In the system of Spencer, as in that of Comte, sociology appears at the top of the scientific series, but with him this pinnacle of knowledge is really and solidly connected with the building itself. In spite of their much greater complexity, social phenomena are essentially identical with those of inferior cosmic life. Sociology for Herbert Spencer is a physical science like others, requiring no peculiar synthetic or subjective methods, and its aim with him can not be any other than the reduction of the specific laws of social life to the universal laws of motion.

Passing to the delimitation of the sociological domain and to the definition of the object of that science by Herbert Spencer, I must observe that those matters, in modern evolutionism, present a degree of complication which Comte avoided by the artificial isolation he created for sociology in his philosophical system. Natural science teaches us that association is the law of every existence. What we usually call society in common speech is only a particular case of that general law. A being, whether social or not, is never absolute, indivisible; but essentially comparative and multiple, resulting from the action of a number of forces converging on one point.

Political and social systems speak a good deal about “individual "” and "society "; but the very point where the individual ends and society begins has never yet been fixed with any accuracy. The most prominent botanists and zoologists, who have to deal with this matter for their own technical purposes, have been led to acknowledge several degrees of individuality: we can consider each individual as a whole, or a person, in comparison with the individuals of a degree beneath it; but when we compare it with the individuality of a superior degree, it soon loses its personality and appears as a part, a member, or an organ. There are myriads of plants (alga) and animals (infusoria), which are styled monocellules, and which, indeed, are considered as consisting of one single organic element or cell, although their anatomical structure appears, sometimes, very complex and perfect in its peculiar style. But organic cells quite identical with these form also aggregations, or associations, more or less compound; and such groups of cells either live independently, unfolding their own botanical or zoloögical individuality, or enter, in the shape of textures and organs, into the composition of other still superior individual beings. Men, like other mammalia, are, in fact, associations of such colonies of cells. Our inveterate tendency to consider ourselves as an end and a center of the creation makes us prone to prejudge that our own individuality is the only genuine one.

It would be hardly possible to review in a few lines the remarkable researches into the various degrees of vegetable and animal individuality of Nägeli, Virchow, Huxley, Haeckel, and many others; and it is beyond my competence to settle whether absolute individuality, i. e., morphological indivisibility, ought to be granted to cells-as was as

serted till the last few years by the most authoritative scholars-or whether organic cells themselves consist of individualized elements (plastids) still more primordial. But that is not intimately connected with the main object of the present essay, and the biologists are now somewhat at variance on the point. I shall only observe that the great De Candolle distinguished six degrees of individuality in plants alone; Schleiden reduced that number to three (the cell, the shoot, the cormus or stock); while Haeckel, again, doubled that number. For shortness' sake, we may admit the classification very recently (in 1883) proposed by a young Italian scholar, M. Cattaneo,* who, considering the question from a zoological point of view, fixed the number of such degrees of individuality at four, as follows: 1. Plastids, i. e., cells or any other primordial elements, after dividing which we should get not a being of any kind, but mere amorphic organic matter; 2. Merids, i. e., colonies of such plastids; 3. Zoïds, i. e., such individuals as are autonomous so far as their individual preservation is concerned, but which are obliged to unite with other individuals of the same series for preservation of species (like superior animals and men); and, 4. Dems, i. e., colonies of zoïds: conjugal couples or pairs, families, tribes, societies.

Assuming that the proper aim of sociology is the investigation of the natural laws regulating the connections between individuals and society, it is obvious that, before we approach sociological studies themselves, we must answer the preliminary question, Which of the various degrees of individuality above mentioned we accept as the starting-point of our researches ; or, in other terms, where ought the domain of social science properly to begin?

For Comte social life begins as soon as two individuals of the series of zoïds (he explicitly says, man and woman) unite themselves in a conjugal pair, the result of which union is the arising of a dem, i. e., a compound individual of a superior species. Thus he asks us to look for the object of sociology, not in the material fact of an aggregation, but in the consensus or convergence of forces represented by the uniting individuals, aiming at an end which is personal to none of them. In that sense his teaching seems to be of capital significance for the progress of the real social science. But that meaning can be only obtained from the spirit of his doctrine, not from its letter; and the great philosopher himself was more than once false to his own premises. It seems that Comte was not fully aware of the extreme difficulty of settling in a scientific sense the point where individual life becomes social, and we hasten to see how the far more learned English evolutionist-I mean Herbert Spencer-gets out of the whirlpool where the ship of the French positive philosophy foundered with all hands on board.

In his "Principles of Sociology" Herbert Spencer pays but little * "Le colonie lineari e la morfologia dei molluschi.”

attention to these preliminary questions as to the limits and the specific laws of sociology; and we are compelled to go back as far as his "First Principles," etc., to get a knowledge of the way in which those questions are answered by his system. This is to be regretted, not so much because of the practical inconvenience of perusing many volumes about matters but indirectly connected with the object of our researches, but far more on account of the impossibility of summarily reviewing so monumental a work in the few pages of this essay.

To French positivism, sociology appeared too much isolated from genuine knowledge by a gulf which Comte asserted to be unfathomable. With the modern scientific school, the danger comes rather from the opposite side, and sociology is threatened, so to say, with being swallowed up, or absorbed, by zoology.

Indeed, to botanists and zoologists is due the capital discovery of the unquestionable fact that (with the single exception of the lowest monocellular ones) organisms are societies. And if we were arbitrarily to reserve the appellation of society exclusively to the dems of M. Cattaneo's classification, still we could not get out of the difficulty even by such an anthropomorphic (i. e., anti-scientific) restriction. An "organism is a society "-that great sensational thesis is imposed on our mind more and more with every new advance of natural science; while, on the other hand, the chief sociologists of these later years, starting from their more or less synthetic point of view, come to the conclusion that "society is an organism."* The great Darwinian law of the struggle for life, which is the specific law of evolutionary biology, plays a part still more and more prominent in the most recent sociological writings, and the very object of social science appears to be well-nigh dissolved in the vast domain of biology.

IT

THE HICKORY-NUTS OF NORTH AMERICA.

BY JOSEPH F. JAMES.

T is a favorite pastime of our country population during the long winter evenings to gather round the fire and crack and eat hickorynuts. It is an amusement, too, peculiarly American, and for the simple reason that in this country alone are the nuts to be had in any abundance. Perhaps, where almonds or English walnuts are equally common, cracking hickory-nuts is superseded by a resort to these other fruits. They, however, are much easier to open than the hickorynut, and with thinner shells are readily cracked at the table. But in America, in those districts where the peanut does not take the place of other nuts, the cracking of the hickory still continues. Whether it

* See the "Revue Philosophique" of M. Ribot, for 1883, passim.

be the pecan of Texas and Illinois, or the shell-bark or mocker-nut of the Central or Eastern States, the amusement is the same. They are the best nuts the forests of North America produce, and some of them are thought to be superior in flavor to the much-esteemed English walnut.

Year after year have hundreds and thousands of bushels of the shell-barks, the hickory-nuts par excellence, been gathered in various parts of the country. Among these, few can have failed to notice the many differences they present. Some are small and nearly round; some are long, narrow, and angular; some have thick shells, and some thin ones, as any one who has cracked his fingers along with the shell can bear witness.

According to evolutionary doctrines, variability in an important feature is an indication either of a low state of development, or that the organism is in a state of advancement. Various facts show the latter to be the case with the shell-bark hickory. The first stages of the onward march must be sought far back in prehistoric times, for it boasts an ancient if not an honored lineage. Before the hairy mammoth roamed the forests of the Ohio Valley; before the soil of Louisiana was yet above the ocean's waters; before the Ohio had become tributary to the mighty Mississippi; before even the Rocky Mountain. range had been elevated above the waste of waters, the ancestors of this hickory flourished in the land. But, before we study the ancient hickories, let us examine the living trees and note their peculiarities.

Were the same observers who saw the differences in the size and shape of the nuts of the white shell-bark to direct their attention to the husks of that fruit, they would find much variability there also. But these are secondary considerations with the nut-gatherers. If a

nut falls to the ground with the husk intact, the nutter gives it a kick with his boot-heel, or a blow with his stick, and separates the husk into its component parts. For this outer covering divides readily along the sutures and falls into four pieces. Sometimes the four form a nearly perfect ball; sometimes they are long and taper to a point; occasionally, three pieces will serve the purpose of four, but they are all dark green or brown on the outside, white with streaks or veins of brown inside, and they vary from a quarter to half an inch in thickness.

Yet another thing will the nutters notice, and that to their disappointment and disgust. This is the number of nuts having neatly cut, round holes in the shell. Out of these there will often be seen protruding the white body of a well-fed worm, which has been growing in size and strength since the egg hatched in the young nut. The grub grew with the growth of its house; it found an abundant store of nutriment, and it attains a size which makes it a matter of wonder how it manages to escape from the neat little round hole it has cut in

the thin white shell.

Such is the fruit of the white shell-bark. The tree which produces it is equally interesting. The common name of shell-bark or shagbark tells at once its most remarkable characteristic, and one by means of which it is most easily and readily recognized. The bark, instead of being securely attached to the trunk as in most trees, breaks loose from it and hangs in strips, fastened sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the upper and at other times at the lower end. The whole trunk thus presents a shaggy, rough appearance, and in some cases resembles the ragged ends of an ill-laid and worn-out thatch. This feature is only to be observed in trees of more than ten years of age, younger ones showing indications of what is to come.

It is a majestic tree, eighty or ninety feet in height, straight and without a branch for sometimes sixty feet, and then spreading out its bushy head. In the spring the young leaves make a very rapid growth, attaining a length of twenty inches in a short time. These leaves are divided into five leaflets, four being in two opposite pairs, and the fifth placed at the end. Each leaflet tapers to a sharp point and has saw-like teeth on the edges. The flowers are small, green, and form long, pendent catkins, arranged in bunches of threes, with the fertile or pistillate flowers at the base. The pollen is produced in immense quantities, and conveyed from the stamens to the pistils through the agency of the wind. The species is widely distributed over the country, ranging from the St. Lawrence Valley and Southeast Minnesota on the north, to Florida and Texas on the south. This extensive dispersion is perhaps one reason for the variability the nut presents, as under varied conditions it assumes diverse forms.

One of the nearest relatives of the white shell-bark is the thick shell-bark. In this species the nut is very large, has an extremely thick husk and shell, and a small but sweet kernel. The husk sepa