Weather influences ...

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CopyriglitU _ tfORStfGHT DEPOSHt

Author's Preface

If the present volume possesses no other virtue, it has that of being an essay into an hitherto untouched field of scientific research. As such it must be judged. Not as a final word, but as a suggestion for future investigation. And the field which it enters is not without interest to the popular mind, nor possibilities to the investigator. The basis of widespread popular opinion along any line is a fertile field for scientific research', and none more fertile than that of belief in weather influence.

Five of the chapters of the volume have, in substance, previously appeared in print. Chapters V., VI., and VII. in Monograph Supplement No. 10 to the Psychological Review ; Chapter XI. in Popular Science Monthly and Chapter XII. in the Publications of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The rest of the material is entirely new.

In its preparation, I have been placed under obligations to many persons in various parts of the country, and wish here to express my appreciation of their courtesy and kindness. To teachers, wardens of penitentiaries, and superintendents of asylums for the insane in almost every state of the union; to Superintendent Aaron Gove of the Denver Public Schools ; Superintendent F. H. Brandenburgh, of the Denver Station of the United States Weather Bureau, and Chief Howe of the Denver

Preface

Detective Service, for material aid in making the studies of the Colorado climate. For help in the prosecution of the study in New York City, I am indebted to Superintendent Jasper, of the Borough of Manhattan Public Schools, the Principals of Public Schools Nos. 10 and 93, the Superintendents of the various Corrective Institutions for the City of New York, officials at the Central Police Station and Department of Public Health, officials in various national banks, Assistant Superintendent Charles B. Grimshaw of the Roosevelt Hospital, and to E. H. Emery, District Forecaster of the United States Weather Bureau.

To my colleague, Professor E. C. Baldwin, of the Department of English in the University of Illinois, I am also under especial obligations for invaluable assistance in the revision of manuscript.

Edwin Grant Dexter.

The University or Illinois, April 24, 1904.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Sources and Nature of Weather Proverbs, . . 1

II. The Weather Lore of the "Skyey Influences," . 10

Introduction

The work on Weather Influences that Professor Dexter now offers to the attention of the public relates to a theme that has been discussed pro and con by many philosophers. The definitive conclusions attained by him in regard to the influence of certain specific weather conditions upon men are but the beginning of a long series of special researches that will afford a scientific foundation for the general belief in the influence of climate upon the characteristics of tribes and nations. Except in a very few cases no one has as yet succeeded in distinguishing between the immediate or direct influences of weather and climate on man and the indirect influences. Experiments that last but a few hours tell us a little about the immediate temporary influence of great and sudden changes of pressure, temperature, or moisture, but we have as yet only very hazy ideas of the ultimate influences of permanent changes. In fact, a comprehensive view of the possibilities of evolution and natural selection teaches that we must study man, as we do the animals and plants, in reference to every item of his environment. Weather and climate may affect him directly, but they also affect the water he drinks and the food that he eats ; they dictate his clothing and dwelling and all his surroundings, so that climate can scarcely be considered by itself, and we are apt to enlarge the meanx ii WEATHER INFLUENCES

ing of the word so as to include everything, whereas it should be restricted to the meteorological elements only if we are to treat the subject with any precision.

In 1860, 1866, and 1867, Mr. J. Disturnell, in various works on the influence of climate, says :

"The habits and character of the people inhabiting the different sections of our country are more or less influenced by climate. Thus, the inhabitants of the New England states, with a temperate, cool climate, are found to be generally intelligent, industrious, humane, and frugal .... the same may be said of all the ^northern and northwestern states where an agicultural community predominates .... the middle belt, having a mean annual temperature of from 47° to 50°F., is crowded with inhabitants and full of enterprise, where the arts, commerce, institutions of learning and agricultural pursuits are alike encouraged .... the inhabitants of the border or central states, including Maryland, Kentucky, etc., are of a mixed character in regard to many of the habits and traits enumerated above .... the white population of the southern states are more united and fixed in their character. Climate and the institution of slavery combined have tended to render them haughty, domineering, and impatient of restraint. .... The inhabitants of the Pacific states and territories are of a varied and mixed character .... a fine climate, fruitful soil and mountain ranges engender noble temperaments in the breast of man."

The above quotation illustrates the general character of nearly all the literature that I have been able to find bearing on the influence of climate on the characteristics of men. It would seem that in general authors attributed to the meteorological climate, properly so-called, influences that are probably due to entirely different matters. For instance, the intelligence, industry, frugality, and humanity of the New England people, the

INTRODUCTION xiii

enterprise of New York and Pennsylvania, the haughty bearing of the southern people, are all of them characteristics that marked the ancestors of these same people when they were living under the same climate in their European homes three hundred years ago, and when they migrated from Asia thousands of years earlier still. It simply happened that political and social conditions in England and Holland led to the settlement of three different American colonies by three different classes of the emigrants, and we have no evidence whatever that the slight differences between the climates of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have had any appreciable influence in either forming or fixing these traits of character.

A very remarkable work on the relation of climate to mankind is the famous "Esprit de Lois," published in 1748. This work had occupied its author, Baron de Montesquieu, for about twenty years, and his previous publications were but detached chapters or preliminary steps to this, in which he explains history as the result of the laws and customs that govern the nations, and these latter are but the hidden instincts of human nature, as influenced by geographical position, plants, and animals, and, above all, the atmosphere or climate that surrounded each tribe in its native habitat. A few selections and references to this work, which has been translated into every language, must impress the reader with the boldness of the conclusions expressed by its author. A general principle was laid down by D'Alembert in his analysis of the work of Montesquieu in the following paragraph:

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"Nobody doubts but that the climate has an influence upon the habitual disposition of men's bodies and characters; on this account, laws ought to be framed to accord with the nature of the climate. Thus, in countries where the use of wine is hurtful, the law that forbids it is a very good one ; in countries where the heat of the climate inclines people to laziness, the law which encourages labor is a very proper one. Therefore the Government can correct

the effects of climate As climate has so much influence on

domestic and civil slavery, it has no less on political slavery. The people in the north are stronger and more courageous than those of the south. In general, then, the latter must be conquered ; the former must be the conquerors."

Montesquieu enunciates a generalization to the effect that the inhabitants of cold countries have but little taste for delicate pleasures ; in temperate countries they have more; in warm countries their sensibility is exquisite. He draws a contrast in this respect between the cold phlegmatic Englishman and the lively Italian. If we extend this comparison and include under one average all the people living north of the annual isotherm of 50° F. in the northern hemisphere, and those south of this same isotherm in the southern hemisphere, we shall at once perceive that we have included races that enjoy such great varieties of climate and that possess such varied temperaments that we are taking heterogeneous averages that can have but little meaning. If Montesquieu's idea was correct in this respect, then the phlegmatic temperament of the colder countries should be especially in evidence during long nights of the colder or winter season, and might be partly or entirely reversed during long days of the hot summer season as in the United States and Canada.

INTRODUCTION xv

We must not speak of cold as measured by the dry-bulb thermometer, but rather of the relative sensation of cold experienced by two persons, one of them in a dry sunshine, the other in a cloudy, moist atmosphere; one enjoying a balmy southern breeze, the other a raw northeast wind ; one well dressed and housed, the other poorly clad and nourished. We quite agree with Montesquieu that if the climate enforces indolence of body the inevitable result must be indolence of mind, and an eventual want of capacity for any sort of exertion, muscular or intellectual. There should result conservatism and degeneracy. Men are at best conservative beings ; only the young enjoy revolutionary changes of any kind; maturer persons always desire peace, comfort, and a fair division of work and pleasure. The restless, ambitious men and women are in the minority even among enterprising nations. They are said to be especially numerous in the New England states, but this, we think, is principally a result of the fact that our ancestors were restless migrants, and is only partly the result of the severe climate of that region which killed off a large proportion of the early settlers and forces the remainder to live strenuous lives as the essential condition of existence. Agriculture is the principal labor of man, but where his labors are poorly rewarded he, and especially his children, inevitably seek for more favored regions. The mental and physical activities that are absolutely necessary in such climates as that of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States are not likely to develop a class of drones and are not consistent therewith.

Therefore the monastic life has never been greatly xv i WEATHER INFLUENCES

favored in these or other northern countries. If ever monasteries have seemed to temporarily prosper, yet eventually the national spirit of work has remonstrated effectively against indolent religious orders. Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of industry that reigns throughout China and Japan than the annual ceremony of opening the ground with the spade performed by the emperors in commemoration of the beginning of the agricultural season, and as indicative of the honor of agricultural labor. The climate of eastern Asia, like that of eastern America, stimulates work and makes it honorable. The laws of certain nations forbidding the use of alcoholic liquors, enforcing cleanliness, rest, abstinence from meat, the isolation of lepers and other diseased persons, etc., accord with the necessities imposed upon them by their climates and were undoubtedly the result of ages of experience and trial, but other nations in similar circumstances have no such laws !

Many investigators have studied the relation of climate to special diseases, as though that were the most important phase of our sub j ect. The relation of climate to health is, however, far more important, as also more difficult. The progress of knowledge during the past generation has shown that many of the diseases formerly called malarial and supposed to be produced by climate directly are in fact produced by germs, animal and vegetable parasites that are fostered by certain climatic conditions. The diseases are not to be attributed to the meteorological elements or climate directly, since under those same climatic conditions man thrives when he has once learned how to conquer the respective organic

INTRODUCTION xv ii

sources of disease. Until recent discoveries established the nature of the infection, it had been supposed that nations and individuals could, by a long process of acclimatization, become inured to such diseases and in fact immune. This process of acclimatization, byreason of which those individuals died out who were intrinsically unable to withstand the attacks of disease, having gone on for many generations, was generally supposed to have resulted in the evolution of typical races having special characteristics apparently consistent with such immunity. But in the light of our present knowledge, these racial characteristics should not be attributed to the climate properly so-called, but to a combination of other influences that has served to render the individuals immune to the respective diseases.

In 1854, Dr. Aubert-Roche, Chief of the French Medical Service in Egypt, published in Paris an essay on the acclimatization of Europeans in warm countries meaning thereby especially the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, Egypt, Abyssinia, and Arabia. The Red Sea offers the hottest and most oppressive climate of the globe, and yet it is found that Arabs, Turks and Copts enjoy this climate, and even the Italian, French, and English soldiers endure it. The Arab horses are among the finest of breeds, and are sent away to all climates. It is a question of acclimatization, some one says, but what is acclimatization? To this Dr. Aubert- Roche, in view of his long experience, replies :

"It is the bringing of the human organization into harmony with the climate and local influences, in order that man may live, feel well, and en j oy the complete exercise of all his faculties. Now

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it is common to say that climates, like localities, modify the human organism because in one place one style of life is necessary, and in another place another style. But to say that these differences are subject to certain laws and that there is a law of acclimatization, a law of harmony, between human organization and its surroundings is to provoke a research into this subject. If then we add that man, being acclimated, must be in full possession of all his faculties, this will provoke a farther study into the influence of climate on cerebration. The question of acclimatization, thus considered, necessitates a physiological examination to the action of all the agents that surround us. But this leads us too far, and we can at present acquire only an elementary knowledge, such as is given in works of chemistry, physics, physiology, and medicine. The fundamental question is one of temperament. My observations have confirmed the truth of the principle established by Royer-Collard in the memoir published in 1843 to the effect that there are really only two temperaments resulting from the predominance of one or the other of the two great organic systems, the blood and the nerves, which produce and maintain life: that is to say the sanguine and the nervous temperament. We can easily concede that in many countries the primitive races have been mixed with numerous other races, and that instruction, education, food, climate, and civilization have modified the organism. Thus, a general custom or style of clothing may predominate in a given tribe and alter its temperament. It is well recognized that the sanguine temperament predominates in temperate countries, but with certain modifications that vary as we advance north or south. Thus, there is a positive difference between the French of the north, the English, Dutch, and Germans, on the one hand, and the French of the south, the Spaniards and the Italians on the other. This difference is due to climate and food, for we can scarcely properly invoke the influence of primitive races, because the Roman and barbarian invasions have mixed all up together.

"The so-called lymphatic, the muscular, and the bilious or melancholic temperaments are to be considered as modifications

INTRODUCTION xix

of the nervous temperament, and all depend upon the influence on the system of the biliary secretion which is excited and modified by food, climate and civilization. The bilious temperament is said to belong to warm countries, but this is not true of the inhabitants of those countries, but rather of the strangers who visit them and have not yet become acclimated."

Modern students of the influence of the weather on human beings have devised the term temperature or "sensible temperature," originally "temperament," to indicate the sensation produced by atmospheric conditions in general. Thus we speak of pleasant, exhilarating, bracing weather; depressing, gloomy, and muggy weather. Now, these sensations may be produced either by changing the temperature, the moisture, the pressure, the sunshine, or even the food or clothing. The first effect of special weather conditions is to excite special emotions in the nervous system, and most of us are not sufficiently observant to be able to distinguish, or have not a sufficient command of language to be able to express, the sensations experienced with each change of atmospheric conditions. To obviate this trouble, empirical scale numbers, from to 10, have been devised, first by J. E. Osborne in 1878, and later by Tyler ( 1901) , by the general use of which one should be able to ascertain the relative frequency of different kinds of weather influences in all parts of the world. We may thus lay the foundation for at least a partial record and eventual explanation of the peculiar traits of each nation. Perhaps the simplest and best way of recording the influence of the weather is that proposed by the present writer in the Monthly Weather Review for 1899, namely,

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to prepare a diagram whose vertical ordinate represents temperature, and horizontal ordinate relative humidity. On this diagram enter figures representing the velocity of the wind on the Beaufort or other convenient scale. We place these figures at the proper temperature and relative humidity to indicate that the condition produced by these three factors is one of perfect comfort, or one most conducive to physical or intellectual work. After a few months or a year, we shall have located so many points on the diagram that we are able to connect them together by curves that may be called curves of perfect comfort. Several curves may be drawn for several wind velocities, and will show us that the curve for a given wind velocity passes through a different series of temperatures and humidities from that for another wind velocity. An equivalent idea has been suggested independently by Mr. Tyler, who prefers to draw curves of the greatest discomfort. Undoubtedly these latter curves should also be drawn in order to complete the study of the subject.

Every one must recognize the general fact that certain atmospheric conditions, such as the dryness of the air, stimulates, while other conditions, such as moist air, relax the human system. As with man, so also with other animals and plants. Each family, and species, each type of animal or plant has its optimum pressure, temperature, and moisture, and any considerable departure from this means a corresponding amount of change in the direction of the degeneracy in the individuals. But by a long process of adaptation, families and races may become accustomed to the new condition, and achieve a

INTRODUCTION Xxi

general change in the so-called optimum climatic conditions.

We are all familiar with this process of acclimatization, as shown in the history of the evolution of the cultivated food plants and domestic animals that have been transported step by step over the greater part of the globe. The seed that is perfectly at home in a given soil and climate suffers greatly at first when sown in a distant region, but after a few generations "it becomes acclimated," and in some cases does better in the new situation than in the former one. Just so it is with the human family. The tribes that migrate from one country to another after having triumphed over the novel vicissitudes of the new climate, may in a few generations develop a higher order of manhood than in the former locality, or on the other hand may degenerate permanently. In general it is said that those races that migrate from warmer to colder climates are improved thereby, but perhaps it is not wholly correct to maintain that this improvement is due to the direct action of the cold air on the fibres and muscles. We can easily see that for some men and animals the direct action of the cold chilling the surface of the skin, is to stimulate muscular activity, such as running and walking and working, because this stimulates the circulation of the blood and thereby a greater chemical activity within the body, thus evolving internal heat to counteract the external cold. But in some animals the greater cold produces the direct opposite effect; they curl up within warm coverings and hibernate. Man, on the other hand, having no natural protection, is not only forced to take xxii WEATHER INFLUENCES

active exercise, as just mentioned, but has been stimulated to invent clothing, dwellings, fire, and cooked food. Therefore a gradual transfer from a warm, moist, depressing climate to a cool, dry location, or, what is the same thing, a gradual secular change of the climate in any locality in this same direction has had the effect of increasing both the bodily and the mental vigor of the race. But of course the process may go too far. If the climate becomes so severe that appropriate animal and vegetable foods or even liquid fresh water itself and fuel can not be found, or if sunshine is too greatly diminished, the individuals that are least able to resist adverse conditions die away to such an extent that the tribe is reduced in numbers, and those who hold out are reduced in strength and intellect, stunted or dwarfed, as it were, in the struggle for existence against such severe obstacles.

When speaking of climatic influences we must not forget that clothing, food, national customs, or other features of our environment, may very largely counteract the climatic influence proper.

The migrations of the various races of men, the processes of acclimatization, the evolution of races and racial characteristics have been going on for a much longer period than is ordinarily supposed. The development of the present characteristic races of the globe has required not the 5000 years of Ussher's chronology, nor yet the 50,000 years by which we may estimate the antiquity of many archaeological remains, but rather 500,000, or some such great period as that which has elapsed since the beginning of what geologists know as the Quaternary epoch, when Pleistocene man evolved

INTRODUCTION xxiii

from his Pliocene ancestors. Of course, therefore, it is not a matter of direct observation and record, but rather of speculative philosophy, of faith in the continued steady working through untold ages, of the laws that we know are in operation at the present time.

Prof. A. H. Keane, at page 98 of Mills International Geography, New York, 1901, has stated the rational and logical conclusion thus tersely as follows:

"From this view of the first dispersion, it follows that these Pleistocene migrations everywhere preceded the later physical and mental development of mankind, so that the evolution of the existing human varieties and of their several cultures is presented in quite a new light. We need no longer suppose, always a somewhat violent assumption, that some fully specialized group, say, originally black, migrating from continent to continent, became white in one region, yellow in another, brown in a third, and so on. Had such a specialized group passed from its proper zone to another, it would probably have died out long before it had time

to become acclimatized The Pleistocene groups, all alike

at first, everywhere presented the same generalized prototype, from which the now living varieties were severally and independently developed. The main divisions of mankind must therefore be regarded, as Linnaeus regarded them, as so many zoological varieties, all springing from common or closely allied generalized ancestors, and each gradually specialized by slow adaptation to its special environment. Like all other divisions of the terrestrial fauna, these divisions are thus the outcome of their respective surroundings. They are what climate, soil, diet, heredity, and time have made them, and that is the reason why, in the case of all later migrations, the first question that arises is one of acclimatization. If the new zone is favorable, that is, differs but little from the old, the variety persists; if not, it either merges and becomes absorbed in the indigenous element, or else simply dies out."

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Everything seems to combine to prove that the existing order of events both material and intellectual has been brought about by a slow process of change, due to the interaction of the atoms and masses that constitute the material world around us. Sunshine and frost year by year slowly disintegrate or weather away the surface of the rocks, reducing them first to the talus at the foot of the cliff and then to the soil that spreads over the plain. Gradually the soil is carried to the bottom of the sea, but eventually raised far above sea level, so that we observe it as stratified rocks upon which the sunshine and the frost are again acting. By an unknown number of repetitions of this process, our continents and oceans, as we know them, have been formed and reformed, while man, with his attendant plants and animals, has been living upon them, rising and falling with them. Diffused over the whole globe even in those prehistoric days, he yet accommodated his life to every condition, and became the one lord of the whole earth. When the floors of the Atlantic and Pacific were above ocean level they may have been inhabited by man, while the eastern and western continents were below sea level. When the latter rose, man migrated to them while his former home sank beneath the ocean. These geological and orographic changes, combined with the corresponding changes in animal and plant life, the changes in climate and the frequent migrations of human tribes, afford an infinite variety of circumstances, to influence the development of a great variety of races and tribes, and are quite sufficient to explain all the variations that have been recorded.

In general the history of a race, from its birthplace

INTRODUCTION XXV

and small beginning to its migration into a new country, the conquering of the tribes that it finds there, the establishment of a new empire, the culmination of its power, and its final decay and disappearance, occupies the space of two, three, four, or five thousand years ; at least this is a fair average for the races of whose history we know something in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Palestine, China, India, Tartary, and Germany. If the same average holds good for the tribes of Africa, Oceanica, North and South America, and for prehistoric races, then we must imagine the whole globe repeopled many times by different families of men, each tribe working out its own ideals in its own way under the restrictions by which it is surrounded, and giving rise to the many variations of what we all recognize as one type, the genus homo. Among the permanent types thus produced, we find the extreme differences that are familiar to every one, such, for instance, as the olive complexion of the Spaniard, the fair complexion of the Caucassian, the copper hue of the Malay and the American Indian, the swarthy black of some African tribes and the pale brown of others. Shall we attribute these differences to the climate in which they are at present living, or the climates of the regions from which they migrated one, two, or three thousand years ago, or to still more ancient climatic influences? Or, are these peculiarities due to food and drink, or to intermarriage and inheritance? The last is the ordinary method of the modern experimentalist in evolving breeds of cattle distinguished by their color, their flesh, or their milk; thoroughbred horses distinguished by their speed, their size, intelligence, or xxvi WEATHER INFLUENCES

strength ; varieties of birds distinguished by their speed, their plumage, or their song ; species of plants or grains or fruits with almost any desired properties. In almost every case, one seeks to combine two appropriate cell structures or protoplasms, but never expects to directly alter the nature of the cells. Nature accomplishes the same result by selection and survival of the fittest. By cultivating a special crop in a new climate the plants do seem to become inured to that climate and to change their nature, but this is by virtue of a recognized law in plant life, viz., that erratic cells, or so-called "sports" are continually being produced. Perhaps we ought to say that Nature, in her efforts to reproduce a cell like that of the original seed, actually produces millions of attempts that resemble the original seed to a greater or less degree, quite in accordance with the law of probability of errors. That is to say, out of a hundred seeds from the same plant, there is an even chance that 75 will be like the original seed. There is also an even chance that five will differ in some notable respect from the original seed. If any one of these latter five chance to fall in the proper spot and grow, that plant becomes the so-called "sport" of the botanist, and by proper cultivation may be made to give rise to a permanent new variety. In this way plants adapted to every variety of climate have been produced, and the process goes on naturally in the open field, as well as artificially in the greenhouse. The winds, the rivers, the ocean currents, birds and animals scatter the seeds; they are carried to regions where the normal seeds will not thrive, but where the sports may. When the latter brings forth its first and second and