Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849

"Three hundred thousand insects are known!" and every day, we were almost going to add, increases the number. They abound, as may be expected, in equatorial regions, and decrease towards the poles. "The location of insects depends upon that of the plants which yield their food; and as almost each plant is peopled with inhabitants peculiar to itself, insects are distributed over the earth in the same manner as vegetables; the groups, consequently, are often confined within narrow limits, and it is extraordinary that, notwithstanding their powers of locomotion, they often remain within a particular compass, though the plant, and all other circumstances in their immediate vicinity, appear equally favourable for their habitation."

Mountain-chains, Mrs Somerville observes, are a complete barrier to insects; they differ even in the two sides of the Col de Tende in the Alps, and they are limited in the choice of their food. If a plant is taken to a country where it has no congeners, it will be safe from the insects of that country; but if it has congeners, the insect inhabitants will soon find the way to it. Our cabbages and carrots, when transplanted to Cayenne, were not injured by the insects of that country; and the tulip tree, and other magnolias brought here, are not molested by our insects.

The insect is a race, or order, of creatures not friendly to man, or any of the larger animals.

"The mosquito and culex are spread over the world more generally than any other tribe; they are the torment of men and animals from the poles to the equator, by night and by day; the species are numerous, and their location partial… Of all places on earth, the Orinoco, and other great rivers of tropical America, are the most obnoxious to this plague. The account given by Baron Humboldt is really fearful; at no season of the year, at no hour of the day or night, can rest be found; whole districts in the Upper Orinoco are deserted on account of these insects. Different species follow one another with such precision, that the time of day or night may be known accurately from their humming noise, and from the different sensations of pain which the different poisons produce. The only respite is the interval of a few minutes between the departure of one gang and the arrival of their successors, for the species do not mix. On some parts of the Orinoco, the air is one dense cloud of poisonous insects to the height of twenty feet."

The sea, as well as the air, is populous with insect life. The discoloured portions of the ocean generally owe their tint to myriads of insects. The vermilion sea off California is probably to be accounted for from this cause, "as Mr Darwin found red and chocolate-coloured water on the coast of Chili, over spaces of several square miles, full of microscopic animalcules, darting about in every direction, and sometimes exploding" – we hope for joy. "In the Arctic seas, where the water is pure transparent ultramarine colour, parts of twenty or thirty square miles, one thousand five hundred feet deep, are green and turbid, from the quantity of minute animalcules. Captain Scoresby calculated that it would require eighty thousand persons working unceasingly, from the creation of man to the present day, to count the number of insects contained in two miles of the green water."

Captain Scoresby must be very fond of calculations. We have noticed, by the way, on several occasions, how very bold these men of figures are! One pounds and pulverises the Pyrenees, and strews them over France, and tells us how many feet this would raise the level of the whole country. Another calculates how much soil the Mississippi brings down, per hour, to the ocean; and another, still bolder, undertakes to say what quantity of ice lies amongst the whole range of the Alps. Some of these calculations are laborious inutilities, as it is evident that no accurate data can be obtained to proceed upon. In the last instance, how find the depth of the ice? The sand of the desert has been sounded in one place, we are told, and the lead has sunk three hundred and sixty feet without finding a bottom; but what plummet can sound the glacier? Here and there a crevice may let us into the secret of its depth, and we know that below a certain level ice cannot remain unmelted; but who can tell the configuration of the mountain under the ice, how shallow the glacier may be in some parts, and into what profound caverns it may sink in others? There is something childish in giving us an array of figures, when the figures present no useful approximation to the truth.

We have alluded to the difficult problem of the distribution of the different species of animals throughout the several regions of the globe: the same problem meets us in the vegetable world. Here we might expect to grapple with it with some better hopes of success, yet the difficulties are by no means diminished; we only seem to see them more plainly. In the first place, it is clear, as Mrs Somerville says, that "no similarity of existing circumstances can account for whole families of plants being confined to one particular country, or even to a very limited district, which, as far as we can judge, might have grown equally well in many others." But the difference of the floras is not the only difficulty. While there is difference in a great number of the species, there is identity in a certain other number. If now we account for the difference by supposing that the several portions of land emerged from the ocean at different epochs, and under different conditions, and that, therefore, the generative powers of vegetable life, (in whatever, under the will of Divine Providence, these may be supposed to consist) manifested themselves differently, how shall we next account for this identity? "In islands far from continents, the number of plants is small; but of these a large proportion occur nowhere else. In St Helena, of thirty flower-bearing plants one or two only are native elsewhere." But these one or two become a new perplexity. "In the Falkland Islands there are more than thirty flowering plants identical with those in Great Britain." Very many similar cases might be cited; we quote these only to show the nature of the difficulty with which science has to cope.

And here comes in the following strange and startling fact, to render this subject of vegetable production still more inexplicable: —

"Nothing grows under these great forests, (of South America;) and when accidentally burnt down in the mountainous parts of Patagonia, they never rise again; but the ground they grow on is soon covered with an impenetrable brushwood of other plants. In Chili the violently stinging Loasa appears first in these burnt places, bushes grow afterwards, and then comes a tree-grass, eighteen feet high, of which the Indians make their huts. The new vegetation that follows the burning of primeval forests is quite unaccountable. The ancient and undisturbed forests of Pennsylvania have no undergrowth; and when burnt down they are succeeded by a thick growth of rhododendrons." – (Vol. ii. p. 190.)

But we must bring our rambling excursion through these pleasant volumes to a close; the more especially as we wish once more to take this opportunity, not as critics only, but as readers also, to express our grateful sense of the benefit which Mrs Somerville has conferred upon society by this and her preceding volume, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences. It was once a prevailing habit to speak in a sort of apologetic strain of works of popular science. Such habit, or whatever residue of it remains, may be entirely laid aside. If by popular science is meant the conveyance, in clear intelligible language, as little technical as possible, of the results of scientific inquiry, then are we all of us beholden more or less to popular science. The most scientific of men cannot be equally profound in all branches of inquiry. The field has now become so extensive that he cannot hope to obtain his knowledge in all departments from the first sources. He must trust for much to the authority of others. Every one who is desirous of learning what anatomy and physiology can teach us, cannot attend the dissecting table. How much that we esteem, as amongst the most valuable of our acquisitions, depends on this secondary evidence! How few can follow the calculations of the mathematician, by which he establishes results which are nevertheless familiar to all as household words! And the mathematician himself, great aristocrat as he is in science, must take the chemist on his word for the nice analysis the latter has performed. He cannot leave his papers to follow out experiments, often as difficult and intricate as his own calculations. Indeed the experiments of the man of science have become so refined and elaborate, and deal often with such subtle matter, and this in so minute quantities, that, as it has been said of the astronomer, that it requires a separate education, and takes half a life to learn to observe, so it may be truly said, that to devise and conduct new experiments in philosophy has become an art in itself. We must be content to see a great deal with the eyes of others; to be satisfied with the report of this or that labourer in the wide field of science. We cannot all of us go wandering over moor and mountain to gather and classify herbs and flowers; interested as we all are in geological speculations, we cannot all use the geological hammer, or use it to any purpose; still less can we examine all manner of fishes, or pry with the microscope into every cranny of nature for infusoria.

Mrs Somerville gives us the book! – the neat, compact, valuable volume, which we hold so commodiously in the hand. The book – the book for ever! There are who much applaud the lecture and the lecture-room, with its table full of glittering apparatus, glass and brass, and all the ingenious instruments by which nature, as we say, is put to the torture. Let such as please spend their hot uneasy hour in a crowd. We could never feed in a crowd; we detest benches and sitting in a row. To our notion, more is got, in half the time, from a few pages of the quiet letterpress, quietly perused: the better if accompanied by skilful diagrams, or, as in this case, by admirable maps. As to those experiments, on the witnessing of which so much stress is laid, it is a great fallacy to suppose that they add anything to the certainty of our knowledge. When we see an experiment performed at a distance, in a theatre, we do, in fact, as entirely rely on the word of the lecturer as if we only read of its performance. It is our faith in his character that makes all the difference between his exhibition and that of the dexterous conjurer. To obtain any additional evidence from beholding the experiment, we ought to be at the elbow of the skilful manipulator, and weigh, and test, and scrutinise.

But, indeed, as a matter of evidence, the experiment in a popular lecture-room is never viewed for a moment. It is a mere show. It has degenerated into a mere expedient to attract idlers and keep them awake. The crowd is there, and expect to see something; and it has become the confirmed habit of the whole class of popular lecturers to introduce their experiments, not when they are wanted to elucidate or prove their propositions, but whenever and wherever they can answer the purpose of amusing the audience. If a learned professor is lecturing upon the theory of combustion, he will burn a piece of stick or paper before you, to show that when such things are burnt flame is produced. He would on no account forego that flame. Yes; and the audience look on as if they had never seen a stick or a piece of paper burn before. And when he is so happy as to arrive at the point where a few grains of gunpowder may be ignited, they give him a round of applause! In the hands of many, the lecture itself becomes little more than an occasion for the experiment. The glittering vials, the air-pump, the electrical machine, undoubtedly keep the eyes at least of the audience open; but the expedient, with all due deference be it said, reminds us of the ingenious resource of the veteran exhibitor of Punch, who knows that if his puppets receive knocks enough, and there is sufficient clatter with the sticks, the dramatic dialogue may take its course as it pleases: he is sure of his popularity.

Therefore it is we are for the book; and we hold such presents as Mrs Somerville has bestowed upon the public to be of incalculable value, disseminating more sound information than all the literary and scientific institutions will accomplish in a whole cycle of their existence. We will conclude with one or two practical suggestions, which would add to the utility of the last of her two works —The Physical Geography. Mrs Somerville has thought it well to insert a few notes explanatory of some scientific terms. But these notes are few. If it was well to explain such terms as "Marsupial animals," or "Testacea," a reader might be excused for wishing to know what a "torsion balance" was, or what a "moraine," – terms which fall upon him just as suddenly, and unexplained by any previous matter. Would not a glossary of such terms be advisable? But whatever may be thought of this suggestion, our next remark is indisputable. To such a work as this, an index is extremely useful – is all but essential. There is an index, but it is so defective, so scanty, that it is worth nothing. We cannot say whether this last remark applies equally to The Connexion of the Physical Sciences, not having that work at present under our eye. But we beg to intimate to all authors and authoresses, that whenever a book is of such a nature that it becomes valuable as a work of reference, it should be accompanied by a good index. It is a plodding business, but it must be executed.

CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS – A REMEDY

To be British, or not to be, is now literally the question in all the North American colonies. Like England, when Mr Cobden and the potato blight produced, together, a panic which seemed to obliterate, for the time, all past arguments, and all future consequences – changing minds before deemed unchangeable, and raising to fame and greatness men and reasoning that the world was never previously able to see the force or the depth of – like England then, are the colonies now. They are in all the depths and mazes of a panic. One of the storms which occasionally break over the heads of all people is now raging over theirs. Nor is it surprising – with England's history for ten years before us – if there should be those among them who shrink from its drenchings or its shocks, or are incapable, in the midst of its wild commotions, of seeing sunshine in the distance. For our part, we are fond of that sturdy greatness which can put its shoulder to the blast, and say, "Blow on, great guns; we can stand your thunder."

Not that the panic in the colonies arises from the people's looking forward to having nothing to eat. They have plenty, thank God, and to spare. But they have nothing in their pockets; and, what is worse, they are afraid, if they go on much longer as they are now doing, they will soon be without pockets too. Factory cotton may be but fourpence a yard; but if they haven't the fourpence to pay for it, it might as well be as dear as diamonds, as far as they are concerned.

The policy of England, from the day that Lord Chatham said "that he would not allow the colonies to make a hob-nail for themselves," has been to convert them into marts for her manufactures – to make them useful and profitable to her, by causing them to consume those things which give her poor employment, her merchants and manufacturers profit, and her commercial navy all the incidental carrying trade. As a return for this, the colonies were directly and indirectly assured by England, that their produce should be protected in her markets – that, for all the profits England might make by manufacturing for the colonies, they should have a full return in the profits they should have by their produce being protected.

Meantime, the United States pursued an entirely different system. They, notwithstanding the interests of the great body of the southern states – whose interest, their principal product being cotton, was to buy what they wanted of manufactured goods in the lowest market, and to sell their cotton in the highest – rigidly adhered to the system of forming manufacturing interests of their own, and of fostering and encouraging them by every means in their power. While the colonies, therefore, bought, with the produce of their country, broad cloths, cottons, silks, blankets, scythes, hardware, and crockery, which were manufactured in England, they saw all the profits of their manufacture, their sale, and their carriage, go to another country, to be spent among another people. The Americans, on the other hand, who bought, with the produce of their lands, the manufactures of their own country, saw the profits upon these manufactures applied to building up factories, villages, and towns, which brought together a useful population; built churches, made roads, established places of learning and improvement; made better markets for some things which might have been sold otherwise, and made sale for many that could not otherwise have been sold at all, besides greatly enhancing the values of all adjacent property, and increasing the general wealth of the whole country. The advantages of the one system over the other, however, did not stop here. The necessities and the advantages of manufactures, which first dictated the making and improving of a common road, next conceived the benefit of a railroad and a canal, and the profits of manufacturing were straightway applied to their construction, and they were done. The farmer, therefore, imperceptibly to himself, was placed within a few hours of the best markets over the continent – found his produce carried to them for a trifle, in comparison to what it used to cost him – and found, withal, the process which made it so, bringing thousands upon thousands of people into the country, to develop its riches, to increase the price of its lands, and to contribute to its civilisation and conveniencies, from the establishment of a college down to the building of a blacksmith's shop. The colonial farmer, too, who bought the goods of an English or a Scotch manufacturer, contributed to send those manufacturers' children to school, to give them a profession, or to leave them a fortune. The American farmer, who bought his neighbours' manufactures, contributed to establish a school in his own neighbourhood, where his children could be educated; and to bring people together to support them, if they chose to study a profession or to enter into business.

To trace, within the limits of a whole magazine even, much less in the fragment of an article, the wealth and prosperity that have accrued to the States over the Colonies, by this system, would be impossible. We must content ourselves, for the present, with glancing at the accumulation of capital, and the extraordinary improvements in one State, as an example of what must have, and in truth what has, accrued to the rest, in a greater or less degree, in proportion as they have been engaged in manufacturing.

The state of Massachusetts, in point of soil, climate, and resources, has fewer, or, at all events, as few advantages as any other state in the American Union. With a few verdant valleys, and some highly productive land, it has much that is rocky and barren, and more that is marshy and useless. Yet this state, far below Upper Canada in natural advantages, has, intersecting it in different ways, five canals, their aggregate length being ninety-nine miles. It has, too, no fewer than eleven railroads winding through it and round it, constructed at an immense cost, and affording a profitable return to their proprietors. Now what is the cause of this extraordinary growth of capital, in a place where there was literally so little for it to grow upon? – and how came such immense facilities for public business to be employed, where nature has done so little to create business? The answer is obvious. Massachusetts has not prospered by its land, or natural resources – it has prospered by its manufactures; and its improvements, great and extraordinary though they be, are but the natural offspring of those manufactures. Its principal manufacturing town, Lowell, the largest such town in the United States, has grown from a few hundred inhabitants, that the land might have feebly supported, to some forty thousand, that manufactures have profitably employed. The necessities of these manufactures called for a canal and a railroad. The profits of the capital invested in them, and the labour they employed, soon constructed them. Salem, wholly by the profits of making cotton fabrics, has become a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants. Salem's manufacturing interests required a railroad to Boston, and Salem's manufacturers' and artisans' profits were able to construct it. Manchester and Lawrence owe their existence and prosperity, and the adjacent country owes the advantages they are to it, wholly to manufactories. They wanted, too, a railroad to connect them; and they were able to make, and have made one. Springfield, also in this State, and Worcester, Fallriver, Lynn, and Newburyport, and several other places of minor consequence, owe equally their existence and prosperity to the same cause. Nor is it to be wondered at that, in so short a period, such vast improvements should be made, when we consider the immense profits that have accrued upon the capital employed in these manufactories, and upon the labour engaged in them. There is a cotton factory in Salem which itself employs a capital of £200,000, giving work to five hundred and seventy-five operatives, – three-fourths of whom are girls, – whose average wages are three pounds twelve shillings sterling a month. Yet, a great proportion of these being very young, it necessarily follows that the wages of the grown up are reduced to make up the average of those of the weaker, and that in reality an industrious woman "can generally earn a dollar a day; and there are those who have been known, from one year's end to another, even to exceed this." Speaking of the character of this labour, and of its effect upon the States, Mr Webster, the highest authority upon this subject in America, thus truthfully and eloquently remarks —

"I have spoken of labour as one of the great elements of our society, the great substantial interest on which we all stand. Not feudal service, not predial toil, not the irksome drudgery by one race of mankind, subjected, on account of colour, to the control of another race of mankind; but labour, intelligent, manly, independent, thinking and acting for itself, earning its own wages, accumulating those wages into capital, becoming a part of society and of our social system, educating childhood, maintaining worship, claiming the right of the elective franchise, and helping to uphold the great fabric of the State. That is American labour, and I confess that all my sympathies are with it, and my voice, until I am dumb, will be for it."

Of the profits arising from the capital invested in these manufactures, they have varied in different years, but have, on the average, vastly exceeded those upon all similar investments in England, or in any part of Europe. The Newburyport Herald, a couple of years since, gave a statement of the profits arising from the Essex Steam Mill Company in that town, by which it appeared that forty-two and a half per cent upon the capital invested was paid to the stockholders, as the amount of profits for 1845. The Dedham Company, in the same state, also divided ten per cent for six months of the same year; the Norfolk Company, twelve per cent for the same period; and the Northern Company ten. All these companies were engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods – the most profitable, however, of all manufactures in the States.

But against this immense accumulation of capital in the States, against the vast incidental improvements and wealth to the country that have arisen from manufactures, what have the British colonies to show? What have the Canadas to arrest the eye of the traveller, and to prove to him that, though they have pursued the system which Lord Chatham chalked out for them, of not manufacturing a hob-nail for themselves – and which the policy of England has ever since prevented their doing – they have still wherewithal to attest that they have prospered; and that their labour has been equally rewarded by agriculture as by manufactures?