Woman in Science Part 21

Nor was this all. She also prepared for gratuitous distribution a large number of four-page leaflets on the most common farm pests. Of the leaflet, for instance, on the warble-fly, its life-history, methods of prevention and remedy, no less than a hundred and seventy thousand copies were printed. And so great was the demand for her leaflet on the gooseberry red spider that a single mail brought her an order for three thousand copies.

Miss Ormerod, it is proper to state here, received no remuneration whatever for her great services to the public. On the contrary, she gave not only all her time gratuitously, but bore a great part of the expense of printing and distributing her publications. The amount of good she thus did unaided and alone cannot be estimated.

In her leaflet on the warble-fly, also known as bot-fly, she estimates the annual damage to the stock-growers of the United Kingdom from this pest at from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. The losses due to fruit, grain and vegetable insects of various kinds, before she began her insect crusade, were much greater. In Great Britain and her colonies they amounted to very many millions of pounds sterling every year.[174]

And most of these losses, as she demonstrated, were preventable by simple precautions which she eventually succeeded in inducing the people to adopt. How much she was instrumental in saving annually to the farmers and gardeners of England by her writings and lectures can only be imagined, but the sum must have been immense.

When we recollect that Miss Ormerod accomplished all her work before it occurred to the English Board of Agriculture to appoint a government entomologist, we shall realize what a pioneer she was in the career in which she achieved such distinction and through which she conferred such inestimable benefits upon her fellows.

Miss Ormerod's entomological publications, especially her annual reports, brought her into relations with people of all cla.s.ses throughout the whole world. Her correspondence, in consequence, was enormous, and not infrequently amounted to from fifty to a hundred letters a day. The great entomologists of Europe and America held her in the highest esteem, and had implicit faith in her judgment in all matters pertaining to her specialty.

One day she would receive a letter from an English gardener begging for a remedy against the strawberry beetle. The next day she would have a similar letter regarding mite-galls on black currants, or pea-weevil larvae or clover-eel worms. Again there would be a communication from Norway requesting advice about the Hessian fly, or from Argentina asking information concerning a certain kind of destructive gra.s.s beetle, or from India appealing for help against a pernicious species of forest fly, or from South Africa seeking a relief from the boot-beetle. And still again, she was consulted by her foreign correspondents about termites, which were causing havoc among the young cocoa trees of Ceylon, or about certain peculiar species of Australian larvae, or about the devastating action of the pine beetle in the Scotch forests, or about the wheat midge and antler moth in Finland.

One day she had a communication from the Austrian Emba.s.sy regarding a beetle that was eating the oats about Constantinople, and not long afterwards she received a letter from the Chinese Minister in London begging for information as to how to prevent the ravages of certain noxious bugs in the lee-chee orchards of China.

In view of all these facts it is not surprising that Miss Ormerod became an active and valued colleague of some of England's most noted scientific men. Professor Huxley said of her in connection with certain work performed by her as a member of one of the committees to which he belonged that "she knew more about the business" than all the rest put together.

Miss Ormerod's services and attainments, it is gratifying to note, were not without recognition in high quarters. Besides being in constant correspondence with the most eminent entomologists of the world, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England and examiner in agricultural entomology in the University of Edinburgh, she was a member of many learned societies in both the Old and the New World. She was also the recipient of many medals, two of which came from Russia.

The honor, however, which gave her the most pleasure was the degree of Doctor of Laws, which was conferred on her by the University of Edinburgh. It was the first time this old and conservative inst.i.tution thus honored a woman, but in honoring Miss Ormerod it honored itself as well.[175]

But when one considers the magnitude of Miss Ormerod's services to her country and to the world, when one reflects on the tens of millions of pounds sterling which she saved to the British Empire by her researches and writings, these honors seem trivial and unworthy of the great nation which she so signally benefited. If any of her countrymen had labored so long and so successfully and made so many sacrifices for the welfare of the nation as she had, he would have been knighted or enn.o.bled. But age-long prejudices and traditions will not yet permit England to bestow the same honors on women as on men, no matter how brilliant their attainments or how distinguished their services to the crown and to humanity. Recognition of this kind may possibly come as one of the desirable innovations of the twentieth century. No lover of fair play can deny "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."[176]

The names of the women in the United States who have become prominent by their researches and writings in the various branches of the natural sciences would make a long list. And when one recalls the fact that it was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that American women were afforded an opportunity to study science, it is a matter of surprise that the list is so extended. For practically no provision was made for the serious pursuit by them of the natural sciences until the opening of Va.s.sar College in 1865, and it was not until the closing years of the century that the portals of many men's colleges were unlocked and thrown open to the hitherto proscribed s.e.x. Considering all the obstacles they had to overcome, the ignorance, the prejudice, the opposition of all kinds they had to combat in the United States, women have already accomplished wonders and bid fair to achieve much more in the near future.

Now almost every educational inst.i.tution in the land, private or state, has one or more women professors or a.s.sociate professors. They teach all the branches of the natural sciences that are taught by their male colleagues,--botany, geology, mineralogy, zoology, anatomy, bacteriology and all the numerous subdivisions of these sciences,--and they teach them with success and eclat.

They also occupy responsible scientific positions in various state and federal inst.i.tutions. Thus one woman has been the princ.i.p.al of the Denver School of Mines, while another has been the state entomologist for Missouri. Women are also found doing important work in the National Museum, in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and in the Agricultural Department in Washington, as well as in the various museums, botanical gardens and public laboratories of the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Among those who have deserved well of science in the United States by their investigations and writings are Olive Thorne Miller and Florence Merriam in ornithology; Susanna Phelps Gage, Dr. Ida H. Hyde, Mary H.

Hinckley, Cornelia M. Clapp, Edith J. and Agnes M. Claypole in biology; Rose S. Eigenman in icthyology; Edith M. Patch, Elizabeth W. Peckham, Emily A. Smith, Cora H. Clarke, J. M. Arms Sheldon, Mary Treat, Mary E.

Murfeldt, Annie T. Slosson in entomology; Elizabeth G. Britton and Clara E. c.u.mmings in cryptogamic botany; Sarah A. Plummer Lemmon, Katherine E.

Golden, Alice Eastman and Almira Lincoln Phelps in general botany; Ada D. Davidson, Ella F. Boyd and Florence Bascom in geology. Besides these, special mention should also be made of Dr. Julia W. Snow for her work on the microscopical forms of fresh-water algae; Anna Botsford Comstock for her contributions to our knowledge of microscopic insects; Katherine J.

Bush for her monographs on shallow and deep-water molusca; Harriet Randolph and Fannie E. Langdon for their studies on worms, and Katherine Foot for her papers on cellular morphology. Particularly notable, too, is the work that has been done on marine invertebrates by Mary J.

Rathbun in the United States National Museum and by Florence Wambaugh Patterson in vegetable physiology and pathology in the Department of Agriculture in Washington.

But much as the women just named deserve recognition for their achievements in the various branches of science to which they have severally devoted themselves, the one who will always be specially remembered, not only for her valuable contributions to divers branches of natural science, but also for her labors in behalf of higher female education--particularly as president of Radcliffe College--is Mrs.

Elizabeth Cary Aga.s.siz, the wife of the celebrated Swiss-American naturalist, who gave such an impetus to the study of natural science in the United States, and whose influence on the general advancement of science in all its departments has proved so enduring and so far-reaching. As an inspirer of and collaborator with her gifted husband, Mrs. Aga.s.siz deserves a large page in the annals of science, while as an enthusiastic student of nature and as one who communicated her enthusiasm to her students, and at the same time held up before them the highest ideals of womanhood, she is sure of a portion of that immortality which has been decreed to her ill.u.s.trious life-partner, Jean Louis Aga.s.siz.

This chapter would not be complete without some reference to that large cla.s.s of women travelers who, directly or indirectly, have contributed so much to the advancement of the natural sciences. The gifted Roumanian writer and traveler, Princess Helena Kolzoff Ma.s.salsky,--better known under her pseudonym, Doria d'Istria,--somewhere expresses the opinion that a woman traveler admirably supplements the scientific work of the male explorer by bringing to it apt.i.tudes that the latter does not possess. For she notes many things in nature, as well as in the national life and popular customs of the countries which she traverses, which escape the more hebetudinous perceptions of men, and thus a vast field, that would otherwise remain unknown, is opened to observation and critical study.

One of the most noted travelers of her s.e.x in the nineteenth century was the famous Ida Pfeiffer, of Austria. During the years intervening between 1842 and 1858, the date of her death, she traveled nearly two hundred thousand miles and, in so doing, visited nearly every quarter of the globe. When one recalls the difficulties and discomforts of transportation in the early part of the last century, as compared with our present facilities and conveniences, and bears in mind the fact that her traveling expenses for an entire year were less than those of a Lamartine or a Chateaubriand for a single week, we must admit that her achievements were, indeed, extraordinary.

Besides being the author of numerous books which had for many years a great vogue--books which, by reason of the keen observations and the absolutely truthful narratives of their author, are still of special value to the student of geography and ethnology--she made collections ill.u.s.trative of botany, mineralogy and entomology which were subsequently secured for the British Museum and other similar inst.i.tutions in Europe.

No one more highly appreciated Frau Pfeiffer's efforts in behalf of science than did the ill.u.s.trious Alexander von Humboldt, whose friendship was one of the greatest joys of this remarkable woman's life.

Through his recommendation and that of the noted geographer, Karl Ritter, she was made an honorary member of the Geographical Society of Berlin. Besides this, the King of Prussia conferred on her the gold medal for arts and sciences.

Three other women, all representatives of Great Britain, likewise deserve notice for their extensive travels and the interesting and instructive accounts which they published of them. These are Constance Gordon c.u.mming, Isabella Bird Bishop and Amelia B. Edwards.

More notable in many respects than these three distinguished women were Miss Mary H. Kingsley and Madame Octavie Coudreau. For their contributions to science and for their daring adventures in savage lands, they have won for themselves an unique position among women explorers.

Miss Kingsley--the niece of the well-known writer and naturalist, Charles Kingsley--exhibited much of her uncle's literary ability and love of nature. So complete was her intellectual grasp of the most difficult problems, and so rare was her overflowing sympathy for all of G.o.d's creatures, that she was well described as possessing "the brain of a man and the heart of a woman."

In order to get at first-hand information that was necessary to complete a work which her father, George Kingsley, had, owing to his premature death, left unfinished, she determined to visit that part of West Africa "where all authorities agreed that the Africans were at their wildest and worst." Accompanied only by the natives, she travelled among cannibals, pushed her way through mangrove swamps and pestilential mora.s.ses. She spent months in a canoe exploring the territory watered by the Calabar and Ogowe rivers, often in imminent peril of death from wild animals or wilder men.

When not studying the manners and customs of the native tribes, she was hunting fishes and reptiles in streams and quagmires and collecting insects in the weird, grim twilight of the equatorial forest with its inextricable tangle of creepers, its great hanging tapestries of vines and flowers, its myriads of bush-ropes, suspended from the summits of tall b.u.t.tressed trees, "some as straight as plumb lines, others coiled round and intertwined among each other until one could fancy one was looking on some mighty battle between armies of gigantic serpents that had been arrested at its height by some mighty spell."

The results of Miss Kingsley's wanderings in this dark and uncanny wilderness and among the savage tribes visited by her were her two instructive volumes ent.i.tled _Travels in West Africa_ and _West African Studies_. In addition to these two works from her pen there are deposited in the British Museum an interesting collection of insects, fishes and reptiles--many of them new species and some of them named in her honor--which testifies to her activity as a collector and her enthusiasm as a naturalist.

Her brilliant and useful career was cut short in Cape Colony, whither she had gone as an army nurse during the Boer war. In view of her achievements one is not surprised to learn that her countrymen regarded her premature taking-off as a national misfortune. The n.o.blest monument to her memory is "The Mary Kingsley Society of West Africa," whose object is to carry on, as far as may be, the beneficent work she began on the West African coast and to accomplish for English rule in this part of the world what the "Royal Asiatic Society" has achieved for British administration in India.

Madame Coudreau is designated in _Qui Etes-Vous_--the French Who's Who--as an _exploratrice_. This well characterizes her; for, if not the first woman explorer by profession, she is certainly the most energetic and successful.

Her first work was in French Guiana, under instructions from the colonial minister of France. This was in 1894. The following year she began the scientific exploration of the province of Para in northern Brazil, in collaboration with her husband, Henri Coudreau, who had previously distinguished himself by his achievements as a writer and as an explorer in French Guiana. The fruit of their joint work from 1895 to 1899 was six quarto volumes profusely ill.u.s.trated by photographs which they had taken and by carefully executed charts of the various rivers which they had explored.

While engaged in the exploration of the Trombetas, a tributary of the Amazon, Henri Coudreau was taken seriously ill, and, after a few days'

struggle against the disease with which he was stricken, he expired in the depths of the forest primeval, where he was buried by his desolate and disconsolate widow. After such a calamity any other woman would have left the tropics at once and returned to her home and friends. Not so Mme. Coudreau. With matchless courage and determination she buried her grief in the work in which her husband had been so interested, and, after completing the unfinished survey, published the results of this expedition under the t.i.tle _Voyage au Trombetas_.

Having completed this work, she was engaged by the states of Para and Amazonas to explore a number of other rivers in the vast territory known as Amazonia. This commission involved the most arduous and dangerous kind of labor and was a task which few men would have been willing to undertake. It is doubtful if any other woman would have ventured on such an expedition, and it is quite certain that no other one could have been found that was so well equipped for this herculean undertaking or who would have carried it to a more successful issue.

Mme. Coudreau was in the service of Amazonia, in the capacity of official explorer, from 1899 to 1906. Most of this time she spent in a canoe on the affluents of the Amazon, or in her tent in the dense forests under the equator. Her only companions were negroes, or Indians, or Brazilian halfbreeds who served her as porters, cooks and boatmen.

Frequently they were in the forest wilds for many months at a time and far away from every vestige of civilized life. As it was impossible to take sufficient provisions with them to last them during the whole of their journey, they had to depend on wild fruits and such fish and game as they were able to secure. Often they were forced to live for weeks at a time on an unchanging diet of manioc and tapir meat.

But their sufferings were not confined to hunger and disagreeable--often indigestible--food. There were the heavy steaming atmosphere and the broiling rays of a superheated sun, especially when reflected from the mirror-like surface of lake or river, which were so debilitating and exhausting that physical exertion of any kind was at times almost impossible. There were also the torrential and incessant rains--making it impossible for them to cook their food or dry their clothing--which added to their miseries whether in camp or in their canoe.

Great, however, as were their trials on the river, they were trifling in comparison with those in the woods. Here locomotion was impeded by tangled undergrowth which was bound together by strands of lianas and th.o.r.n.y vines which const.i.tuted an impenetrable barrier until a pa.s.sage was hewn through it with a machete. Under foot was a yielding mora.s.s which threatened to absorb them. Overhead were countless chigoes, garapatas and fire-ants which infested the body or buried themselves in the flesh. Or there were clouds of mosquitoes which gave no rest day or night. And worst of all was the ever-present danger of fever and dysentery, not to speak of the dread diseases so common in certain sections of the equatorial regions. It was then that Mme. Coudreau had to act the part of a physician, as well as of a leader, even though she was at the time such a sufferer herself that she was barely able to stand.

To make matters still more difficult for Mme. Coudreau, her employees at times, especially when under the influence of liquor which they contrived to obtain some way or other, became mutinous and refused to accompany her to the end of her journey. At other times the expedition was halted by their fear of wild beasts or savage Indians, or by imaginary evils of many kinds, suggested to them by their superst.i.tious minds. On such occasions Mme. Coudreau never failed to show herself a born leader of men, for she invariably--alone as she was with a crew who were often half savages--was successful in suppressing incipient rebellion and in restoring obedience and order.[177]

Continually confronted, as she was, by such trials and difficulties, privations and dangers, one would imagine that the delicately reared Frenchwoman would have sought immediate release from an engagement that necessitated so much exposure and suffering and sought surcease of sorrow in the distractions and gaieties of pleasure-loving Paris.

Nothing, however, was farther from her thoughts. Intrepid and resourceful, she feared no danger and hesitated before no difficulty, however great. As an explorer she was as venturesome as Crevaux and as conscientious as La Condamine. Like them, who were both her countrymen, she spent many years of her life in the equinoctial regions, and, like them, she contributed immensely to our knowledge of the Land of the Southern Cross.

Never did the tropics have a greater fascination for anyone than for Mme. Coudreau. During the twelve years she spent there, exploring its rivers and traversing its interminable forests, the spell of Amazonia was ever upon her and was never broken, even for a moment.

"I have," she writes, "loved everything in Amazonia, the great majestic woodland and the mysterious virgin forest, the beautiful rivers with their traitorous waters and thundering cataracts, the suffocating air and the perfumed breeze, the burning sun and the sweet freshness of night, the impressive voice of the wind among the trees and the torrential rain. And, contrary to the usual custom of man of bringing everything under his domination, it is I who have become a captive of this savage life which I love, and have permitted it to take possession of all my soul and all my will."[178]

Elsewhere she declares: "In the solitude of the virgin forest I am calm, tranquil, experience no ennui and am almost merry. When I am obliged to leave the great woodland the power to struggle grows less in me. I become of an excessive sensibility. I feel more keenly life's blows. I am not armed for elbowing my way and making a place for myself in the sunshine. I neither love nor understand anything except my virgin forest. There, indeed, I suffer from the inclemency of the weather, from hunger, from sickness; but these are only physical sufferings and are soon forgotten, while moral and interior pains, on the contrary, are ineradicable."[179]

And still again she tells us: "The solitude of the virgin forest has become a necessity for me; it attracts me by its mysterious silence, and only in the great woods have I the impression of being at home."[180]

Can we wonder that such an ardent lover of Nature and such a strenuous votary of science was able to forget herself in her work and was able, notwithstanding her toils and her sufferings, to produce six quarto volumes of reports, in as many years, on the unexplored regions which she had so carefully surveyed and charted? Can we be surprised that her labors received due recognition from learned societies in both the New and the Old World, and that she was acclaimed as an explorer who had rendered distinct service to the cause of natural science, as well as to geography?[181]

When we recall the labors of this lone daughter of France in the wilds of the tropics, with no one to communicate with except her half-civilized servants and boatmen, we instinctively hark back to days not long past and estimate the enormous progress women have made in social and intellectual freedom within but a few decades.

Owing to the policy of repression which so long prevailed regarding the intellectual efforts of women, and the social obstacles which prevented them from publicly acknowledging the offspring of their genius, women like the Bronte sisters, George Sand and George Eliot were compelled to conceal their ident.i.ty under male designations. Because it was considered immodest for a woman to appear before the public as an author, Lady Nairne, after Burns, the most popular song writer in Scotland, felt obliged to keep secret the authorship of her beautiful poems.