More Science From an Easy Chair Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate IX.--Fresco drawing of two female acrobats from the palace of Knossos, date about 1400 B.C. The originals were discovered by Sir Arthur Evans.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: A brief account of the skulls and implements of primitive man, with ill.u.s.trations, is given in the first series of "Science from an Easy Chair," published in 1910 by Methuen & Co.]

CHAPTER XVII

NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR

I came across a discussion the other day as to whether it is right to tell children and to let them believe that Santa Claus puts Christmas presents in their stockings, and that Peter Pan really comes in at the window and teaches nice little boys and girls to float through the air. I was surprised that anyone should be so singularly ignorant of child-nature as to hold that children really believe these things.

Children have a wonderful and special faculty of "make-believe," which is not the same as "belief." All the time when a child is indulging in "make-believe" (a sort of willing self-illusion or waking dream) its real, though tender, reasoning-power is merely "suspended," and is not offended or outraged. That power can on emergency be brought to the front, and the little one will say, "Of course, they're not real," or "I always knew he didn't really come down the chimney." So that I do not think anyone need be anxious as to doing harm or laying the foundations of future distrust by telling fairy-tales to the very young. If told in the right form and spirit they are received by six-year-old and older children readily and naturally as belonging to that delicious world of "make-believe" which (as one of their own orators, I believe, has said) "children of even the meanest intelligence will not be guilty of confounding with that very inferior every-day world of reality in which we find, much to our regret, that it is necessary to spend so large a part of our time." The power of make-believe is almost limitless, and makes its appearance even in the speechless infant of less than two years old, who will gather fruit from a coloured picture, generously offer you a bite, and pretend to swallow the rest itself. Make-believe must have been a very big factor in the life of the ape-like predecessors of prehistoric man.

Deception in the world of reality is very different from make-believe, and a terrible thing. To the child--deception in regard to real things, whatever excuses adults may put forward in its defence, is well-nigh unforgivable. To be one who never says "it is" when it is not, nor "it will be" when it will not be--that is to be a friend on whom a child rests in perfect trust and happiness.

What have these thoughts to do with the New Year? Merely this, that it is not only with and for children that we make-believe at this season--we all of us, more or less, indulge in a make-believe about the New Year. As the clock strikes its twelve notes at midnight on December 31st, and all the bells of a great city are heard hovering in the air, sending forth their sweet sounds from far and near into the fateful night, there are few of us who have not a feeling that a great event has occurred. A physical change has set in--the Old Year is dead and gone, and the New Year, something tangible, which you can let in at the door or the window--has just come into being, and is there waiting for us. We are, of course, indulging in "make-believe," for there is no New Year, with any natural, noteworthy thing to mark its commencement, starting at midnight on December 31st. New Years begin every day and hour, and it is by no means agreed upon by all nations of the earth to pretend that the 1st of January is the critical day which we must regard as that portentous epoch, the beginning of the New Year. This choice of a day was made by the Romans, and that wonderful man Julius Caesar had a great deal to do with it; modern Europe adopted his arrangement of the year or calendar. But the Jews have their own calendar and their own New Year's Day, which varies from year to year, from our September 5th to our October 7th. It is, however, to them always the first day of the month Tishri, and the first day of their new year. The Mahomedans took the date of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina--the night of July 15th, 622 A.D.--as the commencement of their "era," and its anniversary is the first day of their month Muharram and the first day of their year--their New Year's Day. As, although they reckon twelve months to the year, their months are true lunar months, and are not corrected as are those in use by us (as I will explain below); their year consists of 354 days 8 hours, and so does not run parallel to our year at all.

Their New Year's day, which began by being our July 16th, was in the next year coincident with our July 6th, then in three successive years it occurred on different days of June, and so on through May, April, and the preceding months, so that in thirty-two and a half of our years their New Year's Day has run through all our months and comes back again to July.

So much for New Year's Days; they are arbitrary selections, and though the Roman New Year's Day, or January 1st, has been precisely defined and fixed by the determination by astronomers of the position of the earth on that day in its revolution around the sun, yet the original selection of January 1st for the beginning of the year seems to have been merely the result of previous errors and negligence in attempting to fix the winter solstice (which now comes out as December 22nd).

This is the day when the sun is lowest and the day shortest; after it has pa.s.sed the sun appears gradually to acquire a new power, and increases the duration of his stay above the horizon until the longest day is reached--the summer solstice (June 21st). Julius Caesar took January 1st for New Year's Day as being the first day of a month nearest to the winter solstice. The ancient Greeks regarded the beginning of September as "New Year."

Were mankind content with the measure of time by the completion of a cycle of revolution of the earth around the sun--that is the year--and by the revolution of the earth on its own axis--that is the day or day-night ([Greek: nychthemeron]) of the Greeks--the notation of time and of seasons would be comparatively simple. No one seems to know why or when the day was first divided into twenty-four hours, nor why sixty minutes were taken in the hour and sixty seconds in the minute.

The ancient astronomers of Egypt and China, and their beliefs in mystical numbers, have to do with the first choosing of these intervals in unrecorded ages of antiquity (as much as 2000 or 3000 B.C.). The seven days of the week correspond to the five planets known to the ancients, with the addition of the sun and the moon. But the Greeks made three weeks of ten days each in a month. The true year--the exact period of a complete revolution of the earth around the sun--is 365 days 5 hours 18 minutes and 46 seconds. It was measured with a fair amount of accuracy by very ancient races of men, who fixed the position of the rising sun at the longest day by erecting big stones, one close at hand and one at a distance, so as to give a line pointing exactly to the rising spot of the sun on the horizon, as at Stonehenge. They recorded the number of days which elapsed before the longest day again appeared, and they marked also the division of that period by the two events of equally long sunlight and darkness--the spring and the autumn "equinox." It is obvious that if they took 365 days roughly as the period of revolution they would (owing to the odd hours and minutes left out) get about a day wrong in four years, and it was the business of the priests--even in ancient Rome the pontiffs were charged with this duty--to make the correction add the missing day, and proclaim the chief days of the year--the shortest day, the longest day, and the equinox-days of equal halves of sunshine and darkness. In ancient China, if the State astronomer made a wrong calculation in predicting an eclipse he was decapitated.

It is easy to understand how it became desirable to recognise more convenient divisions of the year than the four quarters marked by the solstices and the equinoxes. Various astronomical events were studied, and their regular recurrence ascertained, and they were used for this purpose. But the most obvious natural timekeeper to make use of, besides the sun, was the moon. The moon completes its cycle of change on the average in 29-1/2 days. It was used by every man to mark the pa.s.sage of the year, and its periods from new moon to new moon were called, as in our language, "months" or "moons," and divided into quarters. It is, however, an awkward fact that twelve lunar months give 354 days, so that there are eleven days left over when the solar year is divided into lunar months. The attempt to invent and cause the adoption of a system which shall regularly mark out the year into the popular and universally recognised "moons," and yet shall not make the year itself, so built up, of a length which does not agree with the true year recorded by the return of the rising sun to exactly the same spot on the horizon after 365 days and a few hours, has been throughout all the history of civilised man, and even among prehistoric peoples, a matter of difficulty. It has led to the most varied and ingenious systems, entrusted to the most learned priests and state officers, and mostly so complicated as to break down in the working, until we come to the great clear-headed man Julius Caesar.

In the very earliest times of the city of Rome the solar year, or complete cycle of the seasons, was divided into ten lunar months covering 304 days, and it is not known how the remaining days necessary to complete the solar revolution were dealt with, or disposed of. The year was considered to commence with March, probably with the intention of getting New Year's Day near to the spring equinox. The Celtic people and the Druids, with their mistletoe rites, kept New Year also at that time. The ten Roman months were named Martius, Aprilus, Maius, Junius, Quintillis, s.e.xtilis, September, October, November, December. In the reign of the King Numa two months were added to the year--namely, Januarius at the beginning and Februarius at the end. In 452 B.C. February was removed from the end and given second place. The Romans thus arranged twelve months into the year, as the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks had long before done. The months were made by law to consist alternately of twenty-nine and of thirty days (thus keeping near to the average length of a true lunar cycle), and an odd day was thrown in for luck, making the year to consist of 355 days. This, of course, differs from the solar year by ten days and a bit. To make the solar year and the civil or calendar year coincide as nearly as might be, Numa ordered that a special or "intercalary" month should be inserted every second year between February 23rd and 24th. It was called "Mercedonius," and consisted of twenty-two and of twenty-three days alternately, so that four years contained 1465 days, giving a mean of 366-1/4 days to each year. But this gave nearly a day too much in each year of the calendar (as the legal or civil year is called) as compared with the true solar year, agreement with which was the object in view. So another law was made to reduce the excess of days in every twenty-four years.

Obviously the superintendence of these variations, and the public declaration of the calendar for each year, was a very serious and important task, affecting all kinds of legal contracts. The pontiffs to whom the duty was a.s.signed abused their power for political ends, and so little care had they taken to regulate the civil year and keep it in coincidence with the solar year that in the time of Julius Caesar the civil equinox differed from the astronomical by three months, the real spring equinox occurring, not at the end of what was called March by the calendar, but in June!

Julius Caesar took the matter in hand and put things into better order.

He abolished all attempt to record by the calendar a lunar year of twelve lunar months; he fixed the length of the civil year to agree as near as might be with that of the solar year, and arbitrarily altered the months; in fact, abandoned the "lunar month" and inst.i.tuted the "calendar month." Thus he decreed that the ordinary year should be 365 days, but that every fourth year (which, for some perverse reason, we call "leap" year) should have an extra day. He ordered that the alternate months, from January to November inclusive, should have thirty-one days and the others thirty days, excepting February, which was to have in common years twenty-nine, but in every fourth year (our leap year) thirty. This perfectly reasonable, though arbitrary, definition of the months was accompanied by the alteration of the name of the month Quintilis to Julius, in honour of the great man. Later Augustus had the name of the month s.e.xtilis altered to Augustus for his own glorification, and in order to gratify his vanity a law was pa.s.sed taking away a day from February and putting it on to August, so that August might have thirty-one days as well as July, and not the inferior total of thirty previously a.s.signed to it! At the same time, so that three months of thirty-one days might not come together, September and November were reduced to thirty days, and thirty-one given to October and December. In order to get everything into order and start fair Julius Caesar restored the spring equinox to March 25th (Numa's date for it, but really four days late). For this purpose he ordered two extraordinary months, as well as Numa's intercalary month Mercedonius, to be inserted in the year 47 B.C., giving that year in all 445 days. It was called "the last year of confusion." January 1st, forty-six years before the birth of Christ and the 708th since the foundation of the city, was the first day of "the first Julian year."

Although Julius Caesar's correction and his provisions for keeping the "civil" year coincident with the astronomical year were admirable, yet they were not perfect. His astronomer, by name Sosigenes, did his best, but a.s.sumed the astronomical year to be 11 min. 14 sec. longer than it really is. In 400 years this amounts to an error of three days. The increasing disagreement of the "civil" and the "real"

equinox was noticed by learned men in successive centuries. At last, in A.D. 1582, it was found that the real astronomical equinox, which was supposed to occur on March 25th, when Julius Caesar introduced his calendar (not on March 21st, as was later discovered to be the fact), had retrograded towards the beginning of the civil year, so that it coincided with March 11th of the calendar. In order to restore the equinox to its proper place (March 21st), Pope Gregory XIII directed ten days to be suppressed in the calendar--of that year--and to prevent things going wrong again it was enacted that leap-year day shall not be reckoned in those centenary years which are not multiples of 400. Thus Pope Gregory got rid of three days out of the Julian calendar, or civil year, in every 400 years, since 1600 was retained as a leap-year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900, though according to the former law leap-years, were made common years, whilst 2000 will be a leap-year. In order to correct a further minute error, namely, the fact that the calendar year as now amended is 26 sec. longer than the true solar year, it is proposed that the year 4000 and all its multiples shall be common years, and not leap years. This is a matter which, though practical, is of distinctly remote importance. Some people like to look well ahead.

The alteration in the calendar made by Pope Gregory was successfully opposed for a long time in Great Britain by popular prejudice. It was called "new style," and was at last accepted, as in other European countries, but has never been adopted in Russia, which retains the "old style." An Act of Parliament was pa.s.sed in 1751 ordering that the day following September 2nd, 1752, should be accounted the fourteenth of that month. Many people thought that they had been cheated out of eleven days of life, and there were serious riots! The change had been already made in Scotland in the year 1600 without much outcry. The Scotch were either too "canny" or too dull to "fash" themselves about it.

Let us now revert for a moment to the proceedings of Oriental potentates in regard to astronomers, a cla.s.s of scientific functionaries whom they have from remote ages been in the habit of employing. It appears that in China there is no attempt to make the civil year or year of the calendar coincide with the astronomical year. The astronomical year is reckoned as beginning when the sun enters Capricorn, our winter solstice, and is thus more reasonably defined than is the commencement of our New Year, which is nine days late. Twelve months are recognised; the first is called Tzu, the second Chou, and the third Yin, and the rest respectively Mao, Chen, Su, Wu, Wei, Shen, Yu, Hsu, Hai. But the calendar year, on the other hand, begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, "Make it so," and it is so. With great ceremony he issues a calendar ten months in advance, fixing as he pleases all the important festive and lucky days of the year. Various emperors have made New Year's Day in the fourth, third, second, first, or twelfth month. It has now been fixed for many centuries in the second astronomical month. I have mentioned above that the ancient Greeks reckoned the New Year as beginning about the end of September. But the reckoning differed in the different States, and so did the names of the months. Although the Greek astronomers determined the real solar year with remarkable accuracy, and proposed very clever modes of correcting the calendar so as to use the lunar months in reckoning, there was no general system adopted, no agreement among the "home-ruling" States.

I have stated above that the official Chinese astronomers sometimes get their heads cut off for not correctly foretelling an eclipse.

Ill.u.s.trating this there is the following story of a visit paid about forty years ago to the Observatory in Greenwich Park by the Shah of Persia of that date. The Persians have many close links with the Chinese, and share their view of astronomy as a sort of State function, in which the Emperor has special authority. The Shah accordingly made a great point of visiting the British State observatory, in company with King Edward, who was then Prince of Wales. Sir George Airy was the Astronomer Royal, and showed the party over the building and gave them peeps through telescopes. "Now show me an eclipse of the sun," said the Shah, speaking in French. Sir George pretended not to hear, and led the way to another instrument. "Dog of an astronomer," said the Shah, "produce me an eclipse!" Sir George politely said he had not got one and could not oblige the King of Kings. "Ho, ho!" said the Shah, turning in great indignation to the Prince of Wales. "You hear! cut his head off!" Sir George's life was, as a matter of fact, spared, but in the course of a year he retired, and was succeeded by another Astronomer Royal. On his appointment that gentleman was astonished at receiving a letter of congratulation from the Shah of Persia. The Shah evidently thought that his bloodthirsty request had been attended to, though with some delay. He proceeded to tell the new Astronomer Royal that he had a few days before writing witnessed a total eclipse of the sun in the observatory at Teheran.

This was perfectly correct. The suggestion was that the Teheran astronomers knew their business, and had the good sense to arrange an eclipse when a Royal Visitor wished for one, and so escape decapitation--a course which the kindly Shah evidently wished to indicate to the new and young Astronomer Royal as that which he should pursue in order to avoid the fate of his unhappy and obstinate predecessor. The att.i.tude of the Shah towards science is one which is not altogether unknown in this country.

CHAPTER XVIII

EASTERTIDE, SHAMROCKS AND SPERMACETI

Most people think of Easter as a Christian festival, but it is really in name and origin a pagan one. The word "Easter" is the modern form of "Eastra," the name of the Anglo-Saxon G.o.ddess of spring (in primitive Germanic, "Austro"). The Germans, like ourselves, keep its true pagan name, "Ostern." The Latin nations use for Easter the word Pascha (French, Paque), the Greek form of the Jewish name for the feast of the Pa.s.sover, with which it is historically a.s.sociated by the Christian Church. Terrible quarrels have occurred in early ages over fixing Easter Day and its exact relation to the Jewish calendar. This is the explanation of its being "a movable feast" and of the consequent inconvenience to Parliament, schoolboys, and Bank-holiday-makers at the present day. It must be admitted that when Easter comes as early as it sometimes does those who have but the short spring holiday of the Easter week-end are hardly used. Instead of enjoying the sunny spring weather of Austro, and the flowers and the bursting buds which an Easter at the end of April often gives, they have to put up with the dreary chill of arid March, and this, absurdly enough, is all on account of a mistaken attempt at accuracy made by the Church some sixteen hundred or more years ago in trying to bring the Christian festival into line with the Jewish Pa.s.sover. If it were desired to celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection each year on the day corresponding astronomically with that indicated in the Gospels, the Astronomer Royal would have no difficulty in exactly fixing the day, making due allowance for the changes of the calendar and for the irregularities of the Jewish year. I do not know what day in what month such a calculation would finally establish as that of the ecclesiastical festival, but the Bank Holiday and the Anglo-Saxon Easter might be dealt with separately, and a.s.signed, once for all, to the end of April, the real "opening," or spring month.

The yellow "tansy cakes" which used to be, and the coloured eggs which still are, given away at Easter throughout Europe, are not of Christian origin, but belong to the Roman celebration (at the same season, viz., April 12th to 15th) of the G.o.ddess of Plenty--Ceres.

Eggs are the symbols of fecundity and the renewal of life in the spring. They were decorated and given in baskets by rich Romans to their friends and dependents at this season. "Hot-cross buns" are peculiar to England, and no doubt have a Christian significance. They have not survived in Scotland, although Easter eggs are well known there (sometimes they are called "pace-eggs"), nor on the Continent, where "Pascal eggs" are an inst.i.tution. "Buns" owe their name to the old Norse word "bunga," a convexity or round lump, preserved also in our words "bunion" and "bung." In Norman French it became "bonne," and in the fourteenth century was applied to the round loaf of bread given to a horse; the loaf was called Bayard's bonne (p.r.o.nounced "bun"). In some parts of England a "bunny" still means a swelling due to a blow.

The April fish, the "poisson d'Avril," is the polite French term for what we call an "April fool." But why a fish is introduced in this connection I am unable to say. The custom of sending people on fool's errands on the First of April is probably due to the change of the calendar in France in 1564; but there is a Hindoo feast on March 31st, when similar jokes are perpetrated. It is called "Huli," which, in accordance with phonetic laws, readily becomes "Fooli." This is probably only a coincidence.

A curious Easter custom in country districts in England used to be (perhaps still is) that called "lifting" or "heaving." On Easter Monday two men will join hands so as to form a seat; their companions then "by right of custom" compel the women they may meet to sit, one after the other, on the improvised throne and be lifted or heaved as high as may be. On Easter Tuesday the women perform the same rite upon the men. Strangers thus a.s.sailed have been much disconcerted and have recorded their astonishment in "notes of travel." The custom is said to be a popular degeneration of the celebration of the Resurrection.

An early Easter falls little in advance of St. Patrick's Day, when there is much "wearing of the green" and questioning as to what plant is "the real shamrock." This matter has become so involved and developed by wild enthusiasm, ignorance, and false sentiment that it is difficult to deal with it. A distinguished Irishman once showed me the "shamrock" he was wearing in his b.u.t.tonhole as "the true" plant of that name. He a.s.sured me that he had studied the subject from boyhood and knew well the true and the false. "What is its flower like?" I asked him. "It never has a flower at all," he said. Another injustice to Ireland, one must suppose, or a miracle of St. Patrick's! His "green" was a bit of the small variety of the common clover, _Trifolium repens_, which, of course, produces the usual tuft of florets or clover-head. It is true that this plant has now been vulgarly subst.i.tuted for St. Patrick's shamrock. The shamrock is not really the common clover nor any variety of it. The common Dutch clover and its varieties were introduced into Ireland two hundred years ago from England and are not Irish at all! The true shamrock is the delicate little wood-sorrel, _Oxalis acetosella_, which has a beautifully formed three-split or trefoil leaf of the most vivid green colour, and a white flower like that of a geranium. It is called "fairy-bell" by the Welsh, and was believed to ring chimes for the elfin folk. It was also greatly esteemed for its acid flavour and for various reputed medicinal and magical properties by the Druids and among the early inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland. Pliny says it never shelters a snake, and is an antidote to the poison of serpents and scorpions--a good reason for its a.s.sociation with St.

Patrick! It had already a reputation and sanct.i.ty when, if tradition be true, St. Patrick used its threefold leaf to symbolise the doctrine of the Trinity.

It is much rarer to find the wood-sorrel trefoil with a fourth leaflet than it is to find the clover trefoil so provided. The two plants belong to families widely separated from one another. The ancient architectural decoration of trefoil carving, and also the heraldic shamrock in the arms of the United Kingdom, represent the leaf of the wood-sorrel, and not that of the clover. No doubt there has been some sentimental intention in putting forward the humble, abundant, down-trodden dwarf-clover, the very sod itself of Ireland (really introduced from England) as "the shamrock!" But, as often happens in such cases, truth and the ancient and honourable tradition of a beautiful thing have been wantonly disregarded in order to do business in cheap sentiment. Traders are always ready to take advantage of an ignorant public. Common sprats are called "sardines," the name of another and rarer fish, in order to conceal the fact that they are sprats; clarified horse fat is called "fresh country b.u.t.ter," and Irish regiments are made to decorate themselves with common clover under the delusion that it is the shamrock. Other plants have been from time to time utilised to usurp the t.i.tle of "shamrock." Thus the small Lucerne clover or medicago is often sold as "shamrock" to Irish patriots, and the watercress has been solemnly pat forward as the true shamrock simply because old writers tell us, as evidence of the barbarous state of the Irish, that they fed upon shamrocks and watercress. The true shamrock (the wood-sorrel) was formerly greatly valued all over Europe as a salad and a flavouring herb on account of its leaves containing oxalic acid. It was used for the manufacture of oxalic acid, which was sold as "salts of lemons" for removing iron-mould. It was the basis of the soup and of the green sauce for fish, in which the dock-sorrel (Rumex) has now taken its place. The name "shamrock" is an old Irish word, written "seamragg," and means a little "trefoil." Curiously enough there appears to be an Oriental word, "shamrakh," which I am told is of Arabic origin, and also means a trefoil. In English writers from the seventeenth century onwards the Irish shamrock is variously written of as "shamroots," "shamerags"

(this and the next following with hostile intent), "shame-rogues,"

"sham-brogues," and "sham-rug."

I am sorry to say that Shakespeare does not mention the shamrock at all. No Irishman who knows the little oxalis or wood-sorrel could wish for a more beautiful floral emblem of the Emerald Isle, or dream of letting the vulgar Saxon intruder--the dwarf clover--take its place.

Perhaps it is the Ulstermen who have set up the foreign "Dutch" clover to replace the true shamrock, the wood-sorrel. These changes are easily made. For instance, "green" is not the original colour of Ireland, but light blue--Cambridge blue!

This chapter is one of varied material, and I now pa.s.s abruptly from fresh emerald leaflets to the waxy crystals stewed out of the fat of a monster's head. There has seldom been a controversy so entertaining as that between Dr. Bode (the talented director of the Art Gallery of Berlin) and his opponents, in regard to the age of the wax-bust which he purchased not long ago for 8,000 in Bond Street in the belief that it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Science has had its share in the examination of the bust. The last scientific contribution to the matter was the discovery by an a.n.a.lytical chemist, Dr. Pinkus, that the waxy mixture of which the bust is composed consists in definite proportion of spermaceti. Now since spermaceti was not used before the year 1700, the bust cannot (say Dr. Bode's opponents) have been made by Leonardo da Vinci, who died in the early part of the sixteenth century. "Nonsense!" reply Dr. Bode's supporters, "Shakespeare makes Hotspur speak of 'parmaceti,' and it was well known to the doctors of Salerno in 1100 A.D., and probably used by the ancients."

Nevertheless, the opponents of Dr. Bode are right. I am sorry, because Dr. Bode is, in regard to "works of art," a most able expert, and I think it is better that experts should always be right. Spermaceti was known, probably from cla.s.sical times onwards, as a rare and precious unguent, "resolutive and mollifying," as M. Pomel, "chief druggist to the late French King Louis XIV," says in his treatise on drugs, translated into English in 1737. It was applied as a liniment for hardness of the skin and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and was also taken internally.

Shakespeare's reference to it is "parmaceti for an inward bruise." The fact is it was known and used in small quant.i.ty before 1700 A.D. in connection with medicine and the toilet, but was not consumed by the thousand tons a year, as it was after the hunting of the sperm whale or cachalot (_Physeter mecrocephalus_) had been set a-going by the brave fishermen of Nantucket and the Northern Atlantic coast of America in 1690. In 1730 or thereabouts the English and the Dutch also sent out ships to take part in this perilous industry, which is now again, in its dwindled condition, exclusively American. It is the pursuit of by far the biggest and fiercest animal which man has doomed to extinction. Those who enjoy such stories of adventure should read Mr. Bullen's personal narrative, "The Cruise of the Cachalot." It was at the end of the eighteenth century that spermaceti became so abundant in the market that candles of it were manufactured and sold cheaper than those of wax. From about 1860 it was superseded by paraffin and other wax-like products: and it was at its cheapest period, and when it was most widely in use, that Lucas, the English artist, who made many wax busts and statuettes, is known to have mixed it, in the form of "old candles," with beeswax, in order to form the composition which he used in his works. The evidence given by the chemist, Dr. Pinkus, appears to me to be conclusive (even without the evidence of the old clothes stuffed into the hollow of the bust) against the theory that the Bode wax-bust of Flora is more ancient than the nineteenth century, and much in favour of its being the work of Lucas, who is exceptionally known as a wax-modeller of repute sixty years ago, who did use spermaceti.

Spermaceti is a perfectly definite chemical body, which can be recognised without chance of error. It is a combination of palmitic acid and a peculiar hydrocarbon, called (after the whale) "cetyl," and easily forms pure crystals. Before sperm whales were hunted it was obtained in relatively small quant.i.ty from individual sperm whales, which by misadventure landed themselves on the coast of France, Spain, or Great Britain, and was eagerly purchased by the apothecaries and perfumers of the great cities of Europe. There are several records of such strange mistakes on the part of the great sperm whale. Only ten or fifteen years ago one was stranded on the Lincolnshire coast, whilst the specimen exhibited in the Natural History Museum was washed ash.o.r.e at Thurso in Caithness. The spermaceti is found dissolved in the more ordinary oil (or fat), which occupies a huge region above the bones of the upper jaw and gives the sperm whale its barrel-shaped head. It separates on cooling, from the liquid oil, in crystalline flakes, forming great ma.s.ses, which are purified by re-melting and cooling. In early times the fine waxy, flaky material thus obtained was known in samples of a few ounces, and sold by apothecaries. It was known that it came from a whale, and was believed to be the seed or sperm of that animal, hence its name "spermaceti." M. Pomel, whom I cited above, believed it to come from the brain of the whale called "cachalot." No one would have dreamt in the sixteenth century of mixing this precious stuff with beeswax for modelling purposes. At that date one would as soon have mixed amber with pitch. That reminds me that "grey amber" or "ambergris" is also a product of the sperm whale not to be confounded with spermaceti. It is an unhealthy intestinal concretion like bezoar-stone (see p. 64), only exceptionally produced. It is found floating in the ocean, and is recognised as coming from the cachalot owing to its being largely made up of the h.o.r.n.y beaks of cuttle-fish, upon which the cachalot feeds.

It is still used in perfumery, and fetches the extraordinary price of four guineas the ounce. A piece weighing 4-1/2 oz. may be seen in Cromwell Road.

Though the oils (or fats) of plants and animals are very similar to one another in appearance, there are a very large number of them differing chemically from one another. Thus the fat or oil of dozens of different nuts and plant-products and of lower animals and fishes, and of sheep, oxen, pigs, dogs, elephants, and men contain different and special chemical substances, corresponding to the "cetyl" which is present in the fat of the sperm whale's head. Many of them have acquired as a result of experience and tradition special value for some special purpose. Several oils have peculiar fitness and great value for oiling delicate machinery; others are used in curing leather, for burning, and for medicinal ointments, whilst a large variety is used as human food.

CHAPTER XIX

MUSEUMS

The word "museum" is not one of those which explain themselves and give an indication of what the thing to which they are applied should be, when it has ceased to be what it was intended to be. In ancient Greece the word "mouseion" meant "the place of the Muses"--a grove or a temple--and there was such a place on a part of the Acropolis of Athens, the rocky temple-crowned hill around which the city was built.

There were other "museums," or seats of the Muses, in ancient Greece; those on the slopes of Mount Helicon and of Mount Olympus were the most famous. In modern times a picture gallery and art collection, that of the Louvre, in Paris, is called "the Musee," whilst "the Museum" (the Latin form of the same word) is the name distinctively applied in Paris to the collections of natural history and the laboratories connected with them in the Jardin des Plantes. In London "the British Museum," founded in 1753, originally comprised the national library as well as collections of antiquities and of natural history. In Heidelberg "the Museum" was the name, when I was there, for a delightful club, with a garden. It belonged to the professors, their families, and their friends in the town, and concerts and dances were given in it. It seems that the Heidelberg "Museum" comes nearest to the original meaning of the word as "a seat of Muses," for nearly all those mythical ladies were remarkable for their special patronage of music, dancing, and song.