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The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture Backwoods
Horror and Terror in the Wilderness 2013th Edition
Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery
MICHAEL ARNTFIELD
Semiotics and Popular Culture
Series Editor
Marcel Danesi
University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Semiotics and Popular Culture aims to show the contemporary relevance of cultural theory and present difficult concepts in a clear, jargon-free style. Written by leading figures in the three interconnected fields of media, popular culture, and semiotic studies, this series is an exercise in unraveling the socio-psychological reasons why certain cultural trends become popular. It intends to engage theory and technology and expose its subject matter in a clear, open, and meaningful way.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14487
Michael Arntfield
Gothic Forensics
Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery
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For Sabrina Victoria, a great detective mind in the making.
S EMIOTICS AND P OPULAR C ULTURE S TUDIES
Popular forms of entertainment have always existed. As he traveled the world, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about earthy, amusing performances and songs that seemed odd to him, but which were certainly very popular with common folk. He saw these, however, as the exception to the rule of true culture. One wonders what Herodotus would think in today’s media culture, where his “exception” has become the rule. Why is popular culture so “popular”? What is psychologically behind it? What is it? Why do we hate to love it and love to hate it? What has happened to so-called high culture? What are the “meanings” and “social functions” of current pop culture forms such as sitcoms, reality TV programs, YouTube sites, and the like?
These are the kinds of questions that this series of books, written by experts and researchers in both popular culture studies and semiotics, will broach and discuss critically. Overall, they will attempt to decode the meanings inherent in spectacles, popular songs, coffee, video games, cars, fads, and other “objects” of contemporary pop culture. They will also take comprehensive glances at the relationship between culture and the human condition. Although written by scholars and intellectuals, each book will look beyond the many abstruse theories that have been put forward to explain popular culture, so as to penetrate its origins, evolution, and overall raison d’être human life, exploring the psychic structures that it expresses and which make it so profoundly appealing, even to those who claim to hate it. Pop culture has been the driving force in guiding, or at leashing shaping, social evolution since the Roaring Twenties, triggering a broad debate about art, sex, and “true culture” that is still ongoing. This
debate is a crucial one in today’s global village where traditional canons of art and esthetics are being challenged as never before in human history. The books are written in clear language and style so that readers of all backgrounds can understand what is going in pop culture theory and semiotics, and, thus reflect upon current cultural trends. They have the dual function of introducing various disciplinary attitudes and research findings in a user-friendly fashion so that they can be used as texts in colleges and universities, while still appeal to the interested general reader. Ultimately, the goal of each book is to provide a part of a generic semiotic framework for understanding the world we live in and probably will live in for the foreseeable future.
Marcel Danesi
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
OW TO U SE T HIS B OOK
This book marks a newly practical and incisive approach to a burgeoning area of scholarship. A number of academic titles have previously examined the link between expanded Western interest in the forensic sciences during the nineteenth century and the concomitant rise of detective fiction as a literary genre born of the Victorian novel. Many of these same titles— some cited here—have proven to be penetrating, others less so. None, however, have before now substantively referenced actual investigative techniques or relied on field experience in the police sciences, criminalistics, and criminal investigative analysis in proffering their respective theses. Many of these texts have actually gone to great lengths to avoid practical engagement with these same subjects, including the confluence between nineteenth-century Gothic literature and what are now contemporary applications of forensic expertise. It is the objective of this book to do the opposite. The intent in the chapters ahead is to breathe new life into the study of the interconnection between literature, investigative procedure, and criminology, not to further obfuscate the important work being done in these expanding and mutually reinforcing areas of scholarship and public interest. By using the Victorian Gothic novel as both a point of departure and narrative locus for the critical study of not only forensics but also the current adequacy standards and best practices used in actual criminal investigations and the interpretation of evidence, this book is part of a larger area of study, now in its adolescence, I call literary criminology. I begin then with a note on nomenclature and the classification of those literary traditions employed in this book—the first known treatise on literary criminology, at least by name. I should stress that the title “Victorian,”
H
for our purposes here, describes both British and American literary traditions, specifically those espousing Gothic themes published between 1837 and 1900 inclusive—the period, as the name commonly denotes, corresponding with the reign of Queen Victoria. There has, however, been a conscious effort to avoid references to the Victorian Era by name during those chapters or sections which explicitly discuss American contributions to the Gothic during this same period, simply referring to the period in question in those cases as “the nineteenth century.” In the interest of simplicity and for the purposes of discussing the various iterations of the Gothic tradition during the nineteenth century, I shall follow the sometimes popular practice of citing this period as simply the Victorian Gothic as a unified Anglo-American tradition, doing so without further differentiating between competing national interpretations of the genre. The term “Victorian” as an alloy of both the British and American versions of the Gothic—and by extension Victorian horror and mystery as a lay description of the motifs associated with the Gothic—is chiefly a temporal distinction. The term connects the shared English language and common law legal traditions of two sovereign nations where the Gothic genre was being resuscitated under similar socioeconomic and industrial conditions. It is an editing decision, however contentious, which at the same time permits me to coalesce these two streams into a single Western classification without drawing on assumptions about Victorianism per se.
An additional distinction is made between those titles fitting cleanly within the Victorian Gothic and the contemporaneous and the oftcompared Victorian sensation novels. Much like the Gothic texts discussed here, Victorian sensation novels in many circumstances also concern acts of criminal violence and deviance. Many of the sensation novels produced during this era would therefore arguably also provide effective discussion points for the purposes of examining criminal behavior and the structuralist push–pull effect between literature and investigative procedure of the nineteenth century and beyond. The prime distinction between the Gothic novel and the nineteenth-century sensation novel, however, is that the sensation novel, argued by Cvetkovich (1992) as being “not really a distinct genre” (14), is concerned chiefly with crime and scandal while the approach to crime in the Gothic tends to be more circuitous— more insidious. Crime in the Victorian Gothic is instead interwoven or introduced through a kaleidoscope of the genre’s dominant themes such as the uncanny, the grotesque, paranoia, isolation, inherited curses, and dark romanticism. Some influential titles might also be classified as hybrid
in nature, at once imparting elements of the Gothic and the sensation novel, such as Wilkie Collins’s (1859) The Woman in White—the inaugural text for which the term “sensation novel” was coined (Hughes 2002, 260). Although authors such as Charles Dickens also managed to produce a breadth of works straddling both classifications, it has been generally accepted in literary studies that the sensation novel, while appearing concurrently in the Victorian Era, was spawned from the Gothic novel as both its antecedent and its referent (Adams 2012; Talairach-Vielmas 2012). For reasons of pragmatism and clarity, this book has thus been required to omit titles in sensation fiction which, while having merit with respect to influencing or prefiguring advances in criminal investigation, are simply too far afield to include in the practical discussions which lie ahead.
This is an unusual book intended at once for students in advanced undergraduate courses encompassing a wide array of disciplines—English and literary criticism, history, criminology and sociolegal studies, semiotics and cultural studies, film and media—as well as independent scholars and authors, general interest readers, and both Gothicists and criminal investigators. It is an odd crucible of identifiable groups, scholars, students, and practitioners alike who, until now one might argue, have had little in common or who have at the very least not had their respective interests consolidated into a single volume of work. This is a book that lies at the busy crossroads of theory and practice. It is intended to enable a wider dialogue on the role of literature and the humanities as vessels for the advanced study of criminal offending, as well as paths of ingress toward an improved understanding how we as a collective Western society have historically responded, chiefly through narrative, to fluctuating trends in crime. This includes an examination of literature as the chief negotiator in the public perception—and general understanding—of criminality. With such lofty goals in mind, this book has, by necessity, been required to subscribe to a certain format in order to advance both new arguments and interconnections, previously overlooked, between literature and forensic investigative procedure. At the same time, this book will seek to provide, where possible, a fulsome synopsis, including a discussion of the broader sociohistoric and criminological context for each of the Gothic titles explored herein. One part critical companion to a collection of foundational nineteenth-century Gothic narratives—some better known, others lesser known—and one part practical exposition and explication of established and emerging investigative techniques and forensic adequacy standards, each chapter essentially follows two distinct tracks.
The first track in each chapter is a critical summary and analysis of the Gothic work in question, including an abridged overview of the circumstances surrounding its creation and a brief discussion of characters, setting, and plotting. This discussion includes the criminal and sociolegal context of the work’s authorship—cultural hermeneutics overlaid onto a critical assessment of what the work in question ultimately came to offer the evolution of the forensic sciences. The second track is committed to explicating how the text under examination either predicted or prefigured—sometimes by a century or longer—key investigative methods used in practice by law enforcement and the criminal justice system today. It is also intended to serve as a conduit for broader cultural discourses on crime and criminals more generally. In what is perhaps the most cogent demonstration of life imitating art, each Gothic title explored will also be shown to have helped shape Western definitions of criminality and legal insanity, as well as the accepted forensic methods used to identify and apprehend criminals in future generations, on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These methods, for the most part taken for granted in a digital age, were first conceived in an imaginative and literary form as Gothic constructions.
Because the content of each chapter will engage a number of legal, investigative, and technical terms within the purview of forensics and criminalistics—terms with which traditional literary scholars or students may not be familiar—all key words will appear in bold typeface when first introduced. This indicates that the term has been tabled in the glossary at the back of the book where abridged definitions can be found for additional reference or review purposes. These are definitions that the reader may find to be of value in unpacking technical and legal terms beyond the context in which they are used in the chapter proper. Also, while each term is defined in the chapter in which it appears and is in many cases central to the argument of that chapter, it is recommended that readers review the ancillary stand-alone definition in the glossary when confronting these concepts for the first time. These same terms will be used throughout the chapter—and balance of the book in some cases—without further explanation and with the expectation that the reader will grasp the relationship between the forensic or criminalistic ideas and practices being referenced and the Gothic work being scrutinized. Conversely, for practitioners and investigators reading this book to appreciate the literary antecedents of their trade, while no related definitions for some of the more specific literary concepts are provided beyond those found in the narrative of each
chapter itself, I have tried to make the summary of the works in question as accessible and minimally arcane as possible. Generally speaking, in terms of my fusing two distinct worlds and audiences over the course of this book, each page has required a balancing act in terms of the prose used and arguments fashioned. In doing so, I have walked a fine pedagogical and stylistic tightrope in order to engage as a wide a readership as realistically practicable.
Part of this balancing act has also required, beyond such formatting specifics, that I place strict limits on the number of Gothic texts discussed. The introduction ahead, for instance, is primarily a discussion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet in the context of other publications and key events of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Following the introduction, each chapter is committed to examining a single text (and author) that has made substantive contributions or otherwise served as a progenitor, whether directly or indirectly, to the advancement of forensic methodologies and investigative techniques employed today. The sole exception is the two works by Edgar Allan Poe which occupy two consecutive chapters, in essence an acknowledgment of Poe’s enormous contributions to the establishment of both detective fiction and true crime in addition to the future of criminal investigation.
A ten-chapter book of this nature must then, out of practical necessity, exercise strict editorial controls by excluding explicit and detailed analyses of what are many important other works not found here. These are of course titles that are generally accepted as falling within the catalogue of the Victorian Gothic—a much-debated catalogue in its own right. Ideally, this book will be the first of several to undertake this course of study which bridges academe and the police sciences for a widened readership while also celebrating the literary origins of reforms and improvements that have modernized the criminal justice system in the West. Wherever possible, works excluded by editorial necessity but which have nonetheless made important contributions to the concepts discussed in this book are mentioned in passing and with special attention whenever appropriate. These are works—novels, novellas, and short stories of the nineteenth century—that fall within the domain of the criminal investigative procedures covered in that same chapter. The reader may therefore find these limited references to be of benefit as suggested additional reading, or as aids to further personal research into those same topics, forensic or otherwise, being discussed.
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book and void that it fills with respect to the practical and applied study of crime and literature came about in part out of pedagogical necessity, but also in part because of the invaluable support of those law enforcement professionals and English scholars who prompted me to write it. For years I have been using Gothic fiction as an inroad to the study of the criminal mind and specific police methodologies; however, there has to date been no suitable monograph where the related Victorian Era texts, case studies, and forensic applications have been credibly consolidated in a single scholarly volume. In my search for suitable textbooks, I have found there has been a consistent dearth of viable options. This lack of options led me to select what was for many years lamentably the best of the worst, chapters plucked from various tomes and later cobbled together in various edited course packs and readers. In later years, I was able to procure newer and some might argue better selections, but in the end they lacked any real-world context for those with a mutual fascination with criminology and English literature, or those humanities students looking to rightfully parlay their backgrounds into careers in either law enforcement, the practice of the law, or as interdisciplinary criminologists.
In many respects, most of the scholarly titles published under the guise of “Victorian detective work” or “crime fiction and forensic science” I came across could be more suitably described as academic bait-and-switch deals, where one thing is advertised and the buyer ultimately has to settle for a lesser, remedial version of what they were promised once committed. In the business and marketing worlds, there are laws against this, pursuant to various pieces of consumer protection legislation; however, in terms of
classroom materials, even at a university or college level, few if any comparable safeguards exist. Generally speaking, these titles were not what were advertised. Thus, during the formative years of the various courses and seminars I built on these same ideas—dating back to when I was at once a serving police detective and doctoral student making my foray into academia—I was largely on my own in terms of developing meaningful reading and classroom content. No one it seemed who had an interest or background in law enforcement or forensics had either an appetite or aptitude for literary studies, and vice versa—though it seems some in the university world were prepared to try faking it.
In subsequently tackling this ambitious book, I relied on a combination of my own scholarly and field experience that lies at the crossroads of criminal investigation and literary criticism and history, as well as the invaluable insights and generous contributions of other experts to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. These intellectual contributors and supporters include the esteemed members of both the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, in particular Detective Ken Mains, Dr. Johan Swart, and Lee Mellor, as well as the members of the Northeastern University Listserv for Atypical Homicide, in particular Enzo Yaksic, Dr. Eric Hickey, and Detective Pat Postiglione (ret.). Dr. Robert Barsky, an eminent scholar who heads the law and literature seminar at Vanderbilt University, and Dr. Marcel Danesi, who heads the Centre for Research in Forensic Semiotics at the University of Toronto, deserve special thanks, as does Michael Fox at Western University who was among the first people to review this manuscript and help shape this final version. Dr. Priscilla (Percy) Walton at Carleton University and Dr. DJ Williams at Idaho State University— whose groundbreaking fieldwork on modern vampirism is cited here—also deserve honorable mention for their peer support and insight. On the law enforcement and forensic side, archeologists Renee Wilmon and Helene LeBlanc, FBI cryptanalyst Deneen Hernandez, Ottawa Police Sergeant Chris McGuinness, London Police Constable Omar Hassan, and the countless but consistently modest detectives with over a dozen American, Canadian, and European law enforcement agencies—many of whom I had the privilege of working with during my own police career—who declined to be mentioned by name all deserve great thanks.
I am equally grateful to the undergraduate English and writing students who, through a heuristic process of trial-and-error, helped me determine what exactly this book should look like in terms of style and content— how the seminal text on literary criminology should help shape the initial
discourse. In brief, while I am listed as this book’s author, there have in fact been countless contributors and advisors behind the scenes who helped bring this monograph to fruition. While there are simply too many to thank or otherwise acknowledge by name—and as a testament to their character, most actually asked to not be named—you know who you are, and your commitment to success in both criminal investigations and the history of the book will carry on with this title, and will ultimately stake new territory.
A BOUT THE A UTHOR
Michael Arntfield is an associate professor in the Department of English & Writing Studies at Western University and a previous Fulbright Chair at Vanderbilt University. A former police officer and detective, he now specializes in literary criminology and the criminal humanities.
L IST OF F IGURES
Fig. 6.1 As the first filmic interpretation of the Transylvanian vampire qua Lombroso’s atavistic criminal man, Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosforatu remains, for many, the quintessential representation of Stoker’s Count Dracula, albeit by another name. This promotional still of the film managed to survive, as did a handful of original prints, in spite of the film being ordered destroyed for infringing on Stoker’s 1897 copyright 125
Fig. 7.1 Dr. Charles Booth’s 1889 Descriptive Map of London Poverty, or simply the Booth Poverty Map or London Map of the Poor, provides a visual approximation of Hyde’s “home base” and thus, by extrapolating where his crimes are committed relative to that home base, we can retroactively assign a psychogeographic profile to Hyde based on his being a disorganized Marauder offender. This same process would be carried out today using aerial or satellite maps to assist in determining, or “profiling,” an unknown offender’s likely place of residence 155
Fig. 9.1 An example of forensic art in practice during the course of a death investigation that bridges both police work and archeology. Whether in cases of homicide, suicide, or equivocal death, both digital and analog technologies can be used for the purposes of post-mortem facial approximation in an attempt to identify Jane Does or John Does. In this case, the Jane Doe known only as “The Woman in Well,” believed
to have been murdered and secreted in the well of a livery in Western Canada circa 1900, remains unidentified in spite of the detailed mold seen here having been made public in 2006 201
L IST OF T ABLES
Table 2.1 In this infograph depicting the cycle of secondary deviation and recidivism, a variation on a linear version proposed by Stebbins (2014), the self-identification of an individual as a “deviant” though social and institutional cues offered by society is key to suborning a renewal in (often new or expanded) criminal activities following arrest, conviction, and release. This same model also represents the path to criminal master status 21
Table 6.1 A diagram representing the frequently concomitant nature of paraphilias, both attack and preparatory in nature, that can co-exist in a single subject and which both escalate and de-escalate in non-linear fashion. In this case, the correlation between, and evolution of, various necrophilic spectrum paraphilias is depicted
113
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Forensic Gothic
Dr. Edmond Locard, widely considered the “father” of forensic science, had only one text that was required reading for his first students at the outset of the early twentieth century—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, the novel that debuted Sherlock Holmes. Locard’s theories about the future of sleuthing in which, as his famous adage proclaims, “every contact leaves a trace” (Horswell and Fowler 2004, 48), were not created in a vacuum—they were ripped from the pages of the great Gothic narratives. Before any textbooks, monographs, or other scholarly or scientific materials were widely available on forensic investigation or the set of empirical standards later used to guide criminal inquiries, it was nineteenth-century crime fiction that was the catalyst for police modernization. It was these same nineteenth-century works—the creative engine behind contemporary investigative standards—upon which the first criminalists working under Locard’s mentorship relied as their substantive training material. It turns out that this was just one of many areas where Locard was well ahead of his time as both an investigator and pioneering educator.
The reality is that Doyle’s seminal 1887 novel, widely credited with also being ahead of its time, only scratches the surface in terms of how the Victorian Gothic tradition molded the future of police work and investigative efficacy through literature. Using Locard’s adoption of Holmes’s initially fictive practices and postulates as a proof of concept, it is the aim of this book to go beyond retreading, as others have, temporal coincidences during the Victorian Era with respect to science, crime, and literature while
then philosophizing on the obvious significance of this confluence. The objective here is to critically examine and unpack the role of the Victorian Gothic novel in not only shaping the public understanding of forensic science, but also in serving as the driving force—both procedurally and legislatively—behind what are now standardized techniques in criminal investigation, offender profiling, and applied criminological research among actual practitioners, including modern law enforcement professionals.
Dr. Locard, while previously working as a professor in the Lacassagne School of Criminology in the late nineteenth century, saw the value of A Study in Scarlet not only as a didactic narrative to assist students in grasping pedagogical fundamentals with respect to the study of crime and evidence, but also as a text that would later allow crime stories, as examples of what Linda Hutcheon (1988) calls historiographic metafiction, to find real-world applications beyond the ivory tower and during the course of actual investigations. While today, a handful of universities, in many cases partnering with law enforcement agencies, have developed long-overdue centers for “applied” criminology in this same vein, it seems Locard had a certain prescience of a time when criminal investigative work would be elevated to the same degree of exactitude as any other undertaking which employed the scientific method. It was of course a method central to prevailing nineteenth-century European ideologies and the elevated profile of the university. He seemed to foresee an inevitable marriage between fiction, fantasy, and positivism that Frank (2003) would later describe as “a philosophical materialism…a Romantic materialism” (5) that sent a newly reanimated version of the uncanny and mystical world of the Gothic on a collision course with the industrialized world.
Profoundly influenced by A Study in Scarlet and its focus on investigative efficacy and the need for rigorous continuity of exhibits at crime scenes as a matter of credibility, it should also be noted that Locard, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as Holmes’s creator, was also a trained and licensed medical practitioner. Both men in some sense thus additionally embodied the enhanced role of pathology in police work during the Victorian Era, with the Gothic novel and detective fiction converging to create what I call the forensic Gothic at a point in history when “the detective story never provides an end to speculation” about the nature of evidence, as well as the human body and human character at once (Frank 2003, 26). With that revelation enabled by the Victorian novel, however, came new beginnings and a torrent of possibilities about the future of police work in both Britain and America.
At the time of Locard’s inaugural class on criminal forensics, criminology was a discipline still in its infancy, and criminal psychology “not a coherent discipline, but rather, a collection of works by writers…writers [who] drew upon creative literature for insight into human behavior” (Vrettos 2002, 69). The now increasingly common practice of assigning a novel or other work of fiction as a companion course text in such disciplines, as part of a fledgling interdisciplinary module Arntfield and Danesi (2016) call the criminal humanities, was largely unheard of in Locard’s day. Before long, however, the real and fictional were to become strangely contiguous and part of a larger symbiosis beyond the scope of Locard’s classroom laboratory. Today, for instance, more than a century after Locard first officially paired Sherlock Holmes with the pedagogy of crime scene science, the Metropolitan London Police’s elite Scotland Yard detective bureau, itself made famous in the Sherlock Holmes canon, relies on a database of reported crimes and known offenders known as the HOLMES. Ostensibly, this is an acronym that stands for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. In reality, it is just as much a backronym, one that has been reverse-engineered by police brass to credit Sherlock Holmes vis-à-vis Locard as their muse—the fictional yet still very real forebear of modern detective work.
When A Study in Scarlet first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, later being reprinted as a full book in 1888 concurrent with the Whitechapel murders and ensuing “Ripper” hysteria that swept across London, the morphine-addicted, solitary, but brilliant Holmes quickly proved to be an unlikely prime mover in terms of how the literature might influence real-world procedure. Doyle’s novels and short stories, which went on to total four and fifty-six in number respectively, not surprisingly later set into motion a series of sea changes within the discourse of Industrial Era criminal investigation. They also helped inspire a series of reforms within the world of the fledgling police sciences that actually had their theoretical and philosophical genesis in even earlier literary works, many of which are examined in the chapters to follow. The “examinations,” for instance, of witnesses by Poe’s ingenious investigator, C. Auguste Dupin, established what is today known as cognitive interviewing over a century before the term was coined and appropriated by law enforcement. The veiled discussion of handwriting analysis in Dickens’s Bleak House provided the template for authorship attribution as an area of investigative specialization generations before the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) questioned documents unit came into being. The same novel also legitimized suspec-
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F . 81. S - , s, s; p shows a top view of a sieveplate, with a companion cell, c, at the side; o shows sieveplates in the side of the cell In s, s the protoplasm is shrunken from the walls by reagents
somewhat as the leaves, and the corky or outer bark. The common word “bark” is seen, therefore, not to represent a homogeneous or simple structure, but rather a collection of several kinds of tissue, all separating from the wood beneath by means of cambium. The new bast contains (1) the sieve-tubes (Fig. 81) which transport the sap containing organic substances, as sugar and proteids, from the leaves to the parts needing it (s, Fig. 76). These tubes have been formed like the wood vessels, but they have sieve-plates to allow the dense organic-laden sap to pass with sufficient readiness for purposes of rapid distribution. (2) There are also thick-walled bast fibres (Fig. 82) in the bast that serve for support. (3) There is also some parenchyma in the new bast; it is now in part a storage tissue. Sometimes the walls of parenchyma cells in the cortex thicken at the corners and form brace cells (Fig. 83) (collenchyma) for support; sometimes the whole wall is thickened, forming grit cells or stone cells (Fig. 84; examples in tough parts of pear, or in stone of fruits). Some parts serve for secretions (milk, rosin, etc.) and are called latex tubes
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F . 82. T B C .
The outer bark of old shoots consists of corky cells that protect from mechanical injury, and that contain a fatty substance (suberin) impermeable to water and of service to keep in moisture. There is sometimes a cork cambium (or phellogen) in the bark that serves to extend the bark and keep it from splitting,
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thus increasing its power to protect.
F 84 G C
Transport of the “Sap.”—We shall soon learn that the common word “sap” does not represent a single or simple substance. We may roughly distinguish two kinds of more or less fluid contents: (1) the root water, sometimes called mineral sap, that is taken in by the root, containing its freight of such inorganic substances as potassium, calcium, iron, and the rest; this root water rises, we have found, in the wood vessels,—that is, in the young or “sapwood” (p. 96); (2) the elaborated or organized materials passing back and forth, especially from the leaves, to build up tissues in all parts of the plant, some of it going down to the roots and root-hairs; this organic material is transported, as we have learned, in the sievetubes of the inner bast,—that is, in the “inner bark.” Removing the bark from a trunk in a girdle will not stop the upward rise of the root water so long as the wood remains alive; but it will stop the passage of the elaborated or food-stored materials to parts below and thus starve those parts; and if the girdle does not heal over by the deposit of new bark, the tree will in time starve to death. It will now be seen that the common practice of placing wires or hoops about trees to hold them in position or to prevent branches from falling is irrational, because such wires interpose barriers over which the fluids cannot pass; in time, as the trunk increases in diameter, the wire girdles the tree. It is much better to bolt the parts together by rods extending through the branches (Fig. 85). These bolts should fit very tight in their holes. Why?
Wood.—The main stem or trunk, and sometimes the larger branches, are the sources of lumber and timber. Different kinds of wood have value for their special qualities. The business of raising
F 85 T W W T (See Fig 118)
wood, for all purposes, is known as forestry. The forest is to be considered as a crop, and the crop must be harvested, as much as corn or rice is harvested. Man is often able to grow a more productive forest than nature does.
Resistance to decay gives value to wood used for shingles (cypress, heart of yellow pine) and for fence posts (mulberry, cedar, post oak, bois d’arc, mesquite).
Hardness and strength are qualities of great value in building. Live oak is used in ships. Red oak, rock maple, and yellow pine are used for floors. The best flooring is sawn with the straight edges of the annual rings upward; tangential sawn flooring may splinter. Chestnut is common in some parts of the country, being used for ceiling and inexpensive finishing and furniture. Locust and bois d’arc (osage orange) are used for hubs of wheels; bois d’arc makes a remarkably durable pavement for streets. Ebony is a tropical wood used for flutes, black piano keys, and fancy articles. Ash is straight and elastic; it is used for handles for light implements. Hickory is very strong as well as elastic, and is superior to ash for handles, spokes, and other uses where strength is wanted. Hickory is never sawn into lumber, but is split or turned. The “second growth,” which sprouts from stumps, is most useful, as it splits readily. Fast-growing hickory in rich land is most valuable. The supply of useful hickory is being rapidly exhausted.
Softness is often important. White pine and sweet gum because of their softness and lightness are useful in box-making. “Georgia” or southern pine is harder and stronger than white pine; it is much used for floors, ceilings, and some kinds of cabinet work. White pine is used for window-sash, doors, and moulding, and cheaper grades are used for flooring. Hemlock is the prevailing lumber in the east for the
framework and clapboarding of buildings. Redwood and Douglas spruce are common building materials on the Pacific coast. Cypress is soft and resists decay and is superior to white pine for sash, doors, and posts on the outside of houses. Cedar is readily carved and has a unique use in the making of chests for clothes, as its odour repels moths and other insects. Willow is useful for baskets and light furniture. Basswood or linden is used for light ceiling and sometimes for cheap floors. Whitewood (incorrectly called poplar) is employed for wagon bodies and often for house finishing. It often resembles curly maple.
F 86 T M O B , O W M “Q ” B
Beauty of grain and polish
gives wood value for furniture, pianos, and the like. Mahogany and white oak are most beautiful, although red oak is also used. Oak logs which are first quartered and then sawn radially expose the beautiful silver grain (medullary rays). Fig. 86 shows one mode of quartering. The log is quartered on the lines a, a, b, b; then succeeding boards are cut from each quarter at 1, 2, 3, etc. The nearer the heart the better the “grain”: why? Ordinary boards are sawn tangentially, as c, c. Curly pine, curly walnut, and bird’s-eye maple are woods that owe their beauty of grain to wavy lines or buried knots. A mere stump of curly walnut is worth several hundred dollars. Such wood is sliced very thin for veneering and glued over other woods in making pianos and furniture. If the cause of wavy grain could be found out and such wood grown at will, the discovery would be very useful. Maple is much used for furniture. Birch may be coloured so as very closely to represent mahogany, and it is useful for desks.
Special Products of Trees.—Cork from the bark of the cork oak in Spain, latex from the rubber, and sap from the sugar-maple trees, turpentine from pine, tannin from oak bark, Peruvian bark from cinchona, are all useful products.
S . Parts of a root and stem through which liquids rise. 49. Pull up a small plant with abundant leaves, cut off the root so as to leave two inches or more on the plant (or cut a leafy shoot of squash or other strong-growing coarse plant), and stand it in a bottle with a little water at the bottom which has been coloured with red ink (eosine). After three hours examine the root; make cross sections at several places. Has the water coloured the axis cylinder? The cortex? What is your conclusion? Stand some cut flowers or a leafy plant with cut stem in the same solution and examine as before: conclusion? 50. Girdle a twig of a rapidly growing bush (as willow) in early spring when growth begins (a) by very carefully removing only the bark, and (b) by cutting away also the sapwood Under which condition do the leaves wilt? Why? 51. Stand twigs of willow in water; after roots have formed under the water, girdle the twig (in the two ways) above the roots What happens to the roots, and why? 52. Observe the swellings on trees that have been girdled or very badly injured by wires or otherwise: where are these swellings, and why? 53. Kinds of wood Let each pupil determine the kind of wood in the desk, the floor, the door and window casings, the doors themselves, the sash, the shingles, the fence, and in the small implements and furniture in the room; also what is the cheapest and the most expensive lumber in the community. 54. How many kinds of wood does the pupil know, and what are their chief uses?
N T The work in this chapter is intended to be mainly descriptive, for the purpose of giving the pupil a rational conception of the main vital processes associated with the stem, in such a way that he may translate it into his daily thought It is not intended to give advice for the use of the compound microscope If the pupil is led to make a careful study of the text, drawings, and photographs on the preceding and the following pages, he will obtain some of the benefit of studying microscope sections without being forced to spend time in mastering microscope technique. If the school is equipped with compound microscopes, a teacher is probably chosen who has the necessary skill to manipulate them and the knowledge of anatomy and physiology that goes naturally with such work; and it would be useless to give instruction in such work in a text of this kind. The writer is of the opinion that the introduction of the compound microscope into first courses in botany has been productive of harm. Good and vital teaching demands first that the pupil have a normal, direct, and natural relation to his subject, as he commonly meets it, that the obvious and significant features of the plant world be explained to him and be made a means of training him The beginning pupil cannot be expected to know the fundamental physiological processes, nor is it necessary that these processes should be known
in order to have a point of view and trained intelligence on the things that one customarily sees. Many a pupil has had a so-called laboratory course in botany without having arrived at any real conception of what plants mean, or without having had his mind opened to any real sympathetic touch with his environment
Even if one’s knowledge be not deep or extensive, it may still be accurate as far as it goes, and his outlook on the subject may be rational
M S
S , many of the trunks being formed of aërial roots
F . 87. T M - T
CHAPTER XI
LEAVES—FORM AND POSITION
Leaves may be studied from four points of view,—with reference to (1) their kinds and shapes; (2) their position, or arrangement on the plant; (3) their anatomy, or structure; (4) their function, or the work they perform. This chapter is concerned with the first two categories.
F . 88. A S N - L .
Kinds.—Leaves are simple or unbranched (Figs. 88, 89), and compound or branched (Fig. 90). The method of compounding or branching follows the mode of veining. The veining, or venation, is of two general kinds. In some plants the main veins diverge, and there is a conspicuous network of smaller veins; such leaves are netted-veined. They are characteristic of the dicotyledons. In other plants the main veins are parallel, or nearly so, and there is no conspicuous network; these are parallel-veined leaves (Figs. 89, 102). These leaves are the rule in monocotyledonous plants. The venation of netted-veined leaves is pinnate or feather-like when the veins arise from the side of a continuous midrib (Fig. 91); palmate or digitate (hand-like) when the veins arise from the apex of the petiole (Figs. 88, 92). If leaves were divided between the main veins, the former would be pinnately and the latter digitately compound.
F 90 —C B L B (a common fern).
F 91 — C L W .
F . 89. A S P - L
F 92 —D P L N .
F . 93. P C L A .
It is customary to speak of a leaf as compound only when the parts or branches are completely separate blades, as when the division extends to the midrib (Figs. 90, 93, 94, 95). The parts or branches are known as leaflets. Sometimes the leaflets themselves are compound, and the whole leaf is then said to be bi-compound or twice-compound (Fig. 90). Some leaves are three-compound, four-compound, or five-compound. Decompound is a general term to express any degree of compounding beyond twice-compound.
F . 94.— D C L R . F 95 P I L F
Leaves that are not divided as far as to the midrib are said to be:
lobed, if the openings or sinuses are not more than half the depth of the blade (Fig. 96);
cleft, if the sinuses are deeper than the middle;
parted, if the sinuses reach two thirds or more to the midrib (Fig. 97);
divided, if the sinuses reach nearly or quite to the midrib.
The parts are called lobes, divisions, or segments, rather than leaflets. The leaf may be pinnately or digitately lobed, parted, cleft, or
F . 96. L L S M .
97. D P L B .
divided. A pinnately parted or cleft leaf is sometimes said to be pinnatifid.
Leaves may have one or all of three parts—blade, or expanded part; petiole, or stalk; stipules, or appendages at the base of the petiole. A leaf that has all three of these parts is said to be complete (Figs. 91, 106). The stipules are often green and leaf-like and perform the function of foliage as in the pea and the Japanese quince (the latter common in yards).
Leaves and leaflets that have no stalks are said to be sessile (Figs. 98, 103), i.e. sitting. Find several examples. The same is said of flowers and fruits. The blade of a sessile leaf may partly or wholly surround the stem, when it is said to be clasping. Examples: aster (Fig. 99), corn. In some cases the leaf runs down the stem, forming a wing; such leaves are said to be decurrent (Fig. 100). When opposite sessile leaves are joined by their bases, they are said to be connate (Fig. 101).
98 —O - S L T
F .
F
Leaflets may have one or all of these three parts, but the stalks of leaflets are called petiolules and the stipules of leaflets are called stipels. The leaf of the garden bean has leaflets, petiolules, and stipels.
F 100 D L M
F 99
C
L W A
The blade is usually attached to the petiole by its lower edge. In pinnate-veined leaves, the petiole seems to continue through the leaf as a midrib (Fig. 91). In some plants, however, the petiole joins the blade inside or beyond the margin (Fig. 92). Such leaves are said to be peltate or shield-shaped. This mode of attachment is particularly common in floating leaves (e.g. the water lilies). Peltate leaves are usually digitate-veined.
How
to Tell a Leaf.—It is often difficult to distinguish compound leaves from leafy branches, and leaflets from leaves. As a rule leaves can be distinguished by the following tests: (1) Leaves are temporary structures, sooner or later falling. (2) Usually buds are borne in their axils. (3) Leaves are usually borne at joints or nodes. (4) They arise on wood of the current year’s growth. (5) They have a more or less definite arrangement. When leaves fall, the twig that bore them remains; when leaflets fall, the main petiole or stalk that bore them also falls.
Shapes.—Leaves and leaflets are infinitely variable in shape. Names have been given to some of the more definite or regular shapes. These names are a part of the language of botany. The names represent ideal or typical shapes; there are no two leaves alike and very few that perfectly conform to the definitions. The
F . 102. L L G
shapes are likened to those of familiar objects or of geometrical figures. Some of the commoner shapes are as follows (name original examples in each class):
F . 101. T P C L H .
F . 103. S - L B .
Linear, several times longer than broad, with the sides nearly or quite parallel. Spruces and most grasses are examples (Fig. 102). In linear leaves, the main veins are usually parallel to the midrib.
Oblong, twice or thrice as long as broad, with the sides parallel for most of their length. Fig. 103 shows the short-oblong leaves of the box, a plant that is used for permanent edgings in gardens.
Elliptic differs from the oblong in having the sides gradually tapering to either end from the middle. The European beech (Fig. 104) has elliptic leaves. (This tree is often planted in this country.)
F . 104. E L P B .
Lanceolate, four to six times longer than broad, widest below the middle, and tapering to either end. Some of the narrow-leaved
willows are examples. Most of the willows and the peach have oblong-lanceolate leaves.
Spatulate, a narrow leaf that is broadest toward the apex. The top is usually rounded.
Ovate, shaped somewhat like the longitudinal section of an egg: about twice as long as broad, tapering from near the base to the apex. This is one of the commonest leaf forms (Figs. 105, 106).
F . 105. O S
L H .
F 106 —L A , showing blade, petiole, and small narrow stipules
Obovate, ovate inverted,—the wide part towards the apex. Leaves of mullein and leaflets of horse-chestnut and false indigo are obovate. This form is commonest in leaflets of digitate leaves: why?
Reniform, kidney-shaped. This form is sometimes seen in wild plants, particularly in root-leaves. Leaves of wild ginger are nearly reniform.
Orbicular, circular in general outline. Very few leaves are perfectly circular, but there are many that are nearer circular than of any other shape. (Fig. 107).
The shape of many leaves is described in combinations of these terms: as ovate-lanceolate, lanceolate-oblong.
F 107 O L
L
F . 108. T L T T .
The shape of the base and the apex of the leaf or leaflet is often characteristic. The base may be rounded (Fig. 104), tapering (Fig. 93), cordate or heart-shaped (Fig. 105), trunc ate or squar ed as if cut off. The apex may be blunt or obtus e, acute or sharp, acuminate or long-pointed, truncate (Fig. 108). Name examples.
The shape of the margin is also characteristic of each kind of leaf. The margin is entire when it is not indented or cut in any way (Figs. 99, 103). When not entire, it may be undulate or wavy (Fig. 92), serrate or saw-toothed (Fig. 105), dentate or more coarsely notched (Fig. 95), crenate or round-toothed, lobed, and the like. Give examples.
Leaves on the same plant often differ greatly in form. Observe the different shapes of leaves on the young growths of mulberries (Fig. 2) and wild grapes; also on vigorous squash and pumpkin vines. In
some cases there may be simple and compound leaves on the same plant. This is marked in the so-called Boston ivy or ampelopsis (Fig. 109), a vine that is used to cover brick and stone buildings. Different degrees of compounding, even in the same leaf, may often be found in honey locust. Remarkable differences in forms are seen by comparing seed-leaves with mature leaves of any plant (Fig. 30).
F . 109. D F L P A .
The Leaf and its Environment.—The form and shape of the leaf often have direct relation to the place in which the leaf grows. Floating leaves are usually expanded and flat, and the petiole varies in length with the depth of the water. Submerged leaves are usually linear or thread-like, or are cut into very narrow divisions: thereby more surface is exposed, and possibly the leaves are less injured by moving water. Compare the sizes of the leaves on the ends of branches with those at the base of the branches or in the interior of the tree top. In dense foliage masses, the petioles of the lowermost or undermost leaves tend to elongate—to push the leaf to the light.
On the approach of winter the leaf usually ceases to work, and dies. It may drop, when it is said to be deciduous; or it may remain on the plant, when it is said to be persistent. If persistent leaves remain green during the winter, the plant is said to be evergreen Give examples in each class. Most leaves fall by breaking off at the lower end of the petiole with a distinct joint or articulation. There are many leaves, however, that wither and hang on the plant until torn off by the wind; of such are the leaves of grasses, sedges, lilies,
orchids, and other plants of the monocotyledons. Most leaves of this character are parallel-veined.
Leaves also die and fall from lack of light. Observe the yellow and weak leaves in a dense tree top or in any thicket. Why do the lower leaves die on house plants? Note the carpet of needles under the pines. All evergreens shed their leaves after a time. Counting back from the tip of a pine or spruce shoot, determine how many years the leaves persist. In some spruces a few leaves may be found on branches ten or more years old.
Arrangement of Leaves.—Most leaves have a regular position or arrangement on the stem. This position or direction is determined largely by exposure to sunlight. In temperate climates they usually hang in such a way that they receive the greatest amount of light. One leaf shades another to the least possible degree. If the plant were placed in a new position with reference to light, the leaves would make an effort to turn their blades.
When leaves are opposite the pairs usually alternate. That is, if one pair stands north and south, the next pair stands east and west. See the box elder shoot, on the left in Fig. 110. One pair does not shade the pair beneath. The leaves are in four vertical ranks.
There are several kinds of alternate arrangement. In the elm shoot, in Fig. 110, the third bud is vertically above the first. This is true no matter which bud is taken as the starting point. Draw a thread around the stem until the two buds are joined. Set a pin at each bud. Observe that two buds are passed (not counting the last) and that the thread makes one circuit of the stem. Representing the number of buds by a denominator, and the number of circuits by a numerator, we have the fraction ½, which expresses the part of the circle that lies between any two buds. That is, the buds are one half of 360 degrees apart, or 180 degrees. Looking endwise at the stem, the leaves are seen to be 2-ranked. Note that in the apple shoot (Fig. 110, right) the thread makes two circuits and five buds are passed: two fifths represents the divergence between the buds. The leaves are 5-ranked.
F . 111. P P T Work it out on a fresh long tuber
Every plant has its own arrangement of leaves. For opposite leaves, see maple, box elder, ash, lilac, honeysuckle, mint, fuchsia. For 2ranked arrangement, see all grasses, Indian corn, basswood, elm. For 3-ranked arrangement, see all sedges. For 5ranked (which is one of the commonest), see apple, cherry, pear, peach, plum, poplar, willow. For 8ranked, see holly, osage orange, some willows. More complicated arrangements occur in bulbs, house leeks, and other condensed plants. The buds or “eyes” on a potato tuber, which is an underground stem (why?), show a spiral arrangement (Fig. 111). The arrangement of leaves on the stem is known as phyllotaxy (literally, “leaf arrangement”). Make out the phyllotaxy on six different plants nearest the schoolhouse door.
F . 110. P B E , E , A .
In some plants, several leaves occur at one level, being arranged in a circle around the stem. Such leaves are said to be verticillate, or whorled. Leaves arranged in this way are usually narrow: why?
Although a definite arrangement of leaves is the rule in most plants, it is subject to modification. On shoots that receive the light only from one side or that grow in difficult positions, the arrangement
