in detail and drawn to scale by Professor Osborne. The skeleton stands up like that of a huge bird or a kangaroo on the two hind legs--as does that of the vegetarian reptile Iguanodon. The Iguanodon and the Tyrannosaurus are of about the same height, namely 17ft. But the new monster has enormous tiger-like teeth, twelve on each side of the jaw, above and below, and the jaws are three feet long, whilst the whole head is broad and short. Iguanodon, on the other hand, has been long known from English and Belgian rocks, and can be seen in Cromwell Road. It has a beak like a tortoise, and the small teeth of a vegetable-feeder. Both animals had very short front limbs or arms, but in Tyrannosaurus these are really ridiculously out of proportion, according to more familiar standards, for the whole arm is not bigger than one of the toes of the hind foot. This new giant carnivorous reptile is found in rocks of the same age as our greensand and chalk in Wyoming, U.S.A. It preyed upon huge vegetable-eating reptiles, the remains of which are found in the same strata, and have been reconstructed.

The mere size of these extinct reptiles is a very natural cause of wonder and admiration. At the same time, it is well to remember that the body of the largest African elephant is as big, or very nearly as big, as the body of the biggest of these extinct reptiles. Some of these giant extinct reptiles had very long tails and necks, which the elephant cannot boast. No extinct animal is known which approaches in bulk the great whales of various kinds at present inhabiting the sea. The striking thing about many huge extinct animals is that they are represented to-day by similarly constructed animals of much smaller size. Thus we know giant extinct sloths, which contrast strangely with the small living sloths of to-day, giant extinct rat-like animals and giant extinct kangaroos far exceeding the bulk of living rats and kangaroos. But it is distinctly not true that all recent animals are degenerate and small as compared with extinct related kinds. The modern horse is far larger than its extinct ancestors, which we can trace back in a gradual diminishing series to a little beast no bigger than a spaniel. So, too, the earliest elephants known are quite small creatures.

The interesting point about extinct animals is really not so much that they were often large of their kind, but that they are often of kinds quite unknown at the present day among living animals. On the other hand sometimes (but by no means always) they can be shown to be connected as ancestors to living animals by a series of intermediate forms. The remains of the connecting forms are found embedded in successive rock-strata, intermediate in age between the present day and the remote period when the earliest members of the series were alive and flourishing--and we can follow out in many instances (for example, in the pedigree of the horse, and again of the elephant) the gradual but very extensive changes by which the descendants of a long extinct kind of animal have been “transformed” into modern recent animals, familiar to us.

4. _Work at the Pasteur Institute_

Professor Elias Metschnikoff was busy, when I saw him at the Institut Pasteur in Paris last September, with an experimental investigation of “appendicitis.” He finds that chimpanzees can exhibit this disease, and he is led by experiments on those animals to believe that a gas-producing micro-organism--the bacillus aërogenicus--already known as occurring in the human intestine--is especially active in exciting the disease. Parasitic worms or other foreign bodies must first wound the delicate lining of the appendix before the virulent gas-forming bacillus can penetrate and start inflammation and abscess. Metschnikoff was also investigating a disease of tropical regions, known as “the Yaws.” Most people would imagine that this name refers to a disease like the gapes, but it is quite different, being an ulceration of the skin caused by a spirillum.

Spirilla--corkscrew-like threads of excessive minuteness--are parasitic organisms, like bacteria, bacilli, and micrococci. They are of different kinds--some harmless, some deadly. One is common in the mouth of the healthiest of us--another causes one of our most terrible diseases. They can be distinguished by the microscope, though much alike. What microscopists call “dark-ground illumination”--that is, illumination by horizontal rays of light, obtained by a prism attached below the glass slip on which the object is placed for examination with the microscope, has been found at the Institut Pasteur to be a very ready way of showing the spirilla in fresh blood or sputum. The spirilla are alive, and are seen when highly magnified, shooting rapidly across the field of view with a corkscrew action, like brilliant silver threads. The detection of the microbe which causes an infective disease, is often the first step to the control of the disease, or to knowledge which enables man to avoid the disease altogether. Some striking examples of this have occurred of late years.

5. _The Sea Serpent_

The sea-serpent rarely puts in an appearance now, though a Cornish “manifestation” was reported last year. A recent account of a strange marine monster, declared by some to be, of course, the sea-serpent, seen but to disappear, was that given by Lord Crawford’s companions two years ago. In that case, and in others in which a huge fin-like structure, supported by fin-rays, has been seen projecting from the mysterious animal, it is not improbable that what was seen was a large seal of the “eared” kind, raising one of its long, webbed hind-feet from the water, a trick which some of them are known to have. Other reputed sea-serpents have been, in reality, a school of porpoises, or a line-like flight of sea-birds, or a mass of seaweed, or a whale in association with one or other of these--or, again, a real marine snake 5ft. long (such are well known and very poisonous), or a ribbon-fish 12ft. long. There is “no reason why there should not be” a huge and seldom-seen kind of animal living in the sea--like a serpent in appearance. No one can say, as the result of observation, that there is not, since no one has thoroughly explored the dark, unfathomed depths of ocean. Yet we gain very little when we have admitted our ignorance, and agreed that there is no reason why something should not be. The real question is, “Does the thing in question exist?” not “Could it possibly exist?” Does the great sea-serpent exist? The answer to that is, There is not much evidence to show that it does. Most persons who have looked into the matter would be willing to bet 100,000 to 1 against its being captured, dead or alive, and brought before the Royal Society within ten years’ time. Unless it be so captured and “tabled” it matters very little whether it exists or not. It must be “discovered” in order to become really interesting.

6. _Giraffes and the Okapi_

The baby giraffe at the gardens in the Regent’s Park is a most interesting and beautiful creature. In that respect she only resembles on a small scale her grown-up relatives. Next to elephants, giraffes take precedence for strangeness, beauty, and imposing size. Certainly they have done so with me ever since I turned one Sunday afternoon long ago from the great novelty of the day, the first hippopotamus sent from Egypt, round whom the world of fashion was crowding, and gazed into the beautiful eyes that hung over me, supported by a gracefully-curving neck. My tender regard for the beautiful creature was not shaken even when I felt a sudden jerk to the elastic band passing under my chin and saw my new Leghorn straw hat, with its ornamental bunch of Egyptian wheat and broad pink ribbon, disappear between the lips of the beauty. A slow right and left movement of the jaw followed, accompanied by a tranquil kindly look suggestive of a desire for more. That was one of the old stock of Regent’s Park giraffes, who bred freely at the gardens and made money for the society. They died out thirty years ago or more. From time to time since then there have been one or two mis-shapen giraffes in London, but they did not eat children’s hats nor produce young of their own. A new dynasty of Kordofan giraffes has now arrived, and a better spirit prevails.