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Rh The Growth of Zoology,—Let us now look at some general phases in the growth of zoology. In its first stages of growth we find a period devoted to descriptions. In the time of Linnæus, for illustration, emphasis was placed on collecting, describing and systematically arranging all the different kinds of animals. This resulted in giving naturalists a knowledge of the form and appearance of the chief animals that inhabit the globe, and formed the basis upon which further progress could be made.

We can not, however, reach general conclusions without the examination of many facts, and there was naturally a long period devoted merely to the accumulation of facts about animals.

The next great step in advance was that of comparison. The contrast between description and comparison is brought out so clearly by I. P. Whipple in his essay on Louis Agassiz that I quote from it. He says:

My first impression of the genius of Agassiz was gained when he was in the full vigor of his mental and physical powers. Some thirty-five years ago (now sixty-five years), at a meeting of a literary and scientific club of which I happened to be a member, a discussion sprang up concerning Dr. Hitchcock's book on fossil "Bird-tracks," and plates were exhibited representing his geological discoveries. After much time had been consumed in describing the bird-tracks as isolated phenomena, and in lavishing compliments on Dr. Hitchcoock, a man suddenly rose, who, in five minutes, dominated the whole assembly. He was, he said, much interested in the specimens before them, and he would add that he thought highly of Dr. Hitchcock's book, as far as it accurately described the curious and interesting facts he had unearthed; but, he added, the defect in Dr. Hitchcock's volume is this, that it is "dees-creep-teeve," and not "compar-a-teeve." It was evident throughout that the native language of the critic was French, and that he found some difficulty in forcing his thoughts into English words, but I can never forget the intense emphasis he put on the words "descriptive" and "comparative," and by this emphasis flashing into the minds of the whole company the difference between an enumeration of strange, unexplained facts and the same facts as interpreted and put into relation with other facts more generally known.

The moment he contrasted "dees-creep-teeve" with "com-par-a-teeve" one felt the vast gulf that yawned between mere scientific observation and scientific intelligence, between eyesight and insight, between minds that doggedly perceive and describe and minds that instinctively compare and combine.

The descriptive and comparative stages in zoology, of course, overlapped. It was in the early part of the nineteenth century that Cuvier, the great French zoologist and legislator, founded the science of comparative anatomy, and this brought the comparative method into the study of zoology. The beneficent results of this were notable, and zoological knowledge broadened and deepened.

In the last part of the nineteenth century zoologists added another method to the investigation of animal life; they began to study processes by the experimental method. This was not merely the extension of physiology into zoology. The new method involved experiments upon


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352 the development of the embryo and sought to trace the modifications resulting from changes in the conditions of growth and development. It opened the way to those extensive experiments on regulation that have been engaged in by some of our American zoologists. Experiments were further extended to the study of heredity and evolution.

Thus description, comparison and experiment, came to mark different phases in the progress of zoology. Certain other nineteenth century advances can be merely alluded to. Those that had the greatest influence on the progress of zoology were the establishment of the cell theory, the discovery of protoplasm and the acceptance of the doctrine of organic evolution. If time permitted, a fuller consideration of these great events in the history of zoological science might be profitable, but I must hasten to another division of the subject.

The Idea of Service.—In these days we have come to estimate the worth of achievements in the terms of service. We hear on every hand the inquiry, How is this man or that man fitted to serve his time and generation? When inquiries come to the universities regarding one of their graduates seeking place in the world, the chief inquiry is, what is his promise of service? We do not always mean by this the narrow idea of direct utility—the faculty to make something that will sell—but more often that capacity for usefulness to the state and to society that depends on broad education, on discernment of essentials, that has been gained by freeing the mind from hereditary hindrances and from those grosser misunderstandings of natural phenomena that we class as superstitions. The university is a place where such basal training is carried on. The activity of the university is a crusade not only against ignorance, but also against superstition.

It is this kind of service for which the progress of science is especially conspicuous, and this brings us naturally to the consideration of the service of one science in particular. I wish to maintain that for the past century the progress of zoology has exercised a strong and wholesome influence upon the intellectual development of the race. The date of a century is an arbitrary limit, but the event I have in mind is the publication in 1809 of Lamarck's "Philosophic Zoologique," that contained the first comprehensive theory of organic evolution that has survived to the present day.

Very likely the idea is a novel one to many that the influence of zoology upon intellectual progress has been considerable. While one may not dissent from the proposition, he might very well wish to have it supported by specific illustrations.

Influence of Zoology on General Enlightenment.—Let us consider first the part this science has played in general enlightenment. Its influence has been great in clearing the atmosphere of thought, in dispelling clouds and in freeing the mind from the bonds of inherited prejudice and traditional superstition. At the beginning of the revival

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Rh of learning there were fantastic and grotesque misconceptions. The idea of the resurrection bone was one of these—the belief that in the body there was an indestructible bone that formed the nucleus of the resurrection body. This view was demonstrated to be untenable by Vesalius, the reformer of anatomy in the sixteenth century and the forerunner of the morphologists of zoology. Other points about the structure of man and animals, equally fantastic, were upheld, and against one who ventured to disbelieve in them the cry of heretic was raised. We may at first sight think that crude misunderstandings are harmless vagaries, but when viewed as to their consequences we see that this class of superstitions has led to intolerance and persecutions. As illustrations there come to mind the horrors of the inquisition, the cruel and harmful ideas of witchcraft, the brutal and wicked persecution of men and women for holding saner views than the majority of mankind of the part played by the Almighty in his universe. It is one of the blessings of progress that mankind has been relatively freed from persecutions of this nature. These grotesque beliefs and superstitions were dispelled by advances in the knowledge of the organization of animals. Wherever investigation in this territory prospered, it shed light and dispelled error.

From one point of view the fossil remains of extinct animals belong to the sphere of the zoologist, for the fossil animals were the ancestors of the living ones. It was two zoologists, Cuvier and Lamarck, that founded the science of paleontology, one that of the vertebrate series, and the other that of the invertebrate. When fossil bones were first unearthed they excited stupid wonder and amazement, and the most fantastic theories were proposed to account for them. They were regarded as bones of giants, as remains deposited by the deluge, etc., but finally were accepted as the remains of former races of animals and were turned to account as supplying an index to the past history of the earth. The constantly increasing collections of fossil remains of animals are enabling us to understand something of the momentous changes that have passed over the succession of animal forms that have lived upon the globe. The accounts of the discoveries of prehuman remains, connecting by gradations with races now living, are extending into remote periods our conception of the antiquity of man. These matters arouse interest and discussion, and the sweep of all these discoveries brings with it a widening of the horizon of human understanding. The historical relations of fossils have been established by a great number of talented observers. Without any disparagement to other men who have done notable work in this field, I mention but one, Henry F. Osborn, of New York, who is one of our most distinguished American zoologists. With the enormous collections at his disposal he has devoted himself with marked success to making out the relations of


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354 fossil forms to living forms and he has succeeded in tracing the remote ancestry of a number of living races of mammals.

The Constancy of Nature.—As one great result of the investigations of the nature seekers, there was established a belief in the constancy of nature, and from the work of the zoologists in particular came the idea that all animal life is the result of one orderly progress. Animal organization leads up to the structure of the human body, and on this account there has always been a tender point in discussing the evidences as to man's place in nature.

This belief in the constancy of nature was a great step in intellectual development. In its broad application it means that the entire universe and all on it is the result of an orderly and well-directed progress. It leaves no room for the idea of chance. Remote ancestral man did not rise by chance from the animal series. The gill-clefts in the human embryo are not there by chance. Their presence has some significance, if haply we may find it. The great service of establishing the idea of orderly progress in nature is part of the heritage of work already done. The idea, in so far as it involves living and fossil forms of animals, is owing to the progress of zoology.

Some Practical Applications.—Let us now consider secondly some of the applications of zoological advances to the benefit of mankind. It was owing to the cooperation of botany and zoology that the germ theory of disease was established. The bacteria are, of course, plants. The method of studying their action on animals is zoological. There are also diseases produced by minute animal organisms, such as malaria or common fever and ague. As has long been known, this disease is due to an animal parasite that infects the red blood corpuscles. It is only within recent years, however, that the entire life history of these animal parasites has been made out. As you all know, part of their life cycle is passed in a certain kind of mosquito. The disease itself has been shown to be owing to bites of these mosquitoes, and this fact pointed out the way of avoiding malaria. The ingenuous methods by means of which the propagation of mosquitoes is prevented has freed many malarious districts from pestilence. These discoveries opened the entire question of the transmission of disease by insects, and now, thanks to those brilliant observations and experiments in which some men sacrificed their lives, we know the entire life history of the microbe of yellow fever. We know it is transmitted by mosquito bites, and that disease can now be controlled. The Roman fever, once much dreaded by travelers, and the fever of the Campagna may be avoided. Thanks also to zoological studies, these diseases no longer strike in the dark. We can recognize their approach and avoid inoculation. The scourge of the sleeping sickness that attacks the people of the Congo district is due to an animal parasite. The terrible scourge of syphilis has recently been traced to a minute organism that is probably


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Rh animal. The recognition of these facts is the first step towards gaining control of the disease.

There are other larger animal parasites like trichina, the tape worm, the filaria of the blood, etc., the life history of which is due to zoologists. Some of us recollect that the most comprehensive treatment of these is due to Leuckart, a zoologist. His "Die Menschlichen Parasiten" is a piece of research in pure science. The phagocyte theory, with all its implications, was given to the world by a zoologist—Metchnikoff.

The study of cancer, trypanosomes, opsonins, etc., are being studied by zoologists as well as by medical men, and the work of the medical men with these subjects is chiefly by zoological methods.

Studies of animal behavior, so extensively carried on by zoologists, are reacting on psychology and lighting the way to new advances in that science. Those zoological studies on the wonderful architecture of the nervous system (to which some of your men in the state university have contributed) are bringing a knowledge of the mechanism of the brain, and throwing light on its normal processes and its disorders. Leading up through these studies and the inferences to be drawn from them, we arrive at the science of comparative psychology. Furthermore the study of localization of function in definite areas of the brain substance has opened the way to brain surgery.

The studies of heredity in animals embrace many practical hints to stock breeders and to medical men.

But we can not make a comprehensive list of the large number of practical applications that come from zoological investigation. The illustrations already given are sufficient to indicate that studies in pure science often become of the highest practical value. The practical applications will follow fast enough upon the heels of advancing knowledge. The essential thing, as well as the difficult thing, is, by research, to uncover the facts and to make the first demonstrations.

Encouragement of Scientific Research.—I wish to speak just a word in appreciation of the men who extend the boundaries of knowledge, and a word in favor of the encouragement of pure research. The investigators are necessarily somewhat removed from their fellows and, therefore, often misunderstood. Theirs is a career of intense application and sacrifice. Scientific knowledge is not advanced by happy guesses in moments of inspiration, but only by continuous and well directed effort. He who would wrest from nature her secrets must prepare for the struggle by long training and must follow his calling with intense devotion. Often must he forego the pleasure of social relaxation in order that the discoveries that he is nursing into being may not suffer. When his work is reaching a climax he leads a lonely existence.

The spirit that still animates men of this type is that so long ago exemplified by Agassiz. As Whipple says:


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Men of proved capacity who are willing to devote themselves to research will enter upon it with no selfish motives. They should be classed among the benefactors of mankind, engaged in a useful service. They should be encouraged by men of wealth, by state legislatures and by the establishment of endowments to provide the means of carrying on their researches. There are men of this kind in the State University of Iowa; to the citizens of the state I would say: "These men are a valuable asset to the state," and to the university authorities I would say: "Honor these men and encourage the pursuit of graduate studies under their direction." To any in the rising generation of students who have the internal leading to follow a career devoted to scientific investigation, if they are gifted and energetic, let them without hesitation enter upon this career. The compensations will be chiefly internal. Those who enter upon scientific investigation as a life work must forego certain material prizes in the world that await equally well-directed efforts in other lines of activity, but they will have other kinds of compensations—in living close to great truths, and realizing in their discoveries that thrill of the searcher when he has found, and after long years feeling the uplift of their occupation. Nevertheless, they must learn to renounce and not be embittered as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in that little gem of composition on the attributes of men.

The Doctrine of Organic Evolution.—The crowning service of zoology in extending the boundaries of human understanding is found, perhaps, in the doctrine of evolution. The great sweep of this doctrine


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Rh makes it one of the greatest acquisitions of human knowledge. There has been no point of intellectual vantage reached which is more inspiring. It is so comprehensive that it enters into all realms of thought. Weismann, as you all know one of its great representatives, expresses the opinion that "the theory of descent is the most progressive step that has been taken in the development of human knowledge "and he says further that this position "is justified, it seems to me, even by this fact alone: that the evolution idea is not merely a new light on the special region of the biological sciences, zoology and botany, but is of quite general importance. The conception of an evolution of life upon the earth reaches far beyond the bounds of any single science, and influences our whole realm of thought."

Its applications are helping man in the knowledge of himself and his destiny. Anything that throws light on man's history and his capabilities affects the question of his duty and his destiny. A prominent theologian (Bishop Creighton, of London) has said: "Religion means the knowledge of our destiny and the means of fulfilling it." I shall not attempt to qualify the statement, as I am not a theologian, but I will point out that progress in zoology has extended the knowledge of the history of man, and has thereby influenced our conception of his relation to the universe. I think these advances are helpful, and are supplying a safer and better basis for our education, our system of morals and our religion. For all these matters of so much importance must be brought into relation with the state of knowledge at different periods of the history of our race. This condition is necessary, it seems to me, to men who think, who read or who investigate.

There is still too often a disposition shown by platform and pulpit speakers to qualify, to antagonize and to belittle scientific advances. But let us open our hearts freely, without fear, to the extensions of truth and let us continue in the belief that the knowledge gained by investigation of nature will be helpful to all departments of human endeavor and aspiration. It is to be expected that the views first of the scholars and then of the great mass of humanity will be modified and will become harmonious with all present and all future advances in knowledge.

The present results of these advances will appeal differently to people according to their temperament and experience, but to many scientific men, like Darwin and Huxley, as well as to those of smaller place, the contemplation of it all is uplifting. We may well be drawn into sympathy with the great nature psalm and feel the beauty and force of those lines of poetry in which all nature is called upon to unite in praise of the Ruling Power that directs the forces of the universe. Inanimate nature, as well as all that is alive:


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N matters pertaining to the preservation of health, and the cure of disease, it is a fact of common observation that people in general, and educated people in particular, are very apt to seize eagerly upon every new theory or practise that is confidently announced as able to dispel their ills; and all the more eagerly if, in disregard of science and experience, it is strongly flavored with the mystical and miraculous.

The most remarkable modern instance is the extraordinary growth and acceptance of Eddyism, or so-called christian science, and so confident are its claims and so long its list of undisputed victories that they overshadow, and actually seem to make us forget, the real progress of medical science, which continues uninterruptedly, but without any such flourish of trumpets and beating of drums.

Let us remind ourselves for the moment that scientific investigation has established the presence in the world of certain poisons, whose effects on man have been carefully studied and can be confidently predicted, like strychnia, prussic acid, arsenic and opium; that it has furthermore discovered certain other poisons in the animal world, like the bacillus of tuberculosis, of anthrax, of cholera, of diphtheria, the Plasmodium of malaria and the spirochæte of syphilis, equally poisonous to man with the mineral and vegetable poisons, and capable of producing equally definite and specific effects.

It may not have been part of the intent of creation that man should be harassed by the latter any more than by the former; but the conditions of life and of civilization have made us very vulnerable through our appetites. Intended or not, these specific causes of disease are here; and medical science has not only demonstrated their existence, but has further proved beyond cavil that by their isolation and exclusion the diseases which they cause may be limited, and even be prevented from spreading from person to person.

Scientific medicine has further shown that the vital parts of our bodies are subject to certain degenerative changes induced by exposure, by imprudent habits of eating and drinking, by unnatural modes of living, by inheritance, or simply by age itself. Such are the degenerations of the brain, the heart and blood vessels, the liver, pancreas and kidneys; conditions which are accompanied by demonstrable changes


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 in the structure of these organs, are often progressive in character, and usually incapable of repair.

There is, however, a third class of diseases, which medical science has thus far been unable to classify with the infections or the degenerations; nevertheless, very real and very common, to which it has applied the term functional disorders. These present no demonstrable organic lesion, and very many of them seem to have their origin in psychic rather than in physical causes.

It is from this latter class that the superstition and quackery of all ages have largely derived their support. To be sure, science is gradually invading even this field, and finding a physical basis for conditions which it has been hitherto unable to classify.

It is clear, however, to scientific men that there is a large class for which no physical basis is likely to be found, which will always be the subject of much philosophical speculation and mysticism. Of late, a most interesting attempt has been made to employ science, religion and hypnotic suggestion, under the guise of psychotherapy, in the study and treatment of these cases, and I thought that perhaps it would be interesting to look for a few moments at the so-called Emmanuel movement from a medical viewpoint.

The underlying principle of mind or faith healing is by no means new; it is probably as old as the race. It is the same principle that underlay the sacrificial offering of the ancients, and that underlies the pilgrimages to Lourdes, and the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré. One of the earliest analogous movements, to that of which we now hear so much, was that of Mesmer in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

“By the discovery of a universal fluid, in which life originates, and by which it is preserved, and by the power of regulating the operations of this fluid”—he claimed to be able to cure the most intractable diseases; and although a scientific commission, including our own Benjamin Franklin, was appointed to investigate his claims, and reported that they could find no evidence of any such fluid or special agency emanating from him or his baquet, while, if blindfolded, his patients proved susceptible to its influence only when they believed that they were within its influence, whether they really were or not; still it had for many years an astonishing vogue and following.

In the hands of his pupils animal magnetism, or mesmerism, as it was called, was found to be capable of producing a state of profound insensibility in some individuals and a state akin to somnambulism in others. The subjects were made to do all sorts of unnatural things, and to endure the severest pain without flinching. A number of surgical operations were performed upon patients, who were placed under its influence, and it was the subject of much medical speculation and discussion.


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360 But so thoroughly tainted with fraud was it found to be, in the extravagant and unwarranted claims of its practitioners, that it soon fell into the hands of charlatans and traveling showmen, and thus into general discredit.

It had, however, a great influence in the development of spiritualism and also of hypnotism, although the latter did not obtain its first scientific recognition until many years later, through the work of the eminent French neurologist, Charcot.

This same doctrine of the susceptibility of the individual will to the influence of suggestion or authority is the very foundation of christian science. It underlies the time-honored and well-nigh universal use of the placebo by the medical profession, like the historical brown-bread pill of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, and is the curative agent in most of the well-known proprietary medicines. It is reflected in that old French saying that medicine sometimes cures, often relieves and always comforts.

Physicians have always made use of it, and especially the now much-neglected family doctor. His intimate knowledge of the heredity, habits, social and domestic life of his patients gave him a peculiar advantage in discriminating between their mental and their physical ailments; while the confidence, nay, almost reverence with which his families regarded him gave an authority to his counsel that was seldom questioned.

"His father was here before him," Mrs. Macfadyen used to explain, "atween them, they've had the countyside for weel on tae a century; if MacLure disna understand oor constitutions, wha dis a'wud like tae ask?"

And this simple faith has given the country doctor his one opportunity through all the world, and for many hundreds of years, to practise what we now call psychotherapy. Perhaps he did it unconsciously and in an amateurish sort of way, as Dr. Cabot says, but he did it, is doing it and has done it with great success.

The use of psychotherapy, or mind cure, in a purely scientific way, in the practise of medicine has been tried with conspicuous success for many years by Dubois, in Berne, and Bramwell, in England. "Our endeavor," says the former, "is to raise up these patients, to give them confidence in themselves, and to dissipate their fears and autosuggestions." They do this by making a direct appeal to the patient's reason, by trying to train his will, by trying to make the dominating idea of his ego one of health and strength, not of weakness.

Another factor in the development of this new movement is the renewed interest in the old command, to love thy neighbor as thyself; the awakening of a sense of responsibility of the more fortunate for the less fortunate, in the world they both live in.


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Rh One of the striking features of our economic development is the disappearance of the small community and the small business, with the personal interest of each in all, employer and employed; and in its place we see the herding together of great masses of people in our large cities, each class by itself; the corporation taking the place of the individual owner, and the growth of vast business enterprises, with its inevitable loss of personal interest and sense of personal responsibility.

The old relation of the physician to his patient has also changed; partly because of the growth of the specialties, partly from the growth of the hospital and dispensary, where the great number of patients makes an investigation into each one's individual circumstances and surroundings easier to neglect than to follow up; but more largely still, to that want of intimate acquaintance and the mutual confidence bred of intimate acquaintance incident to life in a large community.

To meet this problem and to help the less fortunate, who, as a class, suffer most from this change, we have the growth of settlement work, of personal service, the better administration of charities, the getting closer to the personal life of the unfortunates, with a better knowledge of their trials, hopes and disappointments, giving more advice, counsel, sympathy and practical help and less alms.

We have, of course, a class of nervous invalids, whose condition is the result of the strain of business and pleasure; but another, and much larger class, whose condition is due to ignorance, misfortune and actual hardship. Hospital men are beginning to recognize that simply a thorough physical examination with a prescription for some medicine and a few hurried words of advice are not enough; that much of our effort and of our hospital endowment has been wasted, because we did not know anything about the conditions under which our patients lived; did not know whether our advice could be followed or not and, even if it could, did not follow them up, see that they understood it and that the instructions were carried out.

We see at once the necessity of getting back to the old idea of the physician, as the friend, adviser and guide of his patients; to a closer personal relation between physician and patient, and where, as in a large hospital clinic, this is impossible, an organization which, under his direction, shall follow his patients to their homes, see what is


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362 possible to be done in the way of carrying out his instructions, how it may be best accomplished, and see that it is accomplished.

In this line, the work of the social service department of the Massachusetts General Hospital, under Dr. Cabot's direction, is a conspicuous example of how these reforms may be brought about.

We have referred now to two separate movements; each of which has exerted a large influence in the development of this Emmanuel movement, so-called. First, the development of a healthy suggestion from without or within, with the education of the will, by an appeal to reason, and the cultivation of a right attitude toward life and especially toward health; and, secondly, the attempt to get closer to those who, by ignorance, misfortune, heredity or wrong doing, have become victims of distorted ideas about health and disease, and are unable to extricate themselves without help.

These very real, very active movements have appealed to many churchmen as offering opportunities in which they could be useful to their fellow men; while, at the same time, they would be extending the influence of their church. The first attempt on a large scale and with a complete organization to enlist in this service was by Rev. Elwood Worcester, of the Emmanuel Church, Boston.

He began three years ago with a tuberculosis class under the personal direction of Dr. J. H. Pratt. “The treatment consisted of the approved, modern method of combating consumption, plus discipline, friendship, encouragement and hope; in short, a combination of physical and moral elements.” It was like a regular hospital clinic under the direction and charge of a hospital physician, but having its headquarters not at the hospital, but at the church; and the church cooperated with its visitors and helpers.

The only new thing about it was its connection with the church organization and the opportunity thus given immediately to strengthen the moral and religious character as well as the physical constitution; there was no mysticism, nothing but rational help—and the class was very successful.

So successful was it that Dr. Worcester says:

It convinced us, that the church has an important mission to perform to the sick, and that the physician and the clergyman can work together to the benefit of the community. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1906, we determined to begin a similar work among the nervously and morally diseased.

Our single desire is to give each patient the best opportunity of life and health which our means allow. We believe in the power of the mind over the body, and we believe also in medicine, in good habits, and in a wholesome and well-regulated life.

In the treatment of functional nervous disorders we make free use of moral and psychical agencies, but we do not believe in overtaxing these valuable aids by expecting the mind to attain results which can be effected more easily through physical instrumentalities. Accordingly, we have gladly availed


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of the services of skilled medical and surgical specialists, who have offered to cooperate with us.

All patients are referred to these specialists first, and only those found to be suffering from the purely functional nervous disorders are admitted to the classes; this is done to avoid the objection that the employment of psychotherapy “in diseases which obviously require physical interference, may result in death through neglect”; but especially because “disorders of this nature are peculiarly associated with the moral life”—and “moral maladies require moral treatment.”

The philosophy of the movement is simple; the fundamental idea is the existence in each of us of a subconscious or subliminal mind, which is a normal part of our spiritual nature and is responsible for our unconscious and automatic movements, thoughts and motives. It is this subconscious mind which responds to hypnotic suggestion, after the conscious mind has been put to sleep; but even without resort to hypnotism, one of the most important characteristics is its suggestibility, its subjection to moral influence and direction.

The functional disorders of the nervous system such as neurasthenia, psychasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria and the like, are believed to be diseases of the subconscious; caused by a dissociation of consciousness, i. e., by certain portions of consciousness having become detached from the main stream.

By “psychic reeducation, utilization of reserve energy, suggestions given in hypnosis or in states of deep abstraction, there follows a re-association, a synthesis of the dissociated state, and a return to a state of healthy mindedness.” And the susceptibility of the subconscious mind to suggestion is believed to afford the means of accomplishing this.

How this is actually applied in the clinic will be understood better perhaps, if I quote directly from Mr. Powell, one of Dr. Worcester's earliest pupils and imitators.

In addition to the clinic at which individual treatments are thus given, there is, at Emmanuel Church, a mid-week meeting, at which, after singing and Bible reading, requests for prayer are read and answered, a short, practical address, applying the teachings of Christ to human ills, followed by an hour of social intercourse in the social room of the church. For the benefit of the doctors, ministers, social workers and others who desired to study the movement, a course of


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364 lectures was given last summer extending over three weeks, for which a small fee was charged.

Such is, in brief, the theory of the practise of the Emmanuel movement, so-called. It attempts to relieve certain disorders, which have a mental or moral origin, by the use of suggestion, reinforced by an appeal to the patient's religious faith, and it invokes the aid of medical science to eliminate those disorders which have a purely physical organic basis. Except for this appeal for the help of science and the recognition of science which it contains, there is absolutely nothing in the movement that is new.

In the first place, these so-called functional diseases do really exist; although it is true that the class has been growing constantly smaller under the influence of scientific investigation and discovery. Still, it is also true, now, as in the middle of the eighteenth century when Dr. John Atkins wrote, that “many distempers, especially of women that are ill all over, or know not what they ail, have been cured, I am apt to think, more by a fancy to the physician than his prescription.”

Every doctor is familiar with the patient whose physical ailments are quite insignificant when compared with the exaggerated importance with which his mind or imagination has invested them. Every medical man recognizes how little physical basis there is for the worry, fear, doubt and melancholy with which so many of his patients are obsessed. We all appreciate how often that symptom-complex, which goes to make up what we call the neurotic temperament, is found in cases in which the most rigid physical examination fails to reveal any indication of organic disease.

In this class we find kindred conditions, which have at different times borne a great variety of names, such as nervous prostration, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria, or melancholia, while in other cases we are content with the simpler definition of disturbed mental equilibrium or deviation.

It seems impossible to classify these cases accurately, because there is no really scientific basis upon which a classification can be made; and the invention of new names to define certain types is not as important or as progressive as it seems.

In speaking of these names, Dubois says: “The name neurasthenia is on everybody's lips; it is the fashionable disease. But I am mistaken, the disease is not new, it is the name by which it is known that is changed. We now designate by this name, a combination of symptoms known through all time.” What we must not lose sight of is that there are diseases of the mind, or imagination, or nervous system, in which no physical deviation from the normal can be found, but which are none the less real, none the less distressing, and that they tax the skill, resources and patience of the attending physician almost to the breaking point.


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Rh Furthermore, it must be observed that these are the cases in which psychotherapy, whether practised by means of the placebo, or through the agency of christian science, or the Emmanuel movement, is preeminently successful.

In the second place, if we study carefully the causes of these conditions, we shall find them in the two great classes into which Charcot has divided them. “The neuroses,” he says, “arise from two factors, the one essential and invariable, neuropathic heredity; the other, contingent and polymorphic, the provoking agent.”

In the latter belong our doubts and fears and worries, as well as the other more easily controlled factors in the causation of these purely functional nervous disorders. But even in the case of heredity, it is more the unstable nervous equilibrium that is transmitted than the specific form in which it is manifested in any individual case; and this unstable equilibrium is capable, in no small degree, of being influenced by reeducation along the lines of which we have been speaking.

“In neurasthenia," says Dubois, “we find general debility; sometimes it is physical, sometimes intellectual, but above all it is moral.” In other words, it is a wrong view-point, a weakness of the will power of the individual, an inability to throw off the unduly insistent habit, or thought, or motive.

In a few words, Carpenter explains the long list of epidemic delusions of history, the form of which has changed from time to time, although many of their characteristics have been common to all; such as mesmerism, magnetism, spiritualism and the like, by saying that “The condition which underlies them all is the subjection of the mind to a dominant idea.”

The trouble is that in the case of these delusions, as well as in the case of the neurasthenic, the dominant idea is pointed in the wrong direction; and the Emmanuel movement simply aims by a process of reeducation through suggestion, autosuggestion or, if necessary, hypnotism, to change this direction.

In the treatment of these cases of functional disorder of the nervous system, doctors, psychologists and Emmanuelists, all agree in attempting to continue the subjection of the mind to a dominant idea; but try, each in his own way, to make that idea stand for health, for right living and right thinking, for cheerfulness, in a word, so to direct it that it shall always look for the doughnut, not the hole.

But, while agreeing thus far, a fundamental difference of opinion is disclosed, as soon as we take up the question as to by whom this work can best be done; by the doctor or by the clergyman. The lines, however, are not strictly drawn between the two professions, because some medical men see no impropriety in asking and encouraging the assistance of the church, while many churchmen deprecate the entrance


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366 of the church, as an organized body, into new and untried and disputed fields of activity.

One thing should be clear at the outset, and it is emphatically set forth in the introduction to Dr. Worcester's book.

The church should not undertake this work without the cooperation and assistance of the best possible medical advisers. It is a scientific work, based on the knowledge derived from the study of medicine and psychology, and its favorable results are not miracles, to be exploited for the glory of religion. They can be obtained only in cases in which no organic pathology is found to exist, in cases carefully selected, after rigid and strictly scientific examinations.

Remember that the goal is reeducation into right habits of thinking and living; and in this process of reeducation, judged by their results, there is little to choose, between the efficiency of the agnostic Dubois and the ecclesiastical Worcester.

That this process of reeducation can not be accomplished by hypnotic suggestion is the firm belief of the medical profession, especially the neurologists. That a state of hypnotic susceptibility can be induced in most people by a will that is stronger than their own is not doubted; but that it is safe, or that its results justify its use as a therapeutic measure, is stoutly denied.

Hypnotism has been known since Braid in 1842, and every now and then it rises up on a new wave of interest and popularity, often in a new guise; but so far as its therapeutic value is concerned, we have as yet derived from it no safe practical assistance.

If not by hypnotism, then how shall we seek to accomplish this reeducation—shall it be by an appeal to reason, or to faith? Unless by faith is meant religious faith, it has been and will always be done by medical men, acting through both agencies; by strong men, confident in their own powers, and able to impress others with the same confidence and faith in the truth, sincerity and accuracy of their opinions.

Examples of this use of psycho-therapeutics have been common enough in the practise of every successful physician. That he has been working at an increasing disadvantage is probably true; due partly to the growth of specialism, and also to the complexity of modern life, which, as has been already indicated, means the loss of that personal relation and sympathy between patient and physician which used to be common; but to an even greater extent is this disadvantage the result of the extraordinary development of the more material and scientific side of disease.

For example, Dr. Cabot complains, and with too much reason, that the psychological side of tuberculosis has been largely disregarded. “We have tried to have our patients live almost by bread alone—actually by milk and eggs alone, in some cases.


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Then, too, the study of the treatment and means of prevention of the infections and degenerations, and the brilliancy of its results, have tended to make us impatient with the less prompt response of the neurotic. We medical men have been tempted to speak sternly, as did the King in Alice in Wonderland, who told the poor hatter, who was trembling before the throne: “Don't be nervous, or I'll have you executed on the spot.” So we have been tempted to say to the unduly nervous patient: “You are not sick; don't be nervous, or you'll make yourself sick”—good advice, but, like much that we have to listen to, badly given.

We must look deeper into the causes of the nervousness, and suggest something to take their place. The profession is already awakening to this defect in its practise, and one of the benefits of christian science and the later movement is the stimulus which it has given the medical profession, to take up again, in its new light, a work which it always used to do, and which still is a part of its duty; a part of its very raison d'être.

A recent editorial in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal says:

The University of Wisconsin has already established a chair of psychology and medicine; the Phipps fund of $500,000 will soon be available for a similar course in the Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Morton Prince offers a course in psychotherapy this winter at the Tufts Medical School. In the great field of hospital and dispensary practise much has been accomplished in the same direction by the introduction of the social-service department, as at the Johns Hopkins, the New York Post-graduate and the Massachusetts General Hospitals.

From these considerations I think there can be no doubt but that the doctor has, can and ought to do this work; the next question is, in how far it can and ought to be done by the church. We all agree that the underlying causes in very many of these functional nervous disorders are moral causes. We all recognize the strong religious side in human nature. We have all seen in our own experience, or that of some of our friends, the peace and satisfaction of mind to be derived from a strong religious faith.

It is a powerful force for the uplifting of man, mentally and morally.


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368 This appeal to religious faith is, however, but one of our means of reaching nervous invalids; it is not always the most promising, nor is it always applicable; but it is the only one which affords any excuse for the entrance of the church into the fields of psychotherapy.

If, as has been said by one of its stoutest medical defenders, the aim of the Emmanuel Church work is only “to educate the religious faith, and to train the moral capacities of nervous invalids, sent to it by the physicians of the community for that very purpose,” there would be much less room for criticism. The work would then be done in the same quiet, unobtrusive way that the medical profession believes that all such work should be done.

But when it comes to lecturing weekly, to hundreds of laymen and women at the church, and to going about from city to city explaining to lay audiences the nature of the work and encouraging imitation, as is being done by the projectors of this Emmanual idea, the medical profession at large views with alarm the superficial manner in which a complex medical problem is presented, and sees in it strong elements of quackery and charlatanism, and the danger of great harm from its practise.

Education of the reason and strengthening of the will would seem to be more promising means of securing a nervous equilibrium than an appeal to the emotions. Even though this work has been, and is being done by the general practitioner, as we have already seen, it is probably true that in many cases, at least, it is a work in which he would welcome the assistance and advice of a specialist. But how much better fitted to give that help is the expert in diseases of the brain and nervous system who has studied psychology, than he who has studied psychology alone, or taken it up as a side issue to his study of theology and of church administration.

On this point there would seem to be little chance for disagreement. The safest counselor in all medical matters is he who has first grounded himself in normal and abnormal anatomy, in normal and pathological physiology and in the theory and practise of medicine as a whole, and then upon this foundation has made a thorough and exhaustive study of his special department; not the man who has followed a post-graduate course of lectures for a few weeks, or even months, nor the man whose psychological study has been incidental to his ecclesiastical training.

To quote again from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal:


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Rh In sympathy with this feeling the best medical opinion is already alienated, and it is apparent that the movement must get along without the very cooperation upon which its originators laid such emphasis; yet it is doubtful if they will recognize this, for they seem disposed to show the same lack of discrimination in the selection of their medical authorities that is manifested by the opponents of vivisection.

It ill becomes a medical man to undertake to say what the effect of this movement may be on the church itself. It is entering a field that has always been occupied by medical men in an empirical way; and with the advancing knowledge of psychology and psychotherapy, they have demonstrated their ability and willingness successfully to cultivate it, wholly independent of church and religion. It is certainly not desirable that this independence should be too complete; but neither is it at all desirable, for the reasons above given, that the medical and scientific part of the work should be incidental and secondary to the religious.

The point which Dr. Worcester seems to me to miss is this: That these disorders, though not accompanied by any structural lesion, are, nevertheless, deviations from the normal brain function, and, as such, are to be studied and treated by those who have a thorough knowledge of the normal anatomy and physiology, and the pathological anatomy and physiology of the brain; and that the assistance of religion in this work, great and invaluable as that often is, should be strictly subordinate, just as it is subordinate, though very helpful and often necessary, in the conduct of the tuberculosis clinic, in his own church.

It is difficult to see where the church has any material advantage in the competition, and as the movement spreads into the hands of those with few qualifications and with greater independence of sound medical counsel, it seems not unreasonable to predict its ultimate failure and general discredit.

However, the Emmanuel movement has done good, just as the popular interest in hypnotism and christian science has done good. They emphasize and make clear the value of mental therapeutics, and spur the doctor and psychologist to renewed study of its nature, limitations and practical application. It will also serve, perhaps, to recall the practising physician from too cold a materialism; and to prevent a dehumanized scientist from taking the place of the doctor of the old school.

It is undoubtedly true that there has been a strong tendency to give undue attention and attribute undue importance to the interesting pathological problem presented in each case, and too little attention to its humanitarian aspect. We must not let the scientist push to one side the samaritan. Such is the lesson to be learned—more real human sympathy and help from the doctor, but not a “medicalized clergy.”


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370

ATZEL in his illuminating work on "The History of Mankind," remarking upon the influence of the ocean on the life of primitive peoples, says:

In contrast with this "gap in the belt of human habitation" the island-dotted Pacific, with its narrowing shore lines to the north, is a habitable area. Its island clusters have ever been the homes of men, and its watery waste the highway of primitive navigators. Dwellers on the fringe-lands of the continents looked out upon the Atlantic as upon a great void, and it was not until the first thousand years of the present era had passed that Scandinavian peoples penetrated its gloomy mists and founded colonies in Iceland and the Faroes. This movement of the Northmen was an expression of that migratory impulse that earlier had brought the rude peoples of Europe to the confines of the land. Five hundred years passed before the "wide gap" was again crossed.

Such a forbidding "fringe," on the farther verge of the known world, was the landfall of the first voyagers, who, steering westward, solved the mystery of the western ocean. In their wake followed successive waves of migrating peoples from the shores of Europe, who sought to found colonies on these strange coasts. Whatever fanciful Eldorados they may have pictured were rudely dispelled by the wild solitudes of an unknown forest that, sphinx-like, stretched its front along the indented coast from the St. Lawrence to Florida. Between these peoples and the world of civilization lay the dissociating Atlantic. Once landed, they had set foot on the threshold of a new home. To the natural features of this threshold—forest, mountain, river, shore-line and climate—and its aboriginal life, we must look for those influences that went so largely to the making of a new type of civilized men.


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The natural condition of eastern North America is that of a forest-covered land. Wherever the primeval woodland has been cleared there springs up, unless thwarted by persistent tillage, a sturdy "second growth" which in time, and if allowed to spread, would restore the face of the country to something of its former appearance. We are familiar enough with such tracts, abandoned by men as unprofitable for cultivation and left to the genial influence of birds and winds and the chemistry of humus soils—nature's way of getting back to original conditions. These delectable places are the "woods," scattered in patches of greater or less extent throughout the farming districts, covering the slopes of hills and the windings of valley streams—places of little value in the economic eye save for a few cords of firewood or as a trifling source of timber, but rich withal in youthful associations.

The primitive Atlantic forest was, for a space of three hundred years after the discovery, a dominant feature in the history of the country. For a long period its impenetrable solitudes limited the spread of settlement to a narrow seaboard margin; only the more intrepid of the newcomers plunged into its depths to meet with strange adventures. The valleys of the larger rivers formed natural highways into the interior of this forest region and the broad tracts of rich bottom-land gradually became, in favorable situations, the sites of settlement, widely scattered at first, but advancing farther and farther inland as population increased.

It is hard for us, dwelling in the long-settled land, to appreciate the attitude of the early colonists toward the forest. Fear mingled with curiosity was undoubtedly the chief state of mind of the first comers. Clearing the land had a twofold purpose—for planting ("plantation" was the word used in all early writings concerning the colonies) and to satisfy a feeling of domesticity that was ingrained in the European mind—an inherited instinct to civilize. To these people the forest was a dreadful reality (some early writers speak of it as a "Desert"), full of unknown terrors, and, especially to the Puritan and Jesuit, a haunt of the Powers of Darkness. On the whole the French settlers took more kindly to the forest than did the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who from the outset evinced a ruthless determination to clear the land. The ancient wood steadily receded, slowly at first, then rapidly as the planted country widened its borders, forest everywhere giving way to field, and with it vanished much that was aboriginal.

"Pine-tree State" and "Pine-tree Shilling" were terms of no empty meaning in the region where they originated. In northern New England the white pine is still the most characteristic tree over wide areas of unimproved land, and a well-defined "pine belt" reaches


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372 from the coast westward to beyond the Great Lakes. A goodly number of other trees mingle with the pines in this northern portion of the Atlantic forest—basswood, elm, birch, sugar maple and ash among the broad-leaved species, and the black spruce, hemlock and cedar among conifers, but the pine everywhere gives the broadest and most pronounced feature to the woodland. This northern pine forest follows the highest ridges of the Alleghanies quite to their southern limits, conspicuous in the mountain landscape as an evergreen belt—the hemlock (or what is left of its once grand forests after the axe of the lumberman and "bark-peeler") predominating in certain districts.

Somewhere in the mid-New England region, and in New York along the watershed of the St. Lawrence, one who travels with an eye for trees will notice the ever-increasing number and variety of broad-leaved species toward the south. Among the scattered pines appears the massy leafage of oaks, hickories, chestnuts, beeches and other hardwoods, which denotes a borderland in tree life—the northern edge of that vast deciduous forest the summer canopy of which, in aboriginal times, covered the Ohio and Mississippi basins and the Piedmont land of the Atlantic seaboard to beyond the valley of the Delaware. Even to-day there are wide areas still covered by remnants of this magnificent interior forest of the continent. And what a wealth of species! Nowhere in the temperate zone may we find such an assemblage of splendid tree forms save possibly in eastern Asia. The tall tulip tree with its gorgeous blossoms and broad leaves of shining green; the array of magnolias, rivaled in beauty and variety only in the Chinese region; the gums (both tupelos and liquidambar); the flowering dogwood; the buckeyes, locusts, catalpas, beeches, plane trees, chestnuts, ashes, elms, cherries, a great variety of hawthorns, the hackberry, persimmon and sassafras; the hickories, walnuts and butternuts; the basswood, maple and sourwood; the hornbeams, and upwards of twenty species of oaks, not to mention a host of other less familiar trees and underwoods. This is the forest that nature would spread over the land again should the white man cease in his toilsome civilization. Those of us born with a love for the woods can only regret the loss and cling the more tenaciously to every woodland tract that happily we may still have the right to protect.

On the coast plain of the southern Atlantic region another form of tree-life gives character to the forest. Here the long-leaf pine and other allied species find a congenial home, the monotonous "piney woods" covering wide tracts of level, sandy country. From the earliest times tar and turpentine have given local color to the commerce of the region where this pine abounds. In low-lying swamp districts and along river shores the bald cypress, with its curious "knees" lifted above the submerging flood, is a conspicuous tree in the landscape and entirely peculiar to this Atlantic coast region.


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Rh The existence of a forest on the Atlantic side of North America is a result of several natural conditions, chief among which is a copious rainfall. The average yearly precipitation east of the Mississippi Valley amounts to some fifty or sixty inches, increasing towards the coast and the Gulf border. This insures an abundant water supply in the subsoil—the stratum into which the roots of forest trees delve in their search for moisture. Soils, too, play their part in the foresting of a land. An underlying layer of clay holds the water, which collects above it in the permeable sands and loam of the subsoil where the tree roots interlace in a vast network. The varied nature of soils over wide regions determines, within certain limits of temperature, the character of tree growth. This explains in part the preponderance of pines on a sandy soil where the water passes more or less rapidly through the root area. Pines are physiologically dry trees as compared with the broad-leaved, deciduous species; their tough and narrow needle-like leaves do not so readily favor the transpiration process—the freeing of the water which has ascended through their vessels from the roots. What ground water enters the transpiration current is, therefore, not too easily lost to the tree through its leaves. The case of the broad-leaved trees is different, for their roots tap soils more or less constantly moist and the ascending transpiration current is quickly relieved by the broad expanse of leafage which they present to the air.

Temperature is unquestionably the controlling feature in the northward and southward distribution of trees. Along the Atlantic seaboard the effective temperatures in tree dispersal are related, in a general way, to the "lay of the land." In the same latitude various species belonging to a more northern habitat appear in the highland districts, while many southern forms are more or less abundant in the lowlands. Along its inland border the coastal plain, in many places, ends in a low rise of land, or "upland terrace," from the top of which one sees the flat expanse of the plain over many miles. Back of the observer lies the rolling country of the Piedmont district (the "uplands" of the early settlers and farming people), a landscape of hills and valleys stretching away to the eastern border of the Blue Ridge. South of the valley of the Delaware this terrace feature marks, in a very general way, the limits of certain northern and southern trees. The sweet gum or liquidambar of the southern region is abundant on the coastal plain in southeastern Pennsylvania, but is of rare occurrence on the uplands. The sheltered nature and rich alluvial soils of river bottoms extend the ranges of some of the more southern trees beyond this limit, and the same sweet gum is found growing in the valley of the Connecticut. In like manner the valleys of the Hudson, the Delaware and the Susquehanna are each tinged with a more southern tree life than are the surrounding uplands along their course. As a reverse of this picture, certain trees of a more northerly


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374, like the hemlock, are found growing along the higher land and in cool ravines as far south as the Lower Delaware Valley.

The more familiar trees, however, mingle over a wide area of country—southern New England and the Middle Atlantic district—a transition region that lies between the northern coniferous forest and the broad-leaved, summer-green forest of the great interior valley and south Atlantic slope.

Something besides temperature appears to control the distribution of certain trees. Since the settlement of the country numerous species, the natural habitats of which are far to the south, have been planted and grown successfully in more northern localities. The catalpa, the sourwood and the several species of magnolia are illustrations of this. Just what is the determining factor in preventing such trees from spreading northward (or others from spreading southward) it is difficult to say. Possibly some subtle condition in the balance of nature—some item in the struggle for existence, has helped or hindered the spread of certain trees, excluding some from localities already occupied by others. It is well known that where pines have been cut off certain species of oaks will spring up and occupy the land. The oak seedlings must have been abundantly scattered over the soil for a long period of time. Only a comparatively few species are enabled to hold their own through some superior advantage in adaptation and grow up to form a forest. A vast number must of necessity lie dormant in the soil for centuries. In Denmark, since glacial times, there has evidently been a succession of forests—oak following fir and beech following oak through a period of many thousands of years. The varied relations of the different species of trees to light, heat, moisture and soils, to animals, and to other trees and plants, are involved in slow, deep-seated processes, the expression of which is the forest as we see it. Our point of view, however, is but momentary in the vast events of nature—a fleeting glimpse, merely, of one picture in an endless biograph.

The question of the succession of forests suggests another question—that of the origin of the present Atlantic forest and its relation to other forests in different parts of the world. In a general survey of the forest trees of eastern North America there appears a large number of types which are common also to Europe. With the exception of the bald cypress and the hemlocks all the other coniferous types—pines, spruces, firs and larches—are represented in Europe by closely allied species. This is true also of a number of the deciduous trees—the oak, beech, chestnut, elm, willow, birch, aspen, walnut, ash, maple, plane tree, linden or basswood, and others are represented on both sides of the Atlantic by more or less nearly related forms. This is not surprising when we come to consider that all of the above-named trees are decidedly northern in their distribution, and exist under very similar climatic conditions. This is especially true of the coniferous


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Rh trees and the birches which form a characteristic boreal forest zone of similar features throughout the entire land area of the cold temperate region from Kamschatka to Alaska. Farther south, as the land masses diverge, the forest types show a decreasing likeness—yet the broad-leaved woodlands of oak, beech and others are readily recognized as such in both the old and the new worlds.

A number of American trees, however, and these characteristic of the more southern portion of the Atlantic forest, have no European counterparts. We look in vain through the forests of Europe for such familiar forms as the hemlock, the hickories, the tulip tree, the magnolias, the sassafras, the tupelo gums, the witchhazel, the Kentucky coffee tree, the yellow-wood, the locusts, the catalpa and the liquidambar. Strange as it may appear, nearly all of these eastern American forms occur nowhere else in the world save in eastern Asia, in the more temperate parts of China and Japan, where the same or very nearly related species are to be found. What is even still more striking is the contrast between the Atlantic and Pacific sides of North America. Excepting along the mountain crests where the more or less world-wide boreal plants find a congenial environment, the vegetation of the California region is related mainly to the dry plateau lands of Mexico and South America. So far as the trees are concerned a native of the eastern United States would find himself in much more homelike surroundings in the woodlands of temperate China and Japan than on the Pacific slope of his own country. A tulip tree, very similar to the one at home, almost if not the identical species of sassafras, numerous closely related magnolias, a near relative of the southern yellow-wood, the liquidambar, the catalpa, the coffee tree, the hemlock, and other forms appear as familiar trees in the landscape of China and Japan. This likeness between the two widely separated regions is not confined to the trees alone. The flora at large presents many features in common. The fox grape, the poison ivy, the hydrangeas, the wistaria, the blue cohosh, the may-apple, the twinleaf, the trailing arbutus or may-flower, and the creeping snowberry have each a more or less closely related form in eastern North America and eastern Asia, but are found in no other part of the world.

This likeness between the forest types of eastern North America and eastern Asia dates from a period far back in the history of northern lands. The tertiary deposits of Greenland and Spitzbergen have yielded numerous fossil remains of trees, among them a magnolia, a tulip tree, a sassafras and a liquidambar, quite similar, if not, in some cases, identical with the species now living. Besides these forms that are peculiar to the regions above named, the remains of other trees of more wide-spread distribution have been found in Greenland—a basswood, a plane tree, a persimmon, also several kinds of beeches, birches,


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376 poplars and oaks—all of which are nearly related to the modern types.

This ancient circumpolar forest flourished at a time when the climate of the Arctic regions was almost warm temperate in its character and capable of supporting a rich and varied tree-life throughout an immensely long period of time. Toward the close of this period the increasing cold which culminated in a glacial epoch caused a gradual change in the forest conditions. The more northerly portion of this wide-spread forest was not able to survive the change, its species were forced out of the region, finding more suitable conditions in lands farther to the south, where some, undoubtedly, had already established themselves. A large number of species, like the oaks and beeches and some of the conifers easily adapted themselves to a varied environment and spread widely around the north temperate zone. Others, however, found suitable conditions of life only in certain localities, often widely apart, but with similar climatic features. Here we have a solution of the similarity of tree forms in forests so widely separated geographically as those of eastern North America and eastern Asia. In every other portion of the wide region into which the trees of this polar forest migrated a certain number of species failed to occupy the soil through some adverse conditions in climate or life relations. Cut off from their center of development in the polar area, they spread to the south, but only in two localities did they succeed in establishing themselves—on the eastern side of the two great northern land masses, where almost similar climatic influences prevail.

It is of more than passing interest to thus trace back the history of our forests. As with men so with trees. Countless generations succeed one another, occupying the soil in which the remains of older generations lie buried, each new generation springing from the one before it and bearing the marks of an inheritance that allies its individual members with other men and trees in far distant lands, and that carries them back through a seemingly endless chain of life to a remote antiquity.

With the retreat of the ice at the close of the last glacial epoch, and the gradual assumption of the present climate and physical features of eastern North America, the more hardy coniferous trees, and some of the broad-leaved species that had adapted themselves to low temperatures along the edge of the ice sheet, began to occupy the newly uncovered land as a northern belt of pine forest. This expansion of tree life toward the north must have relieved the long overcrowded southern area and permitted a fuller development of the summer-green, broad-leaved forest with its great variety of forms. The deciduous habit of this summer-green forest is clearly an adaptation to a low winter


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Rh temperature, the falling away of the leaves temporarily drying out the tree by checking the transpiration current and thus preventing the disastrous effects of freezing. Along the warmer Gulf borders certain deciduous types, as the live oaks, have either never acquired the habit or have lost it since glacial times.

A glamour of romance brooded over this forest land and cast its spell on the mind of western Europe. From Raleigh, dreaming of colonies beyond the sea, down to the days of the great exodus of European peoples there was a pervading sense of wonder concerning the new country. History has dealt at length with the motives that prompted whole bodies of people to leave a long-familiar and civilized homeland for an unknown and untried wilderness. No matter what the varied motives may have been—whether from religious or political oppression, or for the betterment of home and fortune—each and all were expressions of that migratory impulse that from a remote period had been working out the destiny of the race.

The English stock that colonized the Atlantic slope of North America was made up of two strains of blood that had mingled to some extent in the mother country, but which was destined to a far wider and more complete fusion in the new world. From an ethnological point of view the Welsh, the Irish and the Highland Scot or Gael have come to be regarded as the modern representatives of an ancient Celtic people that once occupied Britain and that were driven into remote corners of the land by the invading Angle and his allies. As applied to this people and its speech and literature the word "Celtic" has come to stand for a certain kind of temperament—imaginative and emotional in its nature, poetic and inclined to mysticism, a man on the edge of things, elated or cast down, and capable of great bursts of energy. The reverse of this picture is called up by the word "Teutonic "—the opposite strain of blood that has mingled so largely with the Celtic element in the moulding of an American type. In point of fact the Teutonic is the dominant strain in most of us to-day; the Celtic being more of a local infusion here and there, like the occasional brook flowing into the main stream of a river. The New England Puritans were almost wholly English Teutons and the same was true of the Virginia colonists. The Teutonic Swede and Hollander held for a time the middle region—the Hudson and the lower valley of the Delaware—and left an infusion of their blood in the dominant English population which may still be traced in certain family names. The Quakers that settled Pennsylvania were, like the Puritans, of Teutonic English stock. The Scotch-Irish peoples, likewise largely Teutonic, settled the Carolina seaboard. The main German migration spread through the middle region—in the Delaware and Susquehanna


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378 —and together with the Scotch-Irish settled the frontier valleys of the Blue Ridge. These were the peoples—Teutonic with a Celtic infusion—that traversed the wide gap of the Atlantic and planted a civilization on its farther fringe.

It was what these people brought with them, as qualities of mind, traditions and habits of life, and the way they looked at things, that interest us most. There could be no adaptation to a wilderness life like that of the aboriginal inhabitants of this fringe-land. Here were men and women, the product of centuries of civilization, suddenly confronted with the bare fact of existence on the edge of an inhospitable and unknown forest. This transit of civilized peoples is one of the amazing events of history. Tillers of the land for generations, they brought with them the old-world grains and food plants, their household goods, farm implements and cattle, and with these a bundle of curious ideas and superstitions which had a deep and widespread rootage in the ancestral soil of Europe. The forest held nothing for them save fuel and material for shelter. Fish, flesh and fowl were to be had in abundance, but of the wild food-plants that were indigenous to the soil and which the native peoples had used for ages these immigrants from civilization knew little or nothing. Dependent from a remote antiquity upon agriculture, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the first comers to the new land were at times sorely put to it for food, as the early records relate.

The effect of this fringe-land upon its native inhabitants was apparent in the low state of their culture. The aboriginal Atlantic tribes were unacquainted with the use of iron, which, as Ratzel has remarked, is a characteristic of all fringe-land peoples. Their agriculture was of the rudest sort—the planting of maize, squashes and tobacco, with little or no tillage, hunting and fishing producing their chief food supply. The very primitive condition of these Indian peoples was further evinced by such customs as mother-right and other ancient forms of the social state. The Atlantic fringe-land as a whole was thinly populated. Where many millions of Europeans now dwell on a sound basis of agriculture, the aboriginal population seemed barely able to hold its own, living as it were from hand to mouth. This failure to advance culturally and increase numerically through intelligent use of the soil is the underlying fact in all backward peoples, and their backwardness is, in large measure, the result of environment. Undoubtedly one of the factors in this environment is isolation, through many generations, in a forest region, though we must also remember those inherent racial traits that tend to depress whole bodies of people, relegating them to the less desirable regions—overwhelming forests, unfertile tracts and fringe-lands. A non-agricultural people can not wrest a civilization out of the wilderness. It can only be accomplished by agricultural peoples with a well developed instinct to clear


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Rh the land. The forest and the ocean set limitations to the aboriginal American. The Atlantic once crossed by the agricultural Europeans, though it served to hold them to their new home, became their highway of communication with the world. To them it was no longer "a gap in the belt of human habitation."

The Teutonic blood evinced its trait of dogged persistence in the settlement of the land. Acre after acre of the primeval woodland was cleared and planted. Of the species indigenous to the new country only maize and tobacco became rivals of the old-world culture plants. We can picture to ourselves the rude farm lands of the first period of settlement, with stumps scattered through the fields, charred and blackened in many places by the firing of the fallen growth, with the maize and the English grain springing up; the kitchen-garden of old-world vegetables and herbs; the dooryard blooms—wallflower, daffodil, marigold, larkspur, and other sweet, homely flowers brought from across the sea; the young orchards with their seedling fruit trees or newly set-out transplantings of peach, apple, plum and pear. Most of the houses at this period were built of rough-hewn logs or sawed planks, while some of the more pretentious were of stone or brick. Peter Kalm, the Swedish traveler, has left us a picture of the countryside about the Delaware in the middle of the eighteenth century, after three quarters of a century of settlement. Speaking of the farms near Philadelphia, he says in one place:

A month later (in October) he writes:

The "worm fence" appears to have been a feature of the farm lands in Kalm's time, at least in the middle and southern regions. He comments at some length on the wastefulness of wood in the construction of these worm fences.


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380

These rude forefathers of ours evidently had small concern for future posterity. Wood they had in abundance and they burned it without stint. The smell of the hearth smoke must have gone deep into their veins and its subtle influence still evokes a sense of homeliness in those of us who perchance have inherited some ancestral response that makes for happiness quite as much as acres of standing timber.

In New England the mantle of drift, that had been strewn over the land by the melting of an ancient glacier, afforded abundant material for the building of "stone fences." These old walls, beset with weeds and briars, became the retreat of many of the smaller wild animals that had been driven from their forest stronghold by the clearing of the land. The fox still finds a friendly road in the cover of these boundaries, and the woodchuck, ensconced within some sheltering cranny, whistles his shrill note of defiance against the harassing boy and dog.

The surroundings of a homestead very often reflect certain local conditions. The picturesque "well-sweep" still survives here and there in rural New England and its origin may possibly be traced to the long pine pole of the region. The well-sweep also appears in the pine wood tracts of the coastal plain in Delaware, and probably elsewhere. In the middle Atlantic region the "spring-house" was an early adjunct of the dairy. Many old spring-houses still linger throughout this land, with crumbling roofs and weathered walls falling slowly into decay while the rill trickles through, reminiscent of a time when pans of creamy milk and bowls of yellow butter stood cooling in its water. Ofttimes, in near-by spots, these rills and springs are choked with a growth of the pungent water-cress. Modern separator machinery has dispossessed the spring-house—only on some remote farm does it still do service. Its passing is not altogether to be regretted, for many women-folk fell early victims to the crippling rheumatism that its damp walls engendered. Occasionally some poor family makes a home in one of these abandoned structures, and this recalls a still more interesting abode which one now and then happens upon in some out-of-the-way district—an old log-house that has lingered on through the changing years, a quaint reminder of the past. I know of several such houses not many miles from Philadelphia. The spring-house appears to be altogether local in its origin; the abundant springs and rills along the hillside borders of wide meadow pastures inviting the


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Rh building of such contrivances for keeping dairy products through the hot spells of summer.

Many curious old-world customs and beliefs, into which various natural objects entered, took root in the new soils though in a somewhat altered form to suit the changed conditions. Much of folk-lore has always been concerned with the weather. Besides the ember-days there was Candlemas with its superstition regarding the sunshine on that day as a prognostication of the remainder of winter. In Germany, if the badger saw his shadow it was an old belief that hard weather would follow for some time. No badger appearing on the Atlantic slope, the rôle of weather prophet was conferred upon the ubiquitous woodchuck or ground-hog whose honors are still fairly even with the weather bureau. So prominent a bird in European folk-lore as the cuckoo appears to have had no representative in this country to take its place, though we might regard the term "rain-crow," bestowed upon its American congener, as a somewhat vague recognition of kindred qualities. The art of the divining-rod in locating underground water migrated across the sea with these early settlers, and for this purpose a forked branch of the witch-hazel was used with as sure results, when held by a gifted hand, as that of the elm, the hazel or the willow of the old world. Unfortunately we can not trace the "witch" part of the name back to any certain source in the craft of the broomstick, and "hazel" is but a borrowed title. The shrub has much about it that is peculiar. Among our American underwoods its late autumnal bloom, at the fall of the leaf, and the ripening of its fruit in the next summer are conspicuous and may have appealed to the mystery-loving mind of the seventeenth century.

Superstition gathered about the strange whippoorwill and its weird twilight call. The Indian peoples, too, seem to have regarded this bird as one of omen and Catesby in his "Natural History of Carolina" quotes a piece of aboriginal folk-lore to the effect that the bird was unknown to them until after a certain battle when a great many of their people were slain by the Europeans, and that now the birds heard calling in the dusk are the souls of their ancestors. Many fragments of nature folk-lore sprang up in the new world from an old-world transplanting, as to the belief that swallows spent the winter in the mud of ponds and river, and other beliefs quite as curious which have gone into the limbo of the forgotten past.

In parts of the country, notably in the middle Atlantic region, the planting of plane trees (the sycamore or button wood) in the immediate vicinity of farm houses appears to have been a wide-spread custom under the belief that the tree warded off lightning. Whatever may have been the reason for its planting, this tree, with its huge bowl uplifting a crown of branches, and the striking color of its bark—white,


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386 brown and gray in streaks and blotches—is one of the most conspicuous features about the grounds of many old homesteads.

Adventurous men who wandered beyond the Appalachian Mountains into the Ohio country found, west of the Wabash River, the forest giving place to open grassland or "prairies." These were great meadows with little or no tree growth, save along the bottomlands of rivers. The edge of the broad-leaved forest along this prairie border thinned out into those scattered, open woods known to the early pioneers as "oak openings." It may have been that this prairie country was at one time more extensively wooded and its later deforested condition a result of the persistent burning of the undergrowth by the hunting tribes of Indians to increase the pasture area for the vast herds of bison that roamed over the grass country of the Mississippi Basin. The late Professor Shaler advanced this view some years ago, stating that it was his belief that had the discovery of the continent been delayed for another five centuries much of the original forest to the east would probably have been burnt off in this way and the land changed into a prairie country. This burning of the woods seems to have been a wide-spread custom in aboriginal times. William Wood, in his "New England's Prospects," speaks of it as follows:

Mention is also made of this custom by numerous writers at a later period. Richard Smith, of Burlington, New Jersey, who made a survey about the headwaters of the Susquehanna and the Delaware, in the spring of 1769, speaks of the appearance of these burnt tracts, and I have been told on reliable authority that in the lower Delaware region the Indians burned the tops and slopes of the hills, leaving the land along the river bottoms" untouched.

The clearing of land in the progress of settlement had the same effect as the burning off of the forest—it virtually converted a wide area of primitive forest-covered country into prairie, though interspersed with tracts of woodland. Our pastures are in reality prairies so far, at least, as their faunal and floral features are concerned. This fact suggests a very interesting question. When the country was almost entirely forest-covered, as in the period before settlement, what was the manner of life of such plants and animals as now inhabit our fields and meadow pastures? Were they originally forest-dwellers which have altered their habits to meet the new conditions, or are they migrants from the western prairie country? In the case of certain birds I think that the last view embodies what has actually taken place. A large


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Rh number of plant species, however, which are characteristic of our pastures and fallow fields, involves another point of view as to their former distribution.

The aboriginal flora of the Atlantic slope was unquestionably composed of shade-loving species. Kalm, in a very interesting and suggestive paragraph in his "Travels," noted this fact as early as the year 1748. Save along the river marshes and seacoast, or in widely scattered glades and beaver meadows throughout the forest region, there was little encouragement to the growth of meadow plants as we know them to-day. A striking fact in the distribution of our eastern flora is the comparatively large numbers of species that have found their way across the ocean from the shores of Europe and have become naturalized in our fields. These immigrants are for the most part "weeds" which everywhere find congenial surroundings throughout our cultivated lands, and like the human immigrants thrive apace. They are rank growers of great fecundity and have gained an ill reputation among the farmers. Some of them, as the big white daisy and the buttercups, in out-of-the-way districts where the standard of farming is low, form the chief hay crop, and the daisy is said, by way of extenuation, to possess milk-making qualities. The names of these instrudersintruders [sic] are familiar to most of us, possibly more familiar to many than those of native growth. Daisy, buttercup, toad-flax, mullein, burdock, cockle-bur, dandelion, the common St. John's wort, self-heal, lamb's quarters, field-sorrel, smartweed, and many more are among the throng that early made a new home for themselves in the cleared land. It is hardly likely that these same plants would have gained a foothold had the land remained in its primitive forest-covered state, for they are all light-loving species, thriving in the open expanse of fields. Many indigenous species, as the Joe-Pye weeds or thoroughworts and the tickseeds and others of more or less moist habitats have undoubtedly greatly increased their range since the days of settlement, spreading out from river borders into the low meadow lands. One interesting plant is unquestionably a rather recent migrant from the prairie country. This is the Black-eyed Susan or cone flower which has found its way into eastern fields with clover seed brought from the west. Doubtless it was in some such manner that the host of European species that now adorn this land found a means of transit, for much grass seed and grain was brought over by the colonists. Nearly all the grasses of our fields belong to European species that have become naturalized. The native grasses appear, for the most part, to have been annual species that grew in the woods, at least in certain districts. Kalm has an interesting observation on this point. While staying with the Swedes at their village on the Delaware in the autumn of 1748 one of the old inhabitants told Kalm that in his youth "there was grass in the woods which grew very close, and was everywhere two feet high,"


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384 but being an annual it was rapidly destroyed by the cattle, that were turned into the woods by the settlers, before it had time to seed itself. Kalm further remarks:

From the same writer it appears that the woods about this Delaware region originally had a scant undergrowth, for he speaks of their open character—" so that one could ride on horseback without inconvenience . . . and even with a cart in most places."

It is a significant fact that most of the native wild flowers of our Atlantic region, excepting those that grow along the river banks and in wet meadows, are woodland species. We go to the woods to find our early spring flowers—hepatica, bloodroot, the anemones, the mayflower, dogstooth violet, saxifrage, bluets and spring-beauty. These species probably acquired the habit of vernal blooming as a necessity imposed by their forest life—unfolding their blossoms in the sunshine of bare woods before the leafage cast its heavy shade. It is possible also that the habit may be, in part, an inheritance from the glacial time, the then short summer period of vegetative activity corresponding with our present spring. In certain groups of plants which are eminently characteristic of eastern North America the larger number of species are of woodland distribution. This is the case with the golden-rods and asters. In glancing over these two groups one is struck by the preponderance of species that are found in woods or along wood borders. Those that grow in the more open lands, as in fields, are for the most part either of northern or western distribution or are inhabitants of moist soil districts, such as meadows and swampy glades.

Every boy who has indulged a natural propensity to haunt the wild and delectable spots of his neighborhood, to pursue shy birds and pry into the secrets of their nests, knows that there are some birds that dwell in the woods and others that make their homes in the fields. A student of ornithology, likewise, soon learns that certain species of birds are peculiar either to the woods or to the fields, and that the structure and habits of life in each are in accordance with the nature of the surroundings. Among eastern North American birds there are several species of sparrows, as the vesper sparrow or grass finch, the savanna and grasshopper sparrows, that are strictly grassland birds. The same is also true of the meadow lark, the bob-white, the cowbird, the redwinged blackbird, and the bobolink. These are all birds of open grassland country.


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Rh The question naturally arises—When the region was one unbroken forest, as in aboriginal times, where were the birds that to-day are found only in our fields? Two answers appear possible to this question. There may have been a radical change in the habits of these birds since the first clearing of the land, or they may have come from the western prairie region. This latter view, is, I think, the more probable from the fact that all of the above-mentioned birds are found throughout the prairies and on the Great Plains, or are represented there by varieties which differ only in slight shades of color. The three sparrows are widely distributed over the country, though the savanna sparrow in its choice of localities is not so entirely an upland bird as are the other two species, haunting marshes along the coasts and river valleys as well as the higher open country. The familiar meadow lark of our eastern fields is abundant throughout the prairie region and is replaced on the drier western plains by a closely related form. The cowbird is another species that is widely spread over the continent and its habit of associating with cattle for the purpose of feeding upon the flies that swarm about them suggests the question—whether this habit was acquired since the settlement of the country, or did these birds haunt the bison herds on the plains and begin to straggle eastward after the cattle were introduced. The bobolink may have been a bird of the river marshes throughout the Atlantic region long before the discoverer set foot upon these shores, though from its wide range over the interior valleys and prairie lands we might infer that it had come east after the opening of the country. Similar conclusions could be adduced concerning the red-winged blackbird, but it is a bird more of marshland than of upland fields. Certain shore birds seem also to have taken advantage of the clearing of the country, as the killdeer and the grass plover, both being frequenters of plowed and fallow land.

A remarkably interesting case is that of the black-throated bunting or dicksissel. This bird is an abundant species in the glasslands of the middle prairie region. In the time of the ornithologist Wilson, and as late as the year 1880, it was not uncommon in certain localities in the east. Since this latter date it seems to have entirely disappeared from the Atlantic seaboard. For several years previous to that time I knew of a few pairs of these birds which nested each spring in certain fields of timothy and clover in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Their disappearance from these localities was remarkably sudden and apparently without reason, unless, as was suggested, it was due to the mowing of the fields and the destruction of nests and young birds. The evidence seems clear, however, that a part of the dicksissel population spread early into the newly opened fields of the east and abandoned them later, returning to their original prairie home.

In old, settled lands, as in England and the countries of western Europe, bird life has in large measure adapted itself to the human