Part 11

Perhaps the most remarkable forms are those mentioned by Doctor Sars, when he says: “The very close and apparently genetic relationship between the two polar species of the amphipodous genus _Pseudalibrotos_ and those occurring in the Caspian Sea, is another remarkable instance which seems fully to corroborate the correctness of the assumption of geologists as to a direct connexion in olden times between this isolated basin and the North Polar Sea.”

Both species, taken near 85° N., are regarded as the primitive types from which the Caspian forms are descended. The more remarkable of the Arctic forms, _P. Nanseni_, is reproduced on page 430.

To conclude, this volume is a most valuable contribution to the scientific literature of the Arctic regions. It has but one marked objection, its publication in such beautiful form and high price as necessarily places this series beyond the means of many scientific students.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE.

_LEGISLATION AGAINST MEDICAL DISCOVERY._[P]

[P] An open letter from President Eliot of Harvard University to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia.

DEAR SIR: I observe that a new bill on the subject of vivisection has been introduced into the Senate, Bill No. 34. This bill is a slight improvement on its predecessor, but it is still very objectionable. I beg leave to state very briefly the objection to all such legislation.

1. To interfere with or retard the progress of medical discovery is an inhuman thing. Within fifteen years medical research has made rapid progress, almost exclusively through the use of the lower animals, and what such research has done for the diagnosis and treatment of diphtheria it can probably do in time for tuberculosis, erysipelis, cerebro-spinal meningitis and cancer, to name only four horrible scourges of mankind which are known to be of germ origin.

2. The human race makes use of animals without the smallest compunctions as articles of food and as laborers. It kills them, confines them, gelds them and interferes in all manner of ways with their natural lives. The liberty we take with the animal creation in using utterly insignificant numbers of them for scientific researches is infinitesimal compared with the other liberties we take with animals, and it is that use of animals from which the human race has most to hope.

3. The few medical investigators can not, probably, be supervised or inspected or controlled by any of the ordinary processes of Government supervision. Neither can they properly be licensed, because there is no competent supervising or licensing body. The Government may properly license a plumber, because it can provide the proper examination boards for plumbers; it can properly license young men to practice medicine, because it can provide the proper examination boards for that profession, and these boards can testify to the fitness of candidates; but the Government cannot provide any board of officials competent to testify to the fitness of the medical investigator.

4. The advocates of anti-vivisection laws consider themselves more humane and merciful than the opponents of such laws. To my thinking these unthinking advocates are really cruel to their own race. How many cats or guinea pigs would you or I sacrifice to save the life of our child or to win a chance of saving the life of our child? The diphtheria-antitoxin has already saved the lives of many thousands of human beings, yet it is produced through a moderate amount of inconvenience and suffering inflicted on horses and through the sacrifice of a moderate number of guinea pigs. Who are the merciful people--the few physicians who superintend the making of the antitoxin and make sure of its quality, or the people who cry out against the infliction of any suffering on animals on behalf of mankind?

It is, of course, possible to legislate against an improper use of vivisection. For instance, it should not be allowed in secondary schools or before college classes for purposes of demonstration only; but any attempt to interfere with the necessary processes of medical investigation is, in my judgment, in the highest degree inexpedient, and is fundamentally inhuman.

Yours very truly, C. W. ELIOT.

HON. JAMES MCMILLAN.

_THE HIGHER EDUCATION FOR COLORED YOUTH._

Prof. Shaler’s article in the June number of the POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY was in many ways sensible and timely, but it seems to the writer that in common with many other people he is misleading in his remarks about higher education for the negro. One would think from the great outcry against the higher education for young people of the colored race, that scarcely any other kind of education was being given them. On all sides we hear the familiar refrain: “The higher education for the negro has been a failure.” Now success is a relative term. If a mere handful of colored college graduates, in a few years, ought to have settled the race problem, and induced their white fellow-citizens to treat these graduates and all members of their race fairly, then it has been a failure. But if the higher education should simply give added power of mind, enlarge the mental grasp and capacity for usefulness, lift up, socially, morally, religiously and financially, not only its disciples, but also thousands who have been induced to look upward by the force of their example, then the higher education for colored youth has been a tremendous success. Is not the latter the fair test? Of course the higher education of the few has not eliminated crime. It has not done that for the white race. The writer is a colored man and a college graduate. He can not see that the higher education has any different effect on the colored youth from what it has on the white. If there be any difference it is this: It raises the colored youth from a lower social level, as a rule, and places him on a social plane, relatively, among his own people, higher than it does in the case of the white youth. The higher training, therefore, should be more valuable to the colored youth.

In a recent address before a graduating class at Howard University, the Hon. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education, submitted statistics which showed that the proportionate number of secondary and higher students to the whole number of children attending school in the United States had increased from 2.22 per cent in 1879 to 5.01 per cent in 1897, nearly two and a half times; while the proportion of colored students in secondary schools and colleges had increased very little indeed, from 1 per cent to only 1.16 per cent. But the story is not yet half told. According to the report of the Commissioner of Education, 1897-98, Vol. 2, page 2,097, the total number of students taking the higher education in the United States, as a whole, was 144,477, being 1,980 to each million of the total population. The same report, page 2,480, gives the total number of colored students pursuing collegiate courses in these much discussed colored colleges as 2,492. This is only 310 to the million of colored population, whereas the whole of the United States, as shown above, had 1,980 to the million, nearly six and a half times as many in proportion to population. This does not look as if the entire colored population were rapidly stampeding to the higher education, or as if the labor supply in the Southern States were falling off from this cause.

This is an age of higher education for the masses. The increase in the number of students taking the secondary and higher education in the United States during the last ten years has been phenomenal--unprecedented. Is the person of color so much superior to the white that he does not need so much educational training? I think not. In view of the history and present condition of this race, there is an obvious necessity for a large number of educated and trained teachers, ministers, physicians, lawyers and pharmacists; and in view of the fact that this race has only one fifth of its quota pursuing studies above the elementary grades, what fair mind will not say that there is great need of more of the secondary and higher education for colored youth, instead of less of it?

According to the report above cited, 161 academies and colleges for colored youth in the United States reported. The total number enrolled was 42,328, of which 2,492 were reported in collegiate grades, 13,669 in secondary grades and 26,167 in elementary grades. Even in these colored colleges less than 6 per cent of the students are pursuing collegiate courses. Of these, perhaps not more than 2 per cent are pursuing a college course equal to that offered at Howard. Nearly two thirds of the total enrollment in these colored colleges are receiving elementary instruction in the three R’s. Classified by courses of study, 1,711--217 in a million--were taking the classical course; 1,200--150 in a million--the scientific; 4,449--555 to the million--the normal course in preparation for teaching; 1,285--160 in a million--professional courses; 9,724 the English course, and 244 the business course. In each of these courses the colored race has only about one fifth or one sixth of its quota. Is there anything in these figures to alarm the nation?

About one third of the total number of students in these 161 colored schools and colleges are taking industrial training. When we consider the great demand for educated colored ministers, teachers and physicians, and the quick reward for ability in these lines, on the one hand, and the exclusiveness of some trade-unions in shutting out colored workmen, on the other, the wonder is that one third of the total number of colored youth in these schools have chosen the industrial course. For it is by no means certain that they will be allowed to work at their trades after they have learned them.

The number of colored students who have had even a smattering of the higher education has been shown to be ridiculously small, and the total number of colored graduates with the college degree proper does not at the most liberal estimate exceed one thousand. Many of them are dead. Of the number now living, almost every one can be located in some useful and uplifting employment as ministers, teachers, physicians, lawyers, business men, or as wives presiding over happy, prosperous, cultured homes which white persons seldom enter except on business. Our critics seem to know nothing of these homes, which, as a rule, are owned by their occupants. For the most part these homes are scattered throughout the South, and are centers of culture and refinement that elevate the moral and social status of the entire community.

To deprive the youth of the colored race of the higher education is to deprive them of all the nobler incentives to study, to sacrifice, to struggle to get an education. Every thoughtful person knows that these incentives are necessary for the white race; they are equally necessary for the colored race. Neither the white youth nor the colored, in large numbers, will toil and struggle and apply himself to get an education, unless he sees that education brings power and a better living to its possessors.

The colored race, like every other part of our population, needs all kinds of education. It is a sheer fallacy and a grievous wrong to them to hold _all_ of them down to the rudiments of an education, with industrial training. All can not profit by the industrial training any more than all can profit by the higher training. There is no conflict between the advocates of industrial training and the higher education. Both are right. Both are good in their respective spheres. At any rate, it is not necessary to disparage the magnificent achievements of colored persons who have received the higher training to make an argument in favor of training _all_ of them in the manual trades, or to justify their elimination from politics.

ANDREW F. HILGER, _Washington, D. C._

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

_GEOLOGY._

In accordance with the general results of Mr. G. K. Gilbert’s investigation of recent earth movements in the Great Lakes region--that the whole district is being lifted on one side or depressed on the other, so that its plane is bodily canted toward the south-southwest, and that the rate of change is such that the two ends of a line one hundred miles long, running in a south-southwest direction, are relatively displaced four tenths of a foot in one hundred years--certain general consequences ensue. The waters of each lake are gradually rising on the southern and western shores, or falling on the northern and eastern shores, or both. This change is not directly obvious, because masked by temporary changes due to inequalities of rainfall and evaporation and various other causes, but it affects the mean height of the lake surface. In Lake Ontario the water is advancing on all shores, the rate at any place being proportional to its distance from the isobase through the outlet. At Hamilton and Port Dalhousie it amounts to six inches in a century. The water also advances on all shores of Lake Erie, most rapidly at Toledo and Sandusky, where the change is eight or nine inches a century. All about Lake Huron the water is falling, most rapidly at the north and northeast; at Mackinac the rate is six inches, and at the mouth of French River ten inches a century. On Lake Superior the isobase of the outlet cuts the shore at the international boundary; the water is advancing on the American shore, and sinking on the Canadian. At Duluth the advance is six inches, and at Huron Bay the recession is five inches a century. The shores of Lake Michigan are divided by the Port Huron isobase. North of Oconto and Manistee the water is falling; south of these places it is rising, the rate at Milwaukee being five or six inches a century, and at Chicago nine or ten inches. Eventually, unless a dam is erected to prevent it, Lake Michigan will again overflow to the Illinois River, its discharge occupying the channel carved by the outlet of a Pleistocene glacial lake. The summit in that channel is now about eight feet above the mean level of the lake, and the time before it will be overtopped may be computed. For the mean lake stage such discharge will begin in about one thousand years, and after fifteen hundred years there will be no interruption. In about two thousand years the Illinois River and the Niagara will carry equal portions of the surplus water of the Great Lakes. In twenty-five hundred years the discharge of the Niagara will be intermittent, failing at low stages of the lake, and in thirty-five hundred years there will be no Niagara. The basin of Lake Erie will then be tributary to Lake Huron, the current being reversed in the Detroit and St. Clair channels.

_GEOGRAPHY._

Relating to the Royal Geographical Society the story of his exploration of the Bolivian Andes, Sir Martin Conway spoke of his journey by way of the Arequipa Railroad, Peru, to Lake Titicaca. That remarkable sheet of water is fourteen times the size of the Lake of Geneva and twelve thousand feet above the sea, and might be regarded as the remnant of a far greater inland sea, now shrunk away. Driving from Chililaya, he reached the snowy mountain called the Cordillera Real--the backbone of Bolivia--which he had come especially to visit, and in the region of which he spent four months. To the east the mountains fell very rapidly to a low hill country and the fertile valleys that send their waters to the river Beni. On the other side lay a high plateau, at a uniform altitude of from twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet, from which the tops of low rocky hills here and there emerged. This plateau had obviously been at one time submerged; evidence was plentiful that in ancient times the glaciers enveloped a large part of the slopes that led down to it from the main Cordilleras and reached down many miles farther than now. In the immense pile of _débris_ left by the glaciers deep valleys were afterward cut by the action of water, and into these valleys the glaciers of a second period of advance protruded their snouts, depositing moraines that could still be traced _in situ_ as much as four or five miles below the present limit of the ice. Contrary to the apparently general impression that the peaks of the Cordilleras were volcanic, the author had not been able to find any trace of volcanic action along the axis of the range. The Cordillera Real had been elevated by a great earth movement, and the heart of the range consisted of granites, schists and similar rocks. The whole range might be described as highly mineralized. Gold was found at several points, but the chief auriferous valleys were those on the east side of the range. Just below the snowy mass of Cacaaca on the west was a really enormous vein of tin; and antimony, cobalt and platinum have been found in different parts. The great copper deposits were not in this range, but farther west. The flora of the high regions of the Cordillera Real was apparently sparse, but is probably more abundant in the rainy season. Bird life was more prolific and birds were numerous, at suitable places, up to an altitude of seventeen thousand feet above the sea.

_ZOOLOGY._

The most recent elementary text-book in zoölogy is from the press of The Macmillan Co. Professor and Mrs. Charles B. Davenport are the joint authors. It is recognized now-a-days that what the general high school or elementary student in zoölogy needs is not professional training in that subject, but rather an opportunity to view the field so that he may have as wide an acquaintance as may be of the forms of animals and of their doings. This he needs that he may have an interest in the things of nature and that he may be a more intelligent member of society in the things pertaining to his welfare as affected by animals. The book is therefore an attempt to restore the old natural history in a newer garb. The text is divided into twenty-one chapters. The first of these deals with ‘The Grasshopper and its Allies,’ followed by others upon the butterfly, beetle, fly, spider, etc., similarly treated. Each chapter has one or two ‘keys’--that is, arrangements whereby the families of animals may be determined. The book is richly illustrated by means of half-tone and line reproduction; a number of photographs are from life, and one of these is a flash-light photograph of a slug and an earthworm crawling upon a pavement at night! Outlines for simple laboratory work and a list of books dealing with the classification and habits of American animals are to be found in an appendix. Many good things might be said of this contribution to zoölogical text-books. This ought to be said, that it will be a book which will be of value to any person who, while upon his holiday trip, wishes to learn about the animals he may come across.

_ORNITHOLOGY._

Mr. Chapman is equally at home with camera or pen. In ‘Bird Studies with a Camera, with Introductory Chapters on the Outfit and Methods of the Bird Photographer,’ he gives us some of his many experiences from Central Park to the swamps of Florida and the bare rocks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The first two chapters are devoted to a brief discussion of the outfit and methods of the bird photographer, and these any one thinking of taking up this branch of art will do well to read carefully. Mr. Chapman considers that a 4×5 plate is the size best adapted for general purposes, and notes that while a lens with short focus may serve for photographing nests and eggs, for the birds themselves a rapid lens with focus of fourteen to eighteen inches should be used. The rest of the book is for the general reader, and contains many facts of interest concerning the haunts, habits, and home life of a number of birds from the well-known sparrow to the unfamiliar pelican, the accounts of the Bird Rock and Pelican Island being the most interesting. Some of the illustrations are a little disappointing, and emphasize the difficulties of photographing wild birds, but there is ample compensation for these in the excellence of others, particularly those devoted to Percé, Bonaventure and Bird Rock. This is equally true of birds and scenery, the views of Percé Rock being the finest that have fallen under our notice. Mr. Chapman’s estimate of the feathered population of Great Bird Rock, which he puts at 4,000, is by far the smallest yet made, and probably has the soundest basis, and shows a sad diminution from the hosts of fifty years ago.

* * * * *

‘Bird Homes,’ by A. Radclyffe Dugmore, seems well adapted for its stated purpose of stimulating the love of birds, helping the ordinary unscientific person to get some closer glimpses of them, and aiding in the study of their wonderfully adapted nests and beautiful eggs. Furthermore, it will probably create a strong desire in the reader to become a photographer of birds and their nests. To further these aims we have a first part containing half-a-dozen chapters devoted among other things to birds’ nests and eggs, photographing nests and young birds and the approximate dates when birds begin to nest, this being adapted to the vicinity of New York.

Following this is the bulk of the volume, containing brief descriptions of the birds, their nests, nesting places and eggs, and here the author has confessedly borrowed from Bendire, Davie and other well-known authorities, although one might wish that Mr. Dugmore had introduced more of his own observations, since those given incidentally in the first part are very interesting; where he indulges in theory he is less successful. In place of the usual method of studying the nest from the bird, we have that of studying the bird from the nest, and for this purpose the nests are grouped in classes, a chapter being devoted to each class; thus we have nests open, on the ground in open fields, marshes and generally open country; open nests in trees; nests in bridges, buildings, walls, etc. By this plan any one finding a nest can, with a little care and observation, identify the bird that made it. The illustrations, largely of nests and eggs, are a noteworthy feature of the book, although the three-color process which succeeded so admirably in Dr. Holland’s _Butterfly Book_, is here as equally distinct a failure, the least bad of the colored plates being that showing the nest of the yellow-breasted chat, the worst that of the nest of the Baltimore oriole. Those in black and white, however, merit the highest praise, and this includes the smaller cuts introduced as decorative features in the first portion of the book. It would seem difficult in a half-tone to improve on the plate of young crested flycatchers for clearness of detail, while among others that deserve special mention for artistic effect is the wood thrush on nest, and the nests of the chestnut-sided, yellow, blue-winged and worm-eating warblers. The general ‘get-up’ of the book is excellent, and the printing of the plates separately permits the use of a deadfaced paper for the text, which is pleasant to the eye.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.