It is reasonable to suppose that women, who are such lovers of nature, have always had a greater or less interest in the natural sciences, especially in botany and zoÖlogy; but the fact remains that the first one of their sex to write at any length on the various kingdoms of nature was that extraordinary nun of the Middle Ages, St. Hildegard, the learned abbess of the Benedictine convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen on the Rhine. Of an exceptionally versatile and inquiring mind, her range of study and acquirement was truly encyclopÆdic. In this respect she was the worthy forerunner of Albert the Great, the famous Doctor Universalis of Scholasticism.

Although St. Hildegard has much to say about nature in several of her works, the one of chiefest interest to us as an exposition of the natural history of her time is her treatise entitled Liber Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Creaturarum. It is usually known by its more abbreviated name, Physica, and, considering the circumstances under which it was written, is, in many ways, a most remarkable production. It consists of nine books treating of minerals, plants, fishes, birds, insects and quadrupeds. The book on plants is composed of no fewer than two hundred and thirty chapters, while that on birds contains seventy-two chapters.

In reading Hildegard's descriptions of animated nature we are often reminded of Pliny's great work on natural history; but, so far as known, there is no positive evidence that the learned religieuse had any acquaintance whatever with the writings of the old Roman naturalist. Had she had, the general tenor of her work would have been quite different from what it actually is.

The mystery, then, is, what were the sources of Physica? Some have fancied that Hildegard in preparing this made use of the writings not only of Pliny and Virgil, but also of those of Macer, Constantinus Africanus, Walafrid Strabo, Isodore of Seville, and other writers who were in great vogue during the Middle Ages. The general consensus of opinion, however, of those who have carefully studied this interesting problem is that the gentle nun was not acquainted with any of the authors named, except, possibly, Isodore of Seville, whose works were all held in high esteem, especially during the period of Hildegard's greatest literary activity.

Hildegard's Physica has a special value for philologists, as well as for students of natural history, for it contains the German names of plants still used by the people of the Fatherland seven hundred years after they were penned by the painstaking abbess of St. Rupert's.[164]

Referring to the Saint's work entitled De Natura Hominis, Elementorum, Diversarumque Creaturarum—a treatise on the nature of man, the elements and divers created things—no less an authority than Dr. Charles Daremberg declares that it will always hold an important place in the history of medical art and of inanimate and animate nature—insignis semper locus debetitur in artis medicÆ rerumque naturalium historia.[165]

He even goes further and affirms that Hildegard was familiar with numerous facts of science regarding which other mediÆval writers were entirely ignorant. More than this. She was acquainted with many of nature's secrets which were unknown to men of science until recent times, and which, on being disclosed by modern researches, have been proclaimed to the world as new discoveries.[166]

One reason why St. Hildegard's writings on botany, zoÖlogy and mineralogy are not better known is that few students care to make the effort to master her voluminous works. They require long and assiduous study and a knowledge of her peculiarities of style and expression which is acquired only after patient and persistent labor. But the labor is not in vain, as is evidenced by the numerous monographs which have appeared in recent years, especially in Germany, on the scientific works of this marvelous nun of the twelfth century. All things considered, the Abbess of Bingen may be said to hold the same position in the natural sciences of her time as was held in the physical and mathematical sciences seven hundred years earlier by the illustrious Hypatia of Alexandria.

After the death of St. Hildegard, full six centuries elapsed before any one of her sex again achieved distinction in the domain of natural science. And then, strange to relate, the first woman who won fame by her knowledge of science and by her contributions to it, did so in the field where a woman would, one would think, be least disposed to exercise her talent and least likely to find congenial work. It was in the then comparatively new science of human anatomy—a science which had been inaugurated in the famous medical schools of Salerno and which was subsequently so highly developed in the great University of Bologna.

The name of this remarkable woman was Anna Morandi Manzolini. She was born in 1716 in Bologna, where, after a brilliant career in her favorite branch of science, she died at the age of fifty-eight. She held the chair of anatomy in the University of Bologna for many years, and is noted for a number of important discoveries made as the result of her dissections of cadavers.

But she won a still greater title to fame by the marvelous skill which she exhibited in making anatomical models out of indurated wax. They were so carefully fashioned that some of them could scarcely be distinguished from the parts of the body from which they were modeled. As aids in the study of anatomy they were most highly valued and eagerly sought for on all sides. The collection which she made for her own use was, after her death, acquired by the Medical Institute of Bologna and prized as one of its most precious possessions.

Three years after her demise, Luigi Galvani, professor of anatomy in the same university in which Anna had achieved such fame, made use of these wax models for a course of lectures on the organs and structure of the human body.

These famous models, first perfected by Anna Manzolini, were the archetypes of the exquisite wax models of Vassourie as well as of the unrivaled papier-mÂchÉ creations of Dr. Auzoux and of all similar productions now so extensively used in our schools and colleges.

Even during the lifetime of the gifted modeler there were demands for specimens of her work from all parts of Italy. From many cities in Europe, even from London and St. Petersburg, she received the most flattering offers for her services. So eager was Milan to have her accept a position which had been offered her that the city authorities sent her a blank contract and begged her to name her own conditions. But she could never be induced to leave the home of her childhood and the city which had witnessed and applauded her triumphs of maturer years.

Men of learning and eminence, on passing through Bologna, invariably made it a point to call on the learned professora in order to make her acquaintance and to see her wonderful anatomical collection, which was celebrated throughout Europe as Supellex Manzoliniana. Among these visitors was Joseph II of Austria. So greatly was His Majesty impressed by Anna's rare intellectual attainments and by her marvelous skill in reproducing the various parts of the "human form divine" that he could not take leave of her without showing his appreciation of them by loading her with gifts worthy of a sovereign.[167]

A contemporary of Anna Manzolini, who also distinguished herself in the preparation of anatomical models, was the French woman, Mlle. Biheron. Her facsimiles of parts of the human body were, according to Mme. de Genlis, so true to nature that they could not be distinguished from the originals. This led the facetious Chevalier Ringle, after examining a specimen of her handiwork, to declare, "Verily, it is so perfect that it lacks only the odor of the natural object."

While yet prince royal, Gustavus of Sweden visited the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. Here he was entertained by a number of experiments in anatomy. The demonstrator was Mlle. Biheron, who is said to have had a veritable passion for both anatomy and surgery. So impressed was Gustavus with the extraordinary skill and knowledge of this gifted daughter of France that he offered her the position of demonstrator of anatomy in the royal University of Sweden.

Other branches of science, apparently quite as alien as anatomy to women's taste and talent, are mineralogy and metallurgy. Yet as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, the Baroness de Beausoleil had achieved a great reputation by her investigations into the mineral treasures of France. Indeed, she may, strange as it may appear, be regarded as the first mining engineer of her native land. She details the qualifications of a mining engineer and tells us he must, among other things, be well versed in chemistry, mineralogy, geometry, mechanics and hydraulics. As for herself, she assures us that she devoted thirty years of unremitting study to these divers branches.

To Mme. de Beausoleil is also attributed the glory of awakening her countrymen's interest in the mineral resources of France, and of showing them how their proper exploitation would inure not only to the credit of the nation abroad but also to its prosperity at home.

She was the author of two works which prove that she was a woman of rare attainments combined with exceptional breadth of view and political acumen. She was deeply concerned in the development of the mineral resources of her country and foresaw how greatly they could be made to contribute to the augmentation of the nation's finances.

Her work entitled La Restitution de Pluton is a report on the mines and ore deposits of France, and is a document as precious as it is curious. It was addressed to Cardinal Richelieu, and shows how the French monarch could, if the subterranean treasures of the country were properly developed, become the greatest ruler in Christendom and his subjects the happiest of all peoples.

Another report by this energetic and enthusiastic woman is in the same strain. In it she proves how the King of France, by utilizing the underground riches of his country, could make himself and his people independent of all other nations.[168]

In these two productions Mme. de Beausoleil treats of the science of mining, the different kinds of mines, the assaying of ores and the divers methods of smelting them, as well as of the general principles of metallurgy, as then understood. But, unlike the majority of her contemporaries, this enlightened woman had no patience with those who believed that the earth's hidden treasures could not be discovered without recourse to magic or to the aid of demons. She was unsparing in her ridicule of those who had faith in the existence of gnomes and kobolds, or thought that ore deposits could be located only by divining-rods or similar foolish contrivances which were relics of an ignorant and superstitious age.

The same century that witnessed the exploring activity of the Baroness de Beausoleil saw the beginnings of the notable achievements of a daughter of Germany, well known in the annals of science as Maria Sibylla Merian. Born in Frankfort in 1647, she died in Amsterdam in 1717, after a somewhat checkered career, most of which was devoted to the pursuit of natural history. So fond was she of flowers and insects that it is said they told her all their secrets.

After having familiarized herself with the fauna and flora of her native land, she proceeded to investigate the collections of the principal European cabinets of natural history. This only fired her ambition to see more of the world and study Nature where she is seen in her greatest splendor and luxuriance.

She accordingly resolved to undertake a journey to the equatorial regions of South America. Such a voyage can now be made with comparative ease, but in her days it was fraught with discomforts and dangers of all kinds, and one that no woman thought to venture on unless obliged to do so by stern necessity.

But she was set on investigating animals and plants in their own habitats in the glorious and exuberant flora of the tropics and, accompanied by her two daughters, Helena and Dorothea, she embarked for Surinam. Here, assisted by her daughters, who, like their mother, were both skillful artists, the intrepid naturalist spent two years in studying the wonders of plant and animal life that everywhere greeted her delighted vision. All the time not occupied in research work was devoted to sketching and painting those superb insects that are so abundant in tropical fields and forests.[169]

Returning to Holland with her precious scientific treasures, she began the preparation of a work that will long endure as a monument to her knowledge and industry. It was a magnificent volume in folio on the insects of Surinam. It appeared simultaneously in Dutch and Latin, and was subsequently translated into French.

In illustrating this sumptuous work, Frau Merian was greatly assisted by her younger daughter, Dorothea. The etchings and hand-colored reproductions of the gorgeous butterflies and flowers of Surinam commanded universal admiration, and marked a new epoch in book-making. Even to-day this noble volume is eagerly sought by both book-lovers and men of science, for it is not only a work of rare conception and beauty but also one of exceptional accuracy in illustration and statement of fact.[170]

Besides etchings of multiform insects, lizards and batrachians indigenous to Dutch Guiana, there were in this unique volume carefully executed illustrations of plants and trees peculiar to tropical America, such as vanilla, cacao, and the species of manihot which constitutes the staff of life of so large a portion of the population in the basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco.

A new and enlarged edition of this work was published after Frau Merian's death by her daughter Dorothea. The same gifted daughter showed her interest in her parent's work and her devotion to her memory by bringing out a beautifully illustrated edition of her mother's earliest work which treated of the wonderful life-history of silkworms.[171]

The century following that which had celebrated the scientific triumphs of Maria Merian found in Josephine Kablick, born in 1787 in Hohenelbe, Bohemia, a woman who was destined to prove a worthy successor, as a nature-student, of the noted daughter of Frankfort-on-the-Main.

From her tenderest years she exhibited a passionate love for every form of plant life. In addition to this, she had, while yet young, the good fortune of studying under the best botanists of her time.

Soon she became an enthusiastic collector and was in a short time the happy possessor of a herbarium which contained many new species of plants which she had discovered during her frequent botanical excursions. From making collections for her private herbarium, she was gradually led to make collections for the schools and colleges of her native country, as well as for the museums and learned societies of various parts of Europe. Many public institutions owed to her cordial coÖperation some of the choicest treasures in their herbaria, and not a few botanical writers of her day found in her an intelligent and sympathetic collaborator.

But Frau Kablick's interest in nature was not confined to plants. She was an assiduous student of paleontology as well as of botany, and the many fossil animals and plants named in her honor testify to her success in the pursuit of her favorite branches of science.

There was nothing of the conventional blue-stocking about this ardent votary of nature. Strong and healthy, neither wind nor rain interfered with her fieldwork in botany or paleontology. It was her greatest pleasure to roam through dark forests and scale high mountains in search of new species of plants and fossils. And the success which rewarded her efforts was such that the old and trained naturalists among her male friends had reason to envy her good fortune as an explorer.

But Frau Kablick never permitted her frequent excursions, or her devotion to science, to cause her to neglect the duties of her household. Fortunately, her husband was also an ardent student of nature, and while his wife was devoting her attention to botany and paleontology, he was making investigations in zoÖlogy and mineralogy. They spent fifty happy years together in the pursuit of science and their joint efforts contributed not a little toward the advancement of the branches of science to which they had devoted their lives with such well-directed effort and enthusiasm.

As the fruitful life of Josephine Kablick who had shed such luster on her sex in Bohemia was drawing to a close, a young woman in Germany, Amalie Dietrich by name, was preparing herself to fill the void which would be occasioned by her predecessor's death. Her first love, as a young girl, was plant life, and this was subsequently accentuated by her husband, who was not only a botanist himself but also one who belonged to a distinguished family of botanists.

A keen observer and an indefatigable collector, Frau Dietrich soon became known throughout Europe as a botanist of marked ability and daring. She was wont, unaccompanied, to climb the highest peaks of the Salzburg Alps, and spend entire weeks there seeking new species of Alpine flora. During the day she explored the deep ravines and clambered along the brambly ledges of beetling precipices, and during the night she sought shelter and repose in the humble hut of some hospitable herdsman.

Valuable, however, as was Amalie Dietrich's work in the Austrian Alps, it was but a preparation for that which some years later she was to enter upon in far-off Australia. Here she devoted twelve of the best years of her life to the cultivation of botany in the virgin soil of Queensland. Here, too, she surprised everyone by her venturesome spirit no less than by her irrepressible zeal in making collections. Heedless of danger, she plunged quite alone into the wilderness and spent days and weeks at a time with the wild aborigines.

But she secured what she went in quest of,—a large and valuable collection of plants, containing many new and interesting species. Besides these, she was able to bring back with her to Europe a large mass of zoÖlogical specimens as well as countless domestic utensils and implements of warfare and husbandry employed by the savages among whom she so frequently journeyed and with whose manners and customs she eventually became so familiar.

Modest and trustworthy, Frau Dietrich had a host of friends in the scientific world, and the number of plants which bear her name are not only a tribute to her worth, but a striking evidence of the extent of her activity in the pursuit of the science which became the absorbing passion of her life.[172]

Of Russian women who have become specially noted for their contributions to natural science, a very prominent place must be assigned to Sophia Pereyaslawzewa. After receiving the doctorate of science in the University of Zurich, she became director of the biological station at Sebastopol, a position she held with great Éclat during twelve years. Here she made numerous important researches on manifold forms of marine life and prepared many works for the press in German and French, as well as in her native Russian. Her Monographie de Turbellaries de la Mer Noire, a large and beautifully illustrated volume published at Odessa in 1892, placed her at once among biologists of the first rank. Indeed, so meritorious was this production of the talented daughter of Holy Russia that the Congress of Naturalists in 1893 did not hesitate to recognize its exceptional value by conferring on the fair authoress a special prize.

This gifted biologist has since rendered distinct service in the cause of science by her explorations of the Gulf of Naples and the coasts of France. Her activity is prodigious, and the long list of books and monographs which she has published on the lower forms of marine life in the Black and Mediterranean seas shows that she has a capacity for work that is truly extraordinary.

Here is, probably, the place to make mention of a woman of encyclopÆdic mind, Clemence Augustine Royer, who was born in 1830 in Nantes, France. She wrote on such a variety of subjects that it is difficult to classify her. She was in no sense of the word a specialist, and she seems by temperament to have been averse to confining herself to any one branch of knowledge.

Her first work to attract particular attention was one on a topic connected with political economy. A prize had been offered for the discussion of this subject, and the little French woman acquitted herself so well that she had the honor of sharing the prize with the noted Proudhon. She has also written many works on philosophy and physics. Among these are two which attracted considerable notice at the time of their publication. In one of them she attacks the positivism of Comte; in the other she assails Laplace's hypothesis regarding the origin of the material universe.

But the work which made her famous, particularly in France, was her translation into French in 1862 of Darwin's Origin of Species. It is safe to say that this version created as much of a sensation in France as the original had caused in Great Britain and America. Her preface to the work of the English naturalist, in which she indicates the results which flow from an acceptance of the transformist theory, created a veritable storm in both religious and scientific circles.

So gratified was Madame Royer by the impression made by this preface and so pleased was she with the controversy which she had started, that she expanded her summary of the theory of evolution as therein given and published it in 1870 under the title of Origine de l'Homme et de SociÉtÉs. This production was so revolutionary in character and so subversive of teachings long held sacred that it provoked an indignant protest from all quarters, and the author was at once ranked with such radical exponents of the new science as Voght, BÜchner and HÆckel.

After the appearance of this production, she wrote numerous other works, several of them on subjects relating to natural science, especially in its connection with anthropology and prehistoric archÆology. And so great was her breadth of view and so exceptional was her grasp of all subjects discussed by her that Renan declared of her, Elle est presque un homme de gÉnie—She is almost a man of genius.

Mme. Royer was frequently spoken of as a candidate for the French Institute, but she was so well aware of the prejudices against the admission of women to membership in this learned body that she never allowed herself to consider the proposal seriously. She was certainly a brainy woman, and in her own department of intellectual effort she exhibited as much talent as did George Sand and Mme. de StaËl in literature and history.

An entirely different type of woman from the radical and disputatious Mme. Royer was the charming and cultured lady, Miss Eleanor Ormerod, her contemporary, who, in her chosen department of science, won both fame and the lasting gratitude of her fellowmen.

Miss Ormerod, unlike Mme. Royer, was preËminently a specialist, and the branch of science in which she achieved distinction was entomology, or rather that branch of it known as economic entomology. From her childhood she manifested an unusual interest in all forms of insects, but particularly in those which are serviceable to mankind or are destructive to farms and gardens, orchards and forests.

Fortunately for the gratification of her peculiar bent of mind, nearly half of Miss Ormerod's life was spent in a locality which was specially favorable to the study of insects which are obnoxious to the gardener, the farmer and the forester. This was at the confluence of the Wye and the Severn, where her father owned a large landed estate, part of which was under cultivation and part wood and park land.

Here the young girl made her first collection of insects, and here she began her studies on the cause and nature of the parasitic attacks upon crops. Here she first realized the frightful ravages that were occasioned by the manifold insect pests that infest not only trees, shrubs, cereals and vegetables, but also flocks and herds as well. And here, too, she resolved to devote her life to devising preventive and remedial treatment for the evils which were robbing the husbandman of so great a part of the fruits of his toil.

After taking this generous resolution, the life of our young heroine was, like that of Liebig and Pasteur, devoted to the welfare of her fellowmen. And like these noble benefactors of their race, her thought was always how she might prevent the losses and increase the products of the tillers of the soil. Entomology with her was not mere nomenclature—a knowledge of strange and fantastic names, which, with the ignorant, constitutes a distinction—but one of the most practical and useful of the sciences.

Miss Ormerod might, had she so elected, have won fame as a systematic entomologist and as a distinguished contributor to the already long list of genera and species of insects. She might have devoted herself to theoretical work, or bent her energies towards the general advancement of the science, like Fabricius, Swammerdam, Westwood and Burnmeister; but she preferred to forego all the glory that might accrue from pursuing such a course, and to direct her efforts in such wise as to be of most service to humanity.

Like the great Pasteur, after his long and laborious experimental researches on silkworm diseases, Miss Ormerod could, at the end of her illustrious career, declare with truth: "The results which I have obtained are, perhaps, less brilliant than those which I might have anticipated from researches pursued in the field of pure science, but I have the satisfaction of having served my country in endeavoring, to the best of my ability, to discover the remedy for great misery. It is to the honor of a scientific man that he values discoveries which at their birth can only obtain the esteem of his equals, far above those which at once conquer the favor of the crowd by the immediate utility of their application; but, in the presence of misfortune, it is equally an honor to sacrifice everything in the endeavor to relieve it."[173]

Miss Ormerod's labors were not, it is true, instrumental in rescuing from destruction a nation's chief industries, as were Pasteur's in the case of his famous researches on the phyloxera of the grape vine or the pebrine of the silkworm. Nor had they to do with such frightful industrial disturbances as have frequently been occasioned by rinderpest or by the potato blight in Ireland in 1845.

This is true in so far as any one pest is concerned. But when one reflects on the scope of Miss Ormerod's investigations and considers how far-reaching were her researches and how many and diverse industries were embraced by the remedial and prophylactic measures which she proposed, one cannot but realize the immense importance of her life-work.

The fact that her activities were confined chiefly to old and well-known pests—insects from which the farmer and the gardener and the forester had suffered for centuries, and which they had come to regard as necessary and inevitable evils—does not detract from the merit and the value of her labors. That she should have taken up a work which affected so many people and have been so successful in abating, or in entirely removing evils which had so long afflicted agriculturists and stock-growers, shows that she was a woman of rare courage and determination as well as one of invincible persistence and of intellectual resources of a very high order.

During more than a quarter of a century Miss Ormerod devoted practically the whole of her time to the study of economic entomology and to spreading a knowledge of it among her countrymen. From 1877 to 1898 she published annual reports on injurious insects and sent them broadcast throughout Great Britain and her colonies. In addition to this she wrote a number of manuals and textbooks on insects injurious to food crops, forest trees, orchards and bush fruits.

Nor was this all. She also prepared for gratuitous distribution a large number of four-page leaflets on the most common farm pests. Of the leaflet, for instance, on the warble-fly, its life-history, methods of prevention and remedy, no less than a hundred and seventy thousand copies were printed. And so great was the demand for her leaflet on the gooseberry red spider that a single mail brought her an order for three thousand copies.

Miss Ormerod, it is proper to state here, received no remuneration whatever for her great services to the public. On the contrary, she gave not only all her time gratuitously, but bore a great part of the expense of printing and distributing her publications. The amount of good she thus did unaided and alone cannot be estimated.

In her leaflet on the warble-fly, also known as bot-fly, she estimates the annual damage to the stock-growers of the United Kingdom from this pest at from £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. The losses due to fruit, grain and vegetable insects of various kinds, before she began her insect crusade, were much greater. In Great Britain and her colonies they amounted to very many millions of pounds sterling every year.[174]

And most of these losses, as she demonstrated, were preventable by simple precautions which she eventually succeeded in inducing the people to adopt. How much she was instrumental in saving annually to the farmers and gardeners of England by her writings and lectures can only be imagined, but the sum must have been immense.

When we recollect that Miss Ormerod accomplished all her work before it occurred to the English Board of Agriculture to appoint a government entomologist, we shall realize what a pioneer she was in the career in which she achieved such distinction and through which she conferred such inestimable benefits upon her fellows.

Miss Ormerod's entomological publications, especially her annual reports, brought her into relations with people of all classes throughout the whole world. Her correspondence, in consequence, was enormous, and not infrequently amounted to from fifty to a hundred letters a day. The great entomologists of Europe and America held her in the highest esteem, and had implicit faith in her judgment in all matters pertaining to her specialty.

One day she would receive a letter from an English gardener begging for a remedy against the strawberry beetle. The next day she would have a similar letter regarding mite-galls on black currants, or pea-weevil larvÆ or clover-eel worms. Again there would be a communication from Norway requesting advice about the Hessian fly, or from Argentina asking information concerning a certain kind of destructive grass beetle, or from India appealing for help against a pernicious species of forest fly, or from South Africa seeking a relief from the boot-beetle. And still again, she was consulted by her foreign correspondents about termites, which were causing havoc among the young cocoa trees of Ceylon, or about certain peculiar species of Australian larvÆ, or about the devastating action of the pine beetle in the Scotch forests, or about the wheat midge and antler moth in Finland.

One day she had a communication from the Austrian Embassy regarding a beetle that was eating the oats about Constantinople, and not long afterwards she received a letter from the Chinese Minister in London begging for information as to how to prevent the ravages of certain noxious bugs in the lee-chee orchards of China.

In view of all these facts it is not surprising that Miss Ormerod became an active and valued colleague of some of England's most noted scientific men. Professor Huxley said of her in connection with certain work performed by her as a member of one of the committees to which he belonged that "she knew more about the business" than all the rest put together.

Miss Ormerod's services and attainments, it is gratifying to note, were not without recognition in high quarters. Besides being in constant correspondence with the most eminent entomologists of the world, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England and examiner in agricultural entomology in the University of Edinburgh, she was a member of many learned societies in both the Old and the New World. She was also the recipient of many medals, two of which came from Russia.

The honor, however, which gave her the most pleasure was the degree of Doctor of Laws, which was conferred on her by the University of Edinburgh. It was the first time this old and conservative institution thus honored a woman, but in honoring Miss Ormerod it honored itself as well.[175]

But when one considers the magnitude of Miss Ormerod's services to her country and to the world, when one reflects on the tens of millions of pounds sterling which she saved to the British Empire by her researches and writings, these honors seem trivial and unworthy of the great nation which she so signally benefited. If any of her countrymen had labored so long and so successfully and made so many sacrifices for the welfare of the nation as she had, he would have been knighted or ennobled. But age-long prejudices and traditions will not yet permit England to bestow the same honors on women as on men, no matter how brilliant their attainments or how distinguished their services to the crown and to humanity. Recognition of this kind may possibly come as one of the desirable innovations of the twentieth century. No lover of fair play can deny "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."[176]

The names of the women in the United States who have become prominent by their researches and writings in the various branches of the natural sciences would make a long list. And when one recalls the fact that it was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that American women were afforded an opportunity to study science, it is a matter of surprise that the list is so extended. For practically no provision was made for the serious pursuit by them of the natural sciences until the opening of Vassar College in 1865, and it was not until the closing years of the century that the portals of many men's colleges were unlocked and thrown open to the hitherto proscribed sex. Considering all the obstacles they had to overcome, the ignorance, the prejudice, the opposition of all kinds they had to combat in the United States, women have already accomplished wonders and bid fair to achieve much more in the near future.

Now almost every educational institution in the land, private or state, has one or more women professors or associate professors. They teach all the branches of the natural sciences that are taught by their male colleagues,—botany, geology, mineralogy, zoÖlogy, anatomy, bacteriology and all the numerous subdivisions of these sciences,—and they teach them with success and Éclat.

They also occupy responsible scientific positions in various state and federal institutions. Thus one woman has been the principal of the Denver School of Mines, while another has been the state entomologist for Missouri. Women are also found doing important work in the National Museum, in the Smithsonian Institution, and in the Agricultural Department in Washington, as well as in the various museums, botanical gardens and public laboratories of the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Among those who have deserved well of science in the United States by their investigations and writings are Olive Thorne Miller and Florence Merriam in ornithology; Susanna Phelps Gage, Dr. Ida H. Hyde, Mary H. Hinckley, Cornelia M. Clapp, Edith J. and Agnes M. Claypole in biology; Rose S. Eigenman in icthyology; Edith M. Patch, Elizabeth W. Peckham, Emily A. Smith, Cora H. Clarke, J. M. Arms Sheldon, Mary Treat, Mary E. Murfeldt, Annie T. Slosson in entomology; Elizabeth G. Britton and Clara E. Cummings in cryptogamic botany; Sarah A. Plummer Lemmon, Katherine E. Golden, Alice Eastman and Almira Lincoln Phelps in general botany; Ada D. Davidson, Ella F. Boyd and Florence Bascom in geology. Besides these, special mention should also be made of Dr. Julia W. Snow for her work on the microscopical forms of fresh-water algÆ; Anna Botsford Comstock for her contributions to our knowledge of microscopic insects; Katherine J. Bush for her monographs on shallow and deep-water molusca; Harriet Randolph and Fannie E. Langdon for their studies on worms, and Katherine Foot for her papers on cellular morphology. Particularly notable, too, is the work that has been done on marine invertebrates by Mary J. Rathbun in the United States National Museum and by Florence Wambaugh Patterson in vegetable physiology and pathology in the Department of Agriculture in Washington.

But much as the women just named deserve recognition for their achievements in the various branches of science to which they have severally devoted themselves, the one who will always be specially remembered, not only for her valuable contributions to divers branches of natural science, but also for her labors in behalf of higher female education—particularly as president of Radcliffe College—is Mrs. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, the wife of the celebrated Swiss-American naturalist, who gave such an impetus to the study of natural science in the United States, and whose influence on the general advancement of science in all its departments has proved so enduring and so far-reaching. As an inspirer of and collaborator with her gifted husband, Mrs. Agassiz deserves a large page in the annals of science, while as an enthusiastic student of nature and as one who communicated her enthusiasm to her students, and at the same time held up before them the highest ideals of womanhood, she is sure of a portion of that immortality which has been decreed to her illustrious life-partner, Jean Louis Agassiz.

This chapter would not be complete without some reference to that large class of women travelers who, directly or indirectly, have contributed so much to the advancement of the natural sciences. The gifted Roumanian writer and traveler, Princess Helena Kolzoff Massalsky,—better known under her pseudonym, Doria d'Istria,—somewhere expresses the opinion that a woman traveler admirably supplements the scientific work of the male explorer by bringing to it aptitudes that the latter does not possess. For she notes many things in nature, as well as in the national life and popular customs of the countries which she traverses, which escape the more hebetudinous perceptions of men, and thus a vast field, that would otherwise remain unknown, is opened to observation and critical study.

One of the most noted travelers of her sex in the nineteenth century was the famous Ida Pfeiffer, of Austria. During the years intervening between 1842 and 1858, the date of her death, she traveled nearly two hundred thousand miles and, in so doing, visited nearly every quarter of the globe. When one recalls the difficulties and discomforts of transportation in the early part of the last century, as compared with our present facilities and conveniences, and bears in mind the fact that her traveling expenses for an entire year were less than those of a Lamartine or a Chateaubriand for a single week, we must admit that her achievements were, indeed, extraordinary.

Besides being the author of numerous books which had for many years a great vogue—books which, by reason of the keen observations and the absolutely truthful narratives of their author, are still of special value to the student of geography and ethnology—she made collections illustrative of botany, mineralogy and entomology which were subsequently secured for the British Museum and other similar institutions in Europe.

No one more highly appreciated Frau Pfeiffer's efforts in behalf of science than did the illustrious Alexander von Humboldt, whose friendship was one of the greatest joys of this remarkable woman's life. Through his recommendation and that of the noted geographer, Karl Ritter, she was made an honorary member of the Geographical Society of Berlin. Besides this, the King of Prussia conferred on her the gold medal for arts and sciences.

Three other women, all representatives of Great Britain, likewise deserve notice for their extensive travels and the interesting and instructive accounts which they published of them. These are Constance Gordon Cumming, Isabella Bird Bishop and Amelia B. Edwards.

More notable in many respects than these three distinguished women were Miss Mary H. Kingsley and Madame Octavie Coudreau. For their contributions to science and for their daring adventures in savage lands, they have won for themselves an unique position among women explorers.

Miss Kingsley—the niece of the well-known writer and naturalist, Charles Kingsley—exhibited much of her uncle's literary ability and love of nature. So complete was her intellectual grasp of the most difficult problems, and so rare was her overflowing sympathy for all of God's creatures, that she was well described as possessing "the brain of a man and the heart of a woman."

In order to get at first-hand information that was necessary to complete a work which her father, George Kingsley, had, owing to his premature death, left unfinished, she determined to visit that part of West Africa "where all authorities agreed that the Africans were at their wildest and worst." Accompanied only by the natives, she travelled among cannibals, pushed her way through mangrove swamps and pestilential morasses. She spent months in a canoe exploring the territory watered by the Calabar and OgowÉ rivers, often in imminent peril of death from wild animals or wilder men.

When not studying the manners and customs of the native tribes, she was hunting fishes and reptiles in streams and quagmires and collecting insects in the weird, grim twilight of the equatorial forest with its inextricable tangle of creepers, its great hanging tapestries of vines and flowers, its myriads of bush-ropes, suspended from the summits of tall buttressed trees, "some as straight as plumb lines, others coiled round and intertwined among each other until one could fancy one was looking on some mighty battle between armies of gigantic serpents that had been arrested at its height by some mighty spell."

The results of Miss Kingsley's wanderings in this dark and uncanny wilderness and among the savage tribes visited by her were her two instructive volumes entitled Travels in West Africa and West African Studies. In addition to these two works from her pen there are deposited in the British Museum an interesting collection of insects, fishes and reptiles—many of them new species and some of them named in her honor—which testifies to her activity as a collector and her enthusiasm as a naturalist.

Her brilliant and useful career was cut short in Cape Colony, whither she had gone as an army nurse during the Boer war. In view of her achievements one is not surprised to learn that her countrymen regarded her premature taking-off as a national misfortune. The noblest monument to her memory is "The Mary Kingsley Society of West Africa," whose object is to carry on, as far as may be, the beneficent work she began on the West African coast and to accomplish for English rule in this part of the world what the "Royal Asiatic Society" has achieved for British administration in India.

Madame Coudreau is designated in Qui Etes-Vous—the French Who's Who—as an exploratrice. This well characterizes her; for, if not the first woman explorer by profession, she is certainly the most energetic and successful.

Her first work was in French Guiana, under instructions from the colonial minister of France. This was in 1894. The following year she began the scientific exploration of the province of ParÁ in northern Brazil, in collaboration with her husband, Henri Coudreau, who had previously distinguished himself by his achievements as a writer and as an explorer in French Guiana. The fruit of their joint work from 1895 to 1899 was six quarto volumes profusely illustrated by photographs which they had taken and by carefully executed charts of the various rivers which they had explored.

While engaged in the exploration of the Trombetas, a tributary of the Amazon, Henri Coudreau was taken seriously ill, and, after a few days' struggle against the disease with which he was stricken, he expired in the depths of the forest primeval, where he was buried by his desolate and disconsolate widow. After such a calamity any other woman would have left the tropics at once and returned to her home and friends. Not so Mme. Coudreau. With matchless courage and determination she buried her grief in the work in which her husband had been so interested, and, after completing the unfinished survey, published the results of this expedition under the title Voyage au Trombetas.

Having completed this work, she was engaged by the states of ParÁ and Amazonas to explore a number of other rivers in the vast territory known as Amazonia. This commission involved the most arduous and dangerous kind of labor and was a task which few men would have been willing to undertake. It is doubtful if any other woman would have ventured on such an expedition, and it is quite certain that no other one could have been found that was so well equipped for this herculean undertaking or who would have carried it to a more successful issue.

Mme. Coudreau was in the service of Amazonia, in the capacity of official explorer, from 1899 to 1906. Most of this time she spent in a canoe on the affluents of the Amazon, or in her tent in the dense forests under the equator. Her only companions were negroes, or Indians, or Brazilian halfbreeds who served her as porters, cooks and boatmen. Frequently they were in the forest wilds for many months at a time and far away from every vestige of civilized life. As it was impossible to take sufficient provisions with them to last them during the whole of their journey, they had to depend on wild fruits and such fish and game as they were able to secure. Often they were forced to live for weeks at a time on an unchanging diet of manioc and tapir meat.

But their sufferings were not confined to hunger and disagreeable—often indigestible—food. There were the heavy steaming atmosphere and the broiling rays of a superheated sun, especially when reflected from the mirror-like surface of lake or river, which were so debilitating and exhausting that physical exertion of any kind was at times almost impossible. There were also the torrential and incessant rains—making it impossible for them to cook their food or dry their clothing—which added to their miseries whether in camp or in their canoe.

Great, however, as were their trials on the river, they were trifling in comparison with those in the woods. Here locomotion was impeded by tangled undergrowth which was bound together by strands of lianas and thorny vines which constituted an impenetrable barrier until a passage was hewn through it with a machete. Under foot was a yielding morass which threatened to absorb them. Overhead were countless chigoes, garapatas and fire-ants which infested the body or buried themselves in the flesh. Or there were clouds of mosquitoes which gave no rest day or night. And worst of all was the ever-present danger of fever and dysentery, not to speak of the dread diseases so common in certain sections of the equatorial regions. It was then that Mme. Coudreau had to act the part of a physician, as well as of a leader, even though she was at the time such a sufferer herself that she was barely able to stand.

To make matters still more difficult for Mme. Coudreau, her employees at times, especially when under the influence of liquor which they contrived to obtain some way or other, became mutinous and refused to accompany her to the end of her journey. At other times the expedition was halted by their fear of wild beasts or savage Indians, or by imaginary evils of many kinds, suggested to them by their superstitious minds. On such occasions Mme. Coudreau never failed to show herself a born leader of men, for she invariably—alone as she was with a crew who were often half savages—was successful in suppressing incipient rebellion and in restoring obedience and order.[177]

Continually confronted, as she was, by such trials and difficulties, privations and dangers, one would imagine that the delicately reared Frenchwoman would have sought immediate release from an engagement that necessitated so much exposure and suffering and sought surcease of sorrow in the distractions and gaieties of pleasure-loving Paris.

Nothing, however, was farther from her thoughts. Intrepid and resourceful, she feared no danger and hesitated before no difficulty, however great. As an explorer she was as venturesome as Crevaux and as conscientious as La Condamine. Like them, who were both her countrymen, she spent many years of her life in the equinoctial regions, and, like them, she contributed immensely to our knowledge of the Land of the Southern Cross.

Never did the tropics have a greater fascination for anyone than for Mme. Coudreau. During the twelve years she spent there, exploring its rivers and traversing its interminable forests, the spell of Amazonia was ever upon her and was never broken, even for a moment.

"I have," she writes, "loved everything in Amazonia, the great majestic woodland and the mysterious virgin forest, the beautiful rivers with their traitorous waters and thundering cataracts, the suffocating air and the perfumed breeze, the burning sun and the sweet freshness of night, the impressive voice of the wind among the trees and the torrential rain. And, contrary to the usual custom of man of bringing everything under his domination, it is I who have become a captive of this savage life which I love, and have permitted it to take possession of all my soul and all my will."[178]

Elsewhere she declares: "In the solitude of the virgin forest I am calm, tranquil, experience no ennui and am almost merry. When I am obliged to leave the great woodland the power to struggle grows less in me. I become of an excessive sensibility. I feel more keenly life's blows. I am not armed for elbowing my way and making a place for myself in the sunshine. I neither love nor understand anything except my virgin forest. There, indeed, I suffer from the inclemency of the weather, from hunger, from sickness; but these are only physical sufferings and are soon forgotten, while moral and interior pains, on the contrary, are ineradicable."[179]

And still again she tells us: "The solitude of the virgin forest has become a necessity for me; it attracts me by its mysterious silence, and only in the great woods have I the impression of being at home."[180]

Can we wonder that such an ardent lover of Nature and such a strenuous votary of science was able to forget herself in her work and was able, notwithstanding her toils and her sufferings, to produce six quarto volumes of reports, in as many years, on the unexplored regions which she had so carefully surveyed and charted? Can we be surprised that her labors received due recognition from learned societies in both the New and the Old World, and that she was acclaimed as an explorer who had rendered distinct service to the cause of natural science, as well as to geography?[181]

When we recall the labors of this lone daughter of France in the wilds of the tropics, with no one to communicate with except her half-civilized servants and boatmen, we instinctively hark back to days not long past and estimate the enormous progress women have made in social and intellectual freedom within but a few decades.

Owing to the policy of repression which so long prevailed regarding the intellectual efforts of women, and the social obstacles which prevented them from publicly acknowledging the offspring of their genius, women like the BrontË sisters, George Sand and George Eliot were compelled to conceal their identity under male designations. Because it was considered immodest for a woman to appear before the public as an author, Lady Nairne, after Burns, the most popular song writer in Scotland, felt obliged to keep secret the authorship of her beautiful poems.

Similarly, family honor made it incumbent on Fanny Mendelssohn to refrain from publishing her musical compositions under her own name. Accordingly, they appeared along with those of her brother Felix, and so similar are they in color and sentiment to his own productions that they are indistinguishable from them, unless the author's signature be attached. To satisfy an inane public opinion, they long contributed "to swell the volume of her brother's fame," and there is reason to believe that some of them still appear under his name at the present day.

Yes, truly, when one recalls these and similar facts, one cannot help exclaiming: "What a marvelous change in the attitude of the world toward women within the memories of those still living!" Women like Miss Ormerod, Miss Kingsley and Mme. Coudreau would have been ostracized if they had dared to attempt, in the days of Lady Nairne, the BrontË sisters and Fanny Mendelssohn, what they may now do not only without censure but without exciting more than passing comment. The ban has been lifted from what was for ages tabu for women, and the sphere of their intellectual activities is now almost coËxtensive with that of the sterner sex. Not only does society no longer point the finger of scorn at the woman naturalist or the woman explorer, but it showers honors on her while living and erects monuments to her memory when dead. A great change, indeed, and one long and ardently desired. Verily, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

[164] In his erudite work, Geschichte der Botanik, Vol. III, p. 517, Koenigsberg, 1856, Ernest H. F. Meyer gives in a few words his estimate of the excellence of Hildegard's Physica: "Aber als ehrwÜrdiges Denkmal des Alterthums und einer zu jener Zeit nicht gemeinen Naturkentniss empfehlen sich zumal deutschen Naturforschern ihre vier BÜcher der Physica.... Denn nicht nur der deutsche Botaniker und Zoologe finden in ihrer Physik fast die ersten rohen AnfÄnge vaterlÄndische Naturforshung, auch dem Artzt bietet sic fÜr jene Zeit Überraschende Erscheinung dar, eine nicht von Dioskorides abgeleitete, sondern unverkennbar aus der VolksÜberlieferung geschÖpfte Heilmittellehre; und der Sprachforscher stÖsst im lateinischen Text beinahe Zeile um Zeile auf deutsche AusdrÜcke seltener Sprachformen."