The Otago Witness, WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1909. THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2896, 15 September 1909, Page 52

The Otago Witness, WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1909.

THE WEEK.

"Jfonquom alind natura, aliud sapientia diiit."— IrmM.. , •• flood nature and good sense must ever join."— ton. The rival claims of Dr Cook and Commander Peary to be conXh« C*ok-P«ary sidered first discoverers of t&Bteut. tiie North Pole threaten to transform a unique scientific event into an unseemly squabble. Unfortunately Commander Peary is disinclined to endorse Dr Cook's verdict that in the discovery there is enough honour for two — indeed, hi has gone so far as to declare that he will prove that Dr Cook never reached the Pole. And as the partisans in America of both explorers are indulging in a campaign of vituperation, t there is a growing tendency on the part of the great mass of the public to doubt ; .•whether, after all, the North Pole ha 3 actually been reached. And as the report of the discovery rests upon the uncorroborated testimony of the respective claimante, and as the value of their claims depends upon the accuracy of their observations and reckonings, (t is difficult to see in what manner the dispute will eventually be determined. At least, however, it may be said that the departure from the true scientific spirit which alone has made possible this petty partisan bickering is greatly to be deprecated. Several references have been made to the parallel of simultaneous discovery between the cases of Cook and Peary at the North Pole and of Charles Darwin and Alfred ' Wallace in the discovery of the principle of Natural Selection. And the more closely the cases are .examined the more striking does the parallel appear. Both Darwin and Peary had been for years engaged in laborious preparation for their great discovery ; .Wallace and Cook arrived at the identical point, the one by a flash of sudden intuition, the other by a dash of daring endurance. Here, however, unfortunately, the similarity ends, foi in contrast to the deplorable jealousy of the Polar explorers, as Grant All-en, in his "Life of Darwin," 'happily expresses it — " Both Darwin and (Wallace were born superior to the meannesses of jealousy."' It is interesting to Tead the accounts of the circumstance of the simultaneous discovery as narrated by the respective discoverers. Charles Darwin, in his "Autobiography," afte* de- I tailing the steps which led up to his enunciation of the doctrine afterwards so fully and ably elaborated in the " Origin of Specic6,'*' writes^—" Early in 1856; Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a c-cale three or four times as extensive as that* which afterwards followed in my ' Origin of Species.' yet it was only an abstract of the^ materials which I had collected, and I got through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were overthrown, for early in the summer of 1858, Mr Wallace, who was then in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay on 'The Tendency of the Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,' and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought well of his essay 7 should send it to Lyell for perusal. The circumstances under which I consented, at the request of Lytll and Hooker, ifco allow of an extract from my MSS., together with a lettei to Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's essay, are given in the proceedings of the Linnean Societ}', ■1858, p. 45. I was at first very unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr Wallace might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for 1 ' 'did not then know how generous and noble .■was his disposition." •Nor was the generosity and nobility of disposition all on the one side, WalUeeon. aa the following expression Darn!* and of opinion by Alfred WaltkeOrlrln lace in regard to Darwin •rs»ecies. and tbe '^y^^ of Species" goes to show. This extract from Wallace's recently published "My .Life " is ail the more apropos since the jubilee of the publication of Darwin's 'famous book will be celebrated in Novembe* next. When at Ternate in December, 2860, Wallace vrote to Bates (the author of "The Naturalist on the Amazon"), and an company with whom Wallace — then a young Welsh biologist of 24 years of age — ..went in 1848 to the Amazon Rivtr to collect (bird-o and butterflies, and to study tropical life in the richest region of equatorial "Africa : — " I know not how or to whom jto express fully my admiration of Darwin's book. To him it would seem flattery, ]fco others, self-praise ; but I do honestly Jbelieve that, with however much patience ST. had worked and experimented on the subject, I could never have approached the completeness of his book, its vast accumulation, of evidence, its overwhelming argument, and its admirable tone and spirit. I really feeL thankful, too, that 6t has not been left to me to give the {theory to the world. Mr Darwin has created a new science and a new philosophy, and I believe that never has such a complete illustration of a new branch of jhuman knowledge been due to the labours and researches of » single man. Never "nave such vast masses of widely scattered fend hitherto quite unconnected facts been combined into a system and brought to jbear upon the establishment of such a fMßaxul new and simple philosophy." Wallaces account of the manner in which the {idea of the survival of the fittest first (dearly dawned upon hie mind makes in feqeely interesting reading. In January, 1858, while waiting at Ternate, Wallace bad • sharp attack of intermittent fever. for tiie preceding eight or nine years the

great problem of &m " Origin of Species " had been continually in his mind, and while suffering from the fever he had nothing to do but to think of any subjects that particularly interested him. " One day something brought to my recollection Malthus's 'Principles of Population,' which I had read about 12 years before. I thought of his clear exposition of 'the positive checks to increase ' disease, accidents, war, and famine, which keep down the population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of more civilised peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes, or their equivalents, are continually acting in the case of animals also, juid as animals usually breed more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question: Why do some die and- some live? And the answer was clearly, that on the whole the best-fitted live. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off. And the superior would remain—that is, the fittest would survive. The more I thought over it the more I became convinced that I had at length found the long-sought-for law of Nature that solved the problem of the origin of sptcies. ... I waited ! anxiously for the termination of my fit, ! so that I might at once make notes for a paper on the subject. 3)he same evening i I did this pretty fully, and on the two succeeding evtning? wrote it out carefully in order to f^end it to Darwin by the next post, which would leave in a day or two. I wrote a letter to him, in which I said that I hoped the idea would be as new to him as it was to me, and that it would supply the missing factor to ' explain the origin of species. I asked him if lie thought it sufficiently important to show it to Sir Charles Lyell, who had thought so highly of my former paper." And Wallace continues:— 'J The effect of, my paper upon Darwin was i Hew Darwin almost paralysing. He had, ! HeceiTfd ab i afterwards learnt, hit the Aenr«. upon the same idea as my ' own 20 years' earlier, and i had occupied himself during the whole of ' that long period in study and experiment, and in sketching out and r»artly writing a great work, to show how the new prin- ' ciple would berve to explain almost all tike chief phenomenon and characters cf living things in their relation to each other. So early as 1844 he had shown portions of this work to Sir Charles Lyell and Dt Joseph Hooker, who had been greatly struck by it,, and who were thenceforth his only confidants in the secret of his new idea, which, from the analogy of the breeder's selection of the most suit- ' able animals or plants in order to produce j I new varieties, he termed 'natural selec- j 1 tioji.' Sir Charles Lyell had frequently j urged him to ' publish an outline of his \ views, saying: — 'If you don't, someone else will hit upon it, and you will be forestalled.' On receiving my paper he wrote to Sir Charles: — 'Your words have come true, with a vengeance, that I should be forestalled. I never saw a more striking coincidence. So all my originality, ' whatever it may amount to, will be smashed, tliough my book, if it will ever ! have any va.lue, will not be deteriorated, ' as all the labour consists in the applica- | tion of the theory.' Darwin was naturally > much troubled, and did not know how to ; act, declaring in a later letter to Sir ' Charles Lyell :— ' I would rather bury my whole book than that he (Wallace), or any other man, should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit.' He therefore left, the matter in the hands of his two friends, and they determined (on tht-ir ! own responsibility) that my essay, together with extracts from Darwin's MSS., j which they had seen many years before, I should be read before the lunnean Society ! and published in its Journal. The joint i papers were read on July 1, 1858, Dr ' Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell being pre- ' sent. Both Darwin and Dr Hooker wrote to me in the most kind and courteous man- . ncr informing me of what had been done. ' of which they hoped I would approve. Of course 1 not only approved, but felt that j they had given me more honour and credit than I deserved by putting my sudden in- j tuition, hastily written, and immediately i sent off for T,he opinion of Darwin and Lyell, on the same level with the pro- ' longed labours of Darwin, who ha i reached the same point 20 years before me, and had worked continuously during that long period in order that he might be able to present the theory to the world j with such a body of systematic facts ajvd argument* as would almost compel con- ' viction. In a later letter Darwin wrote | that he ow-ed much to m« and his two friends, adding : — ' I almost think that I Lyell would Have proved right, and that \ I should never have completed my larger , work.' I think, therefore, that I may , have the satisfaction of knowing that by ' writing my article and bending it to , Darwin I was the unconscious means of leading him to concentrate himself on the i task of drawing up what he termed 'an ! abstract ' of the great work he had in j preparation, but which was Teally a large ! and carefully tvritten volume — the cele- ] brated ' Origin of Species,' published in , November, 1859." There can be little • doubt that the splendid spirit and ab- I senoa of jealousy displayed by the rival , investigators did muoh to convert the world to the theory of the " Origin of Species." And, contrariwise, the jealousy i evinced by Peary against Cook will go J far to raise doubts in the mind of the public ac to the genuineness of the re- '

Miss Tare, a Maori probationer in the Palmerston North Hospital, has made such good progress that the board has approved of the suggestion of the matron to place b*r on the permanent staff. j

ported voyages to the North Pole and back again. The death of Edward H. Harriman has removed a notable figure The Passing from the field of action in •f a Balhrar America. Whether this Kiaj. man's work has bten a blessing or a bane to his' i country and to his nation is probably a j moot question ; possibly it may be deemed | a mixture of both. Certainly he used his , exceptional position on Wall Street and j in the railway \rorld to amass a huge | fortune, and equally certain that fortune 1 was amassed by means which approximated j closely to an extensive system of robbery. | But, on the other hand, it has been the • mission of men of the calibre of Edward Harriman and James J. Hill to open up and develop the vast areas of America and Canada by building miles upon miles of railway, and equipping them in a fashion 1 impossible except to those in com- ! ma-nd of great sums of money. JAs an American writer on the ! subject expresses it:— "More than any j other material agency, the railways have J created our Greater America — welding a continent into a nation — a highly organised and interdependent whole. Habits of life and -work they have nearly brought to a : national uniformity. They have diffused mutual knowledge, and because of their ! quick perpetual interchange of men the I people of the West have become all of a | j kind, and the mutual helpfulness and | human kindness of the frontier, that are ' strange to our Ea6t, have permanently ( survived even in the largest cities of the Coast. Bitterly the companies fight each other; selfishly they build. Yet their dividtnd-seeking labours of to-day in the North-west are to be the sure basis of j our coming dominance of the Pacific. It is as if a vast spirit, national, inerrant, were kading these men on and on in I work." Thib is the American view, that, out of all the corruptions and scandals ! which have accompanied the unending battle of the raiiwavs as conducted by the Harrimans, the Hills, and the Goulds, the ' railways created by these master men are ! in their turn creating and sustaining a ! \ new America. Edward Harriman was es- I j sentially a self-made man. Staiting with ' ,jaothing. from a boy in a broker's office ! ! in Wall street, New York, he, developed \ j into one of the boldest and most daring I of stock operators, seizing upon railroad j stocks and shares, aaid Tendering them his J specialty. From trafficking in railway | , shares he aspired to control the railways themselves, and to what an. extent he succeeded in his aspirations may be gathered from tlve fact that two years' ago he was credited with ruling over an ) empire of railways reprefcentinu a mileao-e ! of 54,300 miles of road, with 3357,984,159 , dollars' worth of cap .al, and earning j 685,027,115 dollars annually. For nearly { 46 yearn Mr Harriman was a Wall street , • man, starting as a trader on the floor of i the Exchange, turning over stocks and ', j bonds from day to day, and taking what- - t \ ever profit might accrue. At 40 years of j | age he took service in a great railroad — ! the Illinois Central — and five years later he i dared a conflict with J. P. Morgan over | the Erie railroad. At 50 years of age ■ he became tbs head of the Union Pacific, j and then commenced his activities as one of the leading financiers of the United \ States and one of the great railroad executives. < | 1 A well-informed writer in an American I magazine thus estimates An Estimate of Harriman's position and inj llarrimaa. fluence, and to an oxtent ' explains the extraordinary ' efforts put forth by other American mil- ' lionaires to prevent any slump in the ; Harriman group of securities :— " Let us ' sum up the raihoad accomplishments of the Harriman regime, and <*et them over against the Harriman activities in finance, speculation and politics. In this wav, perhaps, one may get a fair measure of the man and of his servict.or otherwise, i to the people of the United States. It ' may be said that it is to the railroad 1 doings of his reign that his apologists I turn when they wonld defend him againet ' charges of eorjwrate misdoings, high and unprincipled i*nance. political manipula- • tion, and Wall street graft. In the 10 i years of his power he has rebuilt the i Union Pacific railroad irom ond to end. i He has made traffic safer, swifter, and j more comfortable from the rivers to the Pacific Ocean. By his roetliode he has contributed largely* to the growth of the whole South Pacific coast in wealth :iii»! in commercial life. He has not ruined cities, nor deliberately juggled with the , great industries of the regions which he served. When the land called for new j transportation facilities he has listened to i the call and has spent many millions of j dollars to answer it. His position has never been more interesting than it, is at ■ the present moaient (this was written in ; 1907). He stands like a great captain in | the centre of two concentric circles, made \ up of the 'greatest financiers in the United I States, if not in the world. He is> sur- , rounded by the captured banners of his I foes, and confident in an almost unbroken I record of conquest He is rich and power- , ful with the spoils of past conflict, j Around him lies his host, r-eady for de- • fence or conquest. It is a host of veterans, men well tried in years of Wall street battle. Mr Jacob Schiff brings to war a splendid follo'.ving of foreign banking wealth, and the prtstige of a long ana j honourable career" as a banker and financier. Messrs William Rockefeller, Henry I H. Rodgers, and James Stillman marshal | to his aid the forces of the so-calleJ \ ' Standard Oil Interest,' closely affiliated j in every way with Mr Harriman Mr H. i C. Frick brings to the conflict a trem-en- i dous personal wealth, and a wisdom in j council unsurpassed in this country It | is a solid host, homogeneous, compact, organised. In railroad matters it 16 absolutely one with Harriman, whose will rules it like an autocrat. There has never been, in the former history of the world, bo splendid a fighting financial or-

' ganisation Around it lies the outer circle ,of opponents and enemies. There is no , leader in this host. A common impulse of self-protection has brought it together, but it is a bost of many heads, many ■ coun&els, much jealousy, much distrust, i It cannot move to attack, it can merely maintain a loo.<e blockade, so loose, indeed, I that it has not been effectual to prevent | the Harriman raids of conflict save in one 'or two instances. The units that make ' up this army are composed of men of mighty power. Mr J. P. Morgan is one of them. In bis day he has met Mr Haniivan four times in the disputes of Wall street, and in three instances the I Harriman end was gained. Were he the | Morgan of yesterday, he would be quali- , , fied to bind together into one fighting i organisation all the units of this host, but I to-day he is en the eve of retirement. r He is nearly 70 years of age, and is, tired of leadership. Beside him stands > ! another veteran, James J. Hill, seasoned • 1 and unafraid, the one of all the host who j \ would not hesitate to withstand the whole force of Harriman, or even to invade him. Beyond lie the forces of the First National Bank and the Rock Island, bold enough, yet cautious, realising that they stand prac- , tically alone. Mr George Gould commands J a force of reasoned veterans, trained in ! the long wars of Jay Gould, but weakened j in later years by defections, treachery, and , the resulting lack of confidence. Behind ' this great circle of magnates lie other j captains— Edwin Hawley, burning with • eagerness for any raid or venture ; James ' R. Keen, passionate for revenge for his ] terrific drubbing in 1933. United, this group \ of men and powers could come near destroying the power of the Harriman army. Divided, it has watched that powergrow until it nearly overtops them all." And, j (strangest of all, this man Harriman, in- | vulnerable to all his financial foes, has , yet been his r.wn destroyer. Medical experts declare that the disease from which j he has been buffering of late years, and ( which ultimately caused his death, was brought on by excessive brain develop- | ments, which starved the rest of his body, | until existence became a positive burden, j And as one American paper remarks: — , " The spectacle of ; billionaire whose ' brain has starved the rest of his body j into a condition that only bread and beer j can rectify (the treatment he was recently undergoing at the hands of a celebrated , Viennese specialist) is unique enough even ', for America." I It is understood that H.M.S. Encounter will be placed at the disposal of Lord Kitchener when he pays his visit to Australia and New Zealand. | The Mount Stuart Road Board has a ' credit balance of £200— -a position very few JocaJ bodies are in at present. The rate is id in the pound. j