 The Rise and Progress of Paleontology. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Rise and Progress of Paleontology by Thomas Henry Huxley Essay number 2 from Science and Hebrew Tradition That application of the Sciences of Biology and Geology, which is commonly known as Paleontology, took its origin in the mind of the first person who, finding something like a shell or a bone, naturally embedded in gravel or rock, indulged in speculations upon the nature of this thing which he had dug out, this fossil, and upon the causes which had brought it into such a position. In this rudimentary form, a high antiquity may safely be ascribed to Paleontology. In as much as we know that, five hundred years before the Christian era, the philosophic doctrines of Xenophonies were influenced by his observations upon the fossil remains exposed in the quarries of Syracuse. From this time forth, not only the philosophers, but the poets, the historians, the geographers of antiquity occasionally refer to fossils, and, after the revival of learning, lively controversies arose respecting their real nature. But hardly more than two centuries have elapsed since this fundamental problem was first exhaustively treated. It was only in the last century that the archaeological value of fossils, their importance, I mean, as records of the history of the earth, was fully recognized. The first adequate investigation of the fossil remains of any large group of vertebrated animals is to be found in Cuviers, Recherche sur les ossements faciles, completed in 1822, and so modern is stratigraphical Paleontology that its founder, William Smith, lived to receive the just recognition of his services by the award of the first Wooliston Meadow in 1831. But although Paleontology is a comparatively youthful scientific specialty, the mass of materials with which it has to deal is already prodigious. In the last fifty years the number of known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled or quadrupled. The work of interpretation of vertebrate fossils, the foundations of which were so solidly laid by Cuviers, was carried on with wonderful vigor and success by Agassi in Switzerland, by von Meyer in Germany, and last but not least by Owen in this country, while in later years a multitude of workers have labored in the same field. In many groups of the animal kingdom the number of fossil forms already known is as great as that of the existing species. In some cases it is much greater, and there are entire orders of animals of the existence of which we should know nothing except for the evidence afforded by fossil remains. With all this it may be safely assumed that, at the present moment, we are not acquainted with the tittle of the fossils which will sooner or later be discovered. If we may judge by the profusion yielded within the last few years by the tertiary formations of North America, there seems to be no limit to the multitude of mammalian remains to be expected from that continent. An analogy leads us to expect similar riches in Eastern Asia, whenever the tertiary formations of that region are as carefully explored. Again we have, as yet, almost everything to learn respecting the terrestrial population of the Mesozoic Epic, and it seems as if the Western territories of the United States were about to prove as instructive in regard to this point as they have in respect of tertiary life. My friend, Professor Marsh, informs me that, within two years, remains of more than one hundred and sixty distinct individuals of mammals, belonging to twenty species and nine genera, have been found in a space not larger than the floor of a good-sized room, while beds of the same age have yielded three hundred reptiles varying in size from a length of sixty feet or eighty feet to the dimensions of a rabbit. The task which I have set myself tonight is to endeavor to lay before you as briefly as possible a sketch of the successive steps by which are present knowledge of the facts of paleontology and of those conclusions from them which are indisputable has been attained. And I beg leave to remind you, at the outset, that in attempting to sketch the progress of a branch of knowledge to which innumerable labors have contributed, my business is rather with generalizations than with details. It is my object to mark the epics of paleontology, not to recount all the events of its history. That which I must now call the fundamental problem of paleontology, the question which has to be settled before any other can be profitably discussed, is this. What is the nature of fossils? Are they, as the healthy common sense of the ancient Greeks appears to have let them to assume, without hesitation, the remains of animals and plants? Or are they, as was so generally maintained in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, mere-figured stones, portions of mineral matter which have assumed the forms of leaves and shells and bones, just as those portions of mineral matter, which we call crystals, take on the form of regular geometric solids? Or again, are they, as others thought, the products of the germs of animals and of the seeds of plants which have lost their way, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, and have achieved only an imperfect and abortive development? It is easy to sneer at our ancestors for being disposed to reject the first in favor of one or other of the last two hypotheses, but it is much more profitable to try to discover why they, who were really not one-wit less sensible persons than our excellent selves, should have been led to entertain views which strike us as absurd. The belief in what is erroneously called spontaneous generation, that is to say, in the development of living matter out of mineral matter, apart from the agency of pre-existing living matter, as an ordinary occurrence at the present day, which is still held by some of us, was universally accepted as an obvious truth by them. They could point to the arboracent forms assumed by whorefrost and by sundry metallic minerals as evidence of the existence in nature of a plastic force competent to enable inorganic matter to assume the form of organized bodies. And as everyone who is familiar with fossils knows, they present innumerable gradations from shells and bones which exactly resemble the recent objects, to masses of mere stone which, however accurately they repeat the outward form of the organic body, have nothing else in common with it, and thence to mere traces and faint impressions in the continuous substance of the rock. What we now know to be the results of the chemical changes which take place in the course of fossilization by which mineral is substituted for organic substance might, in the absence of such knowledge, be fairly interpreted as the expression of a process of development in the opposite direction, from the mineral to the organic. Moreover, in an age when it would have seemed the most absurd of paradoxes to suggest that the general level of the sea is constant, while that of the solid land fluctuates up and down through thousands of feet in a secular groundswell, it may well have appeared far less hazardous to conceive that fossils are sports of nature, than to accept the necessary alternative, that all the inland regions and highlands, in the rocks of which marine shells had been afound, had once been covered by the ocean. It is not so surprising, therefore, as it may seem at first, that although such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palacy took just views of the nature of fossils, the opinion of the majority of their contemporary set strongly the other way, nor even that error maintained itself long after the scientific grounds of the true interpretation of fossils had been stated in a manner that left nothing to be desired in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The person who rendered this good service to paleontology was Nicola Steno, professor of anatomy in Florence, though ordained by birth. Collectors of fossils at that day were familiar with certain bodies called glosopetre, and speculation was rife as to their nature. In the first half of the seventeenth century Fabio Colonna had tried to convince his colleagues of the famous Academia di Aluncia that the glosopetre were merely fossil sharks' teeth, but his arguments made no impression. Fifty years later Steno reopened the question, and by dissecting the head of a shark and pointing out the very exact correspondence of its teeth with the glosopetre left no rational doubt as to the origin of the latter. Thus far the work of Steno went little further than that of Colonna, but it fortunately occurred to him to think out the whole subject of the interpretation of fossils, and the result of his meditations was the publication in 1669 of a little treatise with the very quaint title of disolodo antra solidum naturalitir contento. The general course of Steno's argument may be stated in a few words. Fossils are solid bodies which, by some natural process, have come to be contained within other solid bodies, namely the rocks in which they are embedded, and the fundamental problem of paleontology stated generally is this. Given a body endowed with a certain shape and produced in accordance with natural laws, to find in that body itself the evidence of the place and manner of its production. The only way of solving this problem is by the application of the axiom that, quote, like effects imply like causes, unquote, or as Steno puts it in reference to this particular case, that, quote, bodies which are altogether similar have been produced in the same way, unquote. Hence, since the glossopetre are altogether similar to shark's teeth, they must have been produced by shark-like fishes. And since many fossil shells correspond down to the minutest details of structure with the shells of existing marine or freshwater animals, they must have been produced by similar animals, and the like reasoning is applied by Steno to the fossil bones of vertebrated animals, whether aquatic or terrestrial. To the obvious objection that many fossils are not altogether similar to their living analogues, differing in substance while agreeing in form, or being mere hollows or impressions, the surfaces of which are figured in the same way as those of animal or vegetable organisms, Steno replies by pointing out the changes which take place in organic remains embedded in the earth, and how their solid substance may be dissolved away entirely, or replaced by mineral matter, until nothing is left of the original but a cast, an impression, or a mere trace of its contours. The principles of investigation thus excellently stated and illustrated by Steno in 1669 are those which have consciously or unconsciously guided the researches of paleontologists ever since. Even that feat of paleontology which has so powerfully impressed the popular imagination, the reconstruction of an extinct animal from a tooth or a bone is based upon the simplest imaginable application of the logic of Steno. A moment's consideration will show, in fact, that Steno's conclusion that the glossopetray are shark's teeth implies the reconstruction of an animal from its tooth. It is equivalent to the assertion that the animal of which the glossopetray are relics had the form and organization of a shark, that it had a skull, a vertebral column, and limbs similar to those which are characteristic of this group of fishes, that its heart, gills, and intestines presented the peculiarities which those of all sharks exhibit. Nay, even any hard parts which its integument contained were of a totally different character from the scales of ordinary fishes. These conclusions are as certain as any based upon probable reasonings can be. And they are so simply because a very large experience justifies us in believing that teeth of this particular form and structure are invariably associated with the peculiar organization of sharks and are never found in connection with other organisms. Why this should be, we are not at present in a position even to imagine. We must take the fact as an empirical law of animal morphology, the reason of which may possibly be one day found in the history of the evolution of the shark tribe, but for which it is hopeless to seek for an explanation in ordinary physiological reasonings. Everyone practically acquainted with paleontology is aware that it is not every tooth nor every bone which enables us to form a judgment of the character of the animal to which it belonged and that it is possible to possess many teeth and even a large portion of the skeleton of an extinct animal and yet be unable to reconstruct its skull or its limbs. It is only when the tooth or bone presents peculiarities which we know by previous experience to be characteristic of a certain group that we can safely predict that the fossil belong to an animal of the same group. Anyone who finds a cow's grinder may be perfectly sure that it belonged to an animal which had two complete toes on each foot and ruminated. Anyone who finds a horse's grinder may be assure that it had one complete toe on each foot and did not ruminate. But if ruminants and horses were extinct animals of which nothing but the grinders had ever been discovered, no amount of physiological reasoning could have enabled us to reconstruct either animal. Still less to have defined the wide differences between the two. Cuvier, in a discourse sur la révolution de la surface de Globe, strangely credits himself and has ever since been credited by others with the invention of a new method of paleontological research. But if you will turn to the Ressurge sur les ossements fossiles and watch Cuvier not speculating but working, you will find that his method is neither more nor less than that of Steno. If he was able to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis of the same animal which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he or anyone else knew or knows why a certain form of jaw is as a rule constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply because experience has shown that these two structures are coordinated. The settlement of the nature of fossiles led at once to the next advance in paleontology, vis its application to the deciphering of the history of the earth. When it was admitted that fossiles are remains of animals and plants, it followed that, insofar as they resemble terrestrial or freshwater animals and plants, they are evidences of the existence of land or freshwater, and insofar as they resemble marine organisms, they are evidences of the existence of the sea at the time they were parts of actually living animals and plants. Moreover, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it must be admitted that the terrestrial or the marine organisms implied the existence of land or sea at the place in which they were found while they were yet living. In fact, such conclusions were immediately drawn by everybody from the time of Xenophonies downwards, who believe that fossils were really organic remains. Steno discusses their value as evidence of repeated alteration of marine and terrestrial conditions upon the soil of Tuscany in a manner worthy of a modern geologist. The speculations of du Malais in the beginning of the eighteenth century turn upon fossils, and Buffon follows him very closely in those two remarkable works, the Thierry de la Terre and the Époque de la Nature, with which he commenced and ended his career as a naturalist. The opening sentences of the Époque de la Nature shows us how fully Buffon recognized the analogy of geological with archaeological inquiries. Quote, as in civil history we consult deeds, seek for coins, or decipher antique inscriptions in order to determine the epics of human revolutions and fix the date of moral events. So, in natural history, we must search the archives of the world, recover old monuments from the bowels of the earth, collect their fragmentary remains, and gather into one body of evidence all the signs of physical change which may enable us to look back upon the different ages of nature. It is our only means of fixing some points in the immensity of space, and of setting a certain number of waymarks along the eternal path of time." Buffon enumerates five classes of these monuments of the past history of the earth, and they are all facts of paleontology. In the first place, he says, shells and other marine productions are found all over the surface and in the interior of the dry land, and all cocaeus rocks are made up of their remains. Secondly, a great many of these shells which are found in Europe are not now to be met with in the adjacent seas, and in the slates and other deep-seated deposits there are remains of fishes and of plants of which no species now exist in our latitudes and which are either extinct or exist only in more northern climates. Thirdly, in Siberia and in other northern regions of Europe and of Asia, bones and teeth of elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses occur in such numbers that these animals must once have lived and multiplied in those regions, although at the present day they are confined to southern climates. The deposits in which these remains are found are superficial, while those which contain shells and other marine remains lie much deeper. Fourthly, tusks and bones of elephants and hippopotamuses are found not only in the northern regions of the Old World, but also in those of the New World, although at present neither elephants nor hippopotamuses occur in America. Fifthly, in the middle of the continents in regions most remote from the sea we find an infinite number of shells of which the most part belong to animals of those kinds which still exist in southern seas, but of which many others have no living analogues, so that these species appear to be lost, destroyed by some unknown cause. It is needless to inquire how far these statements are strictly accurate. They are sufficiently so to justify Buffin's conclusions that the dry land was once beneath the sea, that the formation of the fossiliferous rocks must have occupied a vastly greater lapse of time than that traditionally ascribed to the age of the earth. That fossil remains indicate different climatical conditions to have obtained in former times, and especially that the polar regions were once warmer, that many species of animals and plants have become extinct, and that geological change has had something to do with geographical distribution. But these propositions almost constitute the framework of paleontology in order to complete it, but one addition was needed, and that was made in the last years of the 18th century by William Smith, whose work comes so near to our own times that many living men may have been personally acquainted with him. This modest land surveyor whose business took him into many parts of England profited by the peculiarly favourable conditions offered by the arrangement of our secondary strata to make a careful examination and comparison of their fossil contents at different points of the large area over which they extend. The result of his accurate and widely extended observations was to establish the important truth that each stratum contains certain fossils which are peculiar to it, and that the order in which the strata characterized by these fossils are superimposed one upon the other is always the same. This most important generalization was rapidly verified and extended to all parts of the world accessible to geologists, and now it rests upon such an immense mass of observations as to be one of the best established truths of natural science. To the geologists the discovery was of infinite importance as it enabled him to identify rocks of the same relative age, however their continuity might be interrupted or their composition altered. But to the biologist it had a still deeper meaning, for it demonstrated that throughout the prodigious duration of time registered by the fossiliferous rocks the living population of the earth had undergone continual changes, not merely by the extinction of a certain number of the species which had at first existed, but by the continual generation of new species and the no less constant extinction of old ones. Thus the broad outlines of paleontology in so far as it is the common property of both the geologist and the biologist were marked out at the close of the last century. In tracing its subsequent progress I must confine myself to the province of biology and indeed to the influence of paleontology upon zoological morphology, and I accept this limitation the more willingly as the no less important topic of the bearing of geology and of paleontology upon distribution has been luminously treated in the address of the president of the geographical section. The succession of the species of animals and plants in time being established, the first question which the zoologist or the botanist had to ask himself was, what is the relation of the successive species one to another? And is it a curious circumstance that the most important event in the history of paleontology which immediately succeeded William Smith's generalization was a discovery which, could it have been rightly appreciated at the time, would have gone far towards suggesting the answer, which was in fact delayed for more than half a century. I refer to Cuvier's investigation of the mammalian fossils yielded by the quarries and the older tertiary rocks of Montmartre among the chief results of which was the bringing to light of two genera of extinct hoofed quadrupeds, the anaplotherium and the paleotherium. The rich materials at Cuvier's disposition enabled him to obtain a full knowledge of the osteology and the dentition of these two forms and consequently to compare their structure critically with that of existing hoofed animals. The effect of this comparison was to prove that the anaplotherium, though it presented many points of resemblance with the pigs on the one hand and with the ruminants on the other, differed from both to such an extent that it could find a place in neither group. In fact, it held, in some respects, an intermediate position, tending to bridge over the interval between these two groups, which in the existing fauna are so distinct. In the same way, the paleotherium tended to connect forms so different as the tapir, the rhinoceros, and the horse. Subsequent investigations have brought to light a variety of facts of the same order, the most curious and striking of which are those which prove the existence in the mesozoic epic of a series of forms intermediate between birds and reptiles, two classes of vertebrate animals which at present appear to be more widely separated than any others. Yet the interval between them is completely filled in the mesozoic fauna by birds which have reptilian characters on the one side and reptiles which have ornithic characters on the other. So again, while the group of fishes termed ganoids is at the present time so distinct from that of the dipnoi or mudfishes that they have been reckoned as distinct orders, the Devonian strata present us with forms of which it is impossible to say with certainty whether they are dipnoi or whether they are ganoids. Agassiz long and elaborate researches upon fossil fishes published between 1833 and 1842 led him to suggest the existence of another kind of relation between ancient and modern forms of life. He observed that the oldest fishes present many characters which recall the embryonic conditions of existing fishes, and that not only among fishes but in several groups of the invertebrata which have a long paleontological history, the latest forms are more modified, more specialized than the earlier. The fact that the dentition of the older tertiary ungulate and carnivorous mammals is always complete, noticed by Professor Owen, illustrated the same generalization. Another no less suggestive observation was made by Mr. Darwin, whose personal investigations during the voyage of the Beagle led him to remark upon the singular fact that the fauna which immediately precedes that at present existing in any geographical province of distribution presents the same peculiarities as its successor. Thus in South America and in Australia the later tertiary or caternary fossils show that the fauna which immediately preceded that of the present day was, in the one case, as much characterized by edentates and in the other by marsupials as it is now, although the species of the older are largely different from those of the newer fauna. However clearly these indications might point in one direction, the question of the exact relation of the successive forms of animal and vegetable life could be satisfactorily settled only in one way, namely by comparing, stage by stage, the series of forms presented by one in the same type throughout a long space of time. Within the last few years this has been done fully in the case of the horse, less completely in the case of the other principal types of the ungulata and of the carnivora, and all these investigations tend to one general result, namely that in any given series the successive members of that series present a gradually increasing specialization of structure. That is to say if any such mammal at present existing has specially modified and reduced limbs or dentition and complicated brain, its predecessors in time show less and less modification and reduction in limbs and teeth and a less highly developed brain. The labors of gaudry, marsh, and cope furnished abundant illustrations of this law from the marvelous fossil wealth of peccurmy and the vast uninterrupted series of tertiary rocks in the territories of North America. I will now sum up the results of this sketch of the rise and progress of paleontology. The whole fabric of paleontology is based upon two propositions. The first is that fossils are the remains of animals and plants. The second is that the stratified rocks in which they are found are sedimentary deposits and each of these propositions is founded upon the same axiom that like effects imply like causes. If there is any cause competent to produce a fossil stem or shell or bone except a living being then paleontology has no foundation. If the stratification of the rocks is not the effect of such causes as at present produce stratification we have no means of judging of the duration of past time or of the order in which the forms of life have succeeded one another. But if these two propositions are granted there is no escape as it appears to me from three very important conclusions. The first is that living matter has existed upon the earth for a vast length of time certainly for millions of years. The second is that during this lapse of time the forms of living matter have undergone repeated changes the effect of which has been that the animal and vegetable population at any period of the earth's history contains certain species which do not exist at some antecedent period and others which cease to exist at some subsequent period. The third is that in the case of many groups of mammals and some of reptiles in which one type can be followed through a considerable extent of geological time the series of different forms by which the type is represented at successive intervals of this time is exactly such as it would be if they had been produced by the gradual modification of the earliest forms of the series. These are facts of the history of the earth guaranteed by as good evidence as any facts in civil history. Hitherto I have kept carefully clear of all the hypotheses to which men have at various times endeavored to fit the facts of paleontology or by which they have endeavored to connect as many of these facts as they happen to be acquainted with. I do not think it would be a profitable employment of our time to discuss conceptions which doubtless have had their justification and even their use but which are now obviously incompatible with the well-acertained truths of paleontology. At present these truths leave room for only two hypotheses. The first is that in the course of the history of the earth innumerable species of animals and plants have come into existence independently of one another innumerable times. This of course implies either that spontaneous generation on the most astounding scale and of animals such as horses and elephants has been going on as a natural process through all the time recorded by the fossiliferous rocks or it necessitates the belief in innumerable acts of creation repeated innumerable times. The other hypothesis is that the success of species of animals and plants have arisen the latter by the gradual modification of the earlier. This is the hypothesis of evolution and the paleontological discoveries of the last decade are so completely in accordance with the requirements of this hypothesis that if it had not existed the paleontologists would have had to invent it. I have always had a certain horror of presuming to set a limit upon the possibilities of things. Therefore I will not venture to say that it is impossible that the multitude in this species of animals and plants may have been produced one separately from the other by spontaneous generation nor that it is impossible that they should have been independently originated by an endless succession of miraculous creative acts. But I must confess that both these hypotheses strike me as so astoundingly improbable so devoid of a shred of either scientific or traditional support that even if there were no other evidence than that of paleontology in its favor I should feel compelled to adopt the hypothesis of evolution. Happily the future of paleontology is independent of all hypothetical considerations. Fifty years hence whoever undertakes to record the progress of paleontology will note the present time as the epic in which the law of succession of the forms of the higher animals was determined by the observation of paleontological facts. He will point out that just as Steno and as Cuvier were enabled from their knowledge of the empirical laws of coexistence of the parts of animals to conclude from a part to the whole. So the knowledge of the law of succession of forms empowered their successors to conclude from one or two terms of such a succession to the whole series and thus to divine the existence of forms of life of which perhaps no trace remains at epics of inconceivable remoteness in the past. End of the Rise and Progress of Paleontology by Thomas Henry Huxley should women be beautiful from idle ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Pretty women are going to have a hard time of it later on here the two they have had things far too much their own way in the future there are going to be no pretty girls for the simple reason there will be no plain girls against which to contrast them of late I have done some systematic reading of lady's papers the plain girl submits to a course of treatment in 18 months she bursts upon society and acknowledged beauty and it is all done by kindness one girl writes only a little while ago I used to look at myself in the glass and cry now I look at myself and laugh the letter is accompanied by two photographs of the young lady I should have cried myself had I seen her as she was at first she was a stumpy flat-headed squat-nosed cross-eyed thing she did not even look good one virtue she appears to have had however it was faith she believed what the label said she did what the label told her she is now a tall ravishing young person her only trouble being I should say to know what to do with her hair it reaches to her knees and must be a nuisance to her she would do better to give some of it away taking this young lady as a text it means that the girl who declines to be a dream of loveliness does so out of obstinacy what the raw material may be does not appear to matter provided no feature is absolutely missing the result is one under the same arrived at years of discretion the maiden proceeds to choose the style of beauty she prefers will she be a Juno a Venus or a Helen will she have a Grecian nose or one tip tilted like the petal of a rose let her try the tip tilted style first the professor has an idea it is going to be fashionable if afterwards she does not like it there will be time to try the Grecian it is difficult to decide these points without experiment would the lady like a high or a low forehead some ladies like to look intelligent it is purely a matter of taste with a Grecian nose the low broad forehead perhaps goes better it is more according to precedent on the other hand the high brainy forehead would be more original it is for the lady herself to select we come to the question of eyes the lady fancies a delicate blue not too pronounced to color one of those useful shades that go with almost everything at the same time there should be depth and passion the professor understands exactly the sort of eye the lady means but it will be expensive there is a cheap quality the professor does not recommend it true that it passes muster by gas light but the sunlight shows it up it lacks tenderness and at the price you can hardly expect it to contain much hidden meaning the professor advises the melting oh George take me in your arms and still my foolish fears brand it costs a little more but it pays for itself in the end perhaps it will be best now the eye has been fixed upon to discuss the questions of the hair the professor opens his book of patterns maybe the lady is of a willful disposition she loves to run laughing through the woods during exceptionally rainy weather or to gallop across the downs without a hat a fair ringlet streaming in the wind the old family coachman panting and expostulating in the rear if one may trust the popular novel extremely satisfactory husbands have often been secured in this way you naturally look at a girl who is walking through a wood laughing heartily apparently for no other reason than because it's raining who rides at stretch gulp without a hat if you have nothing else to do you follow her it is always on the cards that such a girl may do something really amusing before she gets home thus things begin to a girl of this kind naturally curly hair is essential it must be the sort of hair that looks better when it is soaking wet the bottle of stuff that makes this particular hair to grow may be considered dear if you think merely of the price but that is not the way to look at it what is it going to do for me that's what the girl has to ask herself it does not do to spoil the ship for a hipoth of tar as the saying is if you're going to be a dashing willful beauty you must have the hair for it or the whole scheme falls to the ground eyebrows and eyelashes the professor assumes the lady would like to match the hair too much eccentricity the professor does not agree with nature after all is the best guide neatness combined with taste that is the ideal to be aimed at the eyebrows should be almost straight the professor thinks the eyelashes long and silky with just the suspicion of a curl the professor would also suggest a little less cheek bone cheekbones being worn low this season will the lady have a dimpled chin or does she fancy the square cut jaw maybe the square cuts jaw under the firm sweet mouth are more suitable for the married woman they go well enough with the baby and the t-earn and the strong proud man in the background for the unmarried girl the dimpled chin and the rosebud mouth are perhaps on the whole safer some gentlemen are so nervous of that firm square jaw for the present at all events let us keep to the rosebud and the dimple complexion well there is only one complexion worth considering a creamy white relieve by delicate peach pink it goes with everything and is always effective rich olives striking pallors yes you hear these things doing well the professor's experience however is that for all round work you'll never improve upon the plain white and pink it is less liable to get out of order and is the easiest at all times to renew for the figure the professor recommends something live and supple five foot four is a good height but that is a point that should be discussed first with the dressmaker for trains five foot six is perhaps preferable but for the sporting girl who has to wear short frocks that height would of course be impossible the bust and the waist are also points on which the dressmaker should be consulted nothing should be done in a hurry what is the fashion going to be for the next two or three seasons there are styles demanding that beginning at the neck you should curve out like a powder pigeon there is apparently no difficulty whatever in obtaining this result but if crinolines for instance are likely to come in again the lady has only to imagine it for herself the effect might be grotesque suggestive of a walking hourglass so too with the waist for some fashions it is better to have it just a foot from the neck at other times it is more useful lower down the lady will kindly think over these details and let the professor know while one is about it one may as well make a sounds job it is all so simple and when you come to think of it really not expensive age apparently makes no difference a woman is as old as she looks in future i take it there will be no ladies over five and twenty wrinkles why any lady should still persist in wearing them is a mystery to me with a moderate amount of care any middle-class woman could save enough out of the housekeeping money in a month to get rid of every one of them gray hair well of course if you cling to gray hair there is no more to be said but to ladies who would just as soon have rich wavy brown or delicate shade of gold i would point out that there are one hundred and forty seven inexpensive lotions on the market any one of which rubbed gently into the head with a toothbrush not too hard just before going to bed will to use a colloquialism do the trick are you to start or are you too thin all you have to do is say which and enclose stamps but do not make a mistake and send for the wrong recipe if you are already too thin you might in consequence suddenly disappear before you found out your mistake one very stout lady i knew worked at herself for 18 months and got stout every day this discouraged her so much that she gave up trying no doubt she had made a model and had sent for the wrong bottle but she would not listen to further advice she said she was tired of the whole thing in future years there will be no need for a young man to look about him for a wife you'll take the nearest girl tell her his ideal and if she really care for him you'll go to the shop and have herself fixed up to his pattern in certain eastern countries i believe something of this kind is done a gentleman desirous of adding to his family sends around the neighborhood at the weight and size of his favorite wife hinting that if another can be found of the same proportions there is room for her fathers walk around among their daughters choose the most likely specimen and have her fattened up that is their brutal eastern way out west we shall be more delicate matchmaking mothers will probably revive the old confession book eligible bachelors will be invited to fill in a page your favorite height in women your favorite measurement round the waist do you like brunettes or blondes the choice will be left to the girls i do think kenry william just too sweet for words the maiden of the future will murmur to herself gently coily she will draw from him his ideal of what a woman should be in from six months to a year she will burst upon him the perfect she height size weight right to a T he will clasp her in his arms at last he will cry i have found her the woman of my dreams and if he does not change his mind and the bottles do not begin to lose their effect there will be every chance that they will be happy ever afterwards might not science go on even further why rest satisfied with making a world of merely beautiful women cannot science while she is about it make them all good at the same time i do not apologize for the suggestion i used to think all women beautiful and good it is their own papers that have disillusioned me i used to look at this lady or that shyly when nobody seemed to be noticing me and think how fair she was how stately now i only wonder who is her chemist they used to tell me when i was a little boy that girls were made of sugar and spice i know better now i have read the recipes in the answers to correspondence when i was quite a young man i used to sit in dark corners and listen with swelling heart while people at the piano told me where little girl babies got their wonderful eyes from of the things they did to them in heaven that gave them dimples oh me i wish now that i had never come across those ladies papers i know the stuff that causes those bewitching eyes i know the shop where they make those dimples i have passed it and looked in i thought they were produced by angels kisses but there was not an angel about the place that i could see perhaps i have also been deceived as regards their goodness maybe all women are not so perfect as in the popular short story they appear to be that is why i suggest that science should proceed still further and make them all as beautiful in mind as she is now able to make them in body may we not live to see in the advertisement columns of the ladies papers of the future the portrait of a young girl sulking in a corner before taking the lotion the same girl dancing among her little brothers and sisters shedding sunlight through the home after the three first bottles may we not have the caudal mixture one tablespoon at bedtime guaranteed to make the lady murmur good night dear hope you'll sleep well and at once to fall asleep her lips parted in a smile maybe some specialist of the future will advertise mind massage warranted to remove from the most obstinate subject all traces of hatred envy and malice and when science has done everything possible for women there might be no harm in her turning her attention to us men her idea at present seems to be that we men are too beautiful physically and morally to need improvement personally there are one or two points about which I should like to consult her the end of should women be beautiful by Jerome K. Jerome recorded by Peter Yersley the story of an eyewitness by Jack London this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the story of an eyewitness by Jack London Collier's special correspondent Colliers the National Weekly May 5th 1906 upon receipt of the first news of the earthquake Colliers telegraphed to Mr. Jack London who lives only 40 miles from San Francisco requesting him to go to the scene of the disaster and write the story of what he saw Mr. London started at once and he sent the following dramatic description of the tragic events he witnessed in the burning city the earthquake shook down in San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of walls and chimneys but the conflagration that followed burned up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property there is no estimating within hundreds of millions the actual damage wrought not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed San Francisco is gone nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling houses on its outskirts its industrial section is wiped out its business section is wiped out its social and residential section is wiped out the factories and warehouses the great stores and newspaper buildings the hotels and the palaces of the nabobs are all gone remains only the fringe of dwelling houses on the outskirts of what was once San Francisco within an hour after the earthquake shock the smoke of San Francisco's burning was a lurid tower visible 100 miles away and for three days and nights this lurid tower swayed in the sky reddening the sun darkening the day and filling the land with smoke on Wednesday morning at a quarter past five came the earthquake a minute later the flames were leaping upward in a dozen different quarters south of market street and the working class ghetto and in the factories fires started there was no opposing the flames there was no organization no communication all the cunning adjustments of a 20th century city had been smashed by the earthquake the streets were humped into ridges and depressions and piled with the debris of fallen walls the steel rails were twisted into perpendicular and horizontal angles the telephone and telegraph systems were disrupted and the great water mains had burst all the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of man had been thrown out of gear by 30 seconds twitching of the earth crust the fire made its own draft by Wednesday afternoon inside of 12 hours half the heart of the city was gone at that time I watched the vast conflagration from out on the bay it was dead calm not a flicker of wind stirred yet from every side wind was pouring in upon the city east west north and south strong winds were blowing upon the doomed city the heated air rising made an enormous suck thus did the fire of itself build its own colossal chimney through the atmosphere day and night this dead calm continued and yet near to the flames the wind was often half a gale so mighty was the suck Wednesday night saw the destruction of the very heart of the city dynamite was lavishly used and many of San Francisco's proudest structures were crumbled by man himself into ruins but there was nowithstanding the onrush of the flames time and again successful stands were made by the firefighters and every time the flames flanked around on either side or came up from the rear and turned to defeat the hard-won victory an enumeration of the buildings destroyed would be a directory of san francisco an enumeration of the buildings undistroyed would be a line and several addresses an enumeration of the deeds of heroism would stock a library and bankrupt the carnage metal fund an enumeration of the dead will never be made all vestiges of them were destroyed by the flames the number of the victims of the earthquake will never be known south of market street where the loss of life was particularly heavy was the first to catch fire remarkable as it may seem wednesday night while the whole city crashed and roared in a ruin was a quiet night there were no crowds there was no shouting and yelling there was no hysteria no disorder i passed wednesday night in the path of the advancing flames and in all those terrible hours i saw not one woman who wept not one man who was excited not one person who was in the slightest degree panic-stricken before the flames throughout the night fled tens of thousands of homeless ones some were wrapped in blankets others carried bundles of bedding and deer household treasures sometimes a whole family was harnessed to a carriage or delivery wagon that was weighted down with their possessions baby buggies toy wagons and go-karts were used as trucks while every other person was dragging a trunk yet everybody was gracious the most perfect courtesy obtained never in all san francisco's history never in all san francisco's history were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror a caravan of trunks all night these tens of thousands fled before the flames many of them the poor people from the labor ghetto had fled all day as well they had left their homes burdened with possessions now and again they lightened up blinging out upon the street clothing and treasures they had dragged for miles they held on longest to their trunks and over these trunks many a strong man broke his heart that night the hills of san francisco are steep and upon these hills mile after mile were the trunks dragged everywhere were trunks with across them lying their exhausted owners men and women before the march of the flames were flung picket lines of soldiers and a block at a time as the flames advanced these pickets retreated one of their tasks was to keep the trunk pullers moving the exhausted creatures stirred on by the menace of bayonets would arise and struggle up steep pavements pausing from weakness every five or ten feet often after surmounting a heartbreaking hill they would find another wall of flame advancing upon them at right angles and be compelled to change anew the line of their retreat in the end completely played out after toiling for a dozen hours like giants thousands of them were compelled to abandon their trunks here the shopkeepers and soft members of the middle class were at a disadvantage but the working men dug holes and vacant lots and backyards and buried their trunks the doomed city at nine o'clock Wednesday evening I walked down through the very heart of the city I walked through miles and miles of magnificent buildings and towering skyscrapers here was no fire all was in perfect order the police patrolled the streets every building had its watchmen at the door and yet it was doomed all of it there was no water the dynamite was giving out and at right angles two different conflagrations were sweeping down upon it at one o'clock in the morning I walked down through the same section everything still stood intact there was no fire and yet there was a change a rain of ashes was falling the watchmen at the doors were gone the police had been withdrawn there were no firemen no fire engines no men fighting with dynamite the district had been absolutely abandoned I stood at the corner of Cairney and Market in the very innermost heart of San Francisco Cairney Street was deserted half a dozen blocks away it was burning on both sides the street was a wall of flame and against this wall of flame silhouetted sharply were two United States cavalrymen sitting their horses calmly watching that was all not another person was in sight in the intact heart of the city two troopers sat their horses and watched spread of the conflagration surrender was complete there was no water the sewers had long since been pumped dry there was no dynamite another fire had broken out further uptown and now from three sides conflagrations were sweeping down the fourth side had been burned earlier in the day and that direction stood the tottering walls of the examiner building the burned out call building the smoldering ruins of the grand hotel and the gutted devastated dynamited palace hotel the following will illustrate the sweep of the flames and the inability of men to calculate their spread at eight o'clock Wednesday evening I passed through Union Square it was packed with refugees thousands of them had gone to bed on the grass government tents had been set up supper was being cooked and the refugees were lining up for free meals at half past one in the morning three sides of Union Square were in flames the fourth side where stood the great st. Francis hotel was still holding out an hour later ignited from top and sides the st. Francis was flaming heavenward Union Square heaped high with mountains of trunks was deserted troops refugees and all had retreated a fortune for a horse it was at Union Square that I saw a man offering a thousand dollars for a team of horses he was in charge of a truck piled high with trunks from some hotel it had been hauled here into what was considered safety and the horses had been taken out the flames were on three sides of the square and there were no horses also at this time standing beside the truck I urged a man to seek safety in flight he was all but him then by several conflagrations he was an old man and he was on crutches said he today is my birthday last night I was worth thirty thousand dollars I bought five bottles of wine some delicate fish and other things for my birthday dinner I have had no dinner and all I own are these crutches I convinced him of his danger and started him limping on his way an hour later from a distance I saw the truckload of trunks burning merrily in the middle of the street on Thursday morning at a quarter past five just 24 hours after the earthquake I sat on the steps of a small residence on knob hill with me sat Japanese Italians Chinese and Negroes a bit of the cosmopolitan flotsam of the wreck of the city all about were the palaces of the Nabob pioneers of 49 to the east and south at right angles were advancing two mighty walls of flame I went inside with the owner of the house on the steps of which I sat he was cool and cheerful and hospitable yesterday morning he said I was worth six hundred thousand dollars this morning this house is all I have left it will go in 15 minutes he pointed to a large cabinet that is my wife's collection of china this rug upon which we stand is a present it cost fifteen hundred dollars try that piano listen to its tongue there are few like it there are no horses the flames will be here in 15 minutes outside the old mark hopkins residence a palace was just catching fire the troops were falling back and driving the refugees before them from every side came the roaring of flames the crashing of walls and the detonations of dynamite the dawn of the second day I passed out of the house day was trying to dawn through the smoke pall a sickly light was creeping over the face of things once only the sun broke through the smoke pall blood red and showing quarter its usual size the smoke pall itself viewed from beneath was a rose color that pulsed and fluttered with lavender shades then it turned to mauve and yellow and done there was no sun and so dawn the second day on stricken san francisco an hour later I was creeping past the shattered dome of the city hall then it there was no better exhibit of the destructive force of the earthquake most of the stone had been shaken from the great dome leaving standing the naked framework of steel market street was piled high with the wreckage and across the wreckage lay the overthrown pillars of the city hall shattered into short crosswise sections this section of the city with the exception of the mint and the post office was already a waste of smoking ruins here and there through the smoke creeping warily under the shadows of tottering walls emerged occasional men and women it was like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the end of the world bees slaughtered and roasted on mission street lay a dozen steers in a neat row stretching across the street just as they had been struck down by the flying ruins of the earthquake the fire had passed through afterwards and roasted them the human dead had been carried away before the fire came at another place on mission street I saw a milk wagon a steel telegraph pole had smashed down sheer through the driver's seat and crushed the front wheels the milk cans lay scattered around all day thursday and all thursday night all day friday and friday night the flames still raged on friday night saw the flames finally conquered though not until russian hill and telegraph hill had been swept in three quarters of a mile of wars and docks had been licked up the last stand the great stand of the firefighters was made thursday night on van ness avenue had they failed here the comparatively few remaining houses of the city would have been swept here were the magnificent residences of the second generation of san francisco nebobs and these in a solid zone were dynamited down across the path of the fire here and there the flames leaped the zone but these fires were beaten out principally by the use of wet blankets and rugs san francisco at the present time is like the crater of a volcano around which are camped tens of thousands of refugees at the prosidio alone or at least 20 000 all the surrounding cities and towns are jammed with the homeless ones where they are being cared for by the relief committees the refugees were carried free by the railroads to any point they wish to go and it is estimated that over 100 000 people have left the peninsula on which san francisco stood the government has a situation in hand and thanks to the immediate relief given by the whole united states there is not the slightest possibility of a famine the bankers and businessmen have already set about making preparations to rebuild san francisco end of the story of an eyewitness by jack london read by leanne howlett