RECREATION.

By JAMES PAGET.

There are some rules regarding active recreations which it is well for all to observe: for all, at least, who must work, or who wish to work as well as play.

First, recreations should not only be compatible with the business or duty of life, but absolutely and far subordinate; and this, not only in kind, but in number and quantity. Their utility, and, sometimes, even their only justification is that they may increase the power and readiness for work; beyond this they should not be allowed to pass.

Then, they should chiefly exercise the powers which are least used in the work; and this, not only for pleasure but for utility. For there are few daily occupations which provide sufficient opportunities for the training of all the powers and dispositions which may be usefully employed in them and of which the full use, though not necessary for an average fitness, may be essential to excellence in the business of life. They, therefore, that work chiefly with their minds, should refresh themselves chiefly with the exercise of their muscles; manual workers should rather rest and have some study, or practice some gentle art, or strive to invent; or, for one more example, they whose days are spent in money speculations and excitement had better try to be happy in passionless thinking, in listening to sweet sounds, in quiet reading, and so on.

It adds to the utility of every recreation if its events can be often thought of with pleasure; so that the mind may be sometimes occupied with them not only in careful thinking, but in those gaps or casual intervals of time in which, both during and after work, it is apt to wander uselessly. Especially is this true of mental recreations; they may thus prolong their happiness and their utility from day to day or year to year; as often as they are remembered the mind may be refreshed far more than it is in the mere vacancy of thought. And there may be as much refreshment in looking forward; as, for example, in planning a good holiday, or at the best, in trying, by the light of either faith or science, to anticipate the final decision of the doubts which now beset us, or the wonders that will be revealed, or the new powers that will be exercised in the far distant future.

It is an excellence in recreations if they lead us to occupy ourselves in pursuits which give opportunities of gaining honest repute and personal success. Competition is good in all virtuous pleasures as well as in all work; the habit of being in earnest and of doing one’s best may be strengthened in recreations, and then employed in its still better use in work.

And in agreement with this it is a great addition to the happiness and utility of a recreation if it enables us to do or to acquire something which we may call our own. In this is a part of the advantage which any one may find in giving part of his spare time to some study, some branch of art, some invention or research which may be recognized, at least among his friends as being, in some sense, his own. The study itself must be the first and chief refreshment, but its pleasure is enhanced if with the knowledge or the skill which it attains there is mingled some consciousness of personal property.

Similarly, and for a like reason, the happiness of a recreation is increased if it leads us to collect anything; books, sketches, shells, autographs, or whatever may be associated with the studies or the active exercises of spare times or even with those of business. I think that none who have not tried it can imagine how great is the refreshment of collecting and of thinking, at odd moments, of one’s specimens and arranging and displaying them. There are few good recreations, few daily occupations with which something of the kind may not be usefully mingled.

Cricket matches, rowing matches, foot ball, and the like, are admirable in all the chief constituent qualities of recreations; but besides this, they may exercise a moral influence of great value in business or in any daily work. For without any inducement of a common interest in money, without any low motive, they bring boys and men to work together; they teach them to be colleagues in good causes with all who will work fairly and well with them. They teach that power of working with others which is among the best powers for success in every condition of life. And by custom, if not of their very nature, they teach fairness; foul play in any of them, however sharp may be the competition, is by consent of all, disgraceful; and they who have a habit of playing fair will be the more ready to deal fair. A high standard of honesty in their recreations will help to make people despise many things which are far within the limits of the law.

And, for one more general rule, it is an excellent quality in recreations if they will continue good even in old age. I think the experience of men would confirm this by the instances they see of unhappy rich old men who have retired from business and have no habitual recreations. None seem so unhappy as do some of these.

They used to enjoy the excitement of uncertainty in their business; now, everything is safe and dull; then, mere rest after fatigue was happiness; now, there is no fatigue, but there is restlessness in monotony; they used to delight in the exercise of skill and in the counting of its gains; now, the only thing in which they had any skill is gone; they have no work to do, and they do not know how either to play or to rest.

It is well, therefore, that all should prepare for the decline of power in recreations, as well as in much graver things. There are many that do not lose their charm or their utility as we grow older. One is in the refreshment of collections; for there are many whose value constantly increases as they become older, and with all of them the pleasure is enhanced the further we can look back in the memory of the events associated with each specimen, and can recollect the difficulty of obtaining it, and the joy of first possession. Or, there may be a change of active recreations; the elderly cricketer may take to golf and become sure that it is in every way the better of the two; the old hunting man may ride to cover more cautiously. Or, with less activity, there may be the happiness of reading or meditation, of music, or any of the fine arts; these, if they have been prudently cultivated, do not become wearisome in old age. If these and other like things fail, it may be a sign that it is time to leave off work; but so long as a man can work, so long will he be right if he will spend some of his leisure times, wisely and actively, in recreations; they may make him both more fit to do his work, and, at the last, more fit to leave it.—The Nineteenth Century.

LUTHER.

By Mrs. S. R. GRAHAM CLARK.

ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

IV.—THE MATHEMATICAL FAILURE.

We do not often hear those who declare that “education does not educate,” trying to account for the failure charged against existing school systems. Are the alleged defects to be found in the unfit nature of the things studied, or in methods of study, or both? One of the chief exercises—indeed the chief, in common schools—depended upon for mental development is numbers. Is the study of arithmetic worthy the place it holds in that regard? Does it do more than to cultivate a special faculty? Is that faculty one of the most important in the human mind? Is it related intimately to understanding, and does its culture imply a stimulation of the reasoning powers?

Answers to these questions would doubtless be colored by the mental characteristics or experience of the individual answering. To some minds mathematics is a general stimulant; to others only a useful tool; to still others, a stumbling block and an offense. Some one has declared that while all specialties followed exclusively, are narrowing in their influence on the mind, the two specialties which lead straightest toward imbecility are music and mathematics. This was probably the conclusion of a mind which could not master the extraction of the cube root, and did not know “Yankee Doodle” from “Old Hundred.” Oliver Goldsmith said “Mathematics is a study to which the meanest intellect is competent.” He remembered many floggings because of the multiplication table, and hardly had patience to count change for a sovereign. If we appeal to first-rate examples of achievement in music and mathematics—say to a Mozart and a Newton—we shall find well-balanced minds; but on the other hand we may be confounded by finding prodigies in these lines who possess mean intellects otherwise. Blind Tom and Zerah Colburn are illustrations. Zerah Colburn had mathematics in “the natural way.” His parents in Vermont were poor and ignorant; the father appears to have been both selfish and stupid, but the mother was rather a shrewd Yankee woman. If there was any special gift in the family it was for hard work and sharp trading—rather commonplace gifts in New England. Out of this unpromising stock came Zerah in 1804. One day, when he was six years old, he flashed out a mathematical meteor, a revelation. His father overheard him reciting in his play the multiplication table, having never learned it. Examination showed that he knew it all and more too; was, in fact, himself a walking, frisking multiplication table. He answered instantly the product of 13×97—1261. The gift seemed to have descended on him then and there miraculously; the fact probably was that it had always been there, but he had been too dull to exercise it until the whim struck the little animal.

The event created a sensation, which, inside of a year, was felt both in America and Europe. The popular wonder with which the child’s performance was received very speedily turned the head of his stupidly cunning father; he dropped his farm tools and rejecting all the offers of wealthy gentlemen to give the boy a complete education, set out to exhibit the prodigy through the land as a show. Thereafter, so long as both lived, the father was the evil genius of the son.

At the outset of their wanderings, President Wheelock, of Dartmouth College, offered to take the child and give him a thorough education, but the father declined the offer, not including even a honorarium for himself. In Boston a committee of wealthy gentlemen, headed by Josiah Quincy, offered to raise $5,000, one-half to be given to the father, the other moiety to be devoted to Zerah’s education, under their direction. The father acceded to this, but for some reason, when the contract of indenture was drawn, it was different in the important particular that the father and son were to be permitted to exhibit the lad publicly until the proceeds should amount to $5,000, when the sum was to be apportioned as before stipulated. This arrangement the father very properly rejected, and the negotiations failed. Wrong versions of this affair were published, imputing to the father the rejection of the genuine benefaction first proposed. That these reports injured him and their success thereafter wherever they went, the son always asseverated.

They now went on “a starring tour” through the country, meeting with varied success, and in the early spring of 1811 returned to Vermont with about $600 as the proceeds thereof. The elder Colburn gave $500 of this to the mother, which, for the next twelve years, was all he contributed to the family support—the family then consisting of six children under fourteen years of age.

From the first Zerah’s performance was confounding to all spectators. Mathematically, nothing seemed impossible to this child of six years. Being asked, “What is the number of seconds in 2,000 years?” he readily and accurately answered 63,072,000,000. Again, “What is the square of 1,449,” he answered, 2,099,601. More intricate calculations based on concrete facts, were equally easy, as “Suppose I have a corn-field in which are seven acres, having seventeen rows to each acre, sixty-four hills to each row, eight ears on a hill, and one hundred and fifty kernels on each ear, how many kernels in the corn-field?” The answer, 9,139,200 kernels, came readily. Asked what sum multiplied by itself will produce 998,001, he replied in four seconds, 999; and in twenty seconds produced the correct answer to “How many days and hours have lapsed since the Christian era began?” viz.: 661,015 days, 15,864,360 hours. He gave the answer to this: What is the square of 999,999×49×25; the answer requires seventeen figures to express it. Being asked what are the factors of 247,483 he made this reply: “941 and 263, and these are the only factors.” How could he know that?

These operations seemed the automatic action of mental power allied to instinct rather than to reason. The child had had absolutely no education in numbers and could neither read nor write; he would scarcely interrupt his infantile play to make his calculations. It was not till the spring of 1811 that he learned the names and the powers of the nine digits when written, and this he learned from a stranger who seemed to take this much more interest in his education than his father had ever taken. He was at this time a bright, playful, healthy boy. He answered mere puzzling questions with more than the ordinary shrewdness of his age, as, “Which is the greater, six dozen dozen or half a dozen dozen?” “Which is greater, twice twenty-five or twice five-and-twenty?” “How many black beans make six white ones?” He answered quickly, “Six—if you skin ’em.” During his calculations he would twist and contort like one in St. Vitus’ dance. If asked, as he often was, his method of calculation, he would cry at the annoyance of attempting to explain.

In April, 1811, father and son went to England, the child then being six and a half years old. The father tried (in vain, of course) to induce his wife to put their five little ones out in care of the neighbors and go abroad with him! Then, as at all other times, she seems to have monopolized the wit of the family. The same one-sidedness may have been detected in other families, for aught I know to the contrary.

In England he at first created a marked sensation. His receptions were attended by wondering multitudes, among them being members of the nobility and royal family and distinguished scientists and literati. Among his achievements at this time was to multiply the number eight by itself up to the sixteenth power, giving the inconceivable result, 281,474,976,710,656. He extracted the square and cube roots of large numbers by a flash of his genius. It had been laid down by mathematicians that no rule existed for finding the factors of numbers, but at the age of nine Zerah made such a rule; it was nearly as difficult to understand as his performance, however. Under this formula he gave the factors of 171,395, viz.: 5×34279; 7×22485; 59×2905; 83×2065; 35×4897; 295×581; 413×415. “It had been asserted,” he says, “by a French mathematician that 4294967297 is a prime number; but the celebrated Euler detected the error by discovering that it is equal to 641×6,700,417. The same number was proposed to this child, who found out the factors by the mere operation of his mind.”

The father was now happy. He was in the enjoyment of means and distinction through his child, all of which, with the usual conceit of a father, he arrogated to himself as the due reward of merit for having been the prodigious progenitor of so remarkable a child. Various money-making enterprises were started in connection with the “show,” from which others seemed to derive as much benefit as the father. Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphrey Davy (inventor of the safety lamp) and Basil Montague became a committee to superintend the publication of a book about the child; but though several hundred subscribers were obtained, many of whom paid in advance, the work was never published. A meeting of distinguished gentlemen was held to devise a scheme for his special education, which should develop his genius into a prodigy of matured intellectual powers, such as the world had never conceived. But all these plans were defeated by two circumstances—the boy’s general incapacity and the father’s special rapacity.

The “show business” seemed to be the elder Colburn’s forté and he took the boy on exhibition to Scotland and Ireland, and finally to Paris (1814). Here, too, the extraordinary interest in his extraordinary faculty resulted in a project for his proper education—La Place, the author of “Méchanique Celeste,” and Guizot, the historian, being conspicuous in his interest. It resulted in his being given a scholarship in the Lyceum by order of Napoleon, just then back from Elba on his little excursion to re-resubjugate the world; this intervention in behalf of the boy being one creditable act of his brief restoration, at least. The lad showed his gratitude to his imperial patron by ardently assisting in the entrenchments thrown up to resist the attack of the allied armies on Paris after the defeat at Waterloo.

The London admirers, spurred by pique at the French interest in and control of the boy, and by the father’s importunities, set about raising a purse to bring Zerah back and educate him in England. In furtherance of the enterprise, the father took his boy from the Lyceum and brought him to London in February, 1816. But this scheme fell through, owing, it is charged, to dissatisfaction with the father’s demand of a large endowment to himself as well as for the child; and soon both were living in poverty, unheeded and deserted.

In a fortunate moment the Earl of Bristol interested himself in young Colburn and made a provision of $620 a year for his education at Westminster school, where he was regularly entered, being then a few days over twelve years old. Here he spent two years and nine months. Though he made creditable progress in languages he disappointed those who had built expectations on his peculiar powers, by revolting against higher mathematics. It was found, in fact, that his special faculty was less susceptible of discipline than is the ordinary mathematical power of other youth.

But, I am gratified to state, the young Yankee made a stubborn resistance to the British form of white slavery in the school known as “fagging;” and what with his own obstinacy and the old man’s constant harassing the school authorities with remonstrances, the rule was suspended in the case of Zerah—probably the first and last case of such an alarming innovation on good old brutal British customs. Having won this emancipation the old father submitted with equanimity to being hooted off the “campus” with cries of “Yankee.”

But the elder Colburn next quarreled with his generous patron, and took the boy from school. We may venture to doubt if this was after all a great privation to the lad. The curriculum of Westminster school the first four years consisted of Latin and fagging; the next four years of Greek and fagging. They had made it elective in Zerah’s case to the extent of omitting the fagging, taking away the live part of the curriculum and leaving him only the dead. Zerah himself tells us that the same time which was thus spent in linguistic body-snatching if spent in the French seminary would have afforded an excellent general education. This fatuity regarding dead languages has been since well maintained in English high schools and colleges, and, what is more remarkable, has been pretty faithfully imitated in higher institutions in America.

Thrown on their own resources again, they found the novelty of Zerah’s performance had worn off, and he did not “draw.” The father now conceived the brilliant plan of making an actor of the boy. After four months’ training by Kemble, he appeared on the stage at Margate, with a little success; went with strolling companies through England and Ireland during four months more, and then returned to London and ended the histrionic career. Next Zerah was prompted by the fond father to attempt play-writing, but as he says himself, his compositions “never had any merit or any success”—though this is substantially his opinion of all his own efforts through life.[B] Extreme poverty followed, almost the only means of subsistence being genteel begging from former friends. The last and kindest of these was at length worn out, and directed his footman to slam the door in the poor boy’s face when he presented himself on some alleged errand from his father.

Zerah in his autobiography, subsequently written, speaks of these dark days with sorrow, but without one word of complaint of his father; indeed, the memoir seems to have been written more for the purpose of vindicating the father’s name than to do himself justice. He constantly laments that the mysterious faculty had been given him, and attributes to it and to his own general incapacity, all the misfortunes and sufferings of his father and himself. He called his gift “a peculiarly painful circumstance which destroyed all pleasing anticipations, blasted every prospect of social happiness, and after years of absence consigned the husband and father to a stranger’s grave.” Poor boy! He must have suffered more than he confesses. He hints at their want, his disgust with asking charity, the alienation of friends, and, above all his afflictions, he chafes at his idleness; and he naively sums up the whole experience as one of “comparative unhappiness!” How did Dickens ever miss these unique studies from real life?

A situation as usher in a school was now obtained for young Zerah (ætat 17) and he soon after set up a school on his own account. This was probably the first legitimate money he ever earned, and he mentions the chance, poor as it was, with more satisfaction than he does any of the achievements of his genius. It was far better than depending on patronage—which seems to have galled his pride. Before anything could come of school teaching, however, the father and son went off to other cities on a begging expedition. The usual humiliation and misery followed the undertaking, and they returned to London, where the young man reopened his school. Here, in 1824, his father died of consumption brought on by want and anxiety. One of Zerah’s biographers has said of the father: “Unhappily he had from the first discovery of his son’s extraordinary gifts, worked upon them with mercenary feelings, as a source of revenue. It is true he had a father’s love for his child, and in this respect Zerah, in the simple memoir of his own life, does his parent more than justice; but still it was this short-sighted selfishness which made him convert his child’s endowments into a curse to him, to his friends, and to Zerah himself. His expectations had been lifted to such a pitch that nothing could satisfy them. The most generous offers fell short of what he felt to be his due; liberality was turned in his mind to parsimony, and even his friends were regarded as little short of enemies. Such a struggle could not always last. His mind was torn with thoughts of his home and family, neglected for twelve years; of his life wasted, his prospects defeated; of fond dreams ending at last in failure, shame, and poverty.”

After the death of his father, Zerah’s course of life was not less vacillating and unsuccessful, however, so it seems that his failures were not altogether due to his father’s bad counsels. He remained a while in London, making astronomical calculations and doing other mathematical work, as chance offered it. Aided by his old benefactor, Lord Bristol, he at last set out to seek his mother and family. She had done better alone. “During the long absence of her husband, with a family of eight children, and almost entirely destitute of property, she had sustained the burthen with indomitable energy. She wrought with her own hands in house and field; bargained away the little farm for a better one; and as her son says, ‘by a course of persevering industry, hard fare and trials such as few women are accustomed to, she has hitherto succeeded in supporting herself, beside doing a good deal for her children.’” Lucky for the family that one of them was not a genius. Mathematics, however, seems to be a form of monomania from which her sex is generally exempt. In fact, in the long list of eccentric Americans from which I can choose subjects for this series of sketches, I fear there is not to be one eccentric woman. This can be taken as complimentary to the sex or not, according as the reader regards eccentricity.

Our arithmetical prodigy, now twenty years old, went to teaching a country school for a living, and at last fetched up in that other safe retreat of preaching the gospel. He followed this vocation with more persistence and credit than he had brought to any other of his numerous professions, though on his own modest representation he was not much of a preacher. His last venture was to become professor of—not mathematics—but languages in the “Vermont University” at Norwich. In this situation his life terminated, March 2, 1840. He plaintively, but in a somewhat pedantic style, sums up his career as follows:

“Perhaps it has fallen to the lot of very few, if any individuals, while attracting curiosity and notice, to receive at the same time so many flattering marks of kindness, and it is not unfrequently a sorrowful reflection to him that after all the sympathy and benevolence shown by the liberal and scientific, certain unforeseen and unfortunate causes have prevented and still prevent his reaching and sustaining that distinguished place in the mathematical literature of the age to which, on account of the singular gift bestowed on him, he seemed to be destined. Now, after possessing that talent twenty-two years, he feels unable to account for its donation, and is unaware of its object.”

Some facts regarding this singular gift may furnish suggestions to those who think upon educational matters.

1. His peculiar faculty was arithmetical, not generally mathematical. He had little or no taste for higher mathematics: those which, like geometry and surveying, appeal to the perceptions, those which, like algebra, appeal to the imagination, and those which, like pure mathematics, appeal to the analytical reasoning powers, he disliked. His gift was natural, rudimentary and unreasoning, and as he reached adult life it passed from him, either because he outgrew it or lost it by over-use or disuse. Constant and long continued practice in mental calculation brought the possessor of this special mathematical gift, as he says, neither intellectual growth nor better capacity for mental application. In fact, the more he used it the stupider he grew.

May we infer from this that arithmetic is a primitive, rudimentary and low branch of mathematics, having little or no relation to the perceptions of childhood, the imagination of youth and the reasoning powers of the matured mind, and hence of little or no value for the purpose of mental exercise and stimulation?

2. His whole process was that of multiplication, and its inversion (division). He seems not to have practiced addition, which is in reality the rudiments of multiplication, or its converse, subtraction, which is only the long process of division. In the multiplication of large numbers, which so astounded people, he performed mentally several operations to get the result.

May we infer from this analysis—arithmetic being assumed to be the most unintellectual form of mathematics—that multiplication is the least valuable part of arithmetic?

If psychologists should grant these inferences to be sound, it remains the duty of teachers to address themselves to improving the teaching of the multiplication table, as the weak spot in all our primary education in numbers. Something can be done, perhaps, to idealize the multiplication table, and to make instruction in it concrete, objective, rational. Can not a child be shown why or how six times seven make forty-two? If arithmetic is so abstract, arbitrary and barren of ideas that this can not be done, were it not better to cease compelling the miniature mind to repeat year after year such stale and silly truisms as, “twice two are four,” etc., under the absurd expectation that some prodigious mental outburst must result from it in some mysterious manner? Why not substitute for this endless repetition “Eiry eiry, ickery Ann, fillisy follisy, Nicholas John,” to accomplish the same result?

Some good teachers, here and there, are working on the problem of how to make arithmetic educational as well as useful. A person who has lively recollections of days and weeks and months wasted on the dead-lift of memorizing the multiplication table, as an achievement by the side of which all subsequent labors of life were easy, will find comfort in the perfect uselessness of Colburn’s wonderful genius for multiplication without effort.

But it was a wonderful faculty. What if a man were born with all his faculties expanded to the same degree! Shall education and inherited progress yet produce minds as nearly infinite in every power as Zerah Colburn’s was in one? Is there, is there an educational method which can take the shackles off all the faculties?

If not, may there be somewhere a life in which the mind, let out of the strait earthly house of its tabernacle and freed from the sore limitations of physical nature may reach that acme in all its functions? Some of the operations of mind in a condition of suspended physical existence seem to suggest this as a probability for even common-place natures, as occasionally do such splendid exhibitions of a single faculty in so weak a nature as Zerah Colburn’s.

ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS FOR FEBRUARY.

By Prof. M. B. GOFF.

THE SUN,

As is evidenced by the continually lengthening days, is making its way northward. On the first it rises at 7:10 and sets at 5:18; on the 15th, rises at 6:54 and sets at 5:34; and on the 29th, rises at 6:35 and sets at 5:51, giving from the 1st to the 29th of the month an increase of one hour and eight minutes. The sun is “slow” during the entire month; that is, it does not reach the meridian until after noon; for example, on the 1st, when the sun is on the meridian, a good time-piece says it is about fourteen minutes after noon. On the 1st, day breaks at 5:32, and evening twilight ends at 6:56.

THE MOON.

On the 4th, at 12:49 a. m., the moon enters her first quarter; on the 10th, at 11:40 p. m., is full; on the 18th, at 10:04 p. m., enters her last quarter; and on the 26th, at 1:27, is again new. On the 1st, 15th and 29th respectively, she reaches the meridian at 3:55 p. m., 3:14 a. m., and 2:41 p. m. She is nearest to the earth at 3:54 on the evening of the 4th, and most distant at twelve minutes after three on the morning of the 18th. She reaches her greatest elevation, 67° 31′ latitude 41° 30′, on the 6th.

MERCURY.

Only early risers need expect to see Mercury this month, as he is a morning star, rising as follows: On the 1st at 5:54 a. m.; on the 13th, on which day also he reaches his greatest western elongation (26° 12′), at 5:41 a. m., or about 76 minutes before sunrise, and on the 29th at 5:49 a. m. On the 26th, at 7:00 a. m., he is farthest from the sun. His diameter diminishes from 8.4″ on the 1st to 5.6″ on the 29th.

VENUS,

As intimated last month, continues to be an evening star, making every evening an increasingly handsome display in the western heavens, her diameter growing from 12.8″ on the 1st to 14.6″ on the 29th. Her motion, which is from west to east, amounts during the month to 31° 51′ 37″ of arc. Her time of setting, on the 1st, 15th and 29th, is as follows: 7:54, 8:26 and 8:57 p. m., respectively. On the 29th, at 10:07 a. m., she will be in conjunction with, and 32′ south of the moon.

MARS

Will present nothing particularly new. His retrograde motion still continuing, he will rise earlier each evening, and, of course, set earlier the following morning. Thus, on the 1st, he rises at 4:51 p. m.; on the 15th, at 3:35 p. m.; and on the 29th, at 2:23 p. m. He sets on the mornings immediately following these dates at 7:29, 6:23 and 5:15; or, on the first date about twenty minutes after, and on the latter date about one hour and twenty minutes before sunrise; during the month taking his place as an evening star. His motion amounts to 9° 7′ 11″ of arc, and as he is going farther from the earth, his diameter grows smaller, being 15″ on the first, and only 13.2″ on the last of the month. On the 10th, at 4:40 a. m., he is 9° 43′ north of the moon, and a little east of the nebula Præsepe in Cancer.

JUPITER

Will be evening star throughout the month, and continue his retrograde motion from a point about twenty minutes west of Præsepe on the 1st, to 7 hours 48 minutes 35 seconds right ascension on the 29th. He will rise on the 1st at 3:56; on the 15th at 2:53; and on the 29th at 1:52 p. m., and will set on the 2d at 6:30; on the 16th at 5:29; and on March 1st at 4:30 a. m. On the 9th, at 5:39 a. m., he will be 5° 45′ north of the moon. Of the four satellites, or moons, revolving around Jupiter, three are so near as to be eclipsed by him at each revolution. Roemer, a Danish astronomer, observed, however, that when the earth and Jupiter were on opposite sides of the sun, these eclipses occurred, as he estimated, about twenty-two minutes later than the time predicted by the tables. As the earth in this position was some one hundred and eighty-six millions of miles farther away from Jupiter than when Jupiter and the earth were on the same side of the sun, the discovery was made that the discrepancy in time was occasioned by the fact that light must have time to travel; and later and more accurate investigations afford us the truth that it takes light sixteen minutes and forty seconds to cross the earth’s orbit, or eight minutes and twenty seconds to come from the sun to the earth; and hence, that it travels about 180,000 miles per second. These eclipses occur frequently every month, and can be observed with telescopes of quite moderate power.

SATURN.

This planet will be evening star throughout the month, setting as follows: On the 2d, at 2:28 a. m.; on the 16th, at 1:33 a. m.; and on the 29th, at 12:41 a. m. Its direct motion amounts to 41′ 32.1″ of arc. On the 3d, at 9 a. m., it is stationary. On the 5th, at 7:34 a. m., 1° 18′ north of the moon. On the 22d, at noon, it is “quartile,” being 90° east of the sun. It can be found near the Hyades, a little north, at any time this month. Its diameter decreases from 18″ on the 1st, to 17.2″ on the 29th.

URANUS

Makes a retrograde motion of 55′ 47.1″, and retains the same diameter, namely, 3.8″. It will be morning star, rising however, early enough to be viewed in the evening. For example, on the 1st, at 9:00 p. m.; on the 15th, at 8:02 p. m.; and on the 29th, at 7:04 p. m. It will set as follows: On the 2d, at 9:10 a. m.; on the 16th, at 8:14 a. m.; and on the 29th, at 7:18 a. m. On the 13th, at 7:44 p. m., it will be 3° 18′ north of the moon. On the 29th can be found nearly on a line between Beta and Eta in the constellation Virgo, and from Beta about one-third of the distance between these two stars.

NEPTUNE

Will be evening star during the month, rising on the 1st at 11:24 in the forenoon, and setting next morning at 1:14; on the 15th, rising at 10:29 a. m., and setting on the 16th at 12:19 a. m.; and on the 29th, rising at 9:35 a. m., and setting at 11:25 the same evening. Its diameter is 2.6″. Motion direct, amounting to 16′ 56″ of arc. On the 4th, at 6:33 a. m., is 11′ north of the moon; and on the 7th, at 9 a. m., is 90° east of the sun. Rises about forty-eight minutes earlier than Saturn.

Whoever wishes to perform something noble, if he would produce some great work, collects quietly and perseveringly the mightiest powers into the smallest space.—Schiller.

THE SEA AS AN AQUARIUM.

A lecture delivered at the Monterey Assembly, Pacific Grove Retreat, California, 1883.

By C. C. ANDERSON, M.D.

I.

It is said of Milton that in two short lines of poetry he made four mistakes in Natural History. He said of a whale:

Now, in the first place, the whale has no gills; second, he takes in air instead of water; third, he throws out expired air; fourth, the water “spouted” is thrown up by the force of expiration, not out of the animal’s body, but water that may lie between the “blow-hole” and the surface of the sea.

I am not so sure but Milton made more than four mistakes in these lines. For whoever starts out on a wrong premise will follow a line of mistakes continually. Nevertheless, mistakes attentively observed may be profitable. We learn by mistakes. Unsuccessful experiments are mistakes of a kind—something wrong in the formula. The first aquarium I tried to start I made more mistakes than Milton made in his two lines. I made mistakes the second trial, and the third, and a dozen more times. And when I have succeeded in some instances, it was by accident, and to-day I can not tell why I sometimes failed, or why I sometimes succeeded. I have the consolation, however, of company in this respect. One of the most successful managers of aquaria says that he would give very much if he knew how to grow some of the higher marine algæ as one grows plants in a garden. Occasionally he has succeeded, but he confesses it was not by skill, but by chance.

I propose, therefore, that for a little while we consider the sea as an aquarium—a place adapted to the growth of animals and plants. Our subject is somewhat large, I must confess, but if we can see and understand how these things live and grow in the ocean we must be able to grow them in our parks, and possibly in our houses. For what Nature does on a grand scale may also be done in a small way; and principles that govern the successful growth of plants and animals in a bottle of sea water must be the same that govern the fauna and flora of the Pacific Ocean.

In order then to study and understand these things it will not be entirely necessary to make a trip to the equator, to the poles, or to travel around the world.

It has been a favorite theory with Henry D. Thoreau and John Burroughs, those genial and poetical lovers and observers of nature, that we need not rove all over the earth, as is the custom of many, to see this curiosity or that, or to observe nature in her secret recesses, but that we only have to sit down in the woods or by the sea-shore, and everything of interest will come round to us. The little town of Concord was a whole world in miniature to Thoreau. Everything worth finding could be found there. And so to John Burroughs, is the juniper forest of the Hudson, a show case, with the whole world inside. “Nature,” he says, “comes home to one most when he is at home; the stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and a traveler also.”

I think we may infer from this theory of our charming philosophers rather a poetical interpretation. They would urge a careful observation and study of phenomena in and near the places where we live, rather than gadding up and down the earth in search of novelties. If we familiarize ourselves with every day common objects and events of plants, animals, and other operations in nature, we shall then always be at home when nature calls, whether on one side or the other of the world.

I have heard of a good old lady who, when nearing the end of her earthly existence, said she did not mind the dying if she could only breathe. Now this goodly person had doubtless spent all the years of her life without observing the fact that every plant or animal however small or simple in structure must have, if nothing else, the organs for breathing, and when that function is suspended or destroyed, life ceases. The respiratory organs may be reduced to a single cell, wall, or membrane. The forms of these organs, however, are exceedingly variable, elaborate, and sometimes complicated.

In the sea, plants and animals have a compensatory relation to each other. The plant exhales oxygen and the animal exhales carbon. That is to say, the carbonic acid which is mixed mechanically with the water coming in contact with the cell, wall, or membrane, covering the plant, the atom of carbon is appropriated, freeing the two atoms of oxygen, which in turn are appropriated by the animal.

Not only is this process of breathing compensatory and reciprocative—an interchange of commodities—the plant giving two atoms of oxygen for one of carbon, and the animal bringing its single but equally valuable atom of carbon for two atoms of oxygen, but without this interchange, neither could plant or animal live, and our world of life would become as dead as the moon is supposed to be.

The process of breathing is so common that we seldom think about it, unless there is an interference in some way. Each one of us sitting quietly in this room would breathe about 1000 times in an hour, requiring over 100 gallons of air to sustain the proper supply of oxygen for the blood. During this time we have taken from the air a certain amount of oxygen and have returned to it an equal amount of something else, which we call carbon oxide, or carbonic acid gas. The oxygen has burned the effete material which is cast out of the blood in the process of breathing, and it is returned to the atmosphere as a kind of coal. The fundamental principle is the same in animals that breathe water as those that breathe air, only the apparatus is different. Animals that breathe water have a fine capillary network of blood-vessels spread out on gills, branchia or projections arranged so that the water shall pass rapidly over them, and thus the carbon is carried away and the oxygen taken into the circulation.

Animals that breathe air through lungs have little air cells, so very small that a human lung is said to contain 600 millions of them; and these lie in contact with the capillary circulation of the lung which receives the oxygen and gives out the carbon. Some air-breathers have no lungs, but merely spiracles or minute holes in the body through which the air enters, coming in contact with the circulation.

In all cases, whatever the form, size, or character of the animal the object is to bring the air in contact with the circulation that oxygen may be received in exchange for the burnt material—the carbon oxide—which, when once formed, is poisonous, and must be expelled from the animal.

Now if we look over the earth we shall find immense deposits of coal. Here in the United States we have nearly 200,000 square miles of coal deposits. In other countries there is a like proportion of these carbon deposits, such as petroleum, bitumen, and paraffine. Then there are great forests and other vegetable growth. These have stored up the carbon set free by the animal, and have kept the air comparatively free from carbonic acid gas, which but for the vegetables would in a little while have rendered our atmosphere unfit for animal use. What is true of the air in this respect is also true of the sea.

Thus it comes about that by the process of breathing, principally, we have the immense coal fields, the wide spread forests, and the herbage that covers almost the entire globe. For in the air and the water there exist the germs of animal and vegetable life so profusely, so universally, that the proper conditions of heat and light will develop contemporaneously, both the organic kingdoms. If we should take ten drops of water from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, near the surface, and add them to a small tube, say two ounces, of water that had been deprived of life by boiling, and kept sealed for a number of years, and place the tube in favorable conditions, we should in a few days see a little universe spring, as it were, into existence. There might not be a great variety of forms, but who can say that there might not be enough to populate or re-populate some world just entering into the conditions of such life as our earth contains, or some other world that had suffered a reverse, or cataclysm, by which all life was destroyed.

Mr. Lloyd, Superintendent of the Birmingham Aquarium, says he kept for eight years a bottle of sea water, well corked and covered with paper, and that when he opened it the water was perfectly clear, free from smell, and of the same appearance as when taken from the sea. But when exposed for eight days to light in a window an abundance of microscopic plants and animals began to grow, and soon covered the sides of the bottle, and darted about in the fluid.

Having occasion some ten months ago to use some sea-water, I brought to my house a demijohn full and placed it on the north side where the sun seldom shines, and where it is nearly always cool; although the temperature sometimes goes as high as 75° and 80° Fahrenheit in the afternoons. There was no particular effort to exclude light and air; the cork fitted loosely, and the wicker work was not unusually close. And yet, whenever I have examined this water it is clear and free from smell, and there are no plants or animals growing in it. But by exposure of a small quantity to the light and warmth of a window, these have rapidly developed. It is a fact, then, easily demonstrated in our own rooms and houses, that by excluding light from water and keeping it in a cool place we can arrest the growth of organisms. This is the case with springs. The microscope fails to discover germs in spring water until it has been exposed to the light for some time.

Acting on hints of this kind, Mr. Lloyd has constructed aquaria with two reservoirs—one in a dark, cool place, quite large—the other in a light and warm place, favorable to the growth of plants and animals. By means of pipes these two reservoirs are connected so that a circulation can be set up between the light and dark portions. A pump may be used to force the water from the dark reservoir into the other, using vulcanite or rubber of some kind for sea water, instead of such oxidizable metals as brass, tin, lead, etc. The most convenient temperature is about 60° Fahrenheit.

Thus, by exchanging the waters of these two reservoirs, as occasion requires, we shall be able to regulate an aquarium so as to keep many kinds of plants and animals in a healthy, growing condition.

The best aquaria are those where the water is never changed, but ever circulated in the manner I have indicated. Water that has once been made clear and good, and maintained plants and animals, is better than any water newly brought from the sea. It must be remembered that evaporation takes place from the surface of an aquarium more or less according to the heat and dryness of the air. At a temperature of 60° in an ordinary dry air, such as occurs some miles inland, the evaporation from a surface of water six inches square would be about three drops in twenty-four hours. Some very warm, dry days it would be two or three times that much. This waste must be made up by adding occasionally some distilled water.

An aquarium must be kept free of decaying matter. If once formed the sooner it is got rid of the better, for it will poison all creatures that come within its influence. The larger the dark reservoir the better. It can not be too large, but should be not less than four or five times larger than the reservoir in which the plants and animals are kept. Any dead matter then will quickly be burned at a low temperature—for oxygenation by means of the dark reservoir means no more nor less than the burning up of the effete and decaying particles thrown off by plants and animals.

It might be profitable for me to tell now how I didn’t succeed with the first aquarium I undertook.

It was a fine, large structure, capable of holding some twenty gallons. The sea water was procured, and at low tide a friend went with me to help carry an assortment of plants and animals. We had read a good deal about the compensatory properties of these two kingdoms; how the plants exhale oxygen and inhale carbon, and how the animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon, and thus preserve the equilibrium and the purity of the water. Well, we had good luck in searching tide-pools, and the turning over of rocks; and we returned loaded with snails, crabs, sea-anemones, sea-urchins, clams, abelones, date fish, real fish, sea worms (with beautiful red branchia), and sea weeds, an extensive variety of red, green and brown, only one or two of which would grow, as I have since learned, even in the most successful aquarium yet known. There are many other things that I have forgotten. We had rock-work and sand, and pebbles of beautiful colors, and a great many iridea, a rainbow-colored sea weed. We intended to imitate one of the beautiful tide-pools we had seen, and astonish our friends with a little bit of the sea, snatched up and transported to our quiet room, away from the fog and wind and chill of the ocean shore. We would willingly have brought the tide and some waves, if they could have been dwarfed to the dimensions of our tank. With these and a few other things we might have succeeded, and kept our aquarium as long as Robert Warrington kept his in London, with unchanged water, during a period of eighteen years.

But in eighteen hours our animals were all dead or dying; and although the plants were in proportion—that is, we had an equilibrium—they were almost equally in as bad a condition as the animals. First the water began to turn cloudy. We looked at our books for light, but they were equally obscure. Then we perceived a smell, somewhat like canned oysters, and this smell grew till it permeated the whole house. We suspected something wrong, so we emptied the aquarium, filtered the water, threw away the decaying matter, and put the things in again. But the “muddy vesture of decay” had covered the stones and entered the crevices, and in a few hours more we had to cast the contents away. The fact is, as I have learned since, we had a large number of bruised, broken and bleeding organisms from the handling in transfer, that the whole ocean’s waters could not save or heal, much less the little tank of twenty gallons. There were no waves to carry away the dead matter, no oxygen in the water to burn it, so it had to be breathed over and over again until the blood was poisoned and the animal died, because it could breathe such water no longer. And the plants began to fade and decay because their blood was also poisoned.

Now let us turn and consider for a moment Nature’s aquarium—the sea. It covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface, and it has been explored to the depth of eight miles at places, without finding bottom. The average depth, however, is about 2½ miles. All this immense mass of salt water is inhabited with a fauna and flora in a state of nature. That is, the hand of man has done nothing in the way of taming or cultivating them. They are absolutely wild, whilst a large part of the earth is subject to man’s dominion, and he was commanded to subdue it. The herbs and the trees of the field “shall be for meat,” and his “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,” pronounced at creation, is, as yet, but partially accomplished. The sea and the air remain as mysteries unsolved, and as powers unconquered. The cyclone and the tidal wave are evidences of the untamableness of these elements. “He bindeth up the waters in thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them,” was the language of some thirty-five centuries ago, and it is equally as true and expressive to-day.

Although the sea is inhabited at all depths, according to the best knowledge we have at present much the largest part lies beyond daylight. Light only penetrates a few fathoms—all below is darkness. This is the great, deep, cool reservoir from which the upper strata is constantly renewed by a circulation about which we, as yet, know but little. How is this circulation kept up? Who has charge of “the doors of the sea?” Who has “entered into the springs of the sea,” or “walked in search of the depth?” We have some knowledge in regard to these questions. The investigations of such men as Edward Forbes, Sir William Thompson, Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter, Lieut. M. F. Maury, Darwin, Kane, and a host of other scientific explorers equally as wise and industrious, have solved many mysteries in regard to the great ocean of salt water, and that lighter ocean of air that surrounds the earth.

Many years ago Maury wrote some striking and impressive sentences in his “Physical Geography of Sea,” such as the following:

“Our planet is invested with two great oceans; one visible, the other invisible; one underfoot, the other overhead; one entirely envelops it, the other covers about two-thirds of its surface. All the water of the one weighs about four hundred times as much as all the air of the other.”

Then again in reference to the Gulf Stream he says: “There is a river in the ocean; in the severest droughts it never fails; in the mightiest floods it never overflows; its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Seas. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than a thousand times greater. Its waters are of an indigo blue. They are so distinctly marked that their line of junction with the common sea water may be traced by the eye. Often one-half of the vessel may be perceived floating in Gulf Stream water, while the other half is in common water of the sea, so sharp is the line and such the want of affinity between those waters, and such, too, the reluctance, so to speak, on the part of those of the Gulf Stream to mingle with the littoral waters of the sea.”

We have all read and doubtless thought a great deal about this wonderful stream; how England and the shores of the continent are warmed by this water. But there are other streams equally important, if not so distinctly marked. Every ocean and sea has its current or currents. As the waters are warmed by the rays of the sun, they expand and flow away. But these streams are not very deep, and the Gulf Stream is shallow compared with the dark, cold current that moves below it, but in an opposite direction.

[To be continued.]