Part 5

The Mars photographs are each about as big as a dried pea (that is the biggest size possible with the feeble light reflected by Mars), but “several of the canals,” says Mr. Lowell, “are distinctly visible on the photographs, and one has been photographed double.” I should have liked to examine these photographs in a good light with a lens. The statement quoted means that the canals in Mars can no longer be regarded as due to errors of eyesight and imagination, and that the annual doubling or formation of a second canal parallel to what was earlier in the year a single canal, is actually recorded by a disinterested, impartial photographic plate. Are these canals the work of intelligent inhabitants of Mars? I will not venture to say in reply more than this, that I have never heard any other explanation of their occurrence. But that, of course, still leaves the matter open.

21. _Origin of Names by Errors in Copying_

A curious illustration of a mistake perpetuated by a clerical error is the title of Viscount Glerawly. The title was intended to have been Glenawly, but the bad writing of a clerk converted the “n” into an “r,” and the name having been so entered in the patent of nobility, or some such document, could not be altered. The same thing has happened to the mammoth. His proper native name is “mammont,” but “mont” became “mout,” and then “moth.” A similar clerical error is responsible for the name Gavial, which is applied to the long, narrow-nosed crocodile of India, both as a scientific name (Gavialis) and colloquially. Really the “v” is due to a misreading of an “r,” the creature’s native name being Garial. It was so written down and sent home by an early explorer, but his handwriting being wanting in clearness, the word was copied as Gavial and the scientific patent issued in that name.

22. _False News as to Extinct Monsters_

The tendency of English newspapers to bedeck themselves every now and again with rank absurdities copied from American rubbish-sheets is a disease. On no subject outside the field of natural history and medicine would any editor dream of printing the stuff which does duty as “news” in regard to these departments--stuff which has not even the semblance of being carefully concocted, but yet is found “good enough” to circulate as serious information.

Another antediluvian monster, much larger than the mammoth, was reported in a London evening paper at the end of November 1907. The article devoted to it is a mass of absurdity, a burlesque of a genuine note on the subject. It appears that the most ordinary thing happened at Los Angeles, California, namely, that some workmen, in driving a tunnel, unearthed some fossil bones. We are not surprised to learn (though it is announced as a marvel) that the bones were those of a mastodon (of which you may see a whole skeleton in Cromwell-road), and those of the extinct American elephant called Elephas columbi. This very commonplace occurrence was certainly not worth recording in a London daily paper. So it is elaborately dressed up with details intended to “fetch” the innocent reader. The writer says Elephas columbi is as much larger than the Siberian mammoth as that is larger than the horse of to-day. The truth is that Elephas columbi and the mammoth are as nearly as possible of the same size. To writer goes on to tell of a “fossil horse,” found at the same place, “a wonderful two-toed animal marked by his cloven hoof.” That is cool impudence; it is precisely “the double hoof” which none of the horse tribe possess, but all the deer, cattle, and sheep do. He next tells us that elephants and mastodons were never found together before, but supposed to have shunned each other’s company. This is an invention; their remains are found side by side all over Europe. Then suddenly the surprising statement is made, like a bolt from the blue, “England ceases to be the Mother Country and Germany the Fatherland to us,” and the pre-eminence of America in providing the biggest thing on earth is declared to have been already manifest “when the world rose out of chaos.” It is satisfactory to be told that England is not the Mother Country of this silliness; but whether the world which solemnly prints and reads it can be said to have yet “risen out of chaos” must be regarded as doubtful.

23. _Mistletoe and Holly_

Christmas things and customs comprise much that has great interest from a scientific point of view. Our modern celebration of Christmas in England is a combination of the Christian festival of the Nativity with that of the Epiphany, and that of St. Nicholas, who long ago was substituted for the sea god Neptune, of classical mythology, by sea-faring folk. Santa Claus--or Saint Nicholas--has his festival at the beginning of December, but he has been carried over to Christmas Day, and appears as “Father Christmas” in modern celebrations. There is no great antiquity about this part of the tradition which we try to keep alive at Christmas. The making of Christmas Day and Christmastide into a special children’s festival is, on the other hand, a moving back of the festival of the Epiphany, when gifts were brought to the child Christ by wise men of the East. In Rome I have assisted in celebrating our Twelfth Night under the name “Befani,” at a great illuminated public fair, near the Pantheon, where children are taken to buy toys.

There has been in England also a similar moving back of the very ancient--even prehistoric--celebrations of the New Year to Christmas, and hence it is that the mysterious and sacred “mistletoe” of the Druids is mingled in our houses with the less significant but beautiful holly as a decoration. The Christian Church, however, did not, and does not, sanction the introduction of mistletoe into the sacred edifice, and not many years ago those who loved and truly understood tradition would not permit mistletoe to be mixed with holly even in the private house at Christmastide. Mistletoe, it was held, could not be rightly introduced until the new year. The new year, however, of the Druids differed in date from that of the later calendar, and fell in what is to us the second week of March.

The holly tree, with its splendid red berries and shining, prickly leaves, is a beautiful decorative plant, very hardy and abundant: it was used by the old Romans in their “Saturnalia,” a feast which nearly coincided with the Christmas of the new religion. There is a species of holly in South America the leaves of which are made into tea by the Indians, the Paraguay tea or matté. This tea is an unpleasant, bitter decoction, devoid of aroma, if I may judge from samples which I have tasted in London. “Ilex” is the botanical name of the genus to which both our holly-tree and the Paraguay tea belong, but it must not be confused with the evergreen oak to which the name Quercus ilex is given on account of the resemblance of its leaves to those of a holly.

The mistletoe (or mistil-tan, the pale branch, in Anglo-Saxon) is a pale-coloured, small-flowered member of a great family of parasitic plants, the Loranthaceæ. They all live upon trees, and draw a part of their nourishment from the juices of the tree into which their rootlets penetrate. The tropical allies of the mistletoe are very beautiful plants, with fine bunches of brilliantly-coloured flowers and broad handsome green leaves. Our mistletoe is most commonly found parasitic on apple trees and poplar trees. It occurs on nearly all our trees, but is very rare on the oak. A careful inquiry some time ago resulted in the discovery of only seven oaks in all England on which mistletoe was growing. The Druids took their sacred mistletoe from the sacred oak tree on account of its rarity. To them it was a charm against infertility and sterility, and, according to Pliny, was cut and distributed at the new year with great ceremony and the sacrifice of heifers. Its paired white berries contain a viscid fluid which gives it its botanical name Viscum album--and causes the seeds to adhere to the beaks of birds--and thus to be transported to a distance and introduced by the birds’ attempts to wipe their beaks into the cracks of the bark of trees, in which the seeds germinate.

The white-berried mistletoe is the only English kind, and red mistletoe seems altogether out of character. But a red-berried species (Viscum cruciatum) is parasitic on the olive tree in Spain, North Africa, and Syria. Curiously enough, though the white-berried mistletoe is excommunicated by the Western Christian Church on account of its use in pagan worship, the red-berried mistletoe was gathered from olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the enclosure of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem by Sir Joseph Hooker, the great botanist. The red-berried mistletoe was successfully raised from seed on young olive trees six years ago in this country by the Hon. Charles Ellis, of Frensham, near Haslemere, and was figured at that time by Hooker.

The mistletoe has an evil name in Scandinavian mythology. Baldur, the beautiful, the Sun-god, was made, like Achilles, invulnerable to spears and arrows cut from whatever tree grows on earth. All things had taken an oath not to hurt him, and the gods of Walhalla amused themselves by throwing all sorts of darts and clubs at him--none could hurt him. At last the blind god Höder, who loved the beautiful Baldur none the less because he himself was weakly and sightless, also ventured to throw a dart at his invulnerable friend. It sped home, pierced Baldur’s heart, and killed him. The dart was made of mistletoe, a tree that does not grow on earth, but lives as a parasite high up on other trees, and had taken no oath to spare Baldur. It had been put into the blind god’s hand in a friendly helpful sort of way by a designing female, who was really the evil spirit Loki in disguise. What is the allegory? Does the mistletoe dart stand for calumny? Is the mistletoe associated with calumny because it is a parasite in high places? If one must choose between the mistletoe myth of Norsemen and Briton--the latter, which survives in the power accorded to the mistletoe to license, even to command, by its mere overhead existence, the giving and taking of unexpected kisses and of expected ones, too, is certainly the more cheerful and suitable to the hopeful enterprise of New Year.

24. _The Cattle Show_

I always look upon the Christmas Cattle Show of the Smithfield Club as a scientific delight. Breeding is a most serious branch of scientific knowledge, held by many people (of whom I am one) to be of more importance to statesmen, politicians, and philanthropists than any other kind of knowledge, and yet almost absolutely neglected and completely ignored except by our farmers and horticulturists. When examining in turn the splendid animals at Islington I have felt indignant that it should be not improbable that, owing to ignorance and neglect in official quarters, the long matured traditions and built-up skill of our cattle-breeders will be destroyed, crushed out of existence by huge, devastating capitalist “combines.” Soon we shall not get the beef we wish for, but we shall have to take whatever inferior stuff the giant monopolist chooses to force on us--or go without! Our wonderful stock, so patiently and happily bred, the envy of the world, will disappear, and our breeders forget their art. We shall none of us in Britain know more about prime beef, roasts, grills, and marrow-bones than do the people of Europe or the eaters of terrapin and soft-shelled crabs.

It is wonderful that man, by deliberate choice in selecting the sires and dams, has been able to produce such widely-different races as the short-horn, the Highland and the Sussex breed, and not only to produce them, but to keep them there generation after generation. In Nature, no such deviations are allowed--her motto is “One species, one shape,” which is only relaxed so as to allow a few geographical varieties. It is man who makes all these strange breeds, just as he has made such a queer, irregular, varied lot of creatures from the human stock. Withdraw once and for all man’s guiding “intelligence,” or perversity, if you choose so to call it, and all these cattle would in a few hundred years revert to one form, nearly (but not quite) the same as that they came from. So, too, the Sheep; so, too, the Pigs. And man himself, if one could poison him universally with a mind-destroying microbe, would become a beautiful, healthy, silly creature, dying at first by millions annually, and at last represented by a hundred thousand unvarying specimens, inhabiting the warm but healthy corners of the earth, aimlessly happy, free from disease, neither increasing nor decreasing in number. It is legitimate, and is a means of examining the whole problem of man’s history, to inquire whether we have reason or not to suppose that, were intelligent man thus removed arbitrarily and completely from the scene, a new “lord of the world” would arise, by normal evolutionary process. A bird, an elephant, a rat, might give rise to the new line of progressive development, and, unchecked by man, once jealous and repressive, but now down-fallen, this new stock might acquire such brains and wits as we men now boast of, and people the earth. You never can tell! But it is not the business of science to expatiate on such possibilities.

The domesticated cattle of Europe are of very ancient prehistoric origin. They are for convenience called “Bos taurus,” and seem to be derived from the huge Bos primigenius or Aurochs, the Urus of Cæsar, which was wild in Central Europe in his time, and from the Indian Bos indicus--which is represented by the Indian and African native breeds of “humped” cattle. It is, however, very difficult to trace most of man’s domesticated animals or his cultivated plants to their original wild forms and original habitation. At the Cattle Show we only see British and Irish breeds, and only those cattle bred as meat-makers--the Highland, the Welsh, the Shorthorns, the polled Angus, the South Devons, the Hereford, the Sussex, the Galloway, the Dexter. But there are other British breeds famous for their milk-producing quality, such as the Guernseys and Jerseys, whilst in Hungary, Italy, and Spain they have magnificent breeds of great size, and often with truly splendid spirally-turned horns (e.g. the Spanish), which are used for ploughing and carting, and are fattened, killed, and eaten after doing ten years’ good work. These fine creatures are not seen in England. They come nearest to the extinct Aurochs, which was, however, bigger than any of them. It, too, existed in prehistoric times in England, and we find its bones in the gravel of the Thames Valley. The last aurochs, or wild bull of Europe, was killed in Poland near the end of the seventeenth century. The wild Chillingham cattle are Roman cattle run wild. Many of these breeds and the bones of the aurochs to compare as to size may be seen in the north hall of the Natural History Museum, where I commenced a collection of domesticated breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, &c., eight years ago. Chillingham cattle are to be seen in the Zoological Gardens.

An interesting fact in this connection is that the splendid bull which is kept in half-wild herds in Spain for the purpose of “bull-fights,” is of a totally different race from that of the big, long-horned agricultural cattle. It may be seen at Cromwell-road, a specimen killed in the ring having been procured at my request and presented to the museum through the kindness of the British Consul at Seville. The Spanish fighting bull is, curiously enough, more like our Channel Island milk-producing cattle than any other. It probably came to Spain from North Africa--but there seems to be no record or history concerning it--and if there were it would probably be a fantastic invention. It seems that only the bulls of this special breed can be played with and dazzled by the matador’s red cloak. A Scotch bull was once brought by sea to Seville and introduced to the arena. He paid no attention to cloaks, red or otherwise, but always went straight for his man. It is stated that he was soon left quite alone in the ring! The native African cattle (of Indian origin) at Ujiji and in Damaraland have the biggest horns of any true Bos--as much as 13-1/2 ft. along the curve from point to point. We have to distinguish from our own cattle, for which there is no name except “Bos taurus,” for neither ox, bull, cow, heifer, nor steer will do--the other bovines--the buffaloes, the yak, and the bison--besides those great beasts the gayal and the gaur of India and the banting of Malay. All these may be seen and studied either in the Museum or the Zoological Gardens.

25. _The Experimental Method_

The observations lately made by a Chancellor of the Exchequer about an attempt to put salt on a bird’s tail remind me of my first attempt to deal experimentally with a popular superstition. I was a very trustful little boy, and I had been assured by various grown-up friends that if you place salt on a bird’s tail the bird becomes as it were transfixed and dazed, and that you can then pick it up and carry it off. On several occasions I carried a packet of salt into the London park where my sister and I were daily taken by our nurse. In vain I threw the salt at the sparrows. They always flew away, and I came to the conclusion that I had not succeeded in getting any salt or, at any rate, not enough on to the tail of any one of them.

Then I devised a great experiment. There was a sort of creek eight feet long and three feet broad at the west end of the ornamental water in St. James’s Park. My sister attracted several ducks with offerings of bread into this creek, and I, standing near its entrance, with a huge paper bag of salt, trembled with excitement at the approaching success of my scheme. I poured quantities--whole ounces of salt--on to the tails of the doomed birds as they passed me on their way back from the creek to the open water. Their tails were covered with salt. But, to my surprise and horror, they did not stop! They gaily swam forward, shaking their feathers and uttering derisive “quacks.” I was profoundly troubled and distressed. I had clearly proved one thing, namely, that my nursemaid, uncle, and several other trusted friends--but not, I am still glad to remember, my father--were either deliberate deceivers or themselves the victims of illusion. I was confirmed in my youthful wish to try whether things are as people say they are or not. Somewhat early perhaps, I adopted the motto of the Royal Society, “Nullius in verba.” And a very good motto it is, too, in spite of the worthy Todhunter and other toiling pedagogues, who have declared that it is outrageous to encourage a youth to seek demonstration rather than accept the statement of his teacher, especially if the latter be a clergyman. My experiment was on closely similar lines to that made by the Royal Society on July 24, 1660--in regard to the alleged property of powdered rhinoceros horn--which was reputed to paralyse poisonous creatures such as snakes, scorpions, and spiders. We read in the journal-book, still preserved by the society, under this date: “A circle was made with powder of unicorne’s horn, and a spider set in the middle of it, but it immediately ran out several times repeated. The spider once made some stay upon the powder.”

26. _Hypnotism and an Experiment on the Influence of the Magnet_

A more interesting result followed from an experiment made in the same spirit twenty-five years later. I was in Paris, and went with a medical friend to visit the celebrated physician Charcot, to whom at that time I was a stranger, at the Salpêtrière Hospital. He and his assistants were making very interesting experiments on hypnotism. Charcot allowed great latitude to the young doctors who worked with him. They initiated and carried through very wild “exploratory” experiments on this difficult subject. Charcot did not discourage them, but did not accept their results unless established by unassailable evidence, although his views were absurdly misrepresented by the newspapers and wondermongers of the day.

At this time there had been a revival of the ancient and fanciful doctrine of “metallic sympathies,” which flourished a hundred years ago, and was even then but a revival of the strange fancies as to “sympathetic powders,” which were brought before the Royal Society by Sir Kenelm Digby at one of its first meetings, in 1660. In the journal-book of the Royal Society of June 5 of that year, we read, “Magnetical cures were then discoursed of. Sir Gilbert Talbot promised to bring in what he knew of sympatheticall cures. Those that had any powder of sympathy were desired to bring some of it at the next meeting. Sir Kenelm Digby related that the calcined powder of toades reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate body, cures it by several applications.” The belief in sympathetic powders and metals was a last survival of the mediæval doctrine of “signatures,” itself a form of the fetish still practised by African witch-doctors, and directly connected with the universal system of magic and witchcraft of European as well as of more remote populations. To this day, such beliefs lie close beneath the thin crust of modern knowledge and civilisation, even in England, treasured in obscure tradition and ready to burst forth in grotesque revivals in all classes of society. The Royal Society put many of these reputed mechanisms of witchcraft and magic to the test, and by showing their failure to produce the effects attributed to them, helped greatly to cause witches, wizards, and their followers to draw in their horns and disappear. The germ, however, remained, and reappears in various forms to-day.

Thirty years ago some of the doctors in Paris believed that a small disc of gold, or copper, or of silver, laid flat on the arm could produce an absence of sensation in the arm, and that whilst one person could be thus affected by one metal another person would respond only to another metal, according to a supposed “sympathy” or special affinity of the nervous system for this or that metal. This astonishing doctrine was thought to be proved by certain experiments made with the curiously “nervous” (hysterical) women who frequent the Salpêtrière Hospital as out-patients. That the loss of sensation, which was real enough, was due to what is called “suggestion”--that is to say, a belief on the part of the patient that such would be the case, because the doctor said it would--and had nothing to do with one metal or another, was subsequently proved by making use of wooden discs in place of metallic ones, the patient being led to suppose that a disc of metal of the kind with which she believed herself “sympathetic” was being applied. Sensation disappeared just as readily as when a special metallic disc was used.