A History of Science Volume V Part 1

A History of Science.

Volume 5.

by Henry Smith Williams.

A HISTORY OF SCIENCE--BOOK V

ASPECTS OF RECENT SCIENCE

STUDENTS of the cla.s.sics will recall that the old Roman historians were accustomed to detail the events of the remote past in what they were pleased to call annals, and to elaborate contemporary events into so-called histories. Actuated perhaps by the same motives, though with no conscious thought of imitation, I have been led to conclude this history of the development of natural science with a few chapters somewhat different in scope and in manner from the ones that have gone before.

These chapters have to do largely with recent conditions. Now and again, to be sure, they hark back into the past, as when they tell of the origin of such inst.i.tutions as the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the Royal Inst.i.tution; or when the visitor in modern Jena imagines himself transplanted into the Jena of the sixteenth century. But these reminiscent moods are exceptional. Our chief concern is with strictly contemporary events--with the deeds and personalities of scientific investigators who are still in the full exercise of their varied powers.

I had thought that such outlines of the methods of contemporary workers, such glimpses of the personalities of living celebrities, might form a fitting conclusion to this record of progress. There is a stimulus in contact with great men at first hand that is scarcely to be gained in like degree in any other way. So I have thought that those who have not been privileged to visit the great teachers in person might like to meet some of them at second hand. I can only hope that something of the enthusiasm which I have gained from contact with these men may make itself felt in the succeeding pages.

It will be observed that these studies of contemporary workers are supplemented with a chapter in which a hurried review is taken of the field of cosmical, of physical, and of biological science, with reference to a few of the problems that are still unsolved. As we have noted the clearing up of mystery after mystery in the past, it may be worth our while in conclusion thus to consider the hordes of mysteries which the investigators of our own age are pa.s.sing on to their successors. For the unsolved problems of to-day beckon to the alluring fields of to-morrow.

I. THE BRITISH MUSEUM

IN the year 1753 a remarkable lottery drawing took place in London.

It was authorized, through Parliament, by "his gracious Majesty" King George the Second. Such notables as the archbishop of Canterbury and the lord chancellor of the realm took official interest in its success. It was advertised far and wide--as advertising went in those days--in the _Gazette_, and it found a host of subscribers. Of the fifty thousand tickets--each costing three pounds--more than four thousand were to be of the cla.s.s which the act of Parliament naively describes as "fortunate tickets." The prizes aggregated a hundred thousand pounds.

To be sure, state lotteries were no unique feature in the England of that day. They formed as common a method of raising revenue in the island realm of King George II. as they still do in the alleged continental portion of his realm, France, and in the land of his nativity, Germany. Indeed, the particular lottery in question was to be officered by the standing committee on lotteries, whose official business was to "secure two and a half million pounds for his Majesty"

by this means. But the great lottery of 1754 had interest far beyond the common run, for it aimed to meet a national need of an anomalous kind--a purely intellectual need. The money which it was expected to bring was to be used to purchase some collections of curiosities and of books that had been offered the government, and to provide for their future care and disposal as a public trust for the benefit and use of the people.

The lottery brought the desired money as a matter of course, for the "fool's tax" is the one form of revenue that is paid without stint and without grumbling. Almost fifty thousand pounds remained in the hands of the archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow-trustees after the prizes were paid. And with this sum the inst.i.tution was founded which has been increasingly famous ever since as the British Museum.

The idea which had this splendid result had originated with Sir Hans Sloane, baronet, a highly respected practising physician of Chelsea, who had acc.u.mulated a great store of curios, and who desired to see the collection kept intact and made useful to the public after his death.

Dying in 1753, this gentleman had directed in his will that the collection should be offered to the government for the sum of twenty thousand pounds; it had cost him fifty thousand pounds. The government promptly accepted the offer--as why should it not, since it had at hand so easy a means of raising the necessary money? It was determined to supplement the collection with a library of rare books, for which ten thousand pounds was to be paid to the Right Honorable Henrietta Cavendish Holies, Countess of Oxford and Countess Mortimer, Relict of Edward, Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, and the Most n.o.ble Margaret Cavendish, d.u.c.h.ess of Portland, their only daughter.

The purchases were made and joined with the Cottonian library, which was already in hand. A home was found for the joint collection, along with some minor ones, in Montague Mansion, on Great Russell Street, and the British Museum came into being. Viewed retrospectively, it seems a small affair; but it was a n.o.ble collection for its day; indeed, the Sloane collection of birds and mammals had been the finest private natural history collection in existence. But, oddly enough, the weak feature of the museum at first was exactly that feature which has been its strongest element in more recent years--namely, the department of antiquities. This department was augmented from time to time, notably by the acquisition of the treasures of Sir William Hamilton in 1773; but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the windfall came which laid the foundation for the future incomparable greatness of the museum as a repository of archaeological treasures.

In that memorable year the British defeated the French at Alexandria, and received as a part of the conqueror's spoils a collection of Egyptian antiquities which the savants of Napoleon's expedition had gathered and carefully packed, and even shipped preparatory to sending them to the Louvre. The feelings of these savants may readily be imagined when, through this sad prank of war, their invaluable treasures were envoyed, not to their beloved France, but to the land of their dearest enemies, there to be turned over to the trustees of the British Museum.

The museum authorities were not slow to appreciate the value of the treasures that had thus fallen into their hands, yet for the moment it proved to them something of a white elephant. Montague Mansion was already crowded; moreover, its floors had never been intended to hold such heavy objects, so it became imperatively necessary to provide new quarters for the collection. This was done in 1807 by the erection of a new building on the old site. But the trustees of that day failed to gauge properly the new impulse to growth that had come to the museum with the Egyptian antiquities, for the new building was neither in itself sufficient for the needs of the immediate future nor yet so planned as to be susceptible of enlargement with reasonable architectural effect. The mistakes were soon apparent, but, despite various tentatives and "meditatings," fourteen years elapsed before the present magnificent building was planned. The construction, wing by wing, began in 1823, but it was not until 1846 that the last vestige of the old museum buildings had vanished, and in their place, spreading clear across the s.p.a.cious site, stood a structure really worthy of the splendid collection for which it was designed.

But no one who sees this building to-day would suspect its relative youth. Half a century of London air can rival a cycle of Greece or Italy in weathering effect, and the fine building of the British Museum frowns out at the beholder to-day as grimy and ancient-seeming as if its ma.s.sive columns dated in fact from the old Grecian days which they recall. Regardless of age, however, it is one of the finest and most ma.s.sive specimens of Ionic architecture in existence. Forty-four ma.s.sive columns, in double tiers, form its frontal colonnade, jutting forward in a wing at either end. The flight of steps leading to the central entrance is in itself one hundred and twenty-five feet in extent; the front as a whole covers three hundred and seventy feet. Capping the portico is a sculptured tympanum by Sir Richard Westmacott, representing the "Progress of Civilization" not unworthily. As a whole, the building is one of the few in London that are worth visiting for an inspection of their exterior alone. It seems admirably designed to be, as it is, the repository of one of the finest collections of Oriental and cla.s.sical antiquities in the world.

There is an air of repose about the _ensemble_ that is in itself suggestive of the Orient; and the illusion is helped out by the pigeons that flock everywhere undisturbed about the approaches to the building, fluttering to be fed from the hand of some recognized friend, and scarcely evading the feet of the casual wayfarer. With this scene before him, if one will close his ears to the hum of the great city at his back he can readily imagine himself on cla.s.sical soil, and, dreaming of Greece and Italy, he will enter the door quite prepared to find himself in the midst of antique marbles and the atmosphere of by-gone ages.

I have already pointed out that the turning-point in the history of the British Museum came just at the beginning of the century, with the acquisition of the Egyptian antiquities. With this the inst.i.tution threw off its swaddling-clothes. Hitherto it had been largely a museum of natural history; in future, without neglecting this department, it was to become equally important as a museum of archaeology. The Elgin marbles, including the wonderful Parthenon frieze, confirmed this character, and it was given the final touch by the reception, about the middle of the century, of the magnificent a.s.syrian collection just exhumed at the seat of old Nineveh by Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Layard.

Since then these collections, with additions of similar character, have formed by far the most important feature of the British Museum. But in the mean time archaeology has become a science.

Within recent years the natural history collection has been removed _in toto_ from the old building to a new site far out in South Kensington, and the casual visitor is likely to think of it as a separate inst.i.tution. The building which it occupies is very modern in appearance as in fact. It is a large and unquestionably striking structure, and one that gives opportunity for very radical difference of opinion as to its architectural beauty. By some it is much admired; by others it is almost equally scoffed at. Certain it is that it will hardly bear comparison with the parent building in Great Russell Street.

Interiorly, the building of the natural history museum is admirably adapted for its purpose. Its galleries are for the most part well lighted, and the main central hall is particularly well adapted for an exhibition of specimens, to which I shall refer more at length in a moment. For the rest there is no striking departure from the conventional. Perhaps it is not desired that there should be, since long experience seems to have settled fairly well the problem of greatest economy of s.p.a.ce, combined with best lighting facilities, which always confronts the architect in founding a natural history museum.

There is, however, one striking novel feature in connection with the structure of the natural history museum at Kensington which must not be overlooked. This is the quite unprecedented use of terra-cotta ornamentation. Without there is a striking display of half-decorative and half-realistic forms; while within the walls and pillars everywhere are covered with terracotta bas-reliefs representing the various forms of life appropriate to the particular department of the museum which they ornament. This very excellent feature might well be copied elsewhere, and doubtless will be from time to time.

As to the exhibits proper within the museum, it may be stated in a word that they cover the entire range of the faunas and floras of the globe in a variety and abundance of specimens that are hardly excelled anywhere, and only duplicated by one or two other collections in Europe and two or three in America.

It would be but a reiteration of what the catalogues of all large collections exhibit were one to enumerate the various forms here shown, but there are two or three exhibits in this museum which are more novel and which deserve special mention. One of these is to be found in a set of cases in the main central hall. Here are exhibited, in a delightfully popular form, some of the lessons that the evolutionist has taught us during the last half-century. Appropriately enough, a fine marble statue of Darwin, whose work is the fountain-head of all these lessons, is placed on the stairway just beyond, as if to view with approval this beautiful exemplification of his work.

One of these cases ill.u.s.trates the variations of animals under domestication, the particular specimens selected being chiefly the familiar pigeon, in its various forms, and the jungle-fowl with its multiform domesticated descendants.

Another case ill.u.s.trates very strikingly the subject of protective coloration of animals. Two companion cases are shown, each occupied by specimens of the same species of birds and animals--in one case in their summer plumage and pelage and in the other clad in the garb of winter.

The surroundings in the case have, of course, been carefully prepared to represent the true environments of the creatures at the appropriate seasons. The particular birds and animals exhibited are the willow-grouse, the weasel, and a large species of hare. All of these, in their summer garb, have a brown color, which harmonizes marvellously with their surroundings, while in winter they are pure white, to match the snow that for some months covers the ground in their habitat.

The other cases of this interesting exhibit show a large variety of birds and animals under conditions of somewhat abnormal variation, in the one case of albinism and the other of melanism. These cases are, for the casual visitor, perhaps the most striking of all, although, of course, they teach no such comprehensive lessons as the other exhibits just referred to.

The second of the novel exhibits of the museum to which I wish to refer is to be found in a series of alcoves close beside the central cases in the main hallway.

Each of these alcoves is devoted to a cla.s.s of animals--one to mammals, one to birds, one to fishes, and so on. In each case very beautiful sets of specimens have been prepared, ill.u.s.trating the anatomy and physiology of the group of animals in question. Here one may see, for example, in the alcove devoted to birds, specimens showing not only details of the skeleton and muscular system, but the more striking examples of variation of form of such members as the bill, legs, wings, and tails.

Here are preparations also ill.u.s.trating, very strikingly, the vocal apparatus of birds. Here, again, are finely prepared wings, in which the various sets of feathers have been outlined with different-colored pigments, so that the student can name them at a glance. In fact, every essential feature of the anatomy of the bird may be studied here as in no other collection that I know of. And the same is true of each of the other grand divisions of the animal kingdom. This exhibit alone gives an opportunity for the student of natural history that is invaluable. It is quite clear to any one who has seen it that every natural history museum must prepare a similar educational exhibit before it can claim to do full justice to its patrons.

A third feature that cannot be overlooked is shown in the numerous cases of stuffed birds, in which the specimens are exhibited, not merely by themselves on conventional perches, but amid natural surroundings, usually a.s.sociated with their nests and eggs or young. These exhibits have high artistic value in addition to their striking scientific worth.

They teach ornithology as it should be taught, giving such clews to the recognition of birds in the fields as are not at all to be found in ordinary collections of stuffed specimens. This feature of the museum has, to be sure, been imitated in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but the South Kensington Museum was the first in the field and is still the leader.

A few words should be added as to the use made by the public of the treasures offered for their free inspection by the British Museum. I shall attempt nothing further than a few data regarding actual visits to the museum. In the year 1899 the total number of such visits aggregated 663,724; in 1900 the figures rise to 689,249--well towards three-quarters of a million. The number of visits is smallest in the winter months, but mounts rapidly in April and May; it recedes slightly for June and July, and then comes forward to full tide in August, during which month more than ninety-five thousand people visited the museum in 1901, the largest attendance in a single day being more than nine thousand. August, of course, is the month of tourists--particularly of tourists from America--but it is interesting and suggestive to note that it is not the tourist alone who visits the British Museum, for the flood-tide days of attendance are always the Bank holidays, including Christmas boxing-day and Easter Monday, when the working-people turn out _en ma.s.se_. On these days the number of visits sometimes mounts above ten thousand.

All this, it will be understood, refers exclusively to the main building of the museum on Great Russell Street. But, meantime, out in Kensington, at the natural history museum, more than half a million visits each year are also made. In the aggregate, then, about a million and a quarter of visits are paid to the British Museum yearly, and though the bulk of the visitors may be mere sight-seers, yet even these must carry away many ideas of value, and it hardly requires argument to show that, as a whole, the educational influence of the British Museum must be enormous.

Of its more direct stimulus to scientific work through the trained experts connected with the inst.i.tution I shall perhaps speak in another connection.

II. THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON FOR IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE

A SESSION OF THE SOCIETY

THERE is one scientific inst.i.tution in London more venerable and more famous even than the British Museum. This, of course, is the Royal Society, a world-famous body, whose charter dates from 1662, but whose actual sessions began at Gresham College some twenty years earlier. One can best gain a present-day idea of this famous inst.i.tution by attending one of its weekly meetings in Burlington House, Piccadilly--a great, castle-like structure, which serves also as the abode of the Royal Chemical Society and the Royal Academy of Arts. The formality of an invitation from a fellow is required, but this is easily secured by any scientific visitor who may desire to attend the meeting. The programme of the meeting each week appears in that other great British inst.i.tution, the _Times_, on Tuesdays.

The weekly meeting itself is held on Thursday afternoon at half-past four. As one enters the door leading off the great court of Burlington House a liveried attendant motions one to the rack where great-coat and hat may be left, and without further ceremony one steps into the reception-room unannounced. It is a middle-sized, almost square room, pillared and formal in itself, and almost without furniture, save for a long temporary table on one side, over which cups of tea are being handed out to the guests, who cl.u.s.ter there to receive it, and then scatter about the room to sip it at their leisure. We had come to hear a lecture and had expected to be ushered into an auditorium; but we had quite forgotten that this is the hour when all England takes its tea, the _elite_ of the scientific world, seemingly, quite as much as the devotees of another kind of society. Indeed, had we come unawares into this room we should never have suspected that we had about us other than an ordinary group of cultured people gathered at a conventional "tea," except, indeed, that suspicion might be aroused by the great preponderance of men--there being only three or four women present--and by the fact that here and there a guest appears in unconventional dress--a short coat or even a velvet working-jacket. For the rest there is the same gathering into cl.u.s.ters of three or four, the same inarticulate clatter of many voices that mark the most commonplace of gatherings.

But if one will withdraw to an inoffensive corner and take a critical view of the a.s.sembly, he will presently discover that many of the faces are familiar to him, although he supposed himself to be quite among strangers. The tall figure, with the beautiful, kindly face set in white hair and beard, has surely sat for the familiar portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace. This short, thick-set, robust, business-like figure is that of Sir Norman Lockyer. Yonder frail-seeming scholar, with white beard, is surely Professor Crookes. And this other scholar, with tall, rather angular frame and most kindly gleam of eye, is Sir Michael Foster; and there beyond is the large-seeming though not tall figure, and the round, rosy, youthful-seeming, beautifully benevolent face of Lord Lister. "What! a real lord there?" said a little American girl to whom I enumerated the company after my first visit to the Royal Society.

"Then how did he act? Was he very proud and haughty, as if he could not speak to other people?" And I was happy to be able to reply that though Lord Lister, perhaps of all men living, would be most excusable did he carry in his manner the sense of his achievements and honors, yet in point of fact no man could conceivably be more free from any apparent self-consciousness. As one watches him now he is seen to pa.s.s from group to group with cordial hand-shake and pleasant word, clearly the most affable of men, lord though he be, and president of the Royal Society, and foremost scientist of his time.

Presently an attendant pa.s.sed through the tearoom bearing a tremendous silver mace, perhaps five feet long, surmounted by a ma.s.sive crown and cross, and looking like nothing so much as a "gigantic war-club."

This is the mace which, when deposited on the president's desk in the lecture-room beyond, will signify that the society is in session. "It is the veritable mace," some one whispers at your elbow, "concerning which Cromwell gave his cla.s.sical command to 'Remove that bauble.'" But since the mace was not made until 1663, some five years after Cromwell's death, this account may lack scientific accuracy. Be that as it may, this mace has held its own far more steadily than the fame of its alleged detractor, and its transportation through the tea-room is the only manner of announcement that the lecture is about to open in the hall beyond. Indeed, so inconspicuous is the proceeding, and so quietly do the members that choose to attend pa.s.s into the lecture-hall, leaving perhaps half the company engaged as before, that the "stranger "--as the non-member is here officially designated--might very readily fail to understand that the seance proper had begun. In any event, he cannot enter until permission has been formally voted by the society.

When he is allowed to enter he finds the meeting-room little different from the one he has left, except that it is provided with a sort of throne on a raised platform at one end and with cushioned benches for seats. On the throne, if one may so term it, sits Lord Lister, scarcely more than his head showing above what seems to be a great velvet cushion which surmounts his desk, at the base of which, in full view of the society, rests the mace, fixing the eye of the "stranger," as it is alleged to have fixed that of Cromwell aforetime, with a peculiar fascination. On a lower plane than the president, at his right and left, sit Sir Michael Foster and Professor Arthur William Rucker, the two permanent secretaries. At Sir Michael's right, and one stage nearer the audience, stands the lecturer, on the raised platform and behind the desk which extends clear across the front of the room. As it chances, the lecturer this afternoon is Professor Ehrlich, of Berlin and Frankfort-on-the-Main, who has been invited to deliver the Croonian lecture. He is speaking in German, and hence most of the fellows are a.s.sisting their ears by following the lecture in a printed translation, copies of which, in proof, were to be secured at the door.

The subject of the lecture is "Artificial Immunization from Disease."

It is clear that the reader is followed with interested attention, which now and again gives rise to a subdued shuffle of applause.

The fact that the lecturer is speaking German serves perhaps to suggest even more vividly than might otherwise occur to one the contrast between this meeting and a meeting of the corresponding German society--the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Each is held in an old building of palatial cast and dimensions, of which Burlington House, here in Piccadilly, is much the older--dating from 1664--although its steam-heating and electric-lighting apparatus, when contrasted with the tile stoves and candles of the other, would not suggest this. For the rest, the rooms are not very dissimilar in general appearance, except for the platform and throne. But there the members of the society are shut off from the audience both by the physical barrier of the table and by the striking effect of their appearance in full dress, while here the fellows chiefly compose the audience, there being only a small company of "strangers" present, and these in no way to be distinguished by dress or location from the fellows themselves. It may be added that the custom of the French Academy of Sciences is intermediate between these two.

There the visitors occupy seats apart, at the side of the beautiful hall, the main floor being reserved for members. But the members themselves are not otherwise distinguishable, and they come and go and converse together even during the reading of a paper almost as if this were a mere social gathering. As it is thus the least formal, the French meeting is also by far the most democratic of great scientific gatherings. Its doors are open to whoever may choose to enter. The number who avail themselves of this privilege is not large, but it includes, on occasions, men of varied social status and of diverse races and colors--none of whom, so far as I could ever discern, attracts the slightest attention.