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Rh iron products. If physiography is the arbiter, the southern shore of Lake Erie, before many years, will be the center of steel and iron production in this country. The Pennsylvania center of this industry has a momentum and a capital investment that will enable it to stand out long against the logic of geography. Allied with this conservatism are the artificial combinations which tend always to restrain the development of new manufacturing centers. But such commercial egoism will in time recognize the greater advantage in conforming to geographic laws. In reference to a particular nation it is probable that ultimate stability will be reached in the industries concerned largely with the inorganic. After the resources of a country have been thoroughly exploited, equilibrium should come, and be disturbed only by responses made to world-wide influences of commerce. But in this country we are still far from stability in the localization of industries; for example, the center of shoe manufacturing has steadily progressed westward; flour milling left Baltimore for Rochester, and moved later to Minneapolis whence it promises to shift again before many years; slaughtering and meat packing, once centered at Cincinnati, later at Chicago, probably now centers west of the Mississippi.

But an almost equally important factor in the shifting of the steel industry is associated with shipping facilities for the finished products. In this respect, northern Ohio has even now an advantage. With the insured growth of New Orleans as a transfer port for marine cargoes a larger relative proportion of finished steel products will go southward.

The earliest effort in this country to facilitate transportation found expression, as already described, in highway construction. This movement was side-tracked when attention was given to canals and later to railroads. These larger needs, involving the final and longest haul for agricultural products, at least, so monopolized thought that we forgot the first step in the route between the farmer and consumer. Early last t century Ohio was given an object lesson in highway construction when I the national road from Wheeling, W. Va., crossed the central part of U the state. Ohio should have excellent roadways. The state now ranks first in the annual production of road-making limestone. This fact should exert an important influence in the future agricultural progress of the state.

The pasture lands of Ohio have always been important and even at the present time they constitute about one third of the area of the tilled lands. The eastern and southeastern parts of the state, the portion encompassed by the Pennsylvanian formations, contain relatively a larger amount of pasture lands. For several decades Ohio was the


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488 leading state in the production of wool. At the present time it still leads among the states outside of the ranching regions. Its rank is ninth in neat cattle, seventh in swine, and sixth in horses. Associated with its standing in live stock is the corollary fact that in Ohio slaughtering and meat packing is still the fourth industry, while in the whole country it ranks ninth in dairy products, and in the gross value of agricultural products it is third in the union.

The trend of scientific agriculture arising from the work of our colleges and from the federal department of agriculture indicates that there will be greater diversity in products as well as more stability in yield. The present marvelous output of the Mississippi basin is bound to be greatly increased. With the prospect of new markets through shorter hauls made possible by the Panama Canal route, and the improvement of waterways, supplementing the inadequate railroad facilities to New Orleans and other gulf ports, the Ohio River states will be stimulated as never before. The probable diversion of trade from the present great shipping ports on the Atlantic does not necessarily imply shrinkage in their business; it means a compliance with physiographic conditions that naturally divides the output of this great agricultural region, between the gulf and the ocean. A large part of the great interior looks to the gulf; geographically, it is a mediterranean country; such was its geologic origin. Its natural affiliations were aborted when the French were supplanted by the British. The history of commerce, the world over, shows how adjustments are inevitable so long as scientific progress is made in farming and manufacturing, and in transportation itself.

From the standpoint of agriculture, however, still another factor will be conspicuously influential before many years. Immigrants to this country in recent times have largely increased our urban population where employment without capital is found, chiefly in the manufacturing centers. A large percentage of these immigrants are farmers in training, and, as they accumulate money, they gravitate to the country. In the east especially these provident foreigners find no trouble in acquiring land because the natives are glad to get out of the country and into villages or cities, preferring to take their chances on earning as good a living there as they were accustomed to on the farm. The deserted farms in the east do not attest a serious impairment of the soil; they indicate an incapacity on the part of the original farmer to adjust himself to changing conditions in agriculture.

In nearly all parts of Ohio one may find holdings which afforded the original farmers a very doubtful living now yielding a constant profit under the tillage of immigrants. European methods of agriculture combined with ability to reef expenses to the vacillations of income make them successful. During the decade 1890-1900 the average

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Rh size of a farm in Ohio was decreased 29.3 + per cent. Particularly in the northern part of the state, throughout the lake-plain belt, specialized and intensive agriculture is now common.

I believe that farming will continue to be one of Ohio's chief sources of wealth. Two thirds of its surface bears glacial soil which contains an abundant and various plant diet. Improved methods of preparing foods for distant markets, and the promise of these markets becoming more accessible through the River-Gulf-Panama Canal route will stimulate cultivation. The advantages of the Ohio River as a means of transportation elicited an early response. In 1794 regular trips, one in four weeks by keel sailboats, were begun between Cincinnati and Pittsburg; this was only six years after the former city was founded. In 1801 a one-hundred-ton vessel for sea trade, built at Marietta, made its first trip down the river, loaded with produce; this was the logical shipping route for the surplus products of southern Ohio.

As early as 1746, six hundred barrels of flour were shipped southward from the Wabash country. French affiliation then dominated the Mississippi valley. The French observed the geography of this interior country in approaching it from either the St. Lawrence or the gulf. New Orleans should be a great port. Logically it is the doorway to nearly half of North America. The aggressive Briton built firmly to the north along the Atlantic; he built so well that it would have been folly to rearrange his structure upon falling heir to the rest of the continent. In extending the commercial structure inland he has not neglected even the slightest natural advantage. But after all, physiographically, the structure is somewhat awkward, and its maintenance expensive. In the organic world, man alone on occasion ignores physiography, but in time he finds it to his highest advantage to comply with the principles of topography. The gulf is the natural outlet of a large part of the Mississippi basin.


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490

S there a limitation placed upon our thought by the language which we use? Do the Germans take to philosophy more easily than other people because of some peculiarly philosophical bias of their language? These are speculative questions which can never be satisfactorily answered. It may, however, safely be asserted that the literature of a language is immediately dependent upon the written alphabet. It is impossible to conceive of a novel having been written in Babylonian cuneiform characters or in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Romance was the same, in its larger outlines, then as now, but writing was too serious a matter to be undertaken for such fleeting fancies. With a difficult alphabet and lack of facilities for writing, general culture was impossible. The Chinese, in modern times, furnish a striking illustration of the deadening effect of a difficult alphabet.

As literature and general culture are related to the alphabet and written language, so scientific advancement is related to the number system in use and to the system of writing numbers. A slight study of the Roman numerals gives the clue to the reason why the advancement along scientific lines lagged so far behind the general advancement achieved by the Roman peoples. The Greeks had a peculiar genius for arithmetical research,-but with them long division was a difficult operation, on account of the symbols. Only an Archimedes could overcome the clumsiness of an unscientific method, and even he could solve but comparatively simple problems.

In order to comprehend the essence of our own number system, it is necessary to distinguish between a number system and a place system. A ten system involves having symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 groups of objects, respectively, and beyond that separate symbols for the successive powers of 10—100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000.... A five system would involve separate symbols for 1, 2, 3 and 4 groups of objects and further symbols for 5 and for the successive powers of 5—25, 125, 625, 3,125, 15,625.... A logically complete 5 system has not been developed among any people of the earth. In fact no other complete system, than a decimal system has ever been developed. Among the Mayas of Central America a 20 system was partially developed. Among the Babylonians there was in use a sixty system interwoven with a decimal system.

A decimal place system involves symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0. The ideas of 10, 100, 1,000 and successive powers of ten are


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492 four as two and two, five as two and two and one, and six as two, two, two. This system is found also among South American tribes. The quinary system is the most frequent of all the systems occurring in the numerals of American languages, although the twenty system is common along the Pacific. A study of the words of various American Indian tribes reveals traces of a five system in the formation of the words for six, seven and eight which are given as five and one, five and two, and five and three. The higher numbers, however, are formed on the decimal scale. The word for twenty signifies two tens and the higher tens are similarly constructed. Among some of the African tribes a partial five system is in use. Other tribes of northern Africa have borrowed the decimal notation from their civilized neighbors.

Without a single exception the ancient civilized peoples of all the world—Egyptians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Hindus—all used the decimal systems. Such striking uniformity among all the races of the earth requires a natural origin for the decimal number base. As Herodotus first suggested, man counts by tens because he has ten fingers. While there may be logical grounds for the advocates of a duo-decimal system, the ten system is too deep-rooted to be dislodged. Were we to acquire numbers as adults with mature minds, a duo-decimal system might be possible, but with children the acquisition of a twelve system may be said to be almost a psychological impossibility.

Among the Babylonians existed a sixty system mixed with a decimal system. Separate symbols and words are found for $$60,\; 3{,}600$$ and $$\textstyle 21{,}600 \;(60,\; \overline{60^2},\; \overline{60^3})$$ and also for $$10,\; 600$$ and $$1{,}000$$ and $$36{,}000$$.

The ingenious hypothesis is advanced by M. Aures that the Babylonians having originally a decimal system, gradually changed from that system of numeration to the duo-decimal and then to the sexagesimal in order to make the number system accord with their systems of measurements. This is the reciprocal movement to that which is taking place with us to-day and that which was effected for France by the French Revolution, the change from duo-decimal and what not else systems of measurements to a decimal system in conformity with our number system. The hypothesis of Aures is justified by the existence of the special symbols and names for 10, 100 and 1,000, and many other curious mixtures of decimal, duo-decimal and sexagesimal systems in the Babylonian measures. There is some comfort to be found in the reflection that ours is not the first civilization to struggle with diverse systems of notation and measurement.

The most striking fact of Babylonian mathematics is that they were in possession of a sixty place system. The famous tablets of Senkereh, discovered by the English geologist, W. K. Loftus, give tables of square and cubic numbers in cuneiform characters. In these tables the numbers proceed regularly up to 82, which is given as 1.4, 92 is given as


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Rh 1.21, $$\textstyle\overline{10^2}$$ as 1.36, $$\textstyle\overline{20^2}$$ as 6.40—naturally all in cuneiform characters. The only possible interpretation of this is that the 1 in the left hand place stands for 60. The table of cubic numbers bears out this interpretation as $$\textstyle\overline{30^3} = 27{,}000$$ is given as 7.30, meaning $$7 \times 3{,}600$$ or $$7 \times \textstyle\overline{60^2} + 30 \times 60 = 25{,}200 + 1{,}800$$ which makes the total of 27,000. Up to date no documents have been found which show the presence of the zero in this system. Even though a zero, and with it thus a full place system, had existed the unwieldiness of the large base would have operated against a universal adoption of the system; a number system must be adapted to child mind.

Our division of the day into 24 hours is probably a heritage from the Babylonians; the division of the hour and minute into sixty parts is certainly a survival from this hoary system. So also the division of the arc of the circle into 360° and the further subdivisions have come to us from this extinct civilization. Greek astronomers and through them all European astronomers borrowed much from the same source, and for over fifteen hundred years of the Christian era sexagesimal fractions were used in all arithmetical computation. The first tables of trigonometric functions were on the basis of a radius of 600,000, later 6,000,000, finally to be discarded by Regiomontanus in 1470 for the base 105, later for 1015, and then by the great Vieta, in 1579, for the base one with decimal values.

It is entirely within the bounds of possibility that the first development of the Hindu, commonly called Arabic, place system was due to some oriental scholar who was familiar with the writings of these ancient Babylonians. Abundant testimony exists tending to prove the communication between Europe and the east. Having special symbols, such as existed in India for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 as early as the second century, acquaintance with this advancement of the Babylonians may have suggested the step to a decimal place system and the innovation of a zero. The existence of a Babylonian zero symbol would strengthen this hypothesis; even a blank space may have been the first symbol.

The Egyptians were in possession of a complete decimal system, with separate symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 and higher powers of 10. The famous Papyrus Rhind of the British Museum gives us a practically complete Egyptian arithmetic. The striking peculiarity of their arithmetic consisted in the work in fractions which was confined almost entirely to unit fractions. The Ahmes Papyrus of date about 1700 B.C. gives a table for a conversion of fractions from to  into unit fractions. The tremendous inertia of even the clumsiest system once established is seen in the fact that Greek manuscripts of date 700 at least 2,200 years later, contain this same bungling system of fractions. Aside from this malign influence European arithmetic was not affected by the Egyptian.


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Rh {|
 * In modern notation, 8,443,682,155, 8 billion, 443 million, 682 thousand, 155.
 * In Hindu, 8 padmas, 4 vyarbondas, 4 kotis, 3 prayoutas, 6 lakchas, ayoutas, 2 sahasra, 1 gata 5 dagan 5.
 * In Arabic and in later German, eight thousand thousand thousand and four hundred thousand thousand and forty-three thousand thousand and six hundred thousand and eighty-two thousand and one hundred fifty-five.
 * In Greek, eighty-four myriads of myriads and four thousand three hundred sixty-eight myriads and two thousand one hundred fifty-five.
 * }
 * In Arabic and in later German, eight thousand thousand thousand and four hundred thousand thousand and forty-three thousand thousand and six hundred thousand and eighty-two thousand and one hundred fifty-five.
 * In Greek, eighty-four myriads of myriads and four thousand three hundred sixty-eight myriads and two thousand one hundred fifty-five.
 * }
 * }
 * }

It is well established that in different parts of India the names for some of the higher powers took different forms, even the order was interchanged. However, as the significance of the name was further given by the order in reading, the variations did not lead to error. Indeed, the variation itself may have necessitated the introduction of a word to signify a vacant place or a lacking unit, with the ultimate introduction of a zero symbol for the word. The use of a special word to indicate absence of a unit is not hypothesis, but is found in verses in the ancient Indian book on astronomy, the Sourya-Siddhanta, and in numerous other ancient Hindu writings.

Brockhaus has well said that if there was any invention for which the Hindus by all their philosophy and religion were well fitted it was the invention of a symbol for zero. This making of nothingness the crux of a tremendous achievement was a step in complete harmony with the genius of the Hindu. The exact date of the birth of the zero symbol is not known, doubtless never will be known. The burden of proof points to a use of this symbol towards the beginning of the fifth century of our era. Wide-spread use in India did not occur until towards the ninth century. With nations as with individuals, the complete significance of great idea is not achieved in a moment; even as this idea itself in its unfolding required the labor of master minds of many centuries, so the appreciation and application of this advance required centuries for its completion.

The intellectual awakening of the Arabs beginning about the middle of the eighth century, manifested itself in the appearance of numerous translations of Greek, Syrian and Hindu works. Barbarians as they undoubtedly were at the period of their first conquests, the Arabs distinguished themselves by their desire for the further conquests of the science and literature of the subjugated peoples. The Persian invasion brought them close to the civilization of the Hindus and here the scholars went further than the flag. Hindu astronomy and astrology accompanied by the Hindu arithmetic were given to the scientific public in translations made at the command of one of the first great


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498 patrons of learning, the Caliph Almansur, who reigned during the second half of the eighth century.

For a period of five hundred years the intellectual activity of the Mediterranean countries was well nigh confined to the Arabs. With what extraordinary diligence the pursuit of foreign learning was made by these erstwhile wanderers is evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of Arabic manuscripts. The library of Hakam at Cordova in Spain contained 400,000 manuscripts; the catalogue alone is in 44 volumes. Original work in science and mathematics did not come from Arabic hands, but the debt of civilization is none the less great as they were long the conservors of the learning of the Greeks and Hindus. The revival of Euclid was brought about by translations made from the Arabic; indeed many important Greek works in all the sciences have come to us only from Arabic sources.

The points of contact of Europeans and the Ottomans were numerous. From Asia Minor at the east to Greece was a well-traveled route; Sicily, Sardinia and Africa were in constant communication with Italy. Moorish Spain was for centuries a meeting place of English, French, Polish and German scholars.

The church played an important role in the spread of the Hindu numerals over Europe, and at the beginning of the thirteenth century in England, France, Germany, Italy and Poland, the arithmetic of the far east was explained by churchmen who had learned of Moorish teachers. However, it remained for a commercial traveler (line he handled is not known) to write the epoch-making work explaining the new doctrine. Leonard of Pisa traveled for business purposes in Africa, Syria, Egypt, Greece and Sicily and incidentally he acquired enough mathematics to make him the greatest mathematician since Archimedes. His Liber Abaci, or book of the abacus, first edition written in 1202, gave the first masterful exposition of the better way to reckon. It was for four centuries the great work of reference in this field.

With the knowledge of the Hindu method spread over all Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century the acceptance of the improvement might be presupposed, but as late as 1520 arithmetics were published entirely in Roman numerals. The logically self-evident step to the right, to decimal fractions, required further centuries for its completion. The step up, to exponents to base ten, was made rather quickly, but has not yet taken its proper place in commercial work.

It is not too much to say that the present development of modern science would be impossible without our number system, yet how slow the world was to accept the reform. Is not the same story being repeated in the United States and England with the decimal system of weights and measures? But the optimistic soul regards chiefly the final acceptance with the comfortable assurance that the forward movement is as sure as it is slow.


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N this year of the Darwin centenary it is worth while to raise two questions which have, in the mass of literature elicited by the occasion, received less consideration than they merit. At what date can the evidence in favor of the theory of organic evolution—as distinct from the hypothesis of natural selection—be said to have been fairly complete: in other words, how early were the facts and principles from which the truth of that theory is now ordinarily inferred sufficiently known to all competent men of science, to require the inference, even though it was not, in fact, generally made? And by what English writer was a logically cogent argument for the theory first brought together and put before the public? The interest attaching to these questions is much more than merely historical. The answer to them will afford a sort of object-lesson in the logic of scientific reasoning. Here is a doctrine now accepted by all naturalists: at what point, in the century-long accumulation, through half a dozen separate sciences, of the evidences inclining to that doctrine, ought we to say that the balance of logical probability turned decisively in its favor? The inquiry will also be found, I think, to throw a somewhat instructive light upon the psychology of belief, and to show how far, even in the minds of acute and professedly unprejudiced men of science, the emotion of conviction may lag behind the presentation of proof.

By this time, no doubt—though it has not long been so—every schoolboy knows that Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution. The Darwin centenary itself has served to remind the public of the names and works of at least some of the earlier protagonists of the doctrine: of the elder Darwin, namely, of Lamarck, of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, of the author of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and of Herbert Spencer. It is less commonly remembered, but perhaps not universally forgotten, that among English-speaking naturalists, the theory was a commonplace topic of discussion for two or three decades before 1859, and especially after the publication and immense circulation of the successive editions of Robert Chambers's "Vestiges," of which the first appeared in 1844. Geological text-books of the period referred to the "theory of transmutation of species" as


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500 a matter of course, though usually only to reject it as an exploded hypothesis. Thus the "Elements of Geology," of Alonzo Gray and C. B. Adams, 1852, enumerates three theories which have been advanced respecting the origin of animal species: (1) Successive special creations; (2) "transmutation, which supposes that beings of the most simple organization having somehow come into existence, the more complex and the higher orders of animals have originated in them by a gradual increase in the complexity of their structures"; (3) generatio cequivoca of individuals and species. The first is adopted, but the second is discussed at greatest length; on it the authors remark that "those who have adopted the theory of transmutation have generally detached it from Lamarck's theory of appetency, and not attempted to explain how the process of transmutation goes on." The argument for evolution is similarly discussed and "refuted" in "Geological Science," a popular text-book by D. T. Ansted, P.R.S., 1854. To this refutation, indeed, the greatest of English geologists had devoted three chapters of his "Principles of Geology" before 1835.

But though such facts as these are, as I have said, now fairly familiar, the notion still widely prevails, even among biologists, that no serious proof of evolution either existed or had been published before the appearance of the "Origin of Species"—or at all events, before the late 1850's. Professor Joseph Le Conte, indeed, in his "Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought," made it a reproach against both Lamarck and Chambers that they had unscientifically embraced the hypothesis before the evidence for it was ripe; and considered it fortunate for science that their notions died still-born, under the weight of the great authority of Cuvier and Agassiz. "I know," wrote Le Conte, "hat many think with Haeckel that biology was kept back half a century by the baleful influence of Agassiz and Cuvier; but I can not think so. The hypothesis was contrary to the facts of science. as then known and understood. It was conceived in the spirit of baseless speculation, rather than of cautious induction; of skilful


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Rh, rather than of earnest truth-seeking. Its general acceptance would have debauched the true spirit of science. . . . The ground must first be cleared. . . and an insuperable obstacle to hearty rational acceptance must first be removed, and an inductive basis laid." This last, Le Conte goes on to argue, was largely the work of Agassiz, opponent of evolutionism though he was. Now, it is, of course, undeniable that the premature adoption of a hypothesis is a sin against the scientific spirit, and that the chance acceptance by some enthusiast of a truth in which, at the time, he has no sound reason for believing, by no means entitles him to any place of honor in the history of science. But what constitutes prematurity in this particular matter? And was the evolutionary hypothesis "contrary to the facts of science, as known and understood" at any time after 1840?

The prevalent belief that it was is chiefly due to two things. The first is the fact that before 1859 few English naturalists of high standing accepted, and almost none publicly avowed, the theory of descent; whereas, after the publication of the "Origin," such notable names as Huxley, Lyell, Hooker and Asa Gray were speedily numbered among the disciples of the doctrine, and in the ensuing five years it was well upon its way towards its eventual complete triumph. The other source of the supposition that Darwin presented the first adequate grounds for believing in evolution is the express testimony of Huxley, whose paper on the reception of the "Origin of Species" has come to be the principal source of information on its subject. In that article, and in several letters and other writings, Huxley takes credit to himself for his rejection of the transformation-theory until he became acquainted with Darwin's work; and he never expressed any sentiment far short of contempt for Chambers's "Vestiges." He wrote in 1887:

I must have read the "Vestiges". . . before 1846; but if I did, the book made very little impression on me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the "species" question until after 1850. . . . It seemed to me then, as now, that "creation," in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. . . . I had not then, and have not now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of the creation of plants and animals given in "Paradise Lost." . . . Far be it from me to say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I confine myself to what must be regarded as a modest and reasonable request—for some particle of evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to me highly improbable. And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-58. . . . The only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer. . . . But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two grounds: Firstly, that at the time the evidence in favor of transmutation was wholly insufficient; secondly, that no suggestion respecting the causes of the


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502

transmutation assumed, which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at the time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable. . . . As for the "Vestiges," I confess the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence at all, it set me against evolution. . . . Thus, looking back into the past, it seems to me that my own position of critical expectancy was just and reasonable. . . . So I took refuge in that tätige Skepsis which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation, among the orthodox.

In this matter Huxley is assuredly a witness whose testimony should not lightly be set aside; for to his attainments as a naturalist he ordinarily joined singular logical acumen and rare openness of mind. Yet I think it possible to show that the passage just quoted gives a thoroughly misleading view of the logical status of the argument for evolution, as it existed in the light of the science of the period; that the attitude which Huxley assumed from 1850 to 1858 was contrary to all sound ideas of scientific method; and that he does the reputations of both Spencer and Chambers serious injustice. I shall attempt to establish these conclusions mainly by showing that the arguments and facts chiefly relied upon by Huxley himself and other early champions of transformism were entirely familiar and well authenticated from fifteen to twenty years before 1859, and had virtually all been clearly noted and pertinently used in the published evolutionary reasonings of Chambers or of Spencer. The truth is—as the evidence to be adduced will make clear—that Huxley's strongly emotional and highly pugnacious nature was held back by certain wholly non-logical influences from accepting an hypothesis for which the evidence was practically as potent for over a decade before he accepted it as it was at the time of his conversion. These influences did not in Huxley's case, as they did in so many others, proceed from religious tradition or temperamental conservatism. But Huxley had unquestionably been strongly repelled by the "Vestiges." The book was written in a somewhat exuberant and rhetorical style; with all its religious heterodoxy, it was characterized by a certain pious and edifying tone, and was given to abrupt transitions from scientific reasoning to mystical sentiment; it contained numerous blunders in matters of biological and geological detail; and its author inclined to believe, on the basis of some rather absurd experimental evidence, in the possibility of spontaneous generation. All these things were offensive to the professional standards of an enthusiastic young naturalist, scrupulous about the rigor of the game, intolerant of vagueness and of any mixture of the romantic imagination with scientific inquiry, a little the victim, perhaps, of the current scientific cant about "Baconian induction," and quite incapable of


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Rh taking, towards any doctrine or movement, any attitude intermediate between contemptuous hostility and ardent partizanship. Full advantage, moreover, had been taken, by the eminent scientists who were also champions of religious orthodoxy, of the faults of Chambers's book; they contrived very successfully to put about the impression that to be a "Vestigiarian" was to be "unscientific" and sentimental and absurd. These were three qualities which Huxley would have been peculiarly averse to being charged with. Finally, he seems to have been exasperated most of all by a single loose piece of phraseology that now and then recurs in the "Vestiges." Chambers, namely, was prone to speak of "laws" as if they were causes and, more particularly, as if they were secondary causes to which the "Divine Will" delegated its agency and control. To Huxley, from the beginning of his career, this hypostatizing fashion of referring to "laws of nature" was a bête noire; and in 1887 we still find him pursuing the author of the "Vestiges" with ridicule because of his "pseudo-scientific realism." He, therefore, in 1854, almost outdid the Edinburgh Review in the ferocity of his onslaught upon the layman who had ventured to put forward sweeping generalizations upon biological questions while


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504 capable of errors upon particular points which were palpable to every competent specialist.

Yet the layman was, after all, sound in his main thesis; and, what is far more significant, his thesis was based upon sound and sensible arguments, substantially the same arguments that Huxley was destined before long to use in the same cause, though with far superior skill as a debater. It will, I think, appear impossible to acquit the young Huxley of a certain measure of scientific Pharisaism in this episode. He was so shocked by minor breaches of scientific propriety, in the "Vestiges," that he forgot the weightier matters of the law of scientific method. In his irritation at Chambers's incidental slips in zoology, he became blind to the importance and suggestiveness of the general outline of that writer's reasoning. Quite other was Alfred Russel Wallace's reaction upon the little book. As early as 1845 he wrote:

By 1847 Wallace had become thoroughly convinced of the truth of transf ormism; and from that time forward his mind was occupied with the problem of explaining the cause and modus operandi of evolution. At this time, he writes:

Wallace thus escaped the fatal error in logical procedure into which Huxley fell. For Huxley, in the passage already cited, gives as one of his two reasons for refusing to accept, even provisionally, the evolutionary hypothesis, the fact that "no adequate suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed" had then been made. But, that no causal explanation of a fact is at hand, is not good reason for denying the fact, if serious evidence of its reality is presented. Wallace properly discriminated the two issues; becoming first convinced that there was an established balance of scientific probability in favor of the fact, he then set himself upon the quest of a hypothesis that would explain it. He verily had his reward; a decade later he appeared, with Darwin, as joint author of the doctrine of natural selection.


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Rh It is time to proceed to the proof of the contentions of this paper. In presenting it, I shall first recall to the reader passages—some of them, doubtless, already familiar—from Huxley or other post-Darwinian defenders of the evolution theory, and then exhibit the parallel arguments found in Chambers, Spencer and other pre-Darwinians. Since, in such a case, textual precision is of some importance, it is hardly needful to apologize for copious citation of the ipsissima verba of the authors in question. The arguments for evolution will be taken up in the order of their generality or of their logical interconnection.

It is necessary first of all, however, to remind the reader of the general outlines of the situation in the science of the time. It was a situation essentially different from that in which Lamarck had carried on the propaganda of transformism. The difference was due to two changes that had taken place in the intervening period. First, the science of geology had gone through a brilliant development, and had fought and won its battle against religious orthodoxy; and in England, though not all geologists were consistent uniformitarians, all geology had been profoundly influenced by the principles and the methods of Hutton and Lyell. Second, the two allied subsidiary sciences of paleontology and stratigraphic geology had been created, through the work of Cuvier and of William Smith. One result was that the recognized age of the planet had been vastly extended; enough time was thus granted for the evolutionary process. A still more significant result was that the Mosaic cosmogony had been entirely abandoned by even the most orthodox of men of science. The doctrine of creation which such men defended against the hypothesis of development no longer bore any close resemblance to the narratives of Genesis; it was no longer a question of a single, original creation of all things, but of a large number of repeated acts of "special creation," separated from one another by wide intervals of time, and confined to the production of organisms. Meanwhile, it was assumed, in the organic realm things were going on in an orderly and normal manner, in accordance with natural laws of geologic change; even the Cuvierian "catastrophes" were "natural" phenomena. The effect, in short, of the triumph of geology had been, curiously enough, to increase the resort to supernatural agency in the current accounts of the genesis of the existing order of nature. In place of one great, obscure miracle at the origination of the universe, the revised version of the doctrine of creation assumed a large number of petty and definite miracles; it supposed, in Chambers's words, "an immediate exertion of the creative power, at one time to produce zoophytes, at another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two Crustacea, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the end." Creationism, to conform to the accepted principles and accumulated knowledge of geological science, had been


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506 compelled, like the Ptolemaic astronomy before it, to interpolate some very singular epicycles in its hypothesis. And while all these miraculous interpositions were taking place in order to keep the organic kingdom in a going condition, the Creator was not for a moment allowed by the orthodox geologists to interfere in a similar manner in their own particular domain of the inorganic processes. Their attitude was like that of the French authorities who, a century earlier, suppressed the "miraculous cures" of the Jansenist abbé at the church of St. Médard in Paris, and, in a famous lampoon, were represented as posting the following proclamation on the church doors:

 De par le roi, défense a Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu.

So, in the ruling science of 1830-60, the only officially licensed place (outside of Palestine) in which miracles might be performed by the Creator was the domain of organic phenomena. Here, as a measure of compensation, the number of miracles scientifically sanctioned had been materially increased.

It was a further consequence of these changes in the scientific situation that the men who, in the name of orthodoxy but under the mantle of science, attacked the pioneers of evolutionism, themselves taught doctrines no less completely at variance with the usual—and with any natural—interpretation of Scripture. Accommodations and forced interpretations had, indeed, been devised in abundance, to "harmonize" the new science with theology; but if these could be invented to justify geology, others could as well be, as they since have been, invented to justify evolutionary biology. Any consistent scriptural believer could make out as good a case of heresy against Cuvier, Owen, Sedgwick, Agassiz, or Hugh Miller, as against the author of the "Vestiges" or Herbert Spencer. These writers, therefore, occupied a position of a strange and rather damaging incongruity, as Chambers did not fail to point out:

Strange to say, those who every day give views of physical cosmogony altogether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for suggesting an organic cosmogony in the same way liable to inconsiderate odium. . . . The views which I gave of this history of organization stand exactly upon the same ground upon which the geological doctrines stood, fifty years ago. . . . If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton's theory of the planetary motions, had rushed forward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of geology, they would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, hardly escaped from


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the rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to join the rabble against a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if that were the best way of purchasing immunity for themselves. The public must soon see that if a literal interpretation of scripture is an insufficient argument against the true geognostic history of our earth, so also must it be against all associated phenomena, supposing they are presented on good evidence.

In view of this situation, the arguments for evolution, in 1844 or 1859, were primarily significant, not as direct evidences in favor of one hypothesis, but as touchstones for deciding between the claims of two—the only two—rival hypotheses: that of the ready-made production of species, with their known characteristics and relations, by repeated special acts of creation; and that of their production through the gradual modification, in the course of natural descent, of earlier and simpler forms. Huxley, it is true, refused to face the alternative, and cried, "a plague o' both your houses V 9 Nothing can be said, however, in justification of such a position on the part of a man of science. Hypotheses non fingo has never been a sound or serviceable maxim; it had certainly not been by following it that the sciences of astronomy and geology had developed. Now, if other hypotheses, beyond the two in question, were conceivable in 1844, certainly no others were seriously advanced. The first concern of a biologist of the period should, then, have been to compare the two hypotheses of the origin of species, in the light of the then known principles and facts, hereafter to be enumerated. This comparison, if made honestly, by a logically competent mind, must necessarily have led, at almost any time after 1840, to the conclusion to which Spencer tells us that he found himself forced somewhere about 1850. By this time, he says:

After these preliminaries, the reader is prepared for viewing the arguments for evolutionism, now to be recalled in a more detailed manner, in their proper historical and logical perspective.

1. Argument from the General Presumption of Science against "Supernatural" Explanations of Phenomena.—In his "Belfast Address," 1874, Tyndall pointed out that the main argument for


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508 lay in the superior congruency of the hypothesis—as contrasted with the special creation doctrine—with the methodological presuppositions of modern science and with the general view of nature which in most of the other provinces of science had already been accepted.

Reviewing the past triumphs of the scientific method over supernaturalism, he concludes:

Similarly Romanes put in the fore-front of the arguments for evolution

Th "overwhelming weight of antecedent presumption" against special creation, and in favor of evolution, was pointed out by Chambers with entire clearness; his arguments present in part an almost verbal parallel to the passages I have quoted from Tyndall and Romanes. In the already established results of geology and astronomy, he writes in the "Vestiges":

We have seen powerful evidence that the construction of the globe and its associates was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his Will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also the result of natural


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laws, which are in like manner the expression of his Will?. . . The fact of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural law, is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise; for how can we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally whenever a new shell-fish or reptile was to be introduced in one of these worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained. This would certainly be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power—in short to anthropomorphize it.

In his "Explanations," 1846, he puts the considerations urged by Romanes far more tellingly than Romanes put them forty years later. Chambers wrote:

Huxley, it is true, seems in his pre-Darwinian period to have disapproved of this type of argument; creation being "perfectly conceivable. . . the so-called a priori arguments against the possibility of creative acts" appeared to him "to be devoid of reasonable foundation." This, of course, was a perverse misapprehension of the issue. It was not a question of conceivability, but of the relative probability of the only two available hypotheses. And the first criterion of probability in such a case must be the agreeement of any proposed hypothesis with the general type of hypothetical explanations which the whole previous experience of men of science has found to be capable of fruitful application, and of the sort of verification which comes through fruitful application. By such a criterion, no hesitation between the two hypotheses was admissible. "Special acts of creative volition" had never been found by science to be a vera causa at all; the hypothesis was vague, sterile, impossible of verification, contrary to all the principles of method by the use of which the past successes of science had been achieved; "gradual development through natural descent" was, as a


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510 working theory, definite, suggestive of precisely formulable problems to which inductive tests could be applied, harmonious with the initial assumptions through which several other disciplines had already been converted from mere masses of information into sciences. Huxley later saw this clearly enough, and expressed it forcibly, though he never seems to have confessed the unreasonableness of his earlier position. The publication of Lyell's "Principles of Geology" in 1830, wrote Huxley in 1887, "constituted an epoch in the modern history of the doctrine of evolution, by raising in the mind of every intelligent reader this question: If natural causation is competent to account for the not-living part of our globe, why should it not also account for the living part?" If every intelligent reader had this question in his mind after 1830, it is a little singular that Huxley himself, and almost every other naturalist of the period, saw no importance whatever in the reasonings of Chambers, Spencer, Baden Powell, and a few others, who were the only writers of the time to press the question home.

2. The Argument from Uniformitarianism in Geology.—Huxley, indeed, from the time of his conversion to Darwin's views, always set great store by the argument from the presumptions of scientific method; but usually in a more specialized and less philosophical form of it. Geology was, in England, the dominant and the most brilliantly successful science of the first half of the century; and Lyell had made it a working principle of geological reasoning that past phenomena, not directly open to experiment, were, so far as possible, always to be referred to the operation of "causes" similar to those now at work. Whether the uniformitarian doctrine was not, as some contemporary geologists hold, a good deal overstrained by Lyell, it does not lie within the purpose of this paper to ask; at all events, the doctrine was accepted by Huxley and most of the men of science of that time. And in uniformitarianism evolutionism seemed to Huxley—after 1858—to be directly implied. We find him writing Lyell in June, 1859:

In the self-same paper in which we saw Huxley justifying his refusal for some twelve years to adopt the doctrine of transformation, even as a working hypothesis, there is also to be found the following passage:

I have recently read afresh the first edition of the "Principles of Geology"; and when I consider that for nearly thirty years this remarkable book had been in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to every reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact—the principle that the past must be


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explained by the present unless good cause can be shown to the contrary; and the fact that, so far as our knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown—I can not but believe that Lyell was, for others, as for myself, the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the organic as the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater "catastrophe" than any of those which Lyell successfully eliminated from sober geological speculation."

But however much Lyell may have "smoothed the road," Huxley, and most of the biologists of those thirty years, declined to go in thereat. It remained for an anonymous amateur, whom they thereupon with one accord fell to abusing, to point out the practicability of that highway. In the "Vestiges" and the "Explanations" Chambers urged the presumption from geological uniformitarianism with an effective use of concrete examples.

It is a curious circumstance, however, that the argument from uniformitarianism cut both ways. As Wallace says:

This difference, as Darwin said in the "Origin," seemed, on the face of it, "to make a broad and clear distinction between varieties and species." And the apparent existence of such a radical distinction between the varieties produced under domestication and true physiological species was an objection, not only against natural selection, but also against evolution itself; for it meant that we do not see now, nor within the limits of human observation, organisms actually getting


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512 transformed, through the accumulation of variations, into new species differing from their progenitors by the final test of specificity of character. In the 1850's such a radical distinction seemed to hold; even by the sixth edition of the "Origin," dated 1872, Darwin was able to point to only four somewhat debatable instances, in plants, of the infertility of varieties when intercrossed. If this difficulty appeared to Huxley and other zoologists an insuperable objection to evolutionism before 1858, it was not, in Huxley's opinion, removed after that date. Yet he no longer found the difficulty insuperable; it was purely a negative argument, e silentio, and he had faith to believe that by further investigation it would be removed. In his Edinburgh lectures of 1862, "he warned his audience of the one missing link in the chain of evidence—the fact that selective breeding has not yet produced species sterile to one another. But it is to be accepted as a working hypothesis, like other scientific generalizations, 'subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding'" In the same year Huxley wrote Darwin:

It is certainly interesting thus to observe that, as Huxley, before his conversion, saw no potency in arguments which afterwards seemed to him conclusive, so also he was able, in his second phase, to pass over by an act of faith one of the most serious of the pre-Darwinian objections to evolutionism. This provisional disregard of the "missing link" in an argument otherwise impressively well concatenated was, under the circumstances, far from unreasonable. But it would have been equally reasonable in 1846 or in 1851.

Leaving these antecedent considerations in favor of evolutionism drawn from the general principles of scientific method, I turn to the more specific facts which—when illumined by those principles—provide the now usual and familiar arguments for the theory. All the more essential of these facts were known before 1844; and attention was duly called to their bearings by the neglected prophets of evolutionism during the fifteen years preceding the publication of the "Origin of Species." In speaking of these "facts," it is well to explain what is meant, in this connection, by the expression. The theory of evolution does not rest immediately upon an induction of individual phenomena; and the evidence for it did not increase by a slow arithmetical progression, through the accumulation of observations of individual phenomena. It is a generalization established inferentially, by


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Rh virtue of the fact that it unifies and explains a number of lesser generalizations, themselves for the most part established by direct induction, in several special sciences. When, in these separate sciences, the subsidiary generalizations underlying the theory of the transformation of species were well established, and generally accepted by specialists, the evidence for evolution must be said to have been logically complete. This does not mean that more facts were not subsequently added; it does mean that the argument was adequate without them, and that no one who found the original evidence unconvincing had any logical ground for being convinced by any of the considerations adduced in the "Origin of Species" or in Huxley's earlier evolutionary writings.

3. Argument from the Homologies in Vertebrates.—This argument was, by 1844, already so old and even hackneyed a one, that it may, in a consideration of the status of the evolutionary argument at that special period, be passed over very briefly. The facts upon which the argument rests had been in the possession of zoologists ever since Buffon and Daubenton had laid the foundations of the science of comparative anatomy (1749). These facts chiefly had, before the end of the eighteenth century, made evolutionists of Diderot, of Kant, and (but for perfunctory reservations in favor of religious orthodoxy) of Buffon himself. It can, therefore, scarcely be necessary to cite evidence to show that the argument was familiar a quarter of a century after the whole conception of homologous organs had been clearly elaborated by E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Nor, for the purposes of the present paper, is it necessary to estimate the precise logical weight of this argument when it stands alone. At the time with which this inquiry is concerned, it did not stand alone, but had been complemented by a number of considerations more recently brought to light by scientific discovery.

4. Argument from the Variability of Existing Species.—Not less old than the last-mentioned was the argument from the fact that existing—and, especially, domesticated—species have a marked tendency to variation, exhibit an extensive diversity of form, and are capable of transmitting variations to their descendants. It was mainly this group of facts that had caused Maupertuis to embrace the evolutionary hypothesis before 1751. The same argument, with that from the homologies, is set down by Erasmus Darwin in the "Zoonomia," 1794, as among the principal reasons for believing in the transformation of species. We are led to such a belief, wrote the grandfather of the author of the "Origin,"

When we think of the great changes introduced into various animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses,. . . or in dogs,. . . or in the


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changes of form in cattle. Add to these the differences we daily see produced in smaller animals by our domestication of them, as rabbits or pidgeons, or from the differences of climate or even of seasons. . . . Add to these the various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of exertion, or the diseases occasioned by their habits of life, both of which become hereditary, and that through many generations.

The argument had often been repeated in the nineteenth century; and in the period under consideration we find Spencer observing that

This argument, it is true, if taken by itself, suffered from two serious limitations. One has already been adverted to, in another connection: the absence of evidence that variation can produce varieties sterile inter se, as species are sterile. But we have already seen that this difficulty, upon the testimony of Huxley himself, was not removed in 1859. The other limitation of the argument was that, before the promulgation of the hypothesis of natural selection, it was commonly associated with a belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. But this association was not logically necessary; and in any case, the wholesale denial of such inheritance is a doctrine of neo-Darwinism unknown to the pre-Darwinian period and to Darwin himself; and was in that period, therefore, not a ground of difficulty. In a subsequent instalment of this inquiry it will remain to consider, somewhat more minutely, four more of the principal general arguments for evolutionism, three of these being, in 1844, of a much less venerable age than the two last mentioned.


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two great advances of modern science, perhaps the two most notable human achievements, are the doctrine of organic evolution and the doctrine of the conservation of energy. All the world has this year been celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth. William Thomson, born fifteen years later, occupies in the physical sciences a position almost equal to that of Darwin in the biological sciences. It is a striking fact that Great Britain should have produced these two great men in the same rank with Newton, by whom, and near Darwin, Kelvin nearly two years ago was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Thomson, like Darwin, appears to have been impressed with hereditary genius; his father was professor of mathematics and his brother professor of engineering. Unlike Darwin, typifying a distinction which seems to obtain between the mathematical sciences and the sciences of observation, Thomson was precocious. He matriculated at Glasgow University at the age of ten and attended his father's classes in mathematics. He published a mathematical paper of consequence before going to Cambridge as a student at the age of seventeen, and during his years as an undergraduate at Peterhouse, he published a number of papers on mathematical physics, which fully represented the direction and characteristics of the work which was continued for more than sixty years. He became professor of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow at the age of twenty-two. At Cambridge Thomson rowed on his college boat and won the Calquhoun sculls, one of the chief athletic competitions of the university. He was one of the founders of the musical society of the university and played at its concerts.

This vigorous versatility was maintained to the end of his long life. The laying of the Atlantic cable, the fixing of units on which electrical engineering is largely based, the invention of electrical and other instruments, many of which were patented and produced a large fortune, seem almost incompatible with his theoretical work in mathematical physics, though it is true that his mathematical analyses were kept in close touch with actual facts. It seems odd to an American that he should have changed the name that had become familiar and famous, if indeed the peerage itself is worth while I when there are no heirs to whom it can be bequeathed. Darwin, to whom no peerage was offered but who bequeathed his name and a large measure of his scientific genius to his sons, seems in this respect to have enjoyed the better fortune. Kelvin visited this country three times and is associated with it both by his work on the Atlantic cable and by the fact that some of his most important theoretical deductions were made known in the form of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University.

An admirable account of Kelvin's scientific work has been contributed to the Proceedings of the Royal Society by Sir Joseph Larmor. From this monograph we reproduce three portraits—the two earlier ones on a reduced scale. It would be fortunate if it were possible to reproduce the lucid exposition of the development of Kelvin's contributions to science and their relations to the work of his predecessors and contemporaries.

In 1848 it was possible for Thomson to maintain the view that heat is a substance which may produce energy


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Rh in falling to a lower temperature or may diffuse passively. But in 1844 Joule had made known his experiments establishing the transformation of heat into work, and in 1847 Helmholtz had published his classical memoir on the conservation of energy. Mayer's earlier paper was first brought to general notice by Joule in 1849. Maxwell published his first paper in 1856, but did not reach the electric theory of light until eight years later. Clausius presented his paper on the motive power of heat to the Berlin Academy in 1850. It was indeed a marvelous period in the history of physics. Among the giants of those days, Thomson stands almost or quite preeminent. His great paper on the dynamical theory of heat was published in 1851, and laid firmly the foundations of the scientific treatment of energy.

In 1849 Thomson published his memoir on the mathematical theory of magnetism, on which subject he had already written four years earlier. This was followed by his remarkable contributions to the theory of electricity and light. In later years his attention was directed to the structure of the ether and of matter. His limitation of the age of the earth gave much concern to geologists and biologists, which the more recent advances of physics has again relieved, though the episode was probably of advantage to the natural sciences.

Even in the briefest note, reference should be made to Thomson and Tait's "Treatise on Natural Philosophy," an epoch-making text, which Helmholtz translated into German, and to the admirable popular lectures which fill three volumes. The contributions to electrical engineering have already been mentioned. Thomson was the leader in the advances by which steam is being supplanted by electricity.

An adequate appreciation of Kelvin's personality is quoted by Sir Joseph Larmor from the address of Lord Roseberry when installed as Kelvin s successor in the chancellorship of the University of Glasgow: "In my personal, intercourse with Lord Kelvin, what struck me was his tenacity, his laboriousness, his indefatigable humility. In him was visible none of the superciliousness or scorn which sometimes embarrass the strongest intellects. Without condescension, he placed himself at once on a level with his


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518 companion. That has seemed to me a characteristic of such great men of science as I have chanced to meet. They are always face to face with the transcendent mysteries of nature. . . . Such labours produce a sublime calm, and it was that which seemed always to pervade Lord Kelvin. Surely in an age fertile in distinction, but not lavish of greatness, he was truly great."

Edmund Halley, born in 1656, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford and later Flamsteed's successor as astronomer royal, made notable contributions to astronomy and cosmical physics. He was the first to catalogue the stars of the southern sky; he studied the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn; he detected the acceleration of the moon's mean motion; he used the transit of Venus to determine the solar parallax; he discovered the proper motion of the fixed stars; he suggested the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; he studied terrestrial magnetism and located magnetic poles; he surveyed the tides and coasts of the British Channel; he cooperated with Newton in the publication of the "Principia."

But outside the circle of astronomers, Halley's name is known because it is attached to a comet whose orbit he calculated and whose return he predicted. This was in 1682, when Halley computed its parabolic orbit, and comparing this with the imperfect observations of comets which had appeared in 1456, 1531 and 1607, concluded that each was the same body returning from the outer region of the solar system beyond the furthest known planet. He wrote: "Wherefore, if it should return according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman."

This was not only a great advance in astronomy and important in its relation to the theory of gravitation, but was a forward movement in the conception of the orderliness of the universe. Comets had been portents of war, pestilence and famine. It was indeed Halley's comet which appeared in 1066 at the time of the invasion of William the Conqueror and again in 1456 when Constantinople was besieged by the Turks and the crescent-shaped tail was a mighty omen.

Halley's comet duly appeared in 1759, somewhat retarded by the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn, its perturbations having been accurately calculated by the French astronomer, Clairaut. It appeared again in 1835 and is now once more rapidly approaching the earth and the sun, having passed the orbit of Jupiter in April last. It has been observed by Professor Max Wolf, of Heidelberg, and we are able to give here photographs taken by Mr. Oliver J. Lee with a two-foot reflector at the Yerkes Observatory. These are printed by the courtesy of Dr. Edwin B. Frost, director of the observatory and editor of the Astrophysical Journal, where they are also printed.

The plate of September 16 was taken with an exposure of 180 minutes, standard central time of mid-exposure being 14h 5m (2:45 Sept. 17). The comet's position, as measured on the plate, was R.A. 6h 18m 56s, Dec. + 17° 9′ 23″. The plate of September 17 was exposed for 130 minutes, mid-exposure at (central standard time) 14h 10m (2:10 a.m. Sept. 18). The right ascension had increased by 4s, and the declination had decreased by 23″. The arrows indicate the position, and also the components of the direction of the comet's motion.

The original negatives are magnified about ten times, and the scale of the I pictures here is about 8″.5 to the milli, meter, or 3.5 minutes of arc to the inch; in other words, the width of each picture is about one seventh of a degree. The new Lumière "Sigma" plates were used, a fresh and clean


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emulsion having been provided by the manufacturers. The faintness of the comet on the plate of September 17 was due to the poor sky, and not to any change in the comet's brightness. The brightest star shown in the pictures, near the left-hand edge, slightly above the center, is of magnitude 8.7, or about ten times fainter than the limit of naked-eye visibility. Stars at least as faint as the seventeenth magnitude, or twenty-five thousand times fainter than naked-eye visibility, are shown on the original negatives, and the comet's brightness must have been considerably less than this, more accurate determinations being now in progress at the hands of Mr. Parkhurst. The comet was first observed visually by Professor Burnham, with the forty inch telescope, on September 15. It was also observed visually by Professor Barnard on September 17 and several subsequent nights. Professor Barnard's visual estimate of the comet's brightness at his last observation before the moonlight interfered, on the early morning of September 27, was that it was of magnitude 14 or 14.5. His measures indicated a diameter of about 10", but the object was without definite boundary.

The comet will be visible to the naked eye early next year and will attain its greatest brightness in the month of May.

record with regret the death of Dr. Washington Irving Stringham, professor of mathematics in the University of California; of Dr. Leonard Pearson, dean of the Veterinary School the University of Pennsylvania, and of professor Anton Dohrn, the eminent zoologist, founder and director of the Naples Zoological Station.

was installed as president of Harvard University on October 6 and Dr Ernest Fox Nichols was installed as president of Dartmouth College on October 14. The inaugural addresses, which are devoted to the condition of the American college are printed in Science for October 15.

(California, '83), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, '88), professor of experimental psychology in Clark University, has been elected president of Clark College to succeed the late Carroll D. Wright.—Dr. J. F. Anderson has been appointed


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520 director of the Hygienic Laboratory, Washington, D. C, to succeed Dr. M. J. Rosenau, who retires from the Public Health Service to accept a professorship of preventive medicine and hygiene at Harvard University.

president of the National Academy of Sciences, has consented, at the request of Dr. H. F. Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, and Mr. Archer Huntington, president of the American Geographical Society, to appoint a scientific commission to examine the records of Lieutenant Peary and Dr. Cook, in case they are ready to present them to such: a commission. Lieutenant Peary has accepted the suggestion.

the eminent chemist of Zurich, was presented on September 19 with a gold medal bearing his portrait and the sum of 40,000 francs to celebrate his seventieth birthday and the jubilee of his doctorate. Chemists were present from many countries and addresses were delivered by a number of delegates. Professor Lunge in his reply announced his intention of giving the money to the Polytechnic Institute for the aid of students of chemistry.—On the occasion of the recent Leipzig celebration Dr. Wilhelm Wundt, the eminent psychologist, who made the principal address, was given the title of excellency. He was also made an honorary citizen of the city of Leipzig.

At the meeting of the Chemists' Club, New York, held on October 8, it was announced that a Chemists' Building Company had been organized, for the purpose of acquiring a plot of ground and erecting thereon a large scientific building, the lower floors of which are to be rented to the Chemists' Club on a long lease, to contain scientific meeting rooms, a library and a museum, as well as the ordinary facilities required by a social organization, including sleeping apartments for its members. The upper floors of the building are to be leased for scientific offices and laboratories.

has received from Mr. William D. Sloane and Mr. Henry T. Sloane the sum of $475,000 to build, equip and endow a physical laboratory.—The University of Pennsylvania proposes to erect during the coming year a building for its graduate school, costing $250,000.—The Pratt Institute of Brooklyn has received the sum of $1,750,000 from Mr. Charles M. Pratt, son of the founder and now its president, and from his five brothers and his sister, Mrs. E. B. Dane.


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HE special object of the observatory which I have the honor to represent is the study of planets of our solar system, beginning with their present state and passing thence to their evolutionary history. So extended to-day is the astronomic field that to do good work one must specialize his endeavor, restricting himself to one particular branch of it and incidentally refraining, we may add, from discussing that of which he has not expert knowledge. Now research on the planets constitutes one such division, making as it were, an entity in itself. For diverse as the planets are to-day, they are all the result of one particular evolutionary process and knowledge of each member throws light upon the development, past or present, of the others.

It is popularly imagined that our gaze is concentrated on Mars, to the exclusion of much else, and that we are particularly concerned with its habitability. That this is a popular fallacy I shall show you tonight. For we shall contemplate together another planet in the light that study of the past thirteen years at the Lowell Observatory casts upon it, and we shall see not only that such a study has indicated it not to be habitable, but that the question of habitability has not in the least affected our research. In short, to us habitation by organic life or non-habitation is merely an incident in the study of a planet's history, which we view with as strict scientific impartiality as we do the presence or absence of water-vapor in its air. We are concerned solely with the facts, a romantic enough revelation in themselves.

Venus, I need not remind you, is the planet which stands orbitally next inside the earth in the solar family. To us she is by far the most brilliant star in the firmament, excelling Sirius some sixteenfold and


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522 paling Jupiter when seen near him by almost the like amount. Her incomparable splendor is partly the result of propinquity; nearness to ourselves and nearness to the sun. Relatively so close is she to both bodies that to show she does not need the abetting background of the night, but without waiting for the sun's withdrawal may nearly always be seen in the daytime in clear air if one knows where in the sky to look. Situate about seven tenths of our own distance from our common giver of light and heat, she gets about double the amount of solar radiation that falls to our lot, so that her surface is proportionately brilliantly illuminated. Being also relatively near us, she displays a correspondingly large disk.

Nevertheless, until recently astronomic inquiry regarding her has proved singularly baffling. The beauty of her face was equaled only by the blankness of her expression. Hers proved one of those countenances that dazzle on a first glance, to tell you nothing on a second. From the time when Galileo first saw her phases, little was learned of her for two centuries and a half, and even the little she seemed to show proved misleading. The few traits thought to be discerned there were so faint and fugitive that, while some observers deemed them substantial, others ascribed them in whole or part to cloud. A cloud-enshrouded planet Venus in consequence was considered to be; a covering not so much for her own sins of commission as for the sins of omission of observers to see.

It was not until Schiaparelli attacked the subject that any real light was shed on her who reflected so much. Through a new departure, by choosing daylight for his observation time, that most eminent observer first solved one riddle she had read astronomers so long, the length of her day. Hitherto she had been scanned chiefly for a few moments at twilight and the recurrent aspect her disk presented on successive days had been for much in imputing to her a rotation not differing substantially from the earth's in length. Schiaparelli's method allowed of repeated scanning during several hours at a stretch and in this manner he learned that the periodic punctuality of the same features night after night was not because they managed so nearly to keep pace with our own, but because they failed to move at all in the meantime. In other words, her day must be immensely long. He then critically examined the older observations and found that they could all be thus explained. Six years later he repeated his observations and with the like result.

In 1896 the subject was taken up at Flagstaff. Very soon it became evident that markings existed on the disk, most noticeable as fingerlike streaks pointing in from the terminator, faint but unmistakable from the positional identity of their successive presentation. A projection near the south cusp was also clearly discernible, as well as two others, one in mid-terminator, one near the northern cusp. Other dark


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Rh also came out, developing into a sort of collar round the southern pole. Spots, too, small, not large, stood blotched upon the disk. In this investigation not only was care taken to guard against illusion, but no regard at the time was paid to any previous observations.

The configurations thus disclosed proved permanent in place. By watching them assiduously it was possible to note that no change in position occurred in them upon the face the planet showed, first through an interval of five hours, then through one of days, then of weeks. It thus became evident that they bore always the same relation to the illuminated portion of the disk. This illuminated part, then, never changed. In other words, the planet turned always the same face to the sun. The fact lay beyond a doubt, though of course not beyond a doubter. The fundamental importance of this primary fact upon the world of Venus we shall note as we proceed.

In character these markings were peculiar and distinctive. In addition to some of more ordinary form were a set of spoke-like dark rays which started from the planet's periphery and ran inwards to a point not very distant from the center. The spokes began well-defined and broad at the edge, dwindling and growing fainter as they proceeded, requiring the best of definition for their following to their central hub. They were most noticeable on the edge of the disk which marked the boundary of light and shade, the sunrise line the terminator, as it is called; less so on that which the sky cut off, called the limb.

From so much of the planet as was then presented earthwards, it was possible to make a map giving the chief features of Venus's globe. In addition to demonstrating the durational identity of the axial rotation and the orbital revolution, the markings showed the planet's poles to be practically perpendicular to the orbital plane. Thus the central equatorial longitude lay in perpetuity directly under the sun.

The difficulty in seeing these tell-tale marks lies in their faintness. A very good reason for such astronomic concealment on the part of Venus will appear as we go on. In consequence, the contrast must be intensified as much as possible and to secure it a small aperture and low powers are best. It is only in very good air that these helps to definition can be disregarded.

Corroboration of these markings has been obtained at Flagstaff in the years that have since elapsed. In 1903 a bulletin giving drawings of that year was published, showing confirmation, and in 1907 and 1909 other drawings afforded like witness to their actuality. Markings have been seen by almost every member of the staff and independent observations made on identical dates show remarkable agreement.

But the most telling testimony is the concordance in results between different methods of investigation. The first of these we shall mention is the spectroscope.

The spectroscope is primarily an instrument for analyzing light.


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526 each according to its kind, into a spectral image band which may then be viewed by the eye or caught upon a photographic plate.

One of the interesting applications of the spectroscope lies in its ability to detect motion in the line of sight, or in just the direction in which the eye can not.

It was reasoned by Doppler in 1842 that if an object be coming toward the observer emitting light as it does so, each wave-length of its spectrum should be shortened in proportion to the relative speed of its approach as compared with the speed of light, because each new wave is given out nearer the observer than would otherwise be the case and its wave-length thus seemingly decreased. Reversely it will be lengthened if the object be receding from the observer or he from it. This would change the color of each wave-length and so of the object, were it not that while each hue moves into the place of the next, like the guests at Alice's tea-party in Wonderland, some red rays pass off the visible spectrum, but new violet rays come up from the infra violet and the spectrum is as complete as before. This unfortunate infecundity of his principle in Doppler's own hands was remedied in 1848 by Fizeau, who pointed out that the dark lines in the spectra can be used as measures of the shift. In all spectra are gaps where individual wavelengths are absorbed or omitted and these, the lines in the spectrum, tell the tale.

This principle is applicable not only to a body moving as a whole, but to differing motions of its parts if the body be large enough to show a disk. Now, if a body be rotating, one side of it will be approaching the observer, while the opposite side is receding from him, and if the slit be placed perpendicular to the axis about which the spin takes place, each spectral line will appear not straight across the spectrum of the object, but skewed, the approaching side being tilted to the violet end, the receding side to the red.

This principle was put in practise by one of the observatory staff, Dr. Slipher, to determine spectrographically the rotation of Venus. By placing the slit parallel to the ecliptic or, more properly, to the orbit of Venus, which is practically the same thing, it would find itself along what we have reason to suppose the equator of the planet and thus by its tilt give evidence of the rotation period capable of measurement. Even a considerable error in the position of the equator would make little difference in the rotational result. In order that there might be no question of illusion or personal bias, photographs instead of eye observations of the spectrum were made.

Dr. Slipher began by considering the take off before he jumped. His sagacity greatly influenced the result. It might seem as if the best time to examine the planet for rotation were when it is farthest from the sun and is best seen. This indeed was the time selected by Belopolsky, who examined Venus spectrographically between the time


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532 the hands of long-continued ones. We can calculate about how much that flattening would be. That of the earth is that of Mars, and both planets rotate in approximately twenty-four hours. That of Venus for a like spin would lie between the two figure, because in mass and density she falls between the earth and Mars. Let us say for it, which would be close to the truth.

Now Venus on occasion offers peculiar opportunity to measure any such flattening if it existed. For at times she passes in transit across the sun's face. At that moment she presents an absolute absence of phase and in consequence any correction due to asymmetrical illumination is self-eliminated. Furthermore, she then shows the largest of all planetary disks, one of 60 seconds in diameter. A flattening of would amount therefore in her case to 0″.22. Such a quantity could not possibly miss of detection. For that of Mars, which is only half as much and is not so well displayed, has nevertheless been measured. Yet no divergence from perfect sphericity has ever been found in the globe of Venus, though diameters at all azimuths have been carefully taken when she is seen silhouetted in transit against the sun.

I may have seemed to dwell at unnecessary length upon the time that Venus takes to turn. But there is cause. The rotation time of Venus, the determination, that is, of the planet's day, is one of the fundamental astronomical acquisitions of recent years. It is not a question of academic accuracy merely, of a little more or a little less in actual duration, but one which carries in its train a completely new outlook on Venus and sheds a valuable sidelight upon the history of our whole planetary system. For upon it turns our whole knowledge of the planet's physical condition. More than this, it adds something which must be reckoned with in the framing of any cosmogony.

To this we shall now proceed and if the deductions and the phenomena which corroborate them appear almost romantically strange it is in the facts themselves that the romance exists.

In the first place such isochronism gives us a glimpse into the planet's past. That the day should coincide with the year means that it has been brought to this condition. For that it can always have been so is mechanically highly improbable. On the other hand, there is a cause continually tending to bring about such a result; tidal friction. Under the immense forces at work the planetary masses behave as if they were plastic. In consequence tides of the whole substance are set up in them if they rotate, and these tides act as a brake upon the rotation until they finally retard it to coincidence with the orbital revolution.

That Venus now turns the same face in perpetuity to the sun, lets us look down a long vista in her career, and gives us a very instant idea of a phase in a planet's history: that long slow change by which a day is lengthened to infinity. That Venus should have suffered such action is in keeping with theory, though it could not have been predicted in the absence of fact?. For Venus falls exactly on debatable ground, on


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Rh the line as it were. Tidal action depends, for the time necessary to produce a given result, on the square of the radius of the body acted on and as the sixth power of its distance from the exciting cause. In consequence for solar action the nearer planets would show its effect first. Now Mercury already turns the same face always to the sun; the earth, as we know, does not. Venus comes between the two in distance and might therefore a priori do either, depending upon how long the action has been going on. That she agrees with Mercury in continuously staring at the sun thus affords valuable evidence on the general evolution of the solar system.

Interesting as this information is, it is second to what we learn in consequence about the body itself. To have the same hemisphere exposed everlastingly to sunlight while the other is in perpetuity turned away, must cause a state of things of which we can form but faint conception from what we know on earth. Baked for æons without let-up and still baking, the sunward face must, if unshielded, be a Tophet surpassing our powers adequately to portray. And unshielded it must be, as we shall presently see. Reversely, the other must be a hyperborean expanse to which our polar regions are temperate abodes. For upon one whole hemisphere of Venus the sun never shines, never so much as peeps above the star-studded horizon. Night eternal reigns over half of her globe! The thought would appall the most intrepid of our arctic explorers, and prevent at least everybody from going to the pole; or rather what here replaces it "through the dark continent."

Deduction from our known premises enables us to go further in sketching the picture of Venus's globe. Venus we know has an atmosphere. The effects of it are patent at the times when she passes between, or nearly between, us and the sun. She is then seen haloed by a rim of light due, as Wilson has shown, to reflection chiefly, not to refraction as was formerly supposed, from an atmosphere about her. Now the intense heating to which the center of her sunward side is exposed must necessarily expand the air there, causing it to rise funnel-wise up in a world-wide western cyclone. To fill the space thus depleted currents must set in toward the center from all points of the compass, continuing out to the lighted rim. Their place in turn would be occupied by surface indraughts from the dark side. Meanwhile the heated air would spread like an umbrella round into the cold hemisphere there to descend and replace the outgoing superficial current back to the sunlit face. A regular aerial round of travel is thus started, which is the same forces that began it must keep up. The course is surface-wise from the dark to the illuminated hemisphere; aloft from the sunlit to the night one.

Now this simple, regular and reliable meteorological service explains a feature of the visual observations which has deterred many timid souls from crediting their reality. One of the most striking features of Venus's disk are the tongues of shading that make in from all parts of


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534 the lighted rim toward the center. They are the beginnings of those spoke-like markings the methodical oddity of which makes their actuality so difficult of belief. They seem a thought too peripherally positioned to be other than optically evolved. Their recurrent showing in the same places marks them as facts, however, and as such we must regard them. Now when we consider them in the light of Venus's meteorology their cause at once suggests itself. And with this index-finger to guide us we perceive that far from being surprising they are just the phenomena we ought to expect. For consider the surface indraught along the bounding rim of constant sun-exposure. With the immense temperature gradient which exists between the day and the night side of Venus, the power of these winds must be enormous. Being essentially surface ones, they must sweep the face of the planet with irresistible force and, what is more, having once found a pathway of preference, must from the general unchangeableness of the conditions continue to follow it perpetually. For the only thing to alter their direction, the libration, is from the circularity of Venus's orbit negligibly small. Sweeping in originally through valleys or mountain passes, the points offering the easiest access, they must eventually have polished the surfaces over which they passed to a differentiation of appearance visible even across millions of miles of intervening space. Essentially surface currents at the rim, they would become less and less so as they neared the center of the lighted side and furthermore would converge as they approached it. They would seem to us to narrow and become at the same time less salient as they advanced. This is just what their spoke-like character shows. Thus the peculiar look of the Venusian markings proves to be in exact keeping with what the conditions demand, and by so doing bears testimony that those conditions actually exist.

Not less strange on its face and equally interesting for its disclosure is another phenomenon connected with the planet which also has been deemed incredible—the exceeding brightness of Venus's disk. Her great luster is, as we saw above, in part attributable to her proximity first to the sun and secondly to us. But this is not the sole cause of it. Though a part of her splendor is due to her position, a part is her own. Her intrinsic brightness, her albedo, as it is called, has been found by Müller, of Potsdam, who has made the last and most authoritative determination of it, to reach the excessive figure of.92 of absolute reflection. This figure has seemed to many impossible, but we shall see from consideration that it simply reflects the conditions.

The rising currents on the sunward side must from their great heat be capable of holding much water-vapor in suspension. This they would take over with them in large part to the night side and becoming chilled there deposit it as snow. Being cold on their return they would reenter the warm side relatively dry and thus be fitted to act again as water-carriers from that side to the other. This process of depletion


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Rh on the one and accumulation on the opposite hemisphere must end in taking the whole supply, surface or aerial, from the day side to pile it up in perpetual ice upon the night one. Dry air more or less laden with dust must therefore constitute now the atmospheric covering of the sunward hemisphere. Now this is what gives Venus her excessive luster—an atmosphere devoid of cloud. It is precisely because she is not cloud-covered that her luster is so great. She "clothes herself with light as with a garment" in consequence of a physical fact of some interest. As becomes the Mother of Loves, this drapery is gauze of the most attenuated character, and yet on that very account is a great heightener of effect. For it is a well-known property of matter that a substance when comminuted reflects much more light than when massed as a solid or an opaque cloud. Now an atmosphere is itself such a comminuted affair and especially is made lucent by the dust of one sort and another which it holds in suspension. This would particularly be true of Venus for the reasons we have exposed and thus stands explained her albedo of .92 which were she cloud-covered could not exceed .72, the albedo of cloud. This brightening character of an atmosphere stands corroborated by what we perceive of the other planets. Mercury and the moon, which are airless bodies, have an albedo of only .17; Mars, which has some air but not much, one of .27; while Venus, whose sky is clear, one of .92.

Another phenomenon which has greatly puzzled astronomers stands accounted for by what we have learned latterly of the world of Venus. For years by one observer or another a sort of faint phosphorescent shine has been reported of the unilluminated part of her disk; the ashen light, it has been called. The side of her which should be dark has appeared ghostly lighted up. The phenomenon has seemed the weirder for the difficulty of explaining it. It is like what dimly reveals the old moon in the new moon's arms. With the moon this is earth-shine; the moon-shine the earth herself lends her satellite. But Venus has no neighbor to act as mirror near her, though such be her astronomic symbol. The earth is too far off and the stars inadequate to the occasion. But the state of things we have sketched furnishes an explanation. If the night side of Venus be a vast stretch of polar ice, here is just the surface to reflect the starlight with something approaching a phosphorescent shine. Nor would this necessarily be dimmed by the dust of ages because of a slow process of glacier rejuvenation constantly in progress, due partly to the winds, partly to a slow sinking of the débris to the bottom.

Such are some of the peculiar phenomena presented by the planet. When we thus reason about them—and even in science reasoning is not so much to be despised as some mechanical souls would have us believe—we see that they lose their oddity, becoming the very pattern and prototype of what we should expect.

Logical deductions from well-established fact has led us to