50 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 311 



gambia to Timbuctu. The expense of maintaining the colony has 

 greatly exceeded any revenue derived from it. Though many 

 doubt the political wisdom of retaining it, yet the French have too 

 much pride to acknowledge that the enterprise has been in anyway 

 a failure ; and they will undoubtedly hold it, and perhaps found an 

 ■empire. Senegambia and the coast of Guinea, claimed by the 

 French and English, are low and moist, filled with swamps and 

 lagoons, and will prevent any European colonization. 



South of the Kongo, the Portuguese claim a wide section of coun- 

 try running across Africa. They have occupied this country over 

 two hundred years. They have done little towards colonizing, and 

 ■only hold a few trading-posts on the coast and in the interior, deal- 

 ing principally in slaves, ivory, and gold ; and it may well be 

 doubted whether, without holding slaves, they have the stamina or 

 ability to colonize this country, or to produce any permanent im- 

 pression upon it. 



The south portion of Africa, from the i8th parallel on the Atlan- 

 tic to the 36th parallel on the Indian Ocean, is generally fertile ; and 

 the climate is favorable to Europeans, and is capable of sustaining 

 a large population. The growth of Cape Colony has been very 

 slow, but a more rapid growth is anticipated. We believe it will 

 ■be permanently occupied by the English, who will dispossess the 

 aborigines, and form a great and permanent English state. The 

 ■coast of Zanzibar, occupied by the Germans and English, is rich 

 and fertile, the climate unhealthy ; but when the mountain-ranges 

 are crossed, and the elevated plateaus and lake regions are reached, 

 the interior resembles the Kongo region. Massaua and Suakin, on 

 the Red Sea, are unhealthy and worthless, unless connected by rail- 

 road with the upper Nile. 



There remains equatorial Africa, including the French settle- 

 ments on the Ogowe, the region about Lake Chad, the Kongo and 

 its tributaries, and the lake region. The more we learn of equa- 

 torial Africa, the greater its natural advantages appear to be. The 

 rivers open up the country in a favorable manner for trade and set- 

 tlement. Its elevation from 2,000 to 3,oocS feet will, I believe, render 

 it healthy, though this elevation is only equal to from ten degrees 

 to fourteen degrees of north latitude. Here all the fruits of the 

 torrid zone, the fruits and most of the grains of the temperate zone, 

 ■cotton. India-rubber, and sugar-cane, are found. 



The country has been unhealthy, a great many Europeans have 

 died, and few have been able to remain more than two or three 

 ■years without returning to Europe to recuperate. These facts 

 seem to show that the climate is not healthy for Europeans. But, 

 by reason of the exposure incidental to all new settlements, the 

 mortality has been much greater than it will be when the country 

 is settled and the unhealthy stations have been exchanged for 

 'healthier localities. Every new country has its peculiar dangers, 

 which must be discovered and understood, then overcome. I be- 

 ilieve that these obstacles will be overcome, and that Europeans 

 will occupy all this region, and that it will become a European 

 -colony. 



If European colonization is successful, European civilization will 

 •come into contact with African barbarism. Where such a contest 

 is carried on in a country where the climate is equally favorable to 

 the two races, it can only result in the subjugation or destruction 

 of the inferior race. If the cUmate is unfavorable to the white 

 population, then, unless the inferior is subjected to the superior, the 

 white population will fail in colonizing the country, and the Negro 

 will either slowly emerge from barbarism, or return to his original 

 -degraded condition. 



The Negroes have never developed any high degree of civiliza- 

 tion ; and when they have lived in contact with civilization, and made 

 -considerable progress when that contact ceased, they have deterio- 

 rated into Barbarists. But, on the other hand, they have never faded 

 away and disappeared, like the Indian of America and the natives 

 ■of the Southern Archipelago. 



Nature has spread a bountiful and never-endingj harvest before 

 the Negro, and given to him a climate where neither labor of body 

 ■or mind, nor clothing, nor a house, is essential to his comfort. 

 All nature invites to an idle life ; and it is only through compulsion, 

 ■and contact with a life from without, that his condition can be im- 

 proved. 



In Africa there is going on a contest between civilization and 



barbarism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, freedom and slavery, 

 such as the world has never seen. Who can fail to be interested 

 in the results of this conflict ? We know that Africa is capable of 

 the very highest civilization ; that it was the birthplace of all civili- 

 zation. To it we are indebted for the origin of all our arts and 

 sciences, and it possesses to-day the most wonderful works of man. 

 I believe that Africa, whose morning was so bright, and whose 

 night has been so dark, will yet live to see the light of another and 

 higher civilization. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Hypjwtzsm or Mesmerism. By Charles B. Cory. Boston, 

 Mudge. 12°. 

 Comparatively little has been done in this country in the 

 study of hypnotism, now occupying so prominent a place in the 

 literatures of France, Germany, and other countries. It is the ob- 

 ject of Mr. Cory, who is chairman of the committee on hypnotism, 

 of the American Society for Psychical Research, to inform the 

 American public with reference to those phenomena. Most of the 

 papers here gathered together have been published separately, and 

 the collection forms a very readable introduction into some aspects 

 of the subject. A general paper on hypnotism, partly historical 

 and partly expository, is followed by the most valuable of the pa- 

 pers, in which the factor played by the consent of the subject in 

 the act of hypnotization is ingeniously analyzed. He shows, in one 

 case, that the most intense efforts to will a patient to sleep, when 

 the latter is unaware of the attempt, prove unavailing ; while en- 

 tire passivity is sufficient to cause sleep, when the subject has been 

 led to believe that an attempt to hypnotize her is being made. Mr. 

 Cory sums up his conclusions thus : (i) hypnotism is related to an 

 abnormal constitution of the nervous system ; (2) only a small per- 

 centage of persons are hypnotizable ; (3) the condition is entirely 

 due to suggestion, no one being hypnotizable without being in- 

 formed, or led to suspect, that he is to be the object of experiment ; 

 (4) the condition may be self-induced ; (5) in certain cases the hyp- 

 notic is insensitive. Mr. Cory's experiments on negative hallucina- 

 tions are extremely ingenious. He shows, that, when an object is 

 removed by suggestion from the field of vision, the subject takes 

 note of some peculiarity by which to recognize that she is to ignore 

 it. What the eye sees, the mind refuses to recognize. If a num- 

 ber of precisely similar objects are presented, the subject has no 

 longer a clew as to which impression is to be ignored, and the 

 suggestion fails. Mr. Cory has also a talk upon the therapeutic 

 value of hypnotism. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



The new " Century Dictionary," which has been in course of 

 preparation by The Century Company during the past seven years, 

 is approaching completion, and it is expected that the issue of the 

 work will begin during the coming spring. It will be published 

 by subscription, and in parts, ok " sections ; " the whole, consisting 

 of about 6,500 pages, to be finally bound into six quarto volumes. 

 Although the printers have been engaged upon the type-setting for 

 more than two years, the publishers have waited until the labor of 

 making the plates is so well advanced that the work can be regu- 

 larly issued at intervals of about a naonth, and completed within 

 two years. Probably no work of greater magnitude or importance 

 has been put forth by an American house. The editor-in-chief. Pro- 

 fessor William Dwight Whitney of Yale University, who is per- 

 haps the highest authority in philology in both America and Eng- 

 land, has been assisted by nearly fifty experts, college professors, 

 and others, each a recognized authority in his own specialty ; the 

 design of the dictionary being to make it complete and authorita- 

 tive in every branch of literature, science, and the arts. It is in- 

 tended that the botanist shall find in the " Century Dictionary " 

 full definitions of terms in his special line of study ; that the civil 

 engineer and the architect can turn to it for the definitions (usually 

 with plans and pictures) of the terms in their own specialties ; and 

 so with every other pursuit or profession, — law, music, medicine, 

 chemistry, anatomy, archsology, zoology, mineralogy, theology, etc. 

 Each expert is reading the proofs of the entire work ; indeed, the 



