THE

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE.

HE breeding of plants is nothing new, but he who enlarges the scope of an operation is entitled to as much credit as the inventor of an entirely new process. Plant-breeders worked in gardens or conservatories with a few varieties, until Luther Burbank showed them that the labor of many lifetimes could be accomplished in a few years by performing five hundred experiments at once instead of two or three. Some of the wonders that he has brought into being have already been described in these columns. Now we have a book on Burbank and his work, bearing the title that stands at the head of this article. The author, W. S. Harwood, tells us, in his chapter on Burbank's

general methods of procedure, that his aim is threefold, namely:

"1. The improvement of old varieties of fruits, flowers, grasses, trees, and vegetables.

"2. The merging of wild or degenerate types of plant life with tame or cultivated ones, in order that the union may be of service to both.

3. The creation of absolutely new forms of life, unknown to the world before-the highest act of the plant-breeder."

The general character of Burbank's work includes two parts-breeding proper, and selection. The former is accomplished by crossfertilization, brought about by sifting the pollen of one plant on the stigma of another. The latter is simply the choosing of the best specimens and the rejection and destruction of the worst. As has been said, Burbank's use of these methods differs from that of his predecessors chiefly in the scale on which he operates. He may use a million plants on acres of ground in a single test, instead of a dozen in a few pots. And of the million he may destroy 999,999 before the final result.

seven inches in diameter, made out of a wild field daisy, a' Japanese and an English daisy; gladioli of greatly enhanced beauty, taught to bloom around their entire stem like a hyacinth instead of the old way, on one side; a dahlia with its disagreeable odor driven out and in its place the odor of the magnolia blossom; a lily with fragrance of the Parma violet, and a scentless verbena given the intensified fragrance of the trailing arbutus; a chestnut-tree which bears nuts in eighteen months from time of seed-planting; fruit trees which will withstand freezing in bud and flower; a poppy so increased in size that it measures ten inches across its brilliant bloom; an amaryllis bred up from two to three inches tonearly a foot in diameter; a calla increased in size until it measures ten to twelve inches in breadth, and then, the process being reversed, bred down to less than two inches; the white blackberry,. a rare and beautiful fruit and as toothsome as beautiful; thousands of varieties of lilies. He has greatly improved the plums,

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In the breeding process Mr. Burbank, as he expresses it, "breaks up the life" of the old parent varieties, and turns their forces into new channels, making the flower, perhaps, lovelier or larger, the fruit sweeter or more marketable. To do this may require ten or even twenty years of work, for cross-breeding is a risky process. No one can predict exactly what will result from it; the only thing is to try it in all possible combinations, select the best result, and use that for new combinations. Only the huge scale on which Burbank works enables him to arrive at any results at all within the period of his own life. A few of these results are now familiar to all readers. Mr. Harwood gives us a partial list of some of the most notable, as follows:

"The improved thornless and spiculeless edible cactus, food for man and beast, to be the reclamation of the deserts of the world; the primus-berry, a union of the raspberry and blackberry, the first recorded instance of the creation of a new species, together with the phenomenal berry created from the California dewberry and the Cuthbert raspberry, and the plumcot, the union of the plum and the apricot, all three the accomplishment of what had been said to be an impossibility; a plum with no pit, one with the flavor of a Bartlett pear, one having a rare fragrance, many plums of great value, rapidly replacing older varieties; a walnut with a shell so thin that the birds visited the branches and destroyed the nuts, necessitating the reversion of the process to make the shell of the right thickness; a walnut bred with no tannin in its meat, the coloring matter of the skin which has a disagreeable taste; a tree which grows more rapidly than any other tree ever known in the temperate zones of the world; the Shasta daisy, a blossom five to

pears, apples, cherries, grapes, quinces, and peaches by selection and breeding; has developed many varieties of flowers, improving them in color, hardiness, and yield; and has. added much to the productiveness and edibility of vegetables. Pie-plant with leaves. four feet in diameter, bearing every day in the year; a prune three or four times larger than the ordinary French prune and greatly enriched; the pomato, an improvement on the poisonous potatoball, producing a rarefruit which grows upon the top of a potato ;blackberries without thorns; the improved Australian star flower, one of the everlasting varieties which is to be used for the decoration of ladies' hats; a larkspur greatly enlarged in size and given a delightful odor; many improved varieties of grasses; improved tobacco; these are among the works which have come from his hand; others promising even more important results are now under way."

The continuance of Mr. Burbank's work under favorable conditions has now been assured by a grant from the Carnegie Institution of $10,000 a year for the next ten years. It is understood, Mr. Harwood tells us, that in thus recognizing Burbank's services, the institution takes special cognizance of their practical bearing on human welfare and the impossibility of carrying forward his experiments along many of the most promising lines, without special funds. Mr. Burbank is now fifty-six years of age. He is a native of Lancaster, Mass., who after working for some years in a factory in his own State, went in his twentysixth year to California for his health. Here, after doing odd jobs for some time, he secured enough money to establish a small nursery, where he at once began the wonderful series of experiments that has made him famous. Before leaving Massachusetts he had already produced a new variety of potato, and his career is a signal illustration of the following of a decided "bent" through all sorts of difficulties. To quote President Jordon of Leland Stanford University, whose words Mr. Harwood gives at the close of his book:

"In his own way, Burbank belongs in the class of Faraday and the long array of self-taught great men who lived while the universities were spending their strength on fine points of grammar and hazy conceptions of philosophy.

"Scientific men belong to many classes; some observe, some compare, some think, and some carry knowledge into action. There is need for all kinds and a place for all. With a broader opportunity, Burbank could have done a greater variety of things and touched life at more points; but, at the same time, he would have lost something of his simple intensity and fine delicacy of touch-things which the schools do not always give and which too much contact with men sometimes takes away.

ward, and as unspoiled as a child, always interested in the phenomena of nature, and never seeking fame or money or anything else for himself. If his place is outside the temple of science, there are not many of the rest of us who will be found fit to enter."

AN ADVANCE IN FLYING-MACHINES.

AN experimental aeroplane that requires no " laurching," but is

actually able to lift itself into the air from a position of rest, has been constructed in Paris, the present home of practical aeronautics. This machine, the invention of two young engineers of Geneva, Henri and Armand Dufaux, who are already known by their invention of the motosacoche, or gasoline-motor outfit.applied to a bicycle, is pronounced by the Paris correspondent of The Scientific American (New York, October 21) to be a "considerable step in advance" in aerial navigation. He writes:

"Up to the present we can scarcely point to an apparatus which is able to rise in the air by the force of its propellers alone, driven by a gasoline-motor, and carry a reserve of energy necessary to continue its flight in the air. . . . After working for some time, they [the brothers Dufaux] have succeeded in building a helicoptere, or propeller flier,' which will rise in the air as long as there is any gasoline in the reservoir, and the supply can even be increased, seeing that the flier will carry a dead weight of 151⁄2 pounds outside of its own weight, which is 381⁄2 pounds. At the Aero Club it is considered that the Dufaux apparatus will no doubt aid greatly in solving the difficult problem of the heavier than air' type of flying-machines.

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As constructed at present, the apparatus is intended simply to demonstrate the principle which the inventors are bringing out. Once this point is proved successfully, the next step will be to build a complete flying-machine of 100 horse-power. One of the interesting points about the apparatus is the motor, which is claimed to be a step in advance in the way of gasoline motors for flying-machines. It has been specially designed for the purpose by Messrs. Dufaux, and is of the two-cylinder, air-cooled type.

it was retained by a trail-rope. In the open air, there is no doubt that it would have risen to a considerable height. This experiment was made several times, with equal success. Many experienced aeronauts, and especially those who are interested in the aeroplane method, were present, and they were greatly impressed with the way the new machine acted. As at present constructed, the apparatus is only one part of a complete flying-machine and will be used for the lifting movement. Afterward the inventors are to add an aeroplane which will provide for the horizontal movement. Messrs. Dufaux are now engaged in building a complete aviator on the same lines, but this is to be a large machine and will carry an aeronaut. It is to have a motor of 100 horse-power.

"The aviation committee of the Aero Club consider that the Dufaux machine is a great step in advance in the question of flyingmachines of the aeroplane type. This is owing to the excellent performance of the apparatus and its good balance in the air, a point which is very difficult to obtain with a motor-driven flier, and one in which very few inventors have been able to accomplish anything up to the present. The second point is the question of lightness of the machine compared with the motive power, or how much weight it can lift outside of the dead weight of the apparatus. This is an essential point in the matter of aviators, and one which it is not easy to solve. It is considered that the present experiments go a great way toward a solution of this problem for motordriven aeroplanes, seeing that we now have an apparatus of great lifting power compared with its weight, and no doubt Messrs. Dufaux will soon succeed in building an apparatus which will lift an aeronaut by means of its propellers."

The Gold in Sea-Water.-This interesting subject is touched upon by way of illustration in a recent address on some points in the theory of solutions, delivered by G. T. Beilby before the Chemical Section of the British Association. Mr. Beilby calculates that in a cubic millimeter (a drop about the size of a pinhead) of the weakest cyanide solution ever made, which contains about the same amount of gold as sea-water, there are a number of molecules expressed by 125 followed by 18 ciphers. Of these, 6,500 million are gold molecules, which are less than o inch apart. Says a commentator in Engineering (London, September 29):

"This is not really very wide spacing; for the point of the finest sewing-needle would cover 1,500 gold molecules. A cubic meter of this solution spread out on a sheet, one molecule in thickness, would cover an area of 1,680 square miles, and nowhere in this area would it be possible to put down the point of a needle without

We al

touching some hundred gold molecules simultaneously. luded above to the amount of gold in the sea-water. Mr. Liveridge has estimated it at 1 grain per ton-approximately the proportion of which we have been speaking. No drop of water can be removed from the sea that does not contain millions of gold molecules, and from this molecular point of view our ships literally float on a gilded ocean. But Mr. Beilby cautioned his audience' not to freight the ships which adventurers launch from time to time with the savings of the trusting investor.' The weakest gold solution practically dealt with is richer in gold than the sea-water; and if it does not pay the expert to work his solution ready at hand, how can it pay to begin operating on sea-water about half as rich?" ᅡ...

ture.

These phenomena affect different minds in different ways. To some the apparent coalescence of the organic and inorganic worlds means that the whole universe is alive-that the crystal lives as well as the plant, only in a different way and a lesser degree. To others it seems that instead of universal life there is universal death-the microbe is no more alive than the crystal, but merely responds to external conditions in a more complicated way tho according to the same fundamental laws. These phenomena and their discussion belong to a new branch of science, on the borderland between chemistry and biology, which some have ventured to name "plasmology "--the "science of plasm." Within this science the fight between the mechanical and the vital interpretation of the universe must now take place. Of it Mr. Henri Piéron writes in the Revue Scientifique (Paris, October 7), in an article from which we translate the following paragraphs:

"When we see that in substances that are not alive there may take place phenomena absolutely analogous to vital phenomenaof assimilation or disaggregation, of growth, of movement; that the forms of crystalline equilibrium of matter may also be considered as vital, since they clothe in certain cases living organisms

when we observe such facts, how is it possible not to think that the barrier between mechanical movement and life has broken down? .

"But, say the vitalists, from the fact that there are vital manifestations in inorganic bodies it does not follow at all that we have explained life; for it remains to be proved that these manifestations are the exclusive result of the laws of the mechanism. Now this has been attempted, and certainly not with complete suc

cess.......

"While the mechanists believe that they have seized on the whole of biology and made it a part of physio-chemistry, the mineral world, on the other hand, appears to have annexed the domain of life. . . . In either case the old dualism of dead and living matter tends to disappear, but at the expense of one or the other. The monism of life everywhere,' that is, the universal action of a vital principle, or of life nowhere,' that is, the complete absence of any vital principle, is thus based on the recent discoveries of which so much has been said."

What shall science do in the face of these two opposite conclusions? That, says the writer, is the business of the new department of knowledge-" plasmology "-which seeks to determine the physical conditions of the appearance of vital phenomena in inorganic substances. These conditions, he thinks, are being discovered in the complex and hitherto unknown laws of physical chemistry, the laws of osmose, the phenomena of solution, capillarity, and diffusion. An illustration of the striking analogy between some inorganic forms and those ordinarily supposed to be characteristic of life appears in the remarkable photographs of Mr. St. Leduc, some of which are here reproduced. These indicate that crystallization, or some action allied to it may simulate vegetable tissue, or a mass of living cells, even those in which segmentation -a characteristic vital process-has taken place. Herrera, a Mexican biologist, furnishes other photographs quite as remarkable, showing how living forms, as of fungi, diatoms, or other inferior organisms may be simulated by mineral substances. Some of these are shown in the accompanying illustrations. The writer goes on to say:

"We are right in concluding from these new experiments of plasmology, showing the indubitable action of physico-chemical factors on the elementary forms of equilibrium found in living bodies,

that the general tendency is to direct the whole of biology toward mechanical interpretation, which alone is satisfactory and fertile.

"It is only in the enthusiastic excesses of some investigators that the neovitalists can find weapons. Of course there are not really in the mineral world beings as complicated as earthworms and jellyfish. . . . Following relatively simple laws, bodies in reciprocal action assume forms that resemble those of evolved animals, but even if we should run across the human form in the play of silicious dust, we could not, with out silly exaggeration, pretend that we had discovered the factors that govern human struc

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"We do not find life in the mineral world; we find structures similar to those of the simplest living beings; and plasmology shows us that this structure does not necessarily correspond to any vital principle, but that it may be met in very different bodies, as well in silicates as in salt water; that there is thus nothing specific about it. We find also in crystals temporary phenomena analogous to those met in the functioning of living beings, but we may speak of life in crystals only by an extension of meaning that is of doubtful exactitude.

industry. Mr. Thwaite thought there was also another index almost as valuable, namely, the degree of activity of a nation's inventive faculty, represented by the numerical proportion of applicants for patents. The charts here given, prepared by Mr. Thwaite, show the progress of inventive activity in America, the United Kingdom, and Germany during the twenty years ending 1903, and the comparative progress of the five great iron-producing countries in the production of pig-iron from 1885 to 1899. From the former it will be seen that the rate of increase of inventive activity of Germany has been slightly more rapid than that of the United States, with Great Britain left some distance in the rear. The attitude of the British patent-office is one to discourage many inventors. For instance, under recent legislation the British inventor is compelled to subdivide his claims so as to cause him to apply for a number of patents in place of one. Taking out patents is a very expensive matter in Great Britain, and it is claimed by many that the cost under the new act patent will be greatly increased. Moreover, the granting of a British patent does not even now insure validity. The German inventor, on the other hand, is stimulated to enterprise by the German mercantile banking system, by which selected inventions of promise are developed and commercially introduced under the best conditions to secure success."

: "All these facts show us colloidal structures or crystalloidal

actions ... as the rough sketches or rudiments of life, thus indicating the continuity of natural phenomena. Life keeps its own domain and does not coalesce with the inorganic kingdom, any more than it has succeeded in annexing the latter; but the two are connected; we have the outline, the first piles of the bridge that will enable us to pass from one territory to the other, and so we may hope that it will be possible to explain all the phenomena of life without appealing to new principles-to a vital principie. But we can not yet prove this, and the question of the real origin of life remains unsolved.

AKING the number of applications for patents as the index of a nation's inventive activity, a graphical method of exhibiting the rise and growth of that activity, over a period of years, is used by Mr. B. H. Thwaite, as shown in Machinery, and quoted as follows in The Scientific American Supplement (No. 1556):

"In a discussion in the British trade papers concerning the lack of encouragement of the British inventor, as compared with his American and German rivals, the proposition was made by Mr. B. H. Thwaite that the true index of any nation's industrial and commercial position was not that of the axiom of Disraeli—the state of the chemical industry-but the condition of the iron and steel

ΤΗ

WHY ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS DIED OUT. HAT the decay and disappearance of many ancient civilizations were due simply to the fact that the regions in which they flourished were unfitted for blond races, is maintained by Dr. Charles E. Woodruff, a surgeon in the United States Army. Major Woodruff's book on "The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men" has already been noticed in these columns, but the bearing of his theory on ancient history seems to have been insufficiently noticed. It will be remembered that the writer maintains that too much light is injurious to white races through its actinic or chemical effects, from which the dark skin-pigments of swarthy races protect them. This at once explains why, by survival of the fittest, dark races are found in tropical lands, why Europeans have always failed to colonize the tropics, and why blonds disappear when they migrate southward. Says the writer of a review in The Edinburgh Medical Journal:

"It seems a small thing that mere tint of skin should influence migration and permanence of occupation, yet the evidence in support of this adduced in the book before us has much in its favor. The blond and intelligent rulers of regions suited better for more swarthy inhabitants have regularly in the course of ages died out, while their subjects, thoroughly acclimatized to their domicile, remain. Egpyt . . . has been the theater of immigration of intellectual races over and over again; in each case these disappeared, and civilization decayed, tho the native fellah survived and survives. There will,' the author predicts, never be another dark age, for the present Aryan conquerors rule it from London and are not colonizers.' The decadence of nations has been assigned to many causes, most of which are most properly results of the decay. The chief one appears to be that a civilization comes to an end because the people who created it perish from climatic unfitness. While the blond type of mankind requires for its evolution a cold,

dark, northern country, the brunette of various degrees of intensity up to absolute blackness is alone adapted for lasting existence in most regions of the world."

"

We have too much sunshine in the United States, Major Woodruff thinks. 'The curious tendency for Americans to go back to Great Britain for permanent residence when they can,' says his reviewer," implies an instinctive desire for the feeling of comfort and well-being which they experience in their ancestral home." None of the races that have come to this country until recently is adapted to the climate, Dr. Woodruff asserts, except the Jews. All the rest of us are degenerating from excessive light. The lower Mediterranean races, however, are now flocking over, and if the blond types die out as they did in Greece and Italy during the decadence of these two countries, our history may repeat theirs, tho Dr. Woodruff consoles us with the assurance that the northern types may survive in sufficient numbers to prevent the destruction of the republic, provided we take warning and limit the franchise to the races represented by these types. The climate of Greece, the writer asserts, took about seven centuries to destroy its blonds. In 500 B.C., the period of its greatest literary glory, the decadence of the Greeks was already evident and shows itself to-day in their lit-. erature and art. Ancient Greek statues exhibit many of the stigmata of degeneracy; even a famous head of Juno has arrested development of the jaw and is "the head of a dying race.' Greece is practically in the latitude of Maryland. Will her history repeat itself here?

"

Dr. Woodruff's book and his conclusions regarding the effect of the tropics on European races are highly approved by Dr. R. W. Felkin, lecturer in the Edinburgh School of Medicine, in an article on "Tropical Climatology" that appears in The Archives of the Roentgen Ray (London, October). He says:

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One of the most important results of climate in the tropics is one which has been entirely ignored until quite recently—that is, the effect of tropical light upon Europeans. . . . I may remark that my recollection of difficulties I myself failed to explain confirms his [Dr. Woodruff's] conclusions, which answer many of the questions I put to myself years ago. It is shownand this is one of the important points in this research-that the simple fevers in the tropics are but one of the myriad forms of heatfever, or sun-fever, or light-fever.

readers will unite in hoping that our own land is not to be classed among the countries that are gradually killing off their brightest intellects with harmful excess of illumination.

BUILDING A DAM ON END.

To build a dam in the form of a column, standing on one end,

and put it in place by tipping it over into the water, is certainly a curious feat of engineering. This method has been adopted, however, by the commissioners of Victoria Park, on the Canadian side at Niagara, to assist the Niagara Falls Park and River Railway Company and the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, in securing a sufficient depth of water in their joint intake in Victoria Park. Says Orrin E. Dunlap in The Western Electrician (Chicago, October 21):

"The Niagara Falls Park and River Railway is the electric line that forms a part of the Niagara Gorge belt line, as it skirts the top of the cliff on the Canadian side at Niagara. Frequently in the past it has been troubled by a lack of water supply to operate the turbines in its power-station, as it controls power rights in Victoria Park. The city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, takes its water supply from this intake and there have been times when it has been forced to call upon the officials of Niagara Falls, N. Y., to supply it with water by means of a line of hose laid across the lower steel arch bridge. All these conditions have been quite annoying both to the railway company and the city, and complaint was made to the commissioners of Victoria Park that the water at the joint intake had been lowered by works of construction for power development. "It was under these circumstances that the park commissioners consulted Mr. Isham Randolph, consulting engineer of the Chicago Drainage Canal, who has on several occasions acted as consulting engineer for the commissioners. Following the advice of Mr. Randolph the park commissioners have erected a concrete column 50 feet high and seven feet four inches square, on top of a trestle that stands 20 feet above the groundlevel at the waterworks intake. This giant column it is proposed to tip over into the river to act as a dam, designed to raise the waterlevel at the intake considerably.

'The concrete of which the column was made was mixed of one part cement, three parts sand, and five parts stone. Its approximate weight is 200 tons, and every eight feet or so there is inserted a wooden wedge that has a width of a foot at the outside and which tapers to about six inches near the center. The object of these wedges is to break the column into six parts as it falls. Running through the center of the column there is a big chain that weighs about 800 pounds, and this will hold the six pieces, in which the column is expected to break, together. When prostrate, the column will be about 20 inches above the ground-level, and for this reason an opening will be left between the end of the dam and the edge of the river in order that any ice which may be floated down-stream in front of the intake may be carried away.

"Prof. E. G. Dexter shows that there is a marked increase of abnormal conduct, due to heat, wind, barometric pressure, humidity, and cloudiness; but, commenting on this, Major Woodruff remarks that Dexter's researches show that 'in New York and Denver, where the mass of the people has too little pigment for the intensity of the light, there is a marked increase of abnormal conduct, due to the irritation in the light season and on bright days. A very bright day in Pennsylvania may be so comforting to a negro by satisfying his light hunger as to give him a sense of wellbeing, under which he behaves himself; while a very blond man-an albino-would be goaded into an irritated state, in which he loses control of his emotions and normal inhibition, and commits abnormal acts.'

...

"Light affects the nervous system, producing nervous instability and irritability. It particularly affects children at the age of six or seyen, when 'the restless age begins of running about, when it is practically impossible to confine them. Hence they are more and more exposed to these harmful rays,' and as the rays are most harmful to the developing cell, children are more harmed than adults with equal exposure."

Probably most authorities will agree with Major Woodruff about the unfitness of the tropics for Northern races, but most of his

"The column will be left standing, as shown in the illustration, for about a month to dry out, and when thoroughly dry it will be tipped by means of jacks. The scene of the work is hardly 600 feet back from the brink of the Horseshoe Fall."

TWENTY-TWO species of mosquitoes are found in Florida, says The Druggist's Circular (New York, October). Thirty-six species, according to Giles. are found in the whole of North America; but it has also been asserted that there are that many in New Jersey alone. For the entire world about 300 species have been described and accepted, and there are probably 200 more. From the sanitary point of view the anopheles and stegomyiæ are the most important. The former are the malaria-carriers (Florida has five species of this genus), and the second are the yellow-fever carriers (Florida has one species, the fasciata, which it is thought may be the only culprit of the genus). In addition to these two very important diseases, it is known that mosquitoes transmit the filaria, probably the Trypanosomata, and the specific cause of dengue. They are also held responsible for certain animal diseases."