the sufferings and losses inflicted by the mother country, and proud of their victory over her, were in no mood for arbitrating or making any concessions whatever. When Mr. Jay returned from England, in 1795, after having negotiated the famous treaty out of which the whole system of modern international arbitration grew, he was no sooner on shore than he was the most unpopular man in the country. He was cursed as a traitor to his native land, he was burned in effigy in Boston, and if his treaty had been referred to the people it would have been torn to shreds and given to the winds. But Washington and a majority of Congress saw the wisdom of the treaty and saved it, Congress adopting it by a majority of only seven out of a total vote of 109. The credit of originating the system is due, therefore, not so much to the nation as to the wisdom and sobermindedness of Mr. Jay and a few friends fortunately situated. But this famous treaty had an English as well as an American side. Lord Grenville, the British Foreign Secretary at that time, helped to draft it. It was ratified by the British government as well as by the Congress of the United States, and the English people could not have received it with worse grace than it was received here. In the development and practical application of the system of arbitration, also, Great Britain has had a share scarcely less creditable than our own. We have arbitrated about forty cases; she, not less than thirty. The United States has settled difficulties in this way with sixteen nations, thirteen of which are weak powers; Great Britain with eleven, six of which are weak powers. The two countries have settled thirteen disputes between themselves in this manner-thirteen of the most difficult, delicate and far-reaching in consequences of all the cases ever adjusted by arbitration. In the conduct of these cases and in loyalty to the decisions rendered by the tribunals, the behavior of Great Britain has always been conspicuously honorable. She has hesitated in the first instance to submit her cases lest she should lose them; we have hesitated lest we should not get all that we claimed. Her cases, not only with the United States but with other nations, have nearly always been decided against her; but she has invariably paid the "smart money" honorably and without excessive growling. We have certainly done no better, possibly not quite so well, in the few cases where we have lost. Whoever studies thoroughly and impartially the history of the origin and growth of the international arbitration movement must speedily convince himself that it centres in the heart and life of the great Englishspeaking people as a whole, not in that of either branch alone, and that the honors are almost equally divided between the two branches. It is the outgrowth of the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, on which Anglo-American civilization is built up. Deeper still, it finds its sources in the elemental Christian principles of love to God and love to man, in reverence for the divine law and devotion to human good, to which this great people has given itself more thoroughly than any other on the face of the globe. The American and the Englishman have wrought side by side in this work since the one people became two nations. In the arbitration movement for a long time they wrought almost entirely alone. During a period of three-quarters of a century, from 1798, when the first of the commissions appointed under the Jay Treaty rendered its decision, to 1872, when the celebrated Alabama case was decided at Geneva, there had been something like thirty-five settlements of international differences by arbitration. Either the United States or Great Britain appeared as a party in all of these except three. In the fortyfive which have occurred since 1872, the one or the other of these two nations has appeared as a party twenty times. In other kindred ways has the arbi tration movement been promoted by these two nations. In 1873, on the motion of Mr. Henry Richard, the British House of Commons passed, by the casting vote of the Speaker, a resolution formally approving of the principle of arbitration in the settlement of international difficulties. This was the first general official recognition of the principle ever given by a national legislative body, the resolution of the same kind introduced by Charles Sumner into the United States Senate the year before having got no further than the order to refer and print. Our Senate had, however, done much to promote the cause by its ready ratification of nearly all the treaties providing for the particular arbitrations which had occurred up to that time. I need hardly refer to the visit to this country made by the distinguished British deputation in 1887, bearing a numerously signed memorial, and to the strength given thereby to this growing movement; nor to the still greater influence exerted by the International American Conference of 1889-90, called by our own Secretary of State. The arbitration treaty drawn by this Conference did not lapse through any fault of the United States; and our government has since made an attempt to revive it and have it ratified. Its failure of ratification did not, however, prevent it from exercising a great influence throughout the world, whither it had been sent. About the time that this Conference adjourned, our Congress unanimously adopted a resolution approving of the general principle of international arbitration, like that of the House of Commons seventeen years earlier. Another resolution was passed by the House of Commons in 1893, more specific, more cordial, than the earlier one, and this time by a unanimous vote. Another memorial more numerously signed than that of 1887, has recently crossed the sea to us, emanating, not from the British Government, but from the nation's representatives in Parliament, and thus voicing the real spirit of the English people. The President of the United States has given the matter honorable mention in a message to Congress. So the movement has gone on for a century. It has drawn into its widening and deepening current much of the best thought, of the best sentiment, of the best purpose of the two countries. It had really begun to seem that the two nations were just on the point of binding themselves together by a permanent treaty of arbitration into a band of perpetual friendship, and that they were to lead in the inauguration of a great international tribunal before which all otherwise unsolvable differences between the nations should be brought for adjustment. For this movement had by no means confined itself to the two branches of the English-speaking people. It had slowly but surely passed out from this centre to the rest of the world. It had touched nearly every nation in both the Old World and the New. Some of these nations have in recent years several times arbitrated their differences. In the national legislatures of eight of them have resolutions been passed favoring the principle of arbitration. Some of them have become almost as thoroughly interested in the movement as the United States and Great Britain. Only last summer France-fighting, glory-seeking France went a step further than either of these nations has ever gone, and frankly asked our country to join her in a permanent treaty of arbitration. The movement was really becoming contagious. And now, when it promised soon to issue in one of the most magnificent triumphs of reason and conscience known to history, the whole movement is suddenly brought to a dead standstill, and that too by the very nations which originated it and have been its chief support. British greed and domineering on the one hand and American jingoism and hotheadedness on the other have combined to humiliate and disgrace both countries, by temporarily arresting and confusing their growing unity and turning their great est glory into shame. Americans are saying that all Great Britain's professions of attachment to arbitration have been false; Englishmen declare that we have abandoned our own cherished principles and that we are willing to go to any length of absurdity, in order to manifest our hatred for them. Old wounds have been torn open, old dislike and distrust awakened; the old instincts of savagery and barbarism which had been smothered nearly dead in Anglo-Saxon blood have been suddenly let upon their feet again. The proposed treaty of arbitration between the two countries is thrust out of sight. In the flurry and confusion at Washington not a moment of thought can be given to the courteous and cordial invitation of France to join her in a treaty of permanent friendship. Great principles, the demands of modern times, are ignored. We have turned our faces backward and are shouting our devotion into the spaces from which we have come. The cause of international fellowship has been temporarily injured everywhere by the mere suggestion of war between this country and Great Britain. Latent animosities have been started into life all over the world. The South American nations have been inflamed against Europe. The chronic meddlesomeness of European nations has been greatly stimulated. For years probably, at best, will it be impossible to bring the arbitration movement back to the favorable position which it had reached last summer. But this movement has its causes too deep and abiding to admit of anything but temporary restraint. The forces which have been carrying it forward so successfully and so rapidly in recent years will before long break down all obstacles. The magnificent outburst of intelligent Christian opposition to war and war talk which has taken place in connection with the recent excitement has been a revelation even to those of us who make it our business to study the subject and to watch for hopeful signs. In spite of appearances to the contrary, the cause has made more real progress than even the most sanguine had supposed. The splendid utterances to which we have been listening on both sides of the ocean are a pledge that the Anglo-American people can not much longer be blinded and led away by senseless jingoistic war flurries, and that any British ministry or United States administration that dares to let loose the winds of passion and strife will have to answer for it with humiliation at the bar of public opinion. The time has come when the word hostilities ought to become obsolete in the dictionary of international relations, especially in that of English-speaking peoples. Civilization has become too complex and sensitive, tco interdependent in all its parts, too intelligent and humane, too conscientious and Christian, to permit itself hereafter to be imperiled by senseless sentimental appeals to ancient and outgrown theories of courage, honor and safety. War has become intolerable in our modern society. It ought to be outlawed at once. Morality and reason have been condemning it from time immemorial; it is now condemned besides by the multiplied interests of an intricate, world-wide association of men. If nations still have differences which an intelligent and peaceful diplomacy can not dispose of, there remains but one honorable appeal, that to arbitration. This method will always bring peace with honor; no other in our time will. It has been tried so often and so successfully, in disputes of every conceivable kind, that it has won its case at the bar of civilization. To reject its adoption longer is to reject not only the arguments of conscience, reason and expediency, but that other argument from which there is no escape-suc cess. The civilized nations ought, then, without delay, to bind themselves by treaties hereafter to settle all their otherwise unadjustable conflicts by this peaceful, reasonable and honorable method, and to take immediate T was natural that the earliest students of plants were interested in them chiefly as sources of sustenance or of healing. It was wholly from this point of view that they were treated by the classic writers, whose accounts furnished the only available information for the few who interested themselves in such matters during the Dark Ages. And long after the revival of learning they remained very few who were not deterred by the fate of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus from the investigation of natural phenomena. When finally the results of study and travel had shown the futility of the early attempts to identify the Mediterranean plants of Theophrastus and Dioscorides with those of northern Europe, attention. was turned from study of the books to the examination of plants. But it was still chiefly for their real or reputed medicinal value that they were thought of interest, and the materia medica came shortly to include almost every known plant. To very many of these the most marvellous properties were attributed by the herbalists and the gatherers of simples. When New England was settled, there was no science of botany. The only knowledge of plants was this pseudo-science of the drug-mongers, and the most elementary principles of their activity in the economy of nature were yet undreamed-of. Theology held full sway over men's minds, and knowledge of the physical world suffered equally under both prevailing forms. The dominant theology of the greater part of Europe often served as a cloak and excuse for an idle and a brainless life. The opposing Calvinism which ruled New England saw in our world only a "vale of tears," and staked its existence on keeping it so; while its logic was to glorify the Creator by contempt for creation. Among the early writers on New England, the Winthrops, Dudley, Higgin son and Wood made incidental reference to some plants of the country, and the earlier explorers had carried back a few of the more striking ones to Europe. Thus by the beginning of the seventeenth century our Indian corn, pitcher-plant, milk-weed and arbor-vitæ, among others, were known to the herbalists. The first serious attempt to describe the natural products of our region was that of an Englishman, John Josselyn, who spent several years here. The chief authority for English-speaking students of his time were the herbal of Gerarde, published in 1636, and that of Parkinson, which appeared four years later. These are huge quartos, filled with the most fantastic statements about plants and their virtues, and illustrated by crude but, for the most part, recognizable wood-cuts of the plants described. The accompanying illustration is from a photograph of Parkinson's herbal. The page on the left is devoted to the peanut and may give an idea of the so-called botanical knowledge of the times. This volume of 1755 pages is called. the Theatrum Botanicum, and was prepared by "John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, and the King's Herbarist." At least so far as American plants are concerned, it justified its claim to contain accounts of more “than hath been hitherto published by any before." The author's classification well shows the utter lack of insight into plant structure and the emphasis laid on their properties in his time. Some of his groups are: 2. Purg "I. Sweete smelling Plants. ing Plants. 3. Venomous, Sleepy, and Hurtfull Plants, and their Counterpoysons. 4. Saxifrages or Breake-stone Plants. 5. Vulnerary or Wound Herbes." In a few cases, where the plants of what we now call a natural group or family possess some striking external peculiarity, this was seized upon; so that a few of his groups correspond in a general way with some now recognized. Such are: This was the state of knowledge when Josselyn wrote; and, as he was an amateur and no very accurate observer at best, we shall not find his work superior to that of his contemporaries. He made visits to New England in 1638 and in 1663, the latter of several years' duration; and most of the time was spent as the guest of his brother, a settler at Black Point, now Scarborough, Maine. He published two volumes concerning these travels, one entitled, "New England's Rarities discovered in birds, beasts, fishes, serpents and plants of that Country," and published at London in 1672; the other, "An Account of two voyages to New England," the second edition of which appeared in 1675. The latter has been reprinted in book form in Boston, and also in the "Collections" of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The former was issued with full and valuable annotations by Prof. Edward Tuckerman, in 1865; and careful notes on that part of it relating to plants had previously been published by Rev. J. L. Russell, in Hovey's Magazine of Horticulture for 1858. Both works contain extensive notes on the products of the region, quite in the style of the times. The lists given in the "Rarities," especially "of such plants as have sprung up since the English Planted and Kept Cattle in New England," have been of service in throwing light on questions concerning the indigenous or introduced character of certain plants, and concerning the time of arrival of various vegetable immigrants. It will afford an instructive idea of the botanical and therapeutic notions of our earliest American ancestors to quote Josselyn's accounts of two well-known plants. He gives the earliest figure and description of our jewel-weed, Impatiens fulva. "This Plant the Humming Bird feedeth upon, it groweth likewise in wet grounds, and is not at its full growth till July, and then it is two cubits high and better, the Leaves are thin, and of a pale green Colour, some of them as big as a Nettle Leaf, it spreads into many Branches, knotty at the setting on, and of a purple Colour, and garnished at the top |