Under The Microscope

Travelling Man -- A Booke Review?

What does the name Sir Francis Galton mean to you? An eminent Victorian scientist well-known for his contributions to statistics, anthropology and meteorology, perhaps. While my local library has none of Galton's important scientific works, it does have his book The Art of Travel, first published in 1855.

The title is really a misnomer, for the book, subtitled Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries, is a veritable cornucopia of general science. So much so that it would not be out of place today used as a supplementary school text. The Art of Travel was the handbook for nineteenth-century explorers and intended for a time when travelling was rough and a person's life depended on their ingenuity and perseverance. Scholars of the book today would make MacGyver look like the greenest of tenderfoots.

During his life Galton travelled extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He wrote The Art of Travel on his return from West Africa, an exploration for which he was awarded the Royal Society's Founder Medal for 1854. Designed to be useful, the book could only have been written by a capable scientist, one accomplished in both theory and experiment. That he was respected for his knowledge of rough country survival is evident from his being asked to deliver a series of lectures on the subject at Aldershot Barracks to troops preparing for war in the Crimea.

For anyone intending to embark on a long and hazardous journey into darker parts of the globe, or who just wants to increase their general scientific knowledge, the book is highly recommended. It contains everything you could ever possibly want to know, from how to break in an ox to lighting a fire in a thunderstorm without matches. The selection on medical emergencies alone is worth including on the inside lid of every first aid kit. It is important, surely, to know the correct procedures to follow in case of scorpion stings or the effects of rarefied air. A paragraph on drowning anticipates modern techniques for artificial respiration, described as a preferred alternative to hanging the unfortunate up by their feet to let all the water drain out.

In addition to extensive information on navigation, including 20 things to do if you get lost, Galton described how to use, repair and sometimes even construct scientific instruments -- how to silver the glass of sextants, for example, and how to tell the time by sundial, pendulum and hour glass. He also compiled a wide variety of tables, some of standard trigonometry, others less familiar such as tables of rates of travel based on on human, camel and horse pace lengths.

Animal husbandry was not forgotten. Galton had a wide knowledge of the correct management of elephants, dogs, goats, sheep, cattle, camels and horses. He described all the equipment necessary for using these animals as beasts of burden or food and how to make it from local materials. More unusual activities associated with animals and described by Galton include swimming across rivers with horses, and using otters and cormorants to catch fish.

Galton was also a builder of some repute and described, in detail, how to construct boats from a variety of materials such as reeds (anticipating Thor Heyerdhal), wood, hides, canvas, rubber, bark and sheet tin. A table giving the specific floating powers for a range of different woods provides useful supporting information here. Galton also described how to make horse accoutrements, bivouacs, carriages, bridges and all manner of useful smaller items.

Galton also anticipated that the traveller would at some stage need to make soap and included a table showing the relative amounts of alkali in the ash of materials such as pine wood and bean stalks. There were also tables on nutrition which gave "real nutriment" as a percentage of the gross weight for a selection of (once) common foodstuffs.

A delightful section on signalling describes Coulomb and Bolton's flashing signals, a predecessor of Morse code, and Galton's own design for a more efficient hand heliostat. Galton's attention to detail was such that he included an observation by a Mr. Parkyns on the signalling techniques employed by a group of bandits in Abyssinia.

The book is a historic collection of scientific methods for solving problems and would be a valuable anecdotal asset to all science classrooms. Did you know, for example, that a cup full of dried peas mixed with water expands enough to lift 60 lb. one inch in 24 hours? A technique guaranteed useful to restore the shape of all those battered hip flasks that teachers are apt to carry for stressful moments in their working day...

Russell Dear

Russell Dear is a Mathematician living in Invercargill