100 Years Ago: June 1924

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: June 1924

 

This is the 113^th entry in my ongoing series of short reviews of National Geographic Magazines that have reached the age of one hundred.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Exploring the Mysteries of Plant Life” and was written by William Joseph Showalter, author of “Exploring the Glories of the Firmament,” etc., in the National Geographic Magazine.  It is comprised of an introductory article, a set of color plates containing paintings of flowering plants, and a field guide containing the names, genus and species, family, plate number, and description of the plant in question.  Since the field guide contained the plate number to link the text to a painting, there is no need for an index.  Of the “88 Illustrations” listed on the cover, forty-one are black-and-white photographs scattered throughout both the intro article and the field guide.  Of those photos, twelve are full-page in size.  The remaining forty-seven illustration are pastel paintings of flowering plants on the “Sixteen Pages of Illustrations in Full Color” headlined on the cover.  Those paintings are three to a page, save one that only has two.  The sixteen pages, embedded in the field guide, are Plates numbered I through XVI in Roman numerals and represent pages 613 through 628 in the issue.

All the factories, all the railroads, all the mines, all the automobiles, all the activities of man that required power, did not utilize as much energy as was developed by the plant world.  Out of intangible sunshine, insubstantial air, and clear water, coupled with a modicum of mineral matter from the soil, plants manufactured all the food that kept alive the innumerable hosts of animals of the earth, stored up all the heat that kept humanity warm and cook its food, furnish most of the power that drove its industries, and provided raw material for all the clothes mankind wore and many of the products of which his factories, his houses, his furniture, and his books were made.  When one burned a plant, the thin layer of ash that remained was all the solids from the earth from the plant; the rest was subtle sunbeams, thin air, and plain water.  Every plant, from a simple moss to a giant tree, was a vast household of individual entities working together, in cooperation and harmony to a common goal.  One group pumped water to where it was needed, others, respectively obtained the solid food from the ground, mixed it with air, sunshine, and water to make food, carried the food to the various parts of the household, stored up the leftovers, built additions to the house, and prepare to send out colonies.  One could compare a plant to a busy little city.  As diverse in their form as in the activities of their cells, the plants and flowers of the world exhibited every gradation in size from the big Sequoias of California and the great Eucalyptus of Australia to the tiny germs of tuberculosis and the microscopic bacilli of typhoid.  They revealed every combination of color from deepest red to richest violet.  They presented every kind of texture from ivory-hard seed of palms to the jelly-soft fronds of seaweed.  They disclosed habits that ranged from independence to insinuating and crass parasitism.

The ability of plants to live and work in adverse conditions and to adjust themselves to their environment was one of the marvels of creation.  Some two hundred thousand species had been catalogued and described, and they had adapted themselves to every conceivable sort of environment.  Some lived in water, others in desert places; some rejoiced in eternal sunshine, other preferred polar cold; some chose the seashore, others selected the mountain peak; some thrived on thin air, others dwelled in caves; some inhabited the human body, others had learned to thrive even where air was entirely absent.  Some found hot springs to their liking, and some began to cover a new lava flow as soon as it cooled.  Plants depended on outside agencies for fertility; they called winds to their service, entered into reciprocal relationships with insects, and developed devices of a high mechanical order.  Rooted in the ground, they were, next to man, the world’s most eminent colonizers, drafting the winds, the waters, birds, animals, and even man into their schemes of dispersal.  Unable to run away when attacked, they had set up innumerable forms of defense for their protection, such as thorns, prickles, acrid juice, and poison.  There were some plants, such as bacteria, which multiplied by simple division.  Others developed bulblets, which took root and grew.  Still others developed suckers, runners, and stolons.  But sexless reproduction was the exception and not the rule.  Most plants were reproduced by “setting seed,” and those always had flowers.  Once it was thought that those flowers were made chiefly, if not wholly, for the pleasure of human senses.  By 1924, we knew that the manifold varieties of floral forms we saw were mainly devices developed by the plant to secure the perpetuation of the species.  They must protect their tender stamens and pistils; they must attract the insects that served them; and they must repel the insects that rendered no service.

Less virile flowers, possessing both stamens and pistils, fertilized themselves.  More progressive ones, also having both stamens and pistils, scorned self-fertilization, and in others, the sexes were so separated that stamens and pistils occurred in different flowers or even on different plants.  Some of those plants employed the wind and the water as messengers for carrying pollen from mature stamens to receptive pistils.  Such flowers were rigid economists except in the matter of pollen, of which they were profligate spenders.  Insects were attracted by pleasing odors, bright colors, and sweet nectar, but the wind and the water paid no attention to such things.   So, color, scent, and sweetness were absent.  But there was a greater need for pollen, since wind and water were poor messengers and must be loaded down if any of the pollen was to reach its proper destination.  Some of the water-fertilized plants had to adapt themselves to fertilization under water, others must be fertilized at the surface.  The wind-pollinated plants included many of the forest trees and most grasses.  A little farther up the line of floral development we found species of plants in the very stage of transformation from wind-lovers to insect-lovers.  The flowers that were insect lovers were usually beautiful, fragrant, and sweet, for they needed to appeal to the insect’s senses of sight, smell, and taste. They made fine hostesses.  However, they needed to be careful not to overfeed their guest, lest they linger and not respond to other invitations.  Likewise, they needed to bar the door to unbidden visitors that were unable to render services.  That problem was met in various ways.  Many of the gentians used the opposite leaves to form a collar, others hung their heads; some provided down-curving hair along the stem, while some even placed hairs on the flowers themselves.  Some had a swelled calyx that kept the nectar safe, even if the walls were gnawed through.

Honeysuckles constricted their corollas, so that only long-tongued insect could reach the sweets at the base.  Flowers like the snap dragon had masklike corollas which were closed to all visitors that had not the strength to push them ajar.  Sticky secretions along the stem and on the calyx formed another device that some flowers used to keep out the uninvited.  Some plants went even further in protecting themselves.  They provided little crystals of sugar on the exterior of the flower, of which ants were very fond.  That enabled the plant to maintain a garrison of defenders.  About three thousand species made such provisions for the maintenance of standing armies.  Orange-growers in China and fruit-growers in Italy made use of that relationship between ant and plant by establishing ant hills at the base of their trees, thereby accomplishing the results that Americans achieved by spraying.  Cross-fertilization by insect was said to produce a sort of floral aristocracy, with larger blossoms, brighter hues, sweeter scents, and richer nectar.  Usually, the guests came and went at will, but not always.  Sometimes they were kidnapped and held prisoners until they had rendered their service – for the flower’s invitation always had the string of obligation tied to it.  The yucca moth and yucca flower had formed a striking flower-insect partnership.  The moth visited a yucca blossom, scraped pollen, and made it into a ball.  Then she flew to another blossom whose pistil had reached the receptive stage.  There, she made an incision in the pistil, put her eggs into the cut, and then ran to the top of the stigma and ram the pollen into its funnel, which insured the setting of seed.  Some flowers gripped the legs of insect visitors and held them fast.  In trying to yank the trapped leg free, the bee pulled loose a little saddlebag containing two packs of pollen, which adhered to the leg.  Flying to another flower that had a receptive stigma, the insect left the saddlebag with it.

Not all flowers attract their guest by fragrance and beauty.  Some claimed the attention of flies by resembling decaying flesh, both in color and odor.  The arrangement by which flowers having both stamens and pistils prevent self-fertilization were of various types.  Some matured their stamens first.  The stigma did not develop to a receptive condition until after the stamens had discharged their pollen.  Other solved the problem the other way around, maturing their stigmas first and holding back their stamens until after the stigmas had passed the receptive stage.  There were other devices employed to accomplish the same end, each remarkable in its effectiveness.  Plants needed to send out colonies even though they themselves were rooted in one place.  If they had not, they would have reached a point of density and competition where few, if any, could have survived.  Furthermore, the soil in many cases would have become so exhausted that they would have starved.  Still further, conditions were ever changing, and more favorable locations were ever developing.  Some plants colonized by powers of independent locomotion, such as the slime-mold.  Some algae developed spores possessing tiny hairs which vibrated, while others had flagella to propel them through the water.  Colonization through extension of growth was frequently employed by higher plants – the strawberry with its runners, the apple tree with its suckers, and the walking fern with its fronds rooting at their tips.  Of course, plants that sent out runners could not travel fast or far, and other means of colonization were demanded by those seeking to go great distances.  Seed expulsion was one of the improved methods of spreading a plant’s domain.  Examples included wild geranium, the castor-bean, and the witch-hazel.  But all the mechanical arrangements by which plants sent out colonies without outside help came up short of the needs of the situation.  They needed to enlist the aid of outside agencies – birds, animals, and even man.

One method was by developing seeds with hooks, which clung to fur, feathers, and clothing.  There were many plants that developed sticky seeds to insure transportation by the fowl of the air.  Birds in that way often carried seeds hundreds of miles.  Other plants brought about transportation of their seeds by developing seeds in edible fruits or edible kernels in hard shells.  Some seeds were designed to deceive animals and to procure their dispersal by fraud.  Cow-wheat, for instance, produced seeds that resembled ants’ eggs.  Other plants produced seed pods that resembled a caterpillar relished by birds.  Most of the weeds in America were from Asia and Europe.  They had come as stowaways and had spread with tremendous rapidity.  Water dispersal of seeds had been employed by many plants.  The Hindu lotus, some waterlilies, and the coconut palm were examples of waterborne seeds.  Wind-dispersed plants were numerous.  They resorted to all kinds of stratagems to command waftage by the winds.  The parachute plume of the dandelion, the down of the thistle, the silky plume of the Virginia-bower, the soft tuft of the milkweed, were examples of the effective vehicles which carried seeds far and wide on the wings of the wind.  The propeller-blade of the maple was another typical device utilized for seed dispersal.  Still other plants gained the aid of the wind by folding themselves up into balls and waiting for gusts to come along, uprooted them and drove them to new habitations, scattering their seeds as they went.  The Russian thistle and the rose-of-Jericho were characteristic “tumble weeds.”  In Russia there was a plant known as the “wind witch,” which had a root like a radish.  When it matured the branches of the stalk curled down and pulled up the plant, root and all.  Then it waited for a high wind to rise and blow it away to a new location where it could take root again and begin a new career.

The life of plants was fascinating to the author.  The seed that found its “place in the sun” settled down and waited for the proper conditions of moisture and warmth to awaken.  Once that little speck of living matter was aroused it became busy, sending out bits of itself to its surroundings.  Each of those promptly built itself a tiny house of its own, constructed of tiny bricks of cellulose.  Between the interstices, communication was maintained with the parent cell, and at the same time the new cell sent out children of its own.  The size of those cells varied.  When the microscope was first invented and philosophers peered into those little houses and saw the living plasm within, amazement and awe possessed them.  The things the pioneers saw were considered delusions until the members of the Royal Society of London peered through the microscope and jointly signed a paper saying they had seen those wonders with their own eyes.  A somewhat viscid substance, not unlike the white of an egg, though thicker, the bit of protoplasm within the cell did the fundamental work of all organic matter.  As it grew, the little community of protoplasts that built the plant divided its labors, and the complex activities of the growing flower began.  The building of those tiny houses was an immeasurable boon to humanity.  Without them our plants and trees would never exist and all we would know would be masses of slime.  With those cell cities were the hustle and bustle and industry constantly taking place.  One of the principal things going on was the manufacture of a myriad of tiny green grains which had been name chlorophyll.  Those grains screened out light, except red and most of the blue, indigo, and violet series, which they used in their work. Concentrating those useful rays on particles of carbon dioxide which came into the leaves through their pores, or stomata, the chlorophyll broke the carbon and oxygen apart and united the carbon with water, which became grape sugar.

In a laboratory, it took a temperature of 1,300 degrees C. to separate the carbon and oxygen atoms of carbon dioxide, but plants did it without difficulty, and in so doing, fabricated the basic food of all organic life, grape sugar.  To make a pound of sugar, the plant must convert nearly ninety gallons of carbon dioxide, by filtering it out of thousands of gallons of air.  The sugar factory worked from sunup to sundown, but it operated only when the leaves were out.  Sugar was the product and oxygen was the byproduct of those factories.  After chlorophyll grains had made sugar, some new workers took it and transformed it into starch, which was stored in the cells for future use.  A thousand square feet of leaf manufactured one pound of starch in five hours of sunlight.  Men and animals had learned to rob the plant of its savings by eating things rich in starch.  A third material was made by the plant which was used in its building operations – inulin.  It closely resembled starch, and was fabricated by another set of workers.  While all those activities were going on in the cells, sap was also needed, for without rich supplies of moisture and a tiny bit of mineral substance the wheels of industry of the community could not revolve.  So, the roots acted as pumps and brought into the city vast supplies of water with mineral in solution.  That sap was pumped to every part of the plant and bathed the protoplasm of every cell, keeping the protoplasts moist and in high spirits.  Out of sugar, starch, and inulin other types of products were built, such as cellulose, which formed the microscopic bricks out of which the cell walls were constructed, and the fixed or fatty oils which were stored up in seeds, bulbs, etc., as reserve material for future needs.

The fibers of cotton, the pith of woody stems, and the filter paper of the chemist were familiar forms of cellulose.  The plant made it serve a double purpose, now a cell-wall material, and now as a stored product, that was reconverted into sugar if needed for food.  As the cell aged, lignin was added to give stiffness to the plant structure, making wood.  Other materials were employed to give hardness to the shells of nuts, waterproof character to cork, or gumminess to seeds like flax.  It was the cellulose of plants which lived long eras ago that we burned today [1924] as coal.  Other plants manufactured the malic acid of apples and currants, the citric acid of lemons and oranges, the tartaric acid of grapes; the waxes which made some flowers; the resins which salved the wounds of injured plants; the glucosides which made the wonderful hues of autumn, and the poisons which protected the plants and served humanity, such as strychnine and morphine.  Still other workers were building up the proteins, or flesh formers.  But most interesting of all the products made by the plant, perhaps, were the enzymes.  They converted sugar into starch and starch into sugar.  They were called the tools with which the protoplasm effected the chemical results it required.  Dr. Frederick V. Coville, of the U. S. D. A., had shown that it was the cold of winter, and not the warm sunshine of spring alone, that caused the buds on the northern trees to open.  They were driven out when enzymes penetrated the walls of the starch cells and the starch converted into sugar.  [See: “The Wild Blueberry Tamed,” June 1916, National Geographic Magazine.]  The seedling of a mustard had a slender root covered with tiny hairs. At the end of the root was a growing tip.  If a potted plant was cut down to the surface of the soil and a glass tube slipped over the stump, the sap rose up in the tube to the approximate height of the original plant.  That sap consisted of water and minerals was drawn out of the earth by that strange process of Nature – osmosis.

The protoplasm acted as a membrane, and the water in the soil was drawn through it to join the sap in the root.  As the volume increased the osmotic force drove the excess up into the plant structure.  The hairs of plant-roots were ever busy pumping in water.  Through capillary action in the soil, particles several feet away were made to contribute their moisture to the hairs.  Between the water the plant used in the manufacture of sugar and the much larger quantity it needed to pass through its system to keep the plant from wilting, heavy drafts were levied on the soil.  An oak tree with 700,000 leaves was estimated to give off 120 tons of water a season.  An acre of grass gave off more than six tons in a single day. From 200 to 500 pounds of water were given off by plants for every pound of dry substance manufactured.  The osmotic power of the plant was supplemented by other agencies to carry the water to the top of the tree.  The chemical processes that went on in the plant in the growing season developed considerable heat.  To carry off the heat, a major portion of the water was employed as a “radiator.”  Evaporation on the leaf surface reduced the plant’s temperature.  Many plants had damper systems whereby excessive radiation was checked.  The mineral matter drawn into plants in solution was made available in many ways.  The earthworms were allies of plant growth.  An acre of arable land contained an earthworm population of 130,000, and they passed two tons of soil through their gizzards every season, converting it into humus rich in soluble minerals.  Lichen ate into marble like acids in getting mineral material for their upbuilding.  Different kinds of plants needed different minerals – potatoes and turnips called for plenty of potash, wheat and corn for much silica, beans and clover for considerable quantities of lime.

Plants adapted themselves and their parts to their environment.  The leaves, whether on tree or flower or grass, always arranged themselves to command the required amount of light.  Some flowers closed at night; others closed if a red-hot poker was brought near them.  Odor offensive to them caused some flowers to close and even to die.  Insectivorous plants were largely an adaptation to environment.  Usually, those which preyed upon insects grew in regions where nitrogen was scarce, like bogs or sandy, acidic soil.  The traps of those plants were well suited for their work.  The Venus flytrap’s leaves stood open normally.  When an insect crawled in and touched one of the trigger hairs, the leaf shut up tight and did not open again until the flesh of the prisoner had been digested.  In setting its snare, the flytrap was not content to wait for chance prey; it spread bait out for them – a sweet secretion on the surface of the leaves.  The competition of plants was often a fierce race for survival of the fittest.  Climbing plants crept up the trunks of giant trees, stealing the sun away from the latter’s leaves, and often smothering or choking them completely.  There were many parasitic plants like mistletoe, the dodder, and the broomrape, which had suckers that penetrated the bark of other plants and sucked away their sap as leeches drank the blood of animals.  A group of plants known as Ficus whose seeds were deposited on the branches of trees by birds.  There they germinated.  The roots clambered down until they reached the soil and the stems climbed up until they reached the crown of the tree.  Once established, the roots hardened and started to throw out branches which amalgamated with one another, until the tree was girt by a series of irregular living hoops.  Ultimately, the tree was killed by the strangler fig.  But while the competition was often fierce and the struggle for survival frequently bitter, many plants entered the conflict armed and ready to protect themselves against both plant and animal foes.

The latex of the rubber tree was not made to furnish man with automobile tires and raincoats, but rather to dress its own wounds.  When a woodpecker drilled a hole in the rubber tree’s trunk, the latex flowed, and healed the wound.  A beetle trying to invade the cell city of the tree became a prisoner and executed.  A mistletoe seed trying to take root was overpowered by the poisonous sap.  As a protection against mice, insect larvae, and underground dwellers, many food-storing roots developed poisons in their tissue.  Sometimes those took the form of alkaloids and fetid gum resins.  Flower intelligence had been noted by many authorities.  One of them pinned a living fly on a bit of cardboard half an inch from the leaf of a sundew.  In two hours, the leaf succeeded in approaching the insect and fastening its tentacles about the creature.  The evolution of plants and the development of cell communities formed one of the most fascinating stories in Nature.  Originally, they were undoubtedly one-cell structures, some of which still survived in our time [in 1924].  All the various functions of a plant thus had to be performed by a single cell.  Then, coming out of the water and upon the earth, they needed to be rooted to the spot that nourished them, and roots began to develop.  Step by step, life requirements became more complex and new conditions were met by the creation of specialized cells which met could do a definite task, and the plant was gradually transformed into the complex creation that it was.  [In 1924,] one encountered plants in all stages of that rise from one-celled primitive to the intricate modern.  When they first appeared, the leaf bud and the flower bud were indistinguishable.  In the biographies of the individual plants in the accompanying flower series, many additional fascinating facts were brought out.  In their natural colors, the flowers told their own stories of structure better than any words could, so the descriptive text was left free to tell the story of their life problems, and how they solved them.

The following is a list of the forty-seven field guide entry headings containing common name, genus and species, family, and plate containing the painting:

• Ground-ivy, Glecoma hederacea, Mint Family [Plate I, left]
• Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea, Pitcher Plant Family [Plate I, middle]
• Pale Wild Bergamot, Monarda mollis, Mint Family [Plate I, right]
• Willow Amsonia, Amsonia tabernaemontana, Douglas Family [Plate II, left]
• Common Cattail, Typha latifolia, Cattail Family [Plate II, middle]
• Pussy Willow, Salix discolor, Willow Family [Plate II, right]
• Carrion Flower, Smilax herbacea, Smilax Family [Plate III, left]
• Common St. John’s Wort, Hypericum perforatum, St. John’s Wort Family [Plate III, middle]
• Small Spatterdock, Nymphaea microphylla, Waterlily Family [Plate III, right]
• American Bladdernut, Staphylea trifelia, Bladdernut Family [Plate IV, left]
• Virginia Spring Berry, Claytonia virginica, Purslane Family [Plate IV, middle]
• Golden Meadow Parsnip, Zizia aurea, Parsley Family [Plate IV, right]
• European Barberry, Berberis vulgaris, Barberry Family [Plate V, left]
• Yellow Wood Sorrel, Xanthoxalis cymose, Sorrel Family [Plate V, middle]
• American Bittersweet, Celastrus scandens, Staff Tree Family [Plate V, right]
• Snow-on-the-Mountain, Dichrophyllum marginatum, Spurge Family [Plate VI, left]
• Blackberry-Lily, Gemmingia chinensis, Iris Family [Plate VI, middle]
• Small Bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis, Morning-glory Family [Plate VI, right]
• Wood Betony, Pedicularis canadensis, Figwort Family [Plate VII, left]
• Sweet-flag, Acorus calamus, Arum Family [Plate VII, middle]
• Cobaea Pentstemon, Penstemon cobaea, Figwort Family [Plate VII, right]
• Curly Dock, Rumex crispus, Buckwheat Family [Plate VIII, left]
• Common Shooting-star, Dodecatheon meadia, Primrose Family [Plate VIII, middle]
• Black Swallow-wort, Cynanchum nigrum, Milkweed Family [Plate VIII, right]

• Common Moonseed, Menispermum canadense, Moonseed Family [Plate IX, left]
• Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, Aster Family [Plate IX, middle]
• Canada Wild Ginger, Asarum canadense, Birthwort Family [Plate IX, right]
• Branching Bur-reed, Sparganium androcladum, Bur-reed Family [Plate X, left]
• Gold-moss, Sedum acre, Orpine Family [Plate X, middle]
• Lizard-tail, Saurus cernuus, Lizard-tail Family [Plate X, right]
• Low Poppy-mallow, Callirhoe involucrate, Mallow Family [Plate XI, left]
• Sweet Gale, Myrica gale, Bayberry Family [Plate XI, middle]
• Checkerbloom, Sidalcea malvaeflora, Mallow Family [Plate XI, right]
• American Burnet, Sanguisorba canadensis, Rose Family [Plate XII, left]
• Trumpet Honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, Honeysuckle Family [Plate XII, middle]
• White-rod, Viburnum cassinoides, Honeysuckle Family [Plate XII, right]
• Rose Pogonia, Pogonia ophioglossoides, Orchis Family [Plate XIII, left]
• Small Yellow Lady-slipper, Cypripedium parviflorum, Orchis Family [Plate XIII, middle]
• Arethusa, Arethusa bulbosa, Orchis Family [Plate XIII, right]
• Tawny Daylily, Hemerocallis fulva, Lily Family [Plate XIV, left]
• Field Garlic, Allium vineale, Lily Family [Plate XIV, middle]
• Grays Lily, Lilium grayi, Lily Family [Plate XIV, right]
• Poison Sumac, Toxicodendron vernix, Sumac Family [Plate XV, left]
• California Rhododendron, Rhododendron californicum, Heath Family [Plate XV, right]
• Creeping Polemonium, Polemonium reptans, Phlox Family [Plate XVI, left]
• Sweet-William Phlox, Phlox maculate, Phlox Family [Plate XVI, middle]
• Alfalfa, Medicago sativa, Pea Family [Plate XVI, right]

 

 

The Second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Norway and the Norwegians” and was written by Maurice Francis Egan, Litt. D., Late United States Minister to Denmark, Author of “Denmark and the Danes” in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains twenty-nine black-and-white photographs of which nineteen are full-page in size.

Norway was one of the new nations [in 1924], although it possessed one of the oldest histories in the world.  It did not become independent until the year 1905, through a carefully negotiated separation from Sweden.  The Swedes were not pleased and when Norway presumed to cast off the mild rule of King Oscar and become “Norway for the Norwegians,” war between Norway and Sweden seemed very near.  The Swedes were ready to mobilize, but through the good sense of both a great misfortune for both countries was averted.  Of the three Scandinavian countries, Norway was the least populated, the Norwegians numbered not quite two million.  In comparison, the population of Sweden was more than double that, and that of Denmark somewhat above it.  If their common sense had not played such a great part in their negotiations for separation from Sweden, they would have become a republic. It was no doubt the influence of the great powers that induced them to retain a monarchy, which had been historic with them.  The Norwegians were very modern in their point of view; they had put in force the methods of a conservative socialism, and they did not hesitate to adopt any progressive idea which seemed to fit in with their civilization.  They were by law established fixed in their opinions, but they did not attempt to force their opinions on others.  And whether it was the influence of their coastline, of their splendid fjords, or of their love of the sea, they were open-minded and far from insular.  In choosing a king they were largely guided by their own principles.  Having a state church, the Lutheran, they had to choose a Lutheran king and one with extreme democratic tendencies, and they wanted a queen, too, who would sympathize with their democratic ideas.  No German princes need apply.  They chose Prince Karl of Denmark, brother of the present [in 1924] king of that country, and he assumed the title of Haakon VII.  His wife, Queen Maud, daughter of King Edward VII, was already known to them.

Prince Olav, the prospective heir to the throne, went to school just like any other well-brought-up Norwegian boy.  He was willing to be a prince, because it was expected of him, but he put on no airs, and he seemed not to count too much on being King of Norway.  Despite their republicanism, the Norwegians looked on him as the pledge of a future stable government.  There was no patriotic Norwegian who did not regard his winter sports as the necessities of life; and Prince Olav was brought up to be a good Norwegian sportsman, in a country where open-air sports, the cultivation of the mind, and acute interest in literary and scientific pursuits meant much more than the piling up of money.  The King and Queen lived alternately in their palace in Christiania and their country house on the peninsula of Bygdo, a short distance from Christiania.  The only luxurious thing about them was a splendid white bearskin used as a sleigh robe when they drove through the streets of Christiania.  King Haakon was a remarkable handsome man.  He had been a sailor in his youth, brought up with a stern sense of duty, a knowledge of economics, and a great sympathy with the progress of peoples.  He spoke well, briefly to the point, and he possessed a melodious voice; but probably no other man hated to speak in public more than he did.  Work was not looked on as menial in Norway.  Norway was one of the few countries in which luxury was not regarded as a necessity of civilized life.  The impression had gone abroad that because Norwegians were frugal their country was poor.  That was not true.  A small country which afforded to devote each year, to the church, to schools, and to science and art, of two million dollars, could not be said to be either miserly, mercenary, or very poor.  There was one thing the Norwegians had not yet learned – that the multiplication of languages was a bad thing in any country, since it added to the difficulties of the working as well as the business man.

The literary Norwegian language, as written and spoken, resembled Danish very closely, although the inflections and intonations in speaking were different.  Well-spoken Norwegian was almost a harmonious chant.  No matter how well a Norwegian spoke his own language, it took a long time to learn English.  It was taking an even longer time if he must disentangle himself from the composite language called maal, which certain patriots were doing their best to make general in Norway.  The maal was not really a dialect of the peasants; it enshrined no folklore.  It was a kind of Esperanto, founded on the ancient dialects, a mosaic carefully put together by skilled philologists and ardent patriots of the Liberal Party.  Before the war a man who dared to oppose the compulsory introduction of the landsmaal would have acquired a host of enemies; but now [in 1924], the results of the war had turned the attention of the Norwegians to the advantages of their country industrially, and the desire for an archaic language might disappear.  But that was a matter for the Norwegians themselves to decide; a foreigner had scarcely a right to an opinion on the subject.  The critics and the sociologists had several opinions as to the value of the works of the two great Norwegians – Bjornson and Ibsen – from the literary and ethical points of view.  There was no question, however, that Ibsen revolutionized the drama, as to its form, in all civilized countries.  Norway, the home of robust fishers and seafaring men, who were brought up to reduce material life to its simplest elements, produced a group of writers and musicians whose fame was international and enduring.  One could not mention modern music without thinking of Edward Grieg, Ole Bull, and Christian Sinding.  The novel with the thesis flourished in Norway.  The questions of sex were not so much of an obsession as it was with the newer school of English novelists.

The matter of women’s rights was settled in Norway.  A woman was eligible for any office except in the church and in the diplomatic service.  The struggle for women’s rights assumed form in Norway when Jacobine Camilla Colett wrote her novel, “The Governor’s Daughter.”  Society in Norway, as in nearly every other country, admitted that a different standard of sexual morality existed for women and men.  In 1883, Bjornson’s play, “A Gauntlet,” appeared.  In Christiania, and in other centers, a storm was raised over the drama, which tore all social gatherings into factions and made rival newspapers thunder.  Bjornson had insisted that there was only one standard of chastity.  Whether a reformation in the male sex was made or not, it was rather impertinent to ask.  “A Gauntlet,” however, was gradually was generally forgotten as to its thesis and was now [in 1924] occasionally played as one of the Norwegian semi-classics.  Both Sweden and Norway were greatly interested in the Nobel prize, and Bjornson was an early recipient of the literary award, in 1903.  Roosevelt was on his way to Christiania to make his speech as the recipient of the Nobel peace prize, when Bjornson died, in 1910.  He was celebrated, both in Christiania and in Copenhagen, with a solemnity befitting the funeral of a great monarch.  The Norwegians had never lost their love of the arts and crafts of the people.  Munthe deserved the credit of having encouraged the art of weaving among the people, and the progress of tapestry making in Norway was marked from year to year.  As yet, Norway had not rivaled the famous porcelain of Copenhagen, but Thorolf Holmboe produced a china made characteristic by its pictures of little polar bears and its fine glaze.  The Norwegians were quick to encourage new designs in jewelry founded on early national themes.  In the country districts one saw beautiful examples of the jeweler’s art done by village craftsmen.

Norway did not show such a dislike to emigration as Sweden.  You could scarcely have a conversation with a Swede without hearing regret that so many of his countrymen had gone to the U. S. and other American countries.  It had become almost a passion in Sweden to prevent emigration.  In Norway, however, although the patriotic citizen desired that the Norwegian stayed in his own country, he still was a Viking at heart, and any great adventure appealed to him.  The horror of the Puritan at the illegitimate child was hardly understood in the rural districts of Norway, and in the cities, it did not seem to have ever existed.  In contrast to that laxity, there was a great honesty, a great sincerity, frankness, and a love of justice.  The tourist who knew only the northern coast of Norway, or one who judged the country only from pictures in magazines, learned very little of the life of the people, and, seeking the picturesque and the unusual, overlooked the serious spirit and the economic progress which characterized the inhabitants.  It was not understood that in Norway one did not live constantly under snow and between great fjords, and that there was sometimes even greater tranquility without melancholy among the people.  Another impression very hard to dissipate was that the Norwegian was a hard drinker.  It was supposed that almost lived on the wine of the country, braendevin, a kind of gin, and in popular stories the Norwegian in a mob was always drunk.  The romancer would lead us to believe that “Skaal!” was his favorite salutation, always accompanied by huge draughts of some fiery liquid.  The legend that his ancestors drank the most ardent mead from the skulls of their enemies had tinctured the modern attitude of mind toward all Scandinavians.

The characters of the Danes and the Norwegians reflected the geography of their countries.  Denmark was flat, lake-studded, a series of islands.  It was almost entirely agricultural.  It had its fisheries of great extent, it was true, but the famous Danish sole was not of the kind that made its home near a rocky and tumultuous coast.  Denmark had no natural, merely industrial, advantages.  Norway, on the contrary, now that its people had begun to understand the value of their “white coal” and using their schools to produce scientific men, was rapidly becoming one of the most important industrial factors of Europe.  While the author was amazed by the industrial development of Norway; but to him the fisher folk and the fishers seemed the most interesting of all the Norwegians who worked with their hands, and consequently Bergen, with its great fish market, seemed to him worthy of a closer look.  Much earlier than the thirteenth century a great part of Christendom was supplied through Bergen, on Fridays and other days of abstinence, with dried fish.  Even now [in 1924] cod, dried after the manner of the Middle Ages, was exported in great quantities.  The process of salting fish had of late taken the place of the old method of drying.  Salted fish was called klip fisk.  As the perennial cod had given its name to a certain class of aristocracy, known in New England as “codfish aristocracy,” klip fisk was a phrase frequently used in connection with the Scandinavian immigrant in this country, especially in Minnesota; but he was so practical, as a rule, that he did not resent a term which reminded him of one of the industries of his native country – Norway or Sweden.  Bergen’s reputation as a fishing port extended over the whole world.  Its export of fish probably rivalled the Danish export of butter.  The cod and the herring were the typical Norwegian fish; the cod yielded by-products of which cod-liver oil was the most important.  The herring was a capricious fish and it was a gamble whether a season would be good or bad.

Norway was often called the land of the ski.  It was not an appropriate title for it gave the impression that the country was merely a land for tourist to enjoy that kingly sport.  In the winter everybody in Norway, outside the cities, went by skis.  Prince Olav owed much of his popularity to his being one of the most birdlike, graceful, and forceful managers of the Norwegian ski.  The art of skiing was part of the national education, and woe be to him who thought that he could master it easily.  It was a democratic sport.  It did not require the outlay of money necessary for polo, or even golf.  Sailing into the harbor of Christiania, one’s first impression was that of what was called homeliness: there were family groups on the pier, chattering and laughing; the welcome songs and waving flags of Norwegians greeting relatives from the U. S.; and the pleasant sights in the city streets.  One was not even oppressed by the fjords.  They had an air of protection about them, and the schoolboys one met were quite eager to show off their few words in English.  The condescending attitude of the Swede of former years toward the Norwegian was met by a firm belief on the part of the latter that, while he might not be entirely superior, he was himself, and that the opinion of an outsider did not matter at all.  Norway never lost an opportunity to present herself to the world in the best light.  Sarcasm did not easily touch the Norwegian, who was, as a rule, very sure of himself.  That self-assurance was sometimes a temptation.  The Norwegian was found anywhere.  It was true that the pine tree longed for the land of the palm, and the palm tree for the land of the pine.  Heine had forever crystalized that truth in one of the loveliest of his lyrics.  The German Emperor spent more than twenty-five seasons in Norway; but, outside his special court, he received no particular marks of reverence from the honest Norwegians.  In fact, he had learned not to expect them.

The traveler in Norway ought to, if he could not master the ski, learn to steer a kjelke.  It was a small sled which held two persons.  It was steered by a pole, which was held under the arm and made a tail for the kjelke.  The skill of the Norwegian girls in steering those sleds approached the miraculous.  They seemed to have the instinct of the mountain goats. A very polite young American, versed in sports, happened to meet a young girl about to join a procession of torchbearers one snowy evening in Christiania.  She seemed rather slight and fragile.  Very respectfully he asked her, “May I assist you?”  She smiled and said “Oh, yes, yes; get in.”  He took the other seat and the kjelke started.  It joined with tremendous swiftness the procession of sleds.  Skirting precipices, within an inch of gulfs, up and down; almost with the speed of a locomotive, the kjelke flew.  He held on with all his might.  After what seemed to be many hours of horror, the kjelke stopped at the end of a Christiania street, surrounded by torch-bearing and singing students.  The young girl gave him her hand and said sweetly, “May I assist you?”  He never saw her again.  No sport known in England or in America prepared one adequately for that winter sport in which the Norwegians had acquired unmatched skill.

 

 

The third and final item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “In the Land of the Vikings” and has Donald McLeish listed in the byline.  It is not an article but a set of “16 Full-Page Illustrations” embedded within the second article, and not counted among that article’s illustrations.  Mr. McLeish is the photographer.  These photographs are not listed as duotones, or etchings, but do appear to be a set of them.  The set runs from page 661 through 676 in the issue.

A list of the photo’s caption titles is as follows:

• “A Rural Debutante of Norway”
• “The Naero Winds Between the Everlasting Hills”
• “A Shy Little Maid of the Naero Valley”
• “Where Farming Is Frugal and Primitive”
• “Making Hay on a Norwegian Farm”
• “An Architectural Mystery Near Bergen”
• “A Housewife of Aal Making “Lepse””
• “Breakfast in an Ancient Farmhouse of the Hallingdal”
• “A Steam Yacht Anchored at the Head of the Naero Fjord”
• “A Chat by the Edge of Aurlands Fjord”
• “A Matron of the Hardanger District”
• “Fascinated by a Book of Pictures”
• “Girls of the Hardanger District at the Edge of the Beautiful Vossevand: Unmarried Women Do Not Wear Caps”
• “Girls of Voss at the Door of Their Hillside Dwelling, a Timber Chalet More Than 200 Years Old”
• “Villagers of Aal, in the Halling Valley, Standing on the Steps of the 17^th Century Courthouse and Town Hall”
• “The Entrance to the Ancient Hanseatic “Gaard,” in Bergen”

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Scott T. Shier]

Well what can I say Tom, here? As always, "très magnifique" !

regards,

Scott S.