488 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 300. 



hunter's pity. Thus Carstenseu in his ' Two 

 Summers in Greenland ' gives an instance of 

 an Eskimo hunter who was so affected by the 

 sad appealing eyes of the seals as he was about 

 to despatch them that he was unable to shoot, 

 and was obliged to give up hunting to the detri- 

 ment of his own family. Monkeys and giraffes 

 often escape human hunters through the pitj' 

 their actions inspire when driven to extremity, 

 as all readers of sporting books will recall. 

 Hough reports that even the bear when cor- 

 nered and completely at the mercy of the hun- 

 ter sometimes exhibits a pitiful submission and 

 despair. 



A third point which deserves more consider- 

 tion is whether, as the authors represent, the 

 literature of pathos is preferred by mankind in 

 general to that of joy (p. 581). Certainly 

 humorous and comic papers abound, and most 

 news sheets and general periodicals have a 

 ^section devoted to wit and humor, whereas there 

 are no journals or portions thereof devoted to 

 pathos. Most novel readers prefer, I think, 

 the tale where everything turns out right in the 

 end. The vast vogue of farce and burlesque 

 on the stage is another evidence of popular 

 taste. With the modern development of humor 

 especially with the Anglo-Saxon races, much 

 annoyance and suffering that would once have 

 been pitiable in ourselves and others, is merely 

 laughable. On the whole the present tendency 

 seems to be to restrict the field of pity and to 

 intensify and rationalize it in that field. 



The pleasure of pity is little referred to, but 

 the survival theory is mentioned : "It seems 

 as though our race had developed modern 

 civilization in which the leisure field is so vastly 

 widened and the pain field so greatly reduced, 

 too suddenly, and that our nervous system is 

 not yet wonted to so much ease and luxury and 

 had therefore to hark back to play over the old 

 litany of sorrow and pain in the falsetto way 

 of the stage novel and poem." But certainly 

 the primary and main pleasure in pity is that it 

 emphasizes power of protector over prot6ge, 

 and the secondary source is in seeing the de- 

 sired relief effected. Pity which is in no wise 

 objective and effective, but solely subjective 

 indulgence — e. g. , pleasure in the tragic poem — 

 is like other emotion for its own sake, an art 



sphere, a late severance of emotion and action, 

 and so while resting upon the past is not to be 

 described as survival, but as the progressive 

 development of experience for its own sake. 

 Thus literature and music idealize pity into 

 pure and subtle forms, and the soul, dissolved 

 in infinite, delicious sadness, experiences the 

 most evanescent and distant development of 

 maternity-paternity. 



HiEAM M. Stanley. 

 Lake Fokest, III., Sept. 10, 1900. 



THE KIEFFEE PEAR AND THE SAN JOSi SCALE. 



In his New Jersey Report for 1897 (p. 484), 

 Dr. J. B. Smith writes: "A curious fact was 

 emphasized this year ; in an orchard of Kieffer 

 trees, when once it becomes infested [with San 

 Jos6 scale] , the scales flourish as well as any- 

 where, and the trees become as completely 

 incrusted as any other variety. But where 

 Kieffer is mixed with other varieties it remains 

 almost exempt, even where neighboring trees 

 are badly infested. This was noticed several 

 times, and Le Conte seems almost less troubled 

 than Kieffer." 



In the Yearbook of the Department of Agri- 

 culture for 1897 (p. 415), Messrs. Swingle and 

 Webber write : ' ' The Kieffer and Le Conte 

 pears * * * are almost certainly hybrids be- 

 tween the Chinese sand pear {Pyrus sinensis) 

 and the common European pear (P. communis), 

 since both were grown from seeds of the sand 

 pear obtained from trees which were surrounded 

 by various European pears." On the same 

 page they write of "the problem which the 

 French hybridizers have successfully solved in 

 obtaining hybrid grapes combining the resist- 

 ance to Phylloxera of the American grape and 

 the quality and size of the fruit of the European 



I have elsewhere set forth my reasons for 

 believing that the San Jos6 scale is a native 

 of eastern Asia, and, if this is the case, does it 

 not appear that our hybridizers have unwit- 

 tingly obtained a pear combining resistance to 

 the San Jos6 scale with the good qualities of 

 the European pears, the fruit of the Chinese 

 sand pear being very poor? The facts, at all 

 events, are strongly suggestive of such a thing. 



