Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/584

568 colza oil or kerosene is burned. Gaslight, finally, creates, in proportion to the light developed, less disagreeable heat and is less unhealthful when proper ventilation of rooms is provided than candles or oil lamps. Among other purposes to which gas has in recent years been applied, Mr. Gerhardt mentions its use in warming rooms, heating sadirons, and heating water; in roasting, baking, steaming, frying, boiling, and broiling. It is adopted as fuel to drive small domestic motors, for various industrial purposes; and it is employed for artificial ventilation conducted by means of gas jets burning in exhaust flues, or by the use of sun-burners. Much has been said about the injurious influence of gaslight upon health; of the vitiation of the atmosphere of rooms; and of the destructive effects of gas, when imperfectly consumed, upon the furniture and decorations of a room, and the smoking up of ceilings and walls. But notwithstanding the rapid development of electric lighting, and notwithstanding the recent return in dwellings to the use of oil lamps, and of extensive and costly paraffin and wax candles, the use of gas in dwelling houses, offices, and stores is undoubtedly so convenient and comparatively safe that for many years to come it will constitute the chief means of artificial illumination.

Are Civilized Races Superior?—Proud of his wonderful achievements, civilized man looks down upon the humbler members of mankind, lie has conquered the forces of Nature and compelled them to serve him. He has transformed inhospitable forests into fertile fields. The mountain fastnesses are yielding their treasures to his demands. The fierce animals which were obstructing his progress are being exterminated, while others which are useful to him are made to increase a thousandfold. The waves of the ocean carry him from land to land, and towering mountain ranges set him no bounds. His genius has molded inert matters into powerful machines, which wait a touch of his hand to serve his manifold demands. What wonder, asked Dr. Franz Boaz, in his address before the Anthropological Section of the American Association, that he pities a people who have not succeeded in subduing Nature, who labor to eke an existence out of the products of the wilderness; who hear with trembling the roar of wild animals; who remain restricted by ocean, rivet, or mountains, and who strive to secure the necessaries of life with the help of few and simple instruments? What wonder if civilized man considers himself a being of higher order than primitive man? If it is claimed that the white race represents a higher type than all others? When we analyze this assumption it will soon be found that the superiority of the civilization of the white race is not a sufficient basis for it. As the civilization is higher, we assume that the aptitude for civilization is also higher, and as the aptitude for civilization presumably depends upon the perfection of the mechanism of body and mind, the inference is drawn that the white race represents the highest type of perfection. In this conclusion, which is reached through a comparison of the social status of civilized man and primitive man, the achievement and the aptitude for achievement have been confounded. Furthermore, as the white race is the civilized race, every deviation from the white type is considered a characteristic of the lower type. That these two errors underlie our judgments of races can easily be shown by the fact that, other conditions being equal, a race is always described as the lower the more fundamentally it differs from the white race.

The Problems of Archæological Relics.—The purpose of Mr. Gerard Fowke's Notes on the Archæology of Ohio is to present in a compact form conclusions based upon a careful study of the earthworks and the relics associated with them; embodying a summary of the results reached by all who have been engaged in the investigation. The very wide range of forms and relics—as is shown by the author—the diversity of material, and their unlikeness to almost everything belonging to the present inhabitants, have caused some misapprehension or confusion as to their probable uses. This is especially the case with the great number of objects whose manufacture may be considered the outcome of aesthetic or religious ideas. They are made of nearly all the different kinds of shell, bone, metal, and stone, especially slate and steatite, accessible to their fabricators. Under such names as gorgets, crescents,