VOLUME VII SLICE X David, St to Demidov (continued 4)

“All words to be spelled on one hand first; then two. When a few words have been memorized, they should be written on slips of paper, then in the exercise-books and dated. After this there should be further repetition and exercising. The same course should be taken with phrases and short sentences. Names of persons should be written on cards and slips of paper and pinned to the chest. Names of things to be affixed to them, or written on them. Names of apartments on cards laid in the rooms. Where the object is not available use a picture, or draw the outline and make pupil do the same. Never nod, or point, or jerk the finger, or use any other gesture, without previously giving the word, and when the latter is understood drop the gesture altogether.

“Never allow a single mistake to pass uncorrected, and make pupils always learn the corrections.

“Language should be a translation of life. It should proceed all day long, out of school as well as in it. If spoken so much the better, but finger-spelling is not a hindrance but a valuable help to its acquisition.

“In most language lessons, especially those exemplifying a particular form of sentence, the pupils should:

“(1) Correct each other’s mistakes. Correct ‘mistakes’ designedly made by the teacher.

“(2) Teacher rubs out a word here and there on the blackboard or tablet; pupils to supply them.

“(3) Pupils to answer questions, giving the subject, predicate and object of the sentence as required, e.g. ‘A farmer ploughs the ground.’ ‘Who ploughs the ground?’ ‘What does a farmer do?’ ‘What does he plough?’ Also additional and illustrative questions; e.g. ‘Does the ground plough the farmer?’ ‘Does a farmer plough the sea?’ ‘Does he eat the ground?’ &c.

“The pupils should learn meanings or synonyms of unfamiliar words before such words are signed.

“(4) Teacher gives a word, and requires pupils to exemplify it in a sentence, e.g. ‘sows,’ ‘He sows the seed.’

“(5) Let them give as many sentences as they can think of in the same form.

“Occurrences, incidents, objects, pictures, reading-books, newspaper cuttings and correspondence should all be used.”

The “pure” oral method, as before noticed, came with a bound into popularity in the early seventies. Since then it has had everything in its favour, but the results have been by no means entirely satisfactory, and there is a marked The best system. tendency among advocates of this method to withdraw from the extreme position formerly held. Opinion has gradually veered round till they have come to seek for some sort of via media that shall embrace the good points of both methods. Some now suggest the “dual method”—that those pupils who show no aptitude for oral training shall be taught exclusively by the manual method and the rest by the oral only. While this is a concession which is positively amazing when compared with the title of the booklet containing utterances of the Abbé Tarra, president of the Milan conference in 1880—“The Pure Oral Method the Best for All Deaf Children”!—yet we believe that in no case should the instruction be given by the oral method alone, and that the best system is the “combined.” That the combined system is detrimental to lip-reading has not much more than a fraction of truth in it, for if the command of language is better the pupils can supply the lacunae in their lip-reading from their better knowledge of English. It is found that they have constantly to guess words and letters from the context. Teach all by and through finger-spelling, reading, writing and signing where necessary to explain the English, and teach those in whose case it is worth it by articulation and lip-reading as well. Signs should be used less and less in class work, and English more and more exclusively as the pupil progresses—English in any and every form. A proportion of teachers should be themselves deaf, as in America. They are in perfect understanding and sympathy with their pupils, which is not always the case with hearing teachers. Statistics which we collected in London showed the following results of the education of 403 deaf pupils after they had left school:—

Manual. Combined. Oral.

Quite satisfactory result 65% 51% 20%

Moderate success 29% 41% 35%

Unsatisfactory result 5% 7% 44%

That the combined system should show to slightly less advantage than the exclusively manual method is what we might perhaps expect, for the time given to oral instruction means time taken from teaching language speedily, the manual method being, we believe, the best of all for this. But it may be worth while to lose a little in command of language for the sake of gaining another means of expressing that language. Hence we advocate the combined system, regarding speech as merely a means of expressing English, as writing and finger-spelling are, and a good sentence written or finger-spelled as being preferable to a poorer one which is spoken, no matter how distinct the speech may be. It is no answer to point to a few isolated cases where the oral method is considered to have succeeded, for one success does not counterbalance a failure if by another method you would have had two successes; and, moreover, these oral successes would have been still greater successes—we are taking language in any form as our criterion—had the teacher fully known and judiciously used the manual method as well as the oral.

The exclusive use of the oral method leads, generally speaking, to comparative failure, for the following, among other, reasons:—(1) It is a slow way of teaching English, the learning to speak the elements of sound taking months at least, and seldom being fully mastered for years. The “word method,” by the way, starts at once with words without taking their component phonetic elements separately; but it has yet to be proved that any quicker progress is made by this means of teaching speech than by the other. (2) Lip-reading is, to the deaf, sign-reading with the disadvantage of being both microscopic and partially hidden. The deaf hear nothing, they only partly see tiny movements of the vocal organs. Finger-spelling, writing, signing, are incomparably more visible, while 130 words a minute can be attained by finger-spelling, and read at that speed. (3) The signs—as they are to the deaf—made by the vocal organs are entirely arbitrary, and have not even a fraction of the redeeming feature of naturalness which oralists demand in ordinary gestures. (4) Circumstances, such as light, position of the speaker, &c., must be favourable for the lip-reading to approach certainty. (5) Styles of speech vary, and it is a constant experience that even pupils who comparatively easily read their teacher’s lips, to whose style of utterance they are accustomed, fail to read other people’s lips. (6) There is a great similarity between certain sounds as seen on the lips, e.g. between t and d, f and v, p and b, s and z, k and g. Which is meant has usually to be guessed from the context, and this requires a certain amount of knowledge of language, which is the very thing that is needed to be imparted. (7) The deliberate avoidance by the teacher of the pupil’s own language—signs—as an aid to teaching him English. If a hearing boy does not understand the meaning of a French word he looks it up in the dictionary and finds its English equivalent. If the deaf boy does not understand a word in English, the simplest, quickest, best way to explain it is, in most cases, to sign it. (8) The distaste of the pupil for the method. This is common. (9) The mechanical nature of the method. There is nothing to rouse his interest nor to appeal to his imagination in it. (10) The temptation to the teacher to use very simple phrases, owing to the difficulty the pupil has in reading others from his lips. Consequently the pupil comparatively seldom learns advanced language.

Other means of educating the deaf in addition to the oral should have a fair trial in modern conditions for the same length of time that the oral method has been in operation. To consider pupils taught manually in oral schools fair criteria of what can be done by the manual method or combined system, when those pupils have confessedly been relegated to the manual class because of “dulness” (as in the case of the C divisions in Denmark and Dresden), is obviously unfair. This division, moreover, assumes that the “pure” oral method is the best for the brightest pupils. The comparing of oral pupils privately taught by a tutor to themselves with manual pupils from an institution crippled and hampered by need of funds, where they had to take their chance in a class of twelve, and the comparison of oral pupils of twelve years’ standing with combined system pupils of four years’, are also obviously unfair. Reference may be made on this subject to Heidsiek’s remarkable articles on the question of education, which appeared in the American Annals of the Deaf from April 1899 to January 1900.

The opinions of the deaf themselves as to the relative merits of the methods of teaching also demand particular attention. The ignoring of their expressed sentiments by those in authority is remarkable. In the case of school children it might fairly be argued that they are too young to know what is good for them, but with the adult deaf who have had to learn the value of their education by bitter experience in the battle of life it is otherwise. In Germany, the home of the “pure” oral method, 800 deaf petitioned the emperor against that method. In 1903 no fewer than 2671 of the adult deaf of Great Britain and Ireland who had passed through the schools signed a petition in favour of the combined system. The figures are remarkable, for children under sixteen were excluded, those who had not been educated in schools for the deaf were excluded, and the education of the deaf has only lately been made compulsory, while many thousands who live scattered about the country in isolation probably never even heard of the petition, and so could not sign it. In America an overwhelming majority favour the combined system, and it is in America that by far the best results of education are to be seen. At the World’s Congress of the Deaf at St Louis in 1904 the combined system was upheld, as it was at Liége. From France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, Finland, Italy, Russia, everywhere in fact where they are educated, the deaf crowd upon us with expressions of their emphatic conviction, repeated again and again, that the combined system is what meets their needs best and brings most happiness into their lives. The majority of deaf in every known country which is in favour of this means of education is so great that we venture to say that in no other section of the community could there be shown such an overwhelming preponderance of opinion on one side of any question which affects its well-being. In the case of the rare exceptions, the pupil has almost always been brought up in the strictest ignorance of the manual method, which he has been sedulously taught to regard as clumsy and objectionable.

The Blind Deaf.

In the summary tables (p. 283) of the 1901 British census the following numbers are given of those suffering from other afflictions besides deafness:—

1. Blind and deaf and dumb 58

2. Blind and deaf 389

3. Blind, deaf and dumb and lunatic 5

4. Blind, deaf and lunatic 5

5. Deaf and dumb and lunatic 136

6. Deaf and lunatic 51

7. Blind, deaf and dumb and feeble-minded 5

8. Blind, deaf and feeble-minded 8

9. Deaf and dumb and feeble-minded 221

10. Deaf and feeble-minded 100

In addition to these, 2 are said to be blind, dumb and lunatic; 20 dumb and lunatic; 3 blind, dumb and feeble-minded, and 222 dumb and feeble-minded. These are certainly outside our province, which is the deaf. The “dumbness” in these four classes is aphasia, due to some brain defect.

Of those in the list, classes 7, 8, 9 and 10 are (we are strongly of opinion) incorrectly described, being, as we think, composed of those who are simply feeble-minded as well as, in classes 7 and 8, blind. Their so-called “deafness” is merely inability of the brain to notice what the ear does actually hear and to govern the vocal organs to produce articulate sound. Many of classes 9 and 10, however, may not be “feeble-minded” at all, but only rather dull pupils whom their teachers have failed to educate.

It is safe to say that in some instances in classes 3, 4, 5 and 6 the persons were only assumed to be deaf. Again, cases of deaf people who to all appearance could not fairly be called insane but who may have had violent temper or some slight eccentricity being relegated to an asylum have come to our notice. A good teacher might accomplish much with some of these described as lunatic in classes 5 and 6. Finally, classes 3 and 4 may have become lunatic owing to the loneliness and brooding inseparable to a great extent from such terrible afflictions as blindness and deafness combined. Probably the isolation became intolerable, and if only they had had some one who understood them to educate them their reason might have been saved.

We are most concerned with the first two classes, and in considering them have to take individual cases separately, as there is no regular institution for them in Great Britain.

Mr W. H. Illingworth, head master of the Blind School at Old Trafford, Manchester, tells how David Maclean, a blind and deaf boy, was taught, in the 1903 report of the conference of teachers of the deaf. The boy lost both sight and hearing, but not before six years of age, which was an advantage, and could still speak or whisper to some extent when admitted to school. His teacher began with kindergarten and attempts at proper voice-production. He gave the sound of “ah” and made David feel his larynx. Then he tickled the boy under his arms, and when he laughed made him feel his own larynx, so that the boy should notice the similarity of the vibration. Then, acting on the theory that brain-waves are to some extent transmittable, Mr Illingworth procured a hearing boy as companion, and, ordering him to keep his mind fixed on the work and to place one hand on David’s shoulder, made him repeat what was articulated. The blind-deaf boy’s right hand was placed on Mr Illingworth’s larynx and the left on the companion’s lips. Thus the pupil felt the sound and the companion’s imitation of it, and soon reproduced it himself. From this syllables and words were formed by degrees. The pupil knew the forms of some letters of the alphabet in the Roman type before he lost sight and hearing, and the connexion between them and the Braille characters and manual alphabet was the next step achieved. This, and all the steps, were aided to a great extent by the hearing and seeing boy companion’s sympathetic influence and concentration of mind, in Mr Illingworth’s opinion. After this stage his progress was comparatively quick and easy; he read from easy books in Braille, and people spelled to him in the ordinary way by forming the letters with their right hand on his left.

From Mr B. H. Payne of Swansea comes the following account of how four blind-deaf pupils were taught:—

“We have received four pupils who were deaf-mute and blind, one of them being also without the sense of smell. One was born deaf, the others having lost hearing in childhood. There was no essential difference between the methods employed in their education and those of ‘sighted’ deaf children. Free-arm writing of ordinary script was taught on the blackboard, the teacher guiding the pupil’s hand, or another pupil guiding it over the teacher’s pencilling. The script alphabet was cut on a slate, and the pupil’s pencil made to run in the grooves. The one-hand alphabet, used with the left hand, was employed to distinguish the letters so written. The script alphabet was also formed in wire for him. The object was to enable the pupil when he had gained language to write to friends and others who were unacquainted with Braille, but the latter notation was taught to enable the pupil to profit by the literature provided for the blind. Both one- and two-hand alphabets were taught, the teacher forming the letters with one of his own hands upon the pupil’s hand. The name of the object presented to the pupil was spelled and written repeatedly until he had memorized it. Qualities were taught by comparison, and actions by performance. The words ‘Come with me’ were spelled before he was guided to any place, and other sentences were spelled as they would be spoken to a ‘hearing’ child in appropriate associations. The blind pupil followed with his hands the signs made by junior pupils who were unacquainted with language, and in this way readily learned to sign himself, the art being of advantage in stimulating and in forming the mind, and explaining language to him. One of the pupils was confirmed, and in preparation for the rite over 800 questions were put to him by finger-spelling. His education was continued in Braille. The deaf-born boy developed a fair voice, and could imitate sounds by placing his hand on a speaker’s mouth. Two of them had a keen sense of humour, and would slyly move the finger to the muscles of their companion’s face to feel the smile with which a bit of pleasantry was responded to. In connexion with the pupil who was confirmed, the vicar who examined him declared that none of his questions had been answered better even by candidates possessed of all their faculties than they were by this blind-deaf boy.”

Mr W. M. Stone, principal of the Royal Blind School at West Craigmillar, Edinburgh, gives this very interesting information:

“We have five blind-deaf children at this institution, and all are wonderfully clever and intelligent. In all cases the children possessed hearing for a time and had some knowledge—very slight in some cases—of language. The method of teaching is, first to teach them the names of common objects on their fingers. A well-known object is put in the child’s hand and then the word is spelled on the hand,—the child’s hand of course. The child learns to associate these signs—he does not know they are letters—with the object, and so he learns a name. Other names are then given and similar names are associated together, and by noticing the difference in the names the child gradually grasps the idea of an alphabet. For instance, if he learns the words cat, bat and mat, he will quickly distinguish that the words are alike except in their initial letters. When in this way language has been acquired he is taught the Braille system of reading for the blind and his progress is now very rapid. This method may appear very complicated and difficult, but in reality it is not so. There are no institutions in Great Britain specially for the blind-deaf, nor are there any in America. I do not know of any on the continent. Our own blind children here are receiving the same education as our other children, and in some ways are more advanced than seeing and hearing children of their own ages. They not only read, write and do arithmetic, but they do typewriting and much manual work.”

Mr Addison mentions two deaf and blind pupils who were taught by the late Mr Paterson of Manchester, and a third in the same school later on. Another was taught in the asylum for the blind in Glasgow, though she only lost hearing and became deaf at ten.

Mr William Wade has written a monograph on the blind-deaf of America, in the preface to which he points out, rightly, that the education of the blind-deaf is not such a stupendous task as people imagine it to be.

“It may not be amiss,” he says, “to state the methods of teaching the first steps to a deaf-blind pupil, that the public may see how exceedingly simple the fundamental principles are, and it should be remembered that those principles are exactly the same in the cases of the deaf and of the deaf-blind, the only difference being in the application—the deaf see, the deaf-blind feel. Some familiar, tangible object—a doll, a cup, or what not—is given to the pupil, and at the same time the name of the object is spelled into its hand by the manual alphabet.” (The one-hand alphabet is in vogue in America.) “By patient persistence, the pupil comes to recognize the manual spelling as a name for a familiar object, when the next step is taken—associating familiar acts with the corresponding manual spelling. A continuation of this simple process gradually leads the pupils to the comprehension of language as a means for communication of thoughts.” Mr Wade is right. Given a sympathetic, resourceful teacher with strong individuality, common-sense, patience, and the necessary amount of time, anything and everything in the way of teaching them is not only possible but certain to be achieved. Language,—give the deaf and the blind-deaf a working command of that and everything else is easy.

In the New York Institution for the Deaf ten blind-deaf pupils were educated, up to the year 1901. Nearly all of these lost one or both senses after they had been able to acquire some knowledge with their aid. In the Perkins Institution for the Blind, Boston, five were taught. It was here that Laura Bridgman was educated by Dr Samuel G. Howe (q.v.); all honour is due to him for being the pioneer in attempting to teach this class of the community, for she was the first blind-deaf person to be taught. Many other schools for the deaf or blind have admitted one or two pupils suffering from both afflictions. In all, seventy cases are mentioned by Mr Wade of those who are quite blind and deaf, and others of people who are partially so. The most interesting, of course, of all these is Helen Keller, if we except Laura Bridgman, in whose case the initial attempt to teach the blind-deaf was made. Helen Keller was taught primarily by finger-spelling into her hand, and signing (which she, of course, felt with her hands) where necessary. Her first teacher was Miss Sullivan. The pupil “acquired language by practice and habit rather than by study of rules and definitions.” Finger-spelling and books were the two great means of educating her at all times. After her grasp of language had been brought to a high standard, Miss Fuller gave her her first lessons in speech, and Miss Sullivan continued them, the method being that of making the pupil feel the vocal organs of the teacher. She learnt to speak well, and to tell (with some assistance from finger-spelling) what some people say by feeling their mouth. Her literary style became excellent; her studies included French, German, Latin, Greek, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, ancient and modern, and poetry and literature of every description. Of course she had many tutors, but Miss Sullivan was “eyes and ears” at all times, by acting as interpreter, and this patient teacher had the satisfaction of seeing her pupil pass the entrance examination of Harvard University. To all time the success attained in educating Helen Keller will be a monument of what can be accomplished in the most favourable conditions.

(A. H. P.)

1 The two words are common to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. taub and dumm (only in the sense of “stupid”), Dutch doof and dom; the original meaning seems to have been dull of perception, stupid, obtuse, and the words may be ultimately related. The Gr. τυφλός blind, and τῦφος, smoke, mist, probably show the same base.

2 For our résumé of the history we are indebted solely to Arnold (Education of Deaf Mutes, Teachers’ Manual) as far as the date of the founding of the Old Kent Road Institution.

DEÁK, FRANCIS (Ferencz), (1803-1876), Hungarian statesman, was born at Söjtör in the county of Zala, on the 17th of October 1803. He came of an ancient and distinguished noble family, and was educated for the law at Nagy-Kanizsá, Pápá, Raab and Pest, and practised first as an advocate and ultimately as a notary. His first case was the defence of a notorious robber and murderer. His reputation in his own county was quickly established, and when in 1833 his elder brother Antal, also a man of extraordinary force of character, was obliged by ill-health to relinquish his seat in the Hungarian parliament, the electors chose Ferencz in his stead. He took an active part in the proceedings of the diet at Pressburg and made the acquaintance of Ödon Beöthy and the other Liberal leaders. No man owed less to external advantages. He was to all appearance a simple country squire. His true greatness was never exhibited in debate. It was in friendly talk, generally with a pipe in his mouth and an anecdote on the tip of his tongue, that he exercised his extraordinary influence over his fellows. Convinced from the first of his disinterestedness and sincerity, and impressed by his penetrating shrewdness and his instinctive faculty of always seizing the main point and sticking to it, his hearers soon felt an absolute confidence in the deputy from Zala county. Perhaps there is not another instance in history in which a man who was neither a soldier, nor a diplomatist, nor a writer, who appealed to no passion but patriotism, and who avoided power with almost oriental indolence instead of seeking it, became, in the course of a long life, the leader of a great party by sheer force of intellect and moral superiority.

During the diet of 1839-1840 Deák succeeded in bringing about an understanding between a reactionary government, sadly in want of money, and a Liberal opposition determined that the nation should have its political privileges respected. “Let us put all jealousy on one side and allow him the pre-eminence,” wrote Széchenyi of Deák (April 30th, 1840). Deák would not go to the diet of 1843-1844, though he had received a mandate, because his election was the occasion of bloodshed in the struggle between the Clericals who would have ousted him and the Liberals who brought him in. In 1848, however, he accepted the post of minister of justice offered to him by Louis Batthyány. He never ceased to urge moderation in those stormy days, holding rather with Eötvös and Batthyány than with Kossuth, and he went more than once to Vienna to endeavour to effect a compromise between the Radicals and the court. But when the ill-will of the Vienna government became patent, and the sentiments of the king doubtful, he resigned together with Batthyány, but without ceasing to be a member of the diet. He it was who drew up the resolution of the Lower House in reply to the rescript of the Austrian ministry demanding the repeal of the Hungarian constitution. It was he who urged the Hungarian cabinet not to depart a hair’s-breadth from their legitimate position. He was one of the parliamentary deputation which waited in vain upon Prince Windischgrätz in his camp. (See Hungary: History.) He then retired to his estate at Kehida. After the war of independence he was tried by court-martial, but acquitted.

During the years of repression he lived in complete retirement. He rejected Schmerling’s proposal that he should take part in the project of judicial reform, but on the other hand he held completely aloof from the widespread, secret revolutionary movements. After 1854 he spent the greater part of his time at Pest, and his little room at the “Queen of England” inn became the meeting-place for those patriots who in those dark days looked to the wisdom of Deák for guidance. He used every opportunity of stimulating the moral strength of the nation and keeping its hopes alive. He invited the nation to contribute to the support of the orphans of Vörösmarty when that great poet died. He drew up the petition of the academy to the government, in which he defended the maintenance of this asylum of the national language against Austrian intervention. He trusted that, as had so often happened in the course of Hungarian history, the weakness and blindness of the court would help Hungary back to her constitutional rights. Armed resistance he considered dangerous, but he was an immutable defender of the continuity of the Hungarian constitution on the basis of the reforms of 1848. His principles alienated him from the Kossuth faction, which looked for salvation to a second war with Austria, engineered from abroad; but he was equally opposed to the attitude of resignation taken up by the followers of Széchenyi, who, according to Deák, always regarded the world from a purely provincial point of view.

The war of 1859 convinced the Austrian government, at last, of the necessity of a reconciliation with Hungary; but the ensuing negotiations were conducted not through Deák, but through the Magyar Conservatives. In 1860 Deák rejected the October diploma (see Hungary: History), which was simply a cast-back to the Maria Theresa system of 1747; but, at the request of the government, he went to Vienna to set forth the national demands. On this occasion he insisted on the re-establishment of the constitution in its integrity as a sine qua non. Meanwhile, it became more and more evident that the Conservative party had no standing in the country. The majority of the deputies returned to the diet of 1861 were in favour of asserting their rights by a resolution of the House, instead of petitioning for them by an address to the crown; hence arose the two parties of the Addressers and the Resolutioners. The Patent of the 20th of February 1861 increased the uneasiness and suspicion of the nation; but Deák, now one of the deputies for Pest, was in favour of an address rather than of a resolution, and his great speech on the subject (May 13th, 1861) converted the majority hostile to an address into a majority for it. The object of the Addressers was to make the responsibility for a rupture rest on the Austrian government. Nevertheless, the court found the address so voted inadmissible; whereupon, on Deák’s motion, the Hungarian diet drew up a second address vigorously defending the rights of the nation, and solemnly protesting against the usurpations of the Austrian government. The speech which Deák made on this occasion was his finest effort. Henceforth all Europe identified his name with the cause of Hungary. The Magyar Conservatives hereupon entered into negotiations with Deák, and the Austrian government, more than ever convinced of the necessity of a reconciliation, was ready to take the first step, if Hungary would take the second and third. Deák now proposed that the sovereign himself should break away from counsellors who had sought to oppress Hungary, and should restore the constitution as a personal act. The worthy response to this loyal invitation was the dismissal of the Schmerling administration, the suspension of the February constitution and the summoning of the coronation diet. Of that diet Deák was the indispensable leader. Under his direction the Addressers and the Resolutioners coalesced, and he was entrusted with the difficult and delicate negotiations with the crown, which aimed at effecting a compromise between the Pragmatic Sanction of 1719, which established the indivisibility of the Habsburg monarchy, and the March decrees of 1848. The committee of which he was president had completed its work, when the war of 1866 broke out and all again became uncertain.

After Königgrätz the extreme parties in Hungary hoped to extort still more favourable terms from the emperor; but Deák remained true to himself and to the constitutional principle. On the 18th of July he went to Vienna, to urge the necessity of forming a responsible Magyar ministry without delay. He offered the post of premier to Count Julius Andrássy, but would not himself take any part in the administration. The diet was resummoned on the 17th of November 1866 and, chiefly through the efforts of Deák, the responsible ministry was formed (February 17th, 1867). There was still one fierce parliamentary struggle, in which Deák defended the Composition (Ausgleich) of 1867, both against the Kossuthites and against the Left-centre, which had detached itself from his own party under the leadership of Kálmán Tisza (q.v.). He, a simple citizen, from pure patriotism, thus mediated between the crown and the people, as the Hungarian palatines were wont to do in years gone by, and it was the wish of the diet that Deák should exercise the functions of a palatine at the solemn ceremony of the coronation. This honour he refused, as he had refused every other reward and distinction. “It was beyond the king’s power to give him anything but a clasp of the hand.” His real recompense was the assurance of the prosperity and the tranquillity of his country in the future, and the reconciliation of the nation and its sovereign. The consciousness of these great services even reconciled him to the loss of much of his popularity; for there can be no doubt that a large part of the Hungarian nation regarded the Composition of 1867 as a sort of surrender and blamed Deák as the author of it. The Composition was the culminating point of Deák’s political activity; but as a party-leader he still exercised considerable influence. He died at midnight of the 28th-29th of July 1876, after long and painful sufferings. His funeral was celebrated with royal pomp on the 3rd of February, and representatives from every part of Hungary followed the “Sage” to the grave. A mausoleum was erected by national subscription, and in 1887 a statue, overlooking the Danube, was erected to his memory.

See Speeches (Hung.) ed. by Manó Kónyi (Budapest, 1882); Z. Ferenczi, Life of Deák (Hung., Budapest, 1894); Memorials of Ferencz Deák (Hung., Budapest, 1889-1890); Ferencz Pulszky, Charakterskizze (Leipzig, 1876).

(R. N. B.)

DEAL, a market town, seaport and municipal borough in the St Augustine’s parliamentary division of Kent, England, 8 m. N.E. by N. of Dover on the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901) 10,581. It consists of three divisions—Lower Deal, on the coast; Middle Deal; and, about a mile inland, though formerly on the coast, Upper Deal, which is the oldest part. Though frequented as a seaside resort, the town derives its importance mainly from its vicinity to the Downs, a fine anchorage, between the shore and the Goodwin Sands, about 8 m. long and 6 m. wide, in which large fleets of windbound vessels may lie in safety. The trade consequently consists largely in the supply of provisions and naval stores, which are conveyed to the ships in need of them by “hovellers,” as the boatmen are called all along the Kentish coast; the name is probably a corruption of hobeler, anciently applied to light-horsemen from the hobby or small horse which they rode. The Deal hovellers and pilots are famous for their skill. Boat-building and a few other industries are carried on. Among buildings the most remarkable are St Leonard’s church in Upper Deal, which dates from the Norman period; the Baptist chapel in Lower Deal, founded by Captain Taverner, governor of Deal Castle, in 1663; the military and naval hospital; and the barracks, founded in 1795. The site of the old navy yard is occupied by villas; and the esplanade, nearly four miles long, is provided with a promenade pier. The golf-links is well known. At the south end of the town is Deal Castle, erected by Henry VIII. in 1539, together with the castles of Sandown, Walmer and Sandgate. They were built alike, and consisted of a central keep surrounded by four lunettes. Sandown Castle, which stood about a mile to the east of Deal Castle, was of interest as the prison in which Colonel Hutchinson, the Puritan soldier, was confined, and is said to have died, September 1664. It was removed on becoming endangered by encroachments of the sea. The “captain” of Deal Castle is appointed by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1111 acres.

Deal is one of the possible sites of the landing-place of Julius Caesar in Britain. Later in the period of Roman occupation the site was inhabited, but apparently was not a port. In the Domesday Survey, Deal (Dola, Dale, Dele) is mentioned among the possessions of the canons of St Martin, Dover, as part of the hundreds of Bewsborough and Cornilo; it seems, however, from early times to have been within the liberty of the Cinque Ports as a member of Sandwich, but was not continuously reckoned as a member until Henry VI., on the occasion of a dispute as to its assessment, finally annexed it to their jurisdiction.

In the time of Henry VIII. Deal was merely a fishing village standing half-a-mile from the sea, but the growth of the English navy and the increase of trade brought men-of-war and merchant ships in increased numbers to the Downs. Deal began to grow in importance, and Lower or New Deal was built along the shore. The prosperity of the town has ever since depended almost entirely on its shipping trade. In 1699 the inhabitants petitioned for incorporation, since previously the town had been under the jurisdiction of Sandwich and governed by a deputy appointed by the mayor of that town; William III. by his charter incorporated the town under the title of mayor, jurats and commonalty of Deal, and he also granted a market to be held on Tuesday and Saturday, and fairs on the 25th and 26th of March, and on the 30th of September and 1st of October, with a court of Pie Powder. The Cinque Ports were first represented in the parliament of 1265; the two members returned by Sandwich represented Sandwich, Deal and Walmer, until they were disenfranchized by the act of 1885.

DEAL. (1) (A common Teutonic word for a part or portion, cf. Ger. Teil, and the Eng. variant “dole”), a division or part, obsolete except in such phrases as “a great deal” or “a good deal,” where it equals quantity or lot. From the verb “to deal,” meaning primarily to divide into parts, come such uses as for the giving out of cards to the players in a game, or for a business transaction. (2) (Also a Teutonic word, meaning a plank or board, cf. Ger. Diele, Dutch deel), strictly a term in carpentry and joinery for a sawn plank, usually of pine or fir, 9 in. wide and 2 to 4½ in. thick. (See Joinery.) The word is also used more loosely of the timber from which such deals are cut, thus “white deal” is used of the wood of the Norway spruce, and “red deal” of the Scotch pine.

DEAN (Lat. decanus, derived from the Gr. δέκα, ten), the style of a certain functionary, primarily ecclesiastical. Whether the term was first used among the secular clergy to signify the priest who had a charge of inspection and superintendence over two parishes, or among the regular clergy to signify the monk who in a monastery had authority over ten other monks, appears doubtful. “Decurius” may be found in early writers used to signify the same thing as “decanus,” which shows that the word and the idea signified by it were originally borrowed from the old Roman military system.

The earliest mention which occurs of an “archipresbyter” seems to be in the fourth epistle of St Jerome to Rusticus, in which he says that a cathedral church should possess one bishop, one archipresbyter and one archdeacon. Liberatus also (Breviar. c. xiv.) speaks of the office of archipresbyter in a manner which, as J. Bingham says, enables one to understand what the nature of his duties and position was. And he thinks that those are right who hold that the archipresbyters were the same as the deans of English cathedral churches. E. Stillingfleet (Irenic. part ii. c. 7) says of the archipresbyters that “the memory of them is preserved still in cathedral churches, in the chapters there, where the dean was nothing else but the archipresbyter; and both dean and prebendaries were to be assistant to the bishop in the regulating the church affairs belonging to the city, while the churches were contained therein.” Bingham, however, following Liberatus, describes the office of the archipresbyter to have been next to that of the bishop, the head of the presbyteral college, and the functions to have consisted in administering all matters pertaining to the church in the absence of the bishop. But this does not describe accurately the office of dean in an English cathedral church. The dean is indeed second to the bishop in rank and dignity, and he is the head of the presbyteral college or chapter; but his functions in no wise consist in administering any affairs in the absence of the bishop. There may be some matters connected with the ordering of the internal arrangements of cathedral churches, respecting which it may be considered a doubtful point whether the authority of the bishop or that of the dean is supreme. But the consideration of any such question leads at once to the due theoretical distinction between the two. With regard to matters spiritual, properly and strictly so called, the bishop is supreme in the cathedral as far as—and no further than—he is supreme in his diocese generally. With regard to matters material and temporal, as concerning the fabric of the cathedral, the arrangement and conduct of the services, and the management of the property of the chapter, &c., the dean (not excluding the due authority of the other members of the chapter, but speaking with reference to the bishop) is supreme. And the cases in which a doubt might arise are those in which the material arrangements of the fabric or of the services may be thought to involve doctrinal considerations.

The Roman Catholic writers on the subject say that there are two sorts of deans in the church—the deans of cathedral churches, and the rural deans—as has continued to be the case in the English Church. And the probability would seem to be that the former were the successors and representatives of the monastic decurions, the latter of the inspectors of “ten” parishes in the primitive secular church. It is thought by some that the rural dean is the lineal successor of the chorepiscopus, who in the early church was the assistant of the bishop, discharging most, if not all, episcopal functions in the rural districts of the diocese. But upon the whole the probability is otherwise. W. Beveridge, W. Cave, Bingham and Basnage all hold that the chorepiscopi were true bishops, though Romanist theologians for the most part have maintained that they were simple priests. But if the chorepiscopus has any representative in the church of the present day, it seems more likely that the archdeacon is such rather than the dean.

The ordinary use of the term dean, as regards secular bodies of persons, would lead to the belief that the oldest member of a chapter had, as a matter of right, or at least of usage, become the dean thereof. But Bingham (lib. ii. chap. 18) very conclusively shows that such was at no time the case; as is also further indicated by the maxim to the effect that the dean must be selected from the body of the chapter—“Unus de gremio tantum potest eligi et promoveri ad decanatus dignitatem.” The duties of the dean in a Roman Catholic cathedral are to preside over the chapter, to declare the decisions to which the chapter may have in its debates arrived by plurality of voices, to exercise inspection over the choir, over the conduct of the capitular body, and over the discipline and regulations of the church; and to celebrate divine service on occasion of the greater festivals of the church in the absence or inability of the bishop. With the exception of the last clause the same statement may be made as to the duties and functions of the deans of Church of England cathedral churches.

Deans had also a place in the judicial system of the Lombard kings in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries. But the office indicated by that term, so used, seems to have been a very subordinate one; and the name was in all probability adopted with immediate reference to the etymological meaning of the word,—a person having authority over ten (in this case apparently) families. L. A. Muratori, in his Italian Antiquities, speaks of the resemblance between the saltarii or sylvani and the decani, and shows that the former had authority in the rural districts, and the latter in towns, or at least in places where the population was sufficiently close for them to have authority over ten families. Nevertheless, a document cited by Muratori from the archives of the canons of Modena, and dated in the year 813, recites the names of several “deaneries” (decania), and thus shows that the authority of the dean extended over a certain circumscription of territory.

In the case of the “dean of the sacred college,” the connexion between the application of the term and the etymology of it is not so evident as in the foregoing instances of its use; nor is it by any means clear how and when the idea of seniority was first attached to the word. This office is held by the oldest cardinal—i.e. he who has been longest in the enjoyment of the purple, not he who is oldest in years,—who is usually, but not necessarily or always, the bishop of Ostia and Velletri. Perhaps the use of the word “dean,” as signifying simply the eldest member of any corporation or body of men, may have been first adopted from its application to that high dignitary. The dean of the sacred college is in the ecclesiastical hierarchy second to the pope alone. His privileges and special functions are very many; a compendious account of the principal of them may be found in the work of G. Moroni, vol. xix. p. 168.

There are four sorts of deans of whom the law of England takes notice. (1) The dean and chapter are a council subordinate to the bishop, assistant to him in matters spiritual relating to religion, and in matters temporal relating to the temporalities of the bishopric. The dean and chapter are a corporation, and the dean himself is a corporation sole. Deans are said to be either of the old or of the new foundation—the latter being those created and regulated after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The deans of the old foundation before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1841 were elected by the chapter on the king’s congé d’élire; and the deans of the new foundation (and, since the act, of the old foundation also) are appointed by the king’s letters patent. It was at one time held that a layman might be dean; but since 1662 priest’s orders are a necessary qualification. Deaneries are sinecures in the old sense, i.e. they are without cure of souls. The chapter formerly consisted of canons and prebendaries, the dean being the head and an integral part of the corporation. By the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1841, it is enacted that “all the members of the chapter except the dean, in every collegiate and cathedral church in England, and in the cathedral churches of St David and Llandaff, shall be styled canons.” By the same act the dean is required to be in residence eight months, and the canons three months, in every year. The bishop is visitor of the dean and chapter. (2) A dean of peculiars is the chief of certain peculiar churches or chapels. He “hath no chapter, yet is presentative, and hath cure of souls; he hath a peculiar, and is not subject to the visitation of the bishop of the diocese.” The only instances of such deaneries are Battle (Sussex), Bocking (Essex) and Stamford (Rutland). The deans of Jersey and Guernsey have similar status. (3) The third dean “hath no cure of souls, but hath a court and a peculiar, in which he holdeth plea and jurisdiction of all such ecclesiastical matters as come within his peculiar. Such is the dean of the arches, who is the judge of the court of the arches, the chief court and consistory of the archbishop of Canterbury, so called of Bow Church, where this court was ever wont to be held.” (See Arches, Court of.) The parish of Bow and twelve others were within the peculiar jurisdiction of the archbishop in spiritual causes, and exempted out of the bishop of London’s jurisdiction. They were in 1845 made part of the diocese of London. (4) Rural deans are clergymen whose duty is described as being “to execute the bishop’s processes and to inspect the lives and manners of the clergy and people within their jurisdiction.” (See Phillimore’s Ecclesiastical Law.)

In the colleges of the English universities one of the fellows usually holds the office of “dean,” and is specially charged with the discipline, as distinguished from the teaching functions of the tutors. In some universities the head of a faculty is called “dean,” and in each of these cases the word is used in a non-ecclesiastical and purely titular sense.

DEAN, FOREST OF, a district in the west of Gloucestershire, England, between the Severn and the Wye. It extends northward in an oval form from the junction of these rivers, for a distance of 20 m., with an extreme breadth of 10 m., and still retains its true forest character. The surface is agreeably undulating, its elevation ranging from 120 to nearly 1000 ft., and its sandy peat soil renders it most suitable for the growth of timber, which is the cause of its having been a royal forest from time immemorial. It is recorded that the commanders of the Armada had orders not to leave in it a tree standing. In the reign of Charles I. the forest contained 105,537 trees, and, straitened for money, the king granted it to Sir John Wyntour for £10,000, and a fee farm rent of £2000. The grant was cancelled by Cromwell; but at the Restoration only 30,000 trees were left, and Wyntour, the Royalist commander, having got another grant, destroyed all but 200 trees fit for navy timber. In 1680 an act was passed to enclose 11,000 acres and plant with oak and beech for supply of the dockyards; and the present forest, though not containing very many gigantic oaks, has six “walks” covered with timber in various stages of growth.

The forest is locally governed by two crown-appointed deputy gavellers to superintend the woods and mines, and four verderers elected by the freeholders, whose office, since the extermination of the deer in 1850, is almost purely honorary. From time immemorial all persons born in the hundred of St Briavel’s, who have worked a year and a day in a coal mine, become “free miners,” and may work coal in any part of the forest not previously occupied. The forest laws were administered at the Speech-House, a building of the 17th century in the heart of the forest, where the verderers’ court is still held. The district contains coal and iron mines, and quarries of building-stone, which fortunately hardly minimize its natural beauty. Near Coleford and Westbury pit workings of the Roman period have been discovered, and the Romans drew large supplies of iron from this district. The scenery is especially fine in the high ground bordering the Wye (q.v.), opposite to Symond’s Yat above Monmouth, and Tintern above Chepstow. St Briavel’s Castle, above Tintern, was the headquarters of the forest officials from an early date and was frequented by King John. It is a moated castle, of which the north-west front remains, standing in a magnificent position high above the Wye.

See H. G. Nicholls, Forest of Dean (London, 1858).

DEANE, RICHARD (1610-1653), British general-at-sea, major-general and regicide, was a younger son of Edward Deane of Temple Guiting or Guyting in Gloucestershire, where he was born, his baptism taking place on the 8th of July 1610. His family seems to have been strongly Puritan and was related to many of those Buckinghamshire families who were prominent in the parliamentary party. His uncle or great-uncle was Sir Richard Deane, lord mayor of London, 1628-1629. Of Deane’s early life nothing is accurately known, but he seems to have had some sea training, possibly on a ship-of-war. At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the parliamentary army as a volunteer in the artillery, a branch of the service with which he was constantly and honourably associated. In 1644 he held a command in the artillery under Essex in Cornwall and took part in the surrender after Lostwithiel. Essex (Letter to Sir Philip Stapleton, Rushworth Collection) calls him “an honest, judicious and stout man,” an estimate of Deane borne out by Clarendon’s “bold and excellent officer” (book xiv. cap. 27), and he was one of the few officers concerned in the surrender who were retained at the remodelling of the army. Appointed comptroller of the ordnance, he commanded the artillery at Naseby and during Fairfax’s campaign in the west of England in 1645. In 1647 he was promoted colonel and given a regiment. In May of that year Cromwell was made lord-general of the forces in Ireland by the parliament, and Deane, as a supporter of Cromwell who had to be reckoned with, was appointed his lieutenant of artillery. Cromwell refused to be thus put out of the way, and Deane followed his example. When the war broke out afresh in 1648 Deane went with Cromwell to Wales. As brigadier-general his leading of the right wing at Preston contributed greatly to the victory. On the entry of the army into London in 1648, Deane superintended the seizure of treasure at the Guildhall and Weavers’ Hall the day after Pride “purged” the House of Commons, and accompanied Cromwell to the consultations as to the “settlement of the Kingdom” with Lenthall and Sir Thomas Widdrington, the keeper of the great seal. He is rightly called by Sir J. K. Laughton (in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.) Cromwell’s “trusted partisan,” a character which he maintained in the active and responsible part taken by him in the events which led up to the trial and execution of the king. He was one of the commissioners for the trial, and a member of the committee which examined the witnesses. He signed the death warrant.

Deane’s capacities and activities were now required for the navy. In 1649 the office of lord high admiral was put into commission. The first commissioners were Edward Popham, Robert Blake and Deane, with the title of generals-at-sea. His command at sea was interrupted in 1651, when as major-general he was brought back to the army and took part in the battle of Worcester. Later he was made president of the commission for the settlement of Scotland, with supreme command of the military and naval forces. At the end of 1652 Deane returned to his command as general-at-sea, where Monck had succeeded Popham, who had died in 1651. In 1653 Deane was with Blake in command at the battle off Portland and later took the most prominent and active part in the refitting of the fleet on the reorganization of the naval service. At the outset of the three days’ battle off the North Foreland, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June 1653, Deane was killed. His body lay in state at Greenwich and after a public funeral was buried in Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, to be disinterred at the Restoration.

See J. Bathurst Deane, The Life of Richard Deane (1870).

DEANE, SILAS (1737-1789), American diplomat, was born in Groton, Connecticut, on the 24th of December 1737. He graduated at Yale in 1758 and in 1761 was admitted to the bar, but instead of practising became a merchant at Wethersfield, Conn. He took an active part in the movements in Connecticut preceding the War of Independence, and from 1774 to 1776 was a delegate from Connecticut to the Continental Congress. Early in 1776 he was sent to France by Congress, in a semi-official capacity, as a secret agent to induce the French government to lend its financial aid to the colonies. Subsequently he became, with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, one of the regularly accredited commissioners to France from Congress. On arriving in Paris, Deane at once opened negotiations with Vergennes and Beaumarchais, securing through the latter the shipment of many vessel loads of arms and munitions of war to America. He also enlisted the services of a number of Continental soldiers of fortune, among whom were Lafayette, Baron Johann De Kalb and Thomas Conway. His carelessness in keeping account of his receipts and expenditures, and the differences between himself and Arthur Lee regarding the contracts with Beaumarchais, eventually led, in November 1777, to his recall to face charges, of which Lee’s complaints formed the basis. Before returning to America, however, he signed on the 6th of February 1778 the treaties of amity and commerce and of alliance which he and the other commissioners had successfully negotiated. In America he was defended by John Jay and John Adams, and after stating his case to Congress was allowed to return to Paris (1781) to settle his affairs. Differences with various French officials led to his retirement to Holland, where he remained until after the treaty of peace had been signed, when he settled in England. The publication of some “intercepted” letters in Rivington’s Royal Gazette in New York (1781), in which Deane declared his belief that the struggle for independence was hopeless and counselled a return to British allegiance, aroused such animosity against him in America that for some years he remained in England. He died on shipboard in Deal harbour, England, on the 23rd of September 1789 after having embarked for America on a Boston packet. No evidence of his dishonesty was ever discovered, and Congress recognized the validity of his claims by voting $37,000 to his heirs in 1842. He published his defence in An Address to the Free and Independent Citizens of the United States of North America (Hartford, Conn., and London, 1784).

The Correspondence of Silas Deane was published in the Connecticut Historical Society’s Collections, vol. ii.; and The Deane Papers, in 5 vols., in the New York Historical Society’s Collections (1887-1890). See also Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History, vol. vii. chap, i., and Wharton’s Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols., Washington, 1889).

DEATH, the permanent cessation of the vital functions in the bodies of animals and plants, the end of life or act of dying. The word is the English representative of the substantive common to Teutonic languages, as “dead” is of the adjective, and “die” of the verb; the ultimate origin is the pre-Teutonic verbal stem dau-; cf. Ger Tod, Dutch dood, Swed. and Dan. död.

For the scientific aspects of the processes involved in life and its cessation see Biology, Physiology, Pathology, and allied articles; and for the consideration of the prolongation of life see Longevity. Here it is only necessary to deal with the more primitive views of death and with certain legal aspects.

Ethnology.—To the savage, death from natural causes is inexplicable. At all times and in all lands, if he reflects upon death at all, he fails to understand it as a natural phenomenon; nor in its presence is he awed or curious. Man in a primitive state has for his dead an almost animal indifference. The researches of archaeologists prove that Quaternary Man cared little what became of his fellow-creature’s body. And this lack of interest is found to-day as a general characteristic of savages. The Goajiros of Venezuela bury their dead, they confess, simply to get rid of them. The Galibis of Guiana, when asked the meaning of their curious funeral ceremony, which consists in dancing on the grave, replied that they did it to stamp down the earth. Fuegians, Bushmen, Veddahs, show the same lack of concern and interest in the memory of the dead. Even the Eskimos, conspicuous as they are for their intelligence and sociability, save themselves the trouble of caring for their sick and old by walling them up and leaving them to die in a lonely hut; the Chukches stone or strangle them to death; some Indian tribes give them over to tigers, and the Battas of Sumatra eat them. This indifference is not dictated by any realization that death means annihilation of the personality. The savage conception of a future state is one that involves no real break in the continuity of life as he leads it. If a man dies without being wounded he is considered to be the victim of the sorcerers and the evil spirits with which they consort. Throughout Africa the death of anyone is ascribed to the magicians of some hostile tribe or to the malicious act of a neighbour. A culprit is easily discovered either by an appeal to a local diviner or in torturing some one into confession. In Australia it is the same. Mr Andrew Lang says that “whenever a native dies, no matter how evident it may be that death has been the result of natural causes, it is at once set down that the defunct was bewitched.” The Bechuanas and all Kaffir tribes believe that death, even at an advanced age, if not from hunger or violence, is due to witchcraft, and blood is required to expiate or avenge it. Similar beliefs are found among the Papuans, and among the Indians of both Americas. The history of witchcraft in Europe and its attendant horrors, so vividly painted in Lecky’s Rise of Rationalism, are but echoes of this universal refusal of savage man to accept death as the natural end of life. Even to-day the ignorant peasantry of many European countries, Russia, Galicia and elsewhere, believe that all disease is the work of demons, and that medicinal herbs owe their curative properties to their being the materialized forms of benevolent spirits.

This animistic tendency is a marked characteristic of primitive Man in every land. The savage explains the processes of inanimate nature by assuming that living beings or spirits, possessed of capacities similar to his own, are within the inanimate object. The growth of a tree, the spark struck from a flint, the devastating floods of a river, mean to him the natural actions of beings within the tree, stone or water. And thus too he explains to himself the phenomena of human life, believing that each man has within him a mannikin or animal which dictates his actions in life. This miniature man is the savage’s conception of the soul; sleep and trance being regarded as the temporary, death as the permanent, absence of the soul. Each individual is thus deemed to have a dual existence. This “subliminal” self (in modern terminology) has many forms. The Hurons thought that it possessed head, body, arms and legs, in fact that it was an exact miniature of a man. The Nootkas of British Columbia regard it as a tiny man, living in the crown of the head. So long as it stands erect, its possessor is well, but if it falls from its position the misfortunes of ill-health and madness at once assail him. The ancient Egyptian believed in the soul or “double.” The inhabitants of Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, have the strange belief that to everyone before birth is given the choice of a long and heavy or short and light soul (a parallel belief may be found in early Greek philosophy), and his choice determines the length of life. Sometimes the soul is conceived as a bird. The Bororos of Brazil fancy that in that shape the soul of a sleeper passes out of the body during night-time, returning to him at his awakening. The Bella Coola Indians say the soul is a bird enclosed in an egg and lives in the nape of the neck. If the shell bursts and the soul flies away, the man must die. If however the bird flies away, egg and all, then he faints or loses his reason. A popular superstition in Bohemia assumes that the soul in the shape of a white bird leaves the body by way of the mouth. Among the Battas of Sumatra rice or grain is sprinkled on the head of a man who returns from a dangerous enterprise, and in the latter case the grains are called padiruma tondi, “means to make the soul (tondi) stay at home.” In Java the new-born babe is placed in a hen-coop, and the mother makes a clucking noise, as if she were a hen, to attract the child’s soul. It is regarded by many savage peoples as highly dangerous to arouse a sleeper suddenly, as his soul may not have time to return. Still more dangerous is it to move a sleeper, for the soul on its return might not be able to find the body. Flies and butterflies are forms which the souls are believed by some races to take, and the Esthonians of the island of Oesel think that the gusts of wind which whirl tornado-like through the roads are the souls of old women seeking what they can find.

But more widespread perhaps than any belief, from its simplicity doubtless, is the idea that the body’s shadow or reflexion is the soul. The Basutos think that crocodiles can devour the shadow of a man cast on the surface of water. In many parts of the world sorcerers are credited with supernatural powers over a man by an attack on his shadow. The sick man is considered to have lost his shadow or a part of it. Dante refers to the shadowless spectre of Virgil, and the folklore of many European countries affords examples of the prevalence of the superstition that a man must be as careful of his shadow as of his body. In the same way the reflexion-soul is thought to be subject to a malice of enemies or attacks of beasts and has been the cause of superstitions which in one form or another exist to-day. From the Fijian and Andaman islander who exhibits abject terror at seeing himself in a glass or in water, to the English or European peasant who covers up the mirrors or turns them to the wall, upon a death occurring, lest an inmate of the house should see his own face and have his own speedy demise thus prognosticated, the idea holds its ground. It was probably the origin of the story of Narcissus, and there is scarcely a race which is free from the haunting dread. Lastly the soul is pictured as being a man’s breath (anima), and this again has come down to us in literature, evidenced by the fact that the word “breath” has become a synonym for life itself. The “last breath” has meant more than a mere metaphor. It expresses the savage belief that there departs from the dying in the final expiration a something tangible, capable of separate existence—the soul. Among the Romans custom imposed a sacred duty on the nearest relative, usually the heir, to inhale the “last breath” of the dying. Moreover the classics bear evidence to the sanctity with which sentiment surrounded the last kiss; Cicero, in his speech against Verres, saying “Matres ab extremo complexu liberum exclusae: quae nihil aliud orabant nisi ut filiorum extremum spiritum ore excipere sibi liceret.” Virgil, too, refers in the Aeneid, iv. 684, to the custom, which survives to-day as a ceremonial practice among many savage and semi-civilized people.

From the inability of the savage in all ages and in all lands to comprehend death as a natural phenomenon, there results a tendency to personify death, and myths are invented to account for its origin. Sometimes it is a “taboo” which has been broken and gives Death power over man. In New Zealand Maui, the divine hero of Polynesia, was not properly baptized. In Australia a woman was told not to go near a tree where a bat lived: she infringed the prohibition, the bat fluttered out, and death resulted. The Ningphoos were dismissed from Paradise and became mortal because one of them bathed in water which had been “tabooed” (Dalton, p. 13). Other versions of the Death-myth in Polynesia relate that Maui stole a march on Night as she slept, and would have passed right through her to destroy her, but a little bird which sings at sunset woke her, she destroyed Maui, and men lost immortality. In India Yama, the god of Death, is assumed, like Maui, to have been the first to “spy out the path to the other world.” In the Solomon Islands (Jour. Anth. Inst., February 1881) “Koevari was the author of death, by resuming her cast-off skin.” The same story is told in the Banks Islands. The Greek myth (Hesiód, Works and Days, 90) alleged that mortals lived “without ill diseases that give death to men” till the cover was lifted from the box of Pandora. This personification of Death has had as a consequence the introduction into the folklore of many lands of stories, often humorous, of the tricks played on the Enemy of Mankind. Thus Sisyphus fettered Death, keeping him prisoner till rescued by Ares; in Venetian folklore Beppo ties him up in a bag for eighteen months; while in Sicily an innkeeper corks him up in a bottle, and a monk keeps him in his pouch for forty years. The German parallel is Gambling Hansel, who kept Death up a tree for seven years. Such examples might be multiplied unendingly, but enough has been said to show that the attitude of civilized man towards the sphinx-riddle of his end has been in part dictated and is even still influenced by the savage belief that to die is unnatural.

Law—Registration.—The registration of burials in England goes back to the time of Thomas Cromwell, who in 1538 instituted the keeping of parish registers. Statutory measures were taken from time to time to ensure the preservation of registers of burials, but it was not until 1836 (the Births and Deaths Registration Act) that the registration of deaths became a national concern. Other acts dealing with death registration were subsequently passed, and the whole law for England consolidated by the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1874. By that act, the registration of every death and the cause of the death is compulsory. When a person dies in a house information of the death and the particulars required to be registered must be given within five days of the death to the registrar to the best of the person’s knowledge and belief by one of the following persons:—(1) The nearest relative of the deceased present at the death, or in attendance during the last illness of the deceased. If they fail, then (2) some other relative of the deceased in the same sub-district (registrar’s) as the deceased. In default of relatives, (3) some person present at the death, or the occupier of the house in which, to his knowledge, the death took place. If all the above fail, (4) some inmate of the house, or the person causing the body of the deceased to be buried. The person giving the information must sign the register. Similarly, also, information must be given concerning death where the deceased dies not in a house.

Where written notice of the death, accompanied by a medical certificate of the cause of death, is sent to the registrar, information must nevertheless be given and the register signed within fourteen days after the death by the person giving the notice or some other person as required by the act. Failure to give information of death, or to comply with the registrar’s requisitions, entails a penalty not exceeding forty shillings, and making false statements or certificates, or forging or falsifying them, is punishable either summarily within six months, or on indictment within three years of the offence. Before burial takes place the clergyman or other person conducting the funeral or religious service must have the registrar’s certificate that the death of the deceased person has been duly registered, or else a coroner’s order or warrant. Failing the certificate, the clergyman cannot refuse to bury, but he must forthwith give notice in writing to the registrar. Failure to do so within seven days involves a penalty not exceeding ten pounds. Children must not be registered as still-born without a medical certificate or a signed declaration from some one who would have been required, if the child had been born alive, to give information concerning the birth, that the child was still-born and that no medical man was present at the birth, or a coroner’s order. The registration of deaths at sea is regulated by the act of 1874 together with the Merchant Shipping Act 1894. See further Birth and Burial and Burial Acts. Registers of death are, in law, evidence of the fact of death, and the entry, or a certified copy of it, will be sufficient evidence without a certificate of burial, although it is desirable that it should also be produced.

Presumption of Death.—The fact of death may, in English law, be proved not only by direct but by presumptive evidence. When a person disappears, so that no direct proof of his whereabouts or death is obtainable, death may be presumed at the expiration of seven years from the period when the person was last heard of. It is always, however, a matter of fact for the jury, and the onus of proving the death lies on the party who asserts it. In Scotland, by the Presumption of Life (Scotland) Act 1891, the presumption is statutory. In those cases where people disappear under circumstances which create a strong probability of death, the court may, for the purpose of probate or administration, presume the death before the lapse of seven years. The question of survivorship, where two or more persons are shown to have perished by the same catastrophe, as in cases of shipwreck, has been much discussed. It was at one time thought that there might be a presumption of survivorship in favour of the younger as against the older, of the male as against the female, &c. But it is now clear that there is no such presumption (In re Alston, 1892, P. 142). This is also the rule in most states of the American Union. The doctrine of survivorship originated in the Roman Law, which had recourse to certain artificial presumptions, where the particular circumstances connected with deaths were unknown. Some of the systems founded on the civil law, as the French code, have adopted certain rules of survivorship.

Civil Death is an expression used, in law, in contradistinction to natural death. Formerly, a man was said to be dead in law (1) when he entered a monastery and became professed in religion; (2) when he abjured the realm; (3) when he was attainted of treason or felony. Since the suppression of the monasteries there has been no legal establishment for professed persons in England, and the first distinction has therefore disappeared, though for long after the original reason had ceased to make it necessary grants of life estates were usually made for the terms of a man’s natural life. The act abolishing sanctuaries (1623) did away with civil death by abjuration; and the Forfeiture Act 1870, that on attainder for treason or felony.

For the tax levied on the estate of deceased persons, and sometimes called “death duty,” see Succession Duty.

For the statistics of the death-rate of the United Kingdom as compared with that of the various European countries see United Kingdom. See also the articles Annuity; Capital Punishment; Cremation; Insurance; Medical Jurisprudence, &c.

DEATH-WARNING, a term used in psychical research for an intimation of the death of another person received by other than the ordinary sensory channels, i.e. by (1) a sensory hallucination or (2) a massive sensation, both being of telepathic origin. (See Telepathy.) Both among civilized and uncivilized peoples there is a widespread belief that the apparition of a living person is an omen of death; but until the Society of Psychical Research undertook the statistical examination of the question, there were no data for estimating the value of the belief. In 1885 a collection of spontaneous cases and a discussion of the evidence was published under the title Phantasms of the Living, and though the standard of evidence was lower than at the present time, a substantial body of testimony, including many striking cases, was there put forward. In 1889 a further inquiry was undertaken, known as the “Census of Hallucinations,” which provided information as to the percentage of individuals in the general population who, at some period of their lives, while they were in a normal state of health, had had “a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as they could discover, was not due to any external cause.” To the census question about 17,000 answers were received, and after making all deductions it appeared that death coincidences numbered about 30 in 1300 cases of recognized apparitions; or about 1 in 43, whereas if chance alone operated the coincidences would have been in the proportion of 1 to 19,000. As a result of the inquiry the committee held it to be proved that “between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone.” From an evidential point of view the apparition is the most valuable class of death-warning, inasmuch as recognition is more difficult in the case of an auditory hallucination, even where it takes the form of spoken words; moreover, auditory hallucinations coinciding with deaths may be mere knocks, ringing of bells, &c.; tactile hallucinations are still more difficult of recognition; and the hallucinations of smell which are sometimes found as death-warnings rarely have anything to associate them specially with the dead person. Occasionally the death-warning is in the form of an apparition of some other person; it may also take the form of a temporary feeling of intense depression or other massive sensation.

Bibliography.—Podmore, Gurney and Myers, Phantasms of the Living (1885); for the Census Report see Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, part xxvi.; see also F. Podmore, Apparitions and Thought Transference. For a criticism of the results of the Census see E. Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions and Zur Kritik des telepathischen Beweismaterials, and Mrs Sidgwick’s refutation in Proc. S.P.R. part xxxiii. 589-601. The Journal of the S.P.R. contains the most striking spontaneous cases received from time to time by the society.

(N. W. T.)

DEATH-WATCH, a popular name applied to insects of two distinct families, which burrow and live in old furniture and produce the mysterious “ticking” vulgarly supposed to foretell the death of some inmate of the house. The best known, because the largest, is a small beetle, Anobium striattum, belonging to the family Ptinidae. The “ticking,” in reality a sexual call, like the chirp of a grasshopper, is produced by the beetle rapidly striking its head against the hard and dry woodwork. In the case of the smaller death-watches, some of the so-called book-lice of the family Psocidae, the exact way in which the sound is caused has not been satisfactorily explained. Indeed the ability of such small and soft insects to give rise to audible sounds has been seriously doubted; but it is impossible to ignore the positive evidence on the point. The names Atropos divinatoria and Clothilla pulsatoria, given to two of the commoner forms, bear witness both to a belief in a causal connexion between these insects and the ticking, and to the superstition regarding the fateful significance of the sound.

DE BARY, HEINRICH ANTON (1831-1888), German botanist, was of Belgian extraction, though his family had long been settled in Germany, and was born on the 26th of January 1831, at Frankfort-on-Main. From 1849 to 1853 he studied medicine at Heidelberg, Marburg and Berlin. In 1853 he settled at Frankfort as a surgeon. In 1854 he became privat-docent for botany in Tübingen, and professor of botany at Freiburg in 1855. In 1867 he migrated to Halle, and in 1872 to Strassburg, where he was the first rector of the newly constituted university, and where he died on the 19th of January 1888.

Although one of his largest and most important works was on the Comparative Anatomy of Ferns and Phanerogams (1877), and notwithstanding his admirable acquaintance with systematic and field botany generally, de Bary will always be remembered as the founder of modern mycology. This branch of botany he completely revolutionized in 1866 by the publication of his celebrated Morphologie und Physiologie d. Pilze, &c., a classic which he rewrote in 1884, and which has had a world-wide influence on biology. His clear appreciation of the real significance of symbiosis and the dual nature of lichens is one of his most striking achievements, and in many ways he showed powers of generalizing in regard to the evolution of organisms, which alone would have made him a distinguished man. It was as an investigator of the then mysterious Fungi, however, that de Bary stands out first and foremost among the biologists of the 19th century. He not only laid bare the complex facts of the life-history of many forms,—e.g. the Ustilagineae, Peronosporeae, Uredineae and many Ascomycetes,—treating them from the developmental point of view, in opposition to the then prevailing anatomical method, but he insisted on the necessity of tracing the evolution of each organism from spore to spore, and by his methods of culture and accurate observation brought to light numerous facts previously undreamt of. These his keen perception and insight continually employed as the basis for hypotheses, which in turn he tested with an experimental skill and critical faculty rarely equalled and probably never surpassed. One of his most fruitful discoveries was the true meaning of infection as a morphological and physiological process. He traced this step by step in Phytophthora, Cystopus, Puccinia, and other Fungi, and so placed before the world in a clear light the significance of parasitism. He then showed by numerous examples wherein lay the essential differences between a parasite and a saprophyte; these were by no means clear in 1860-1870, though he himself had recognized them as early as 1853, as is shown by his work, Die Brandpilze.

These researches led to the explanation of epidemic diseases, and de Bary’s contributions to this subject were fundamental, as witness his classical work on the potato disease in 1861. They also led to his striking discovery of heteroecism (or metoecism) in the Uredineae, the truth of which he demonstrated in wheat rust experimentally, and so clearly that his classical example (1863) has always been confirmed by subsequent observers, though much more has been discovered as to details. It is difficult to estimate the relative importance of de Bary’s astoundingly accurate work on the sexuality of the Fungi. He not only described the phenomena of sexuality in Peronosporeae and Ascomycetes—Eurotium, Erysiphe, Peziza, &c.—but also established the existence of parthenogenesis and apogamy on so firm a basis that it is doubtful if all the combined workers who have succeeded him, and who have brought forward contending hypotheses in opposition to his views, have succeeded in shaking the doctrine he established before modern cytological methods existed. In one case, at least (Pyronema confluens), the most skilful investigations, with every modern appliance, have shown that de Bary described the sexual organs and process accurately.

It is impossible here to mention all the discoveries made by de Bary. He did much work on the Chytridieae, Ustilagineae, Exoasceae and Phalloideae, as well as on that remarkable group the Myxomycetes, or, as he himself termed them, Mycetozoa, almost every step of which was of permanent value, and started lines of investigation which have proved fruitful in the hands of his pupils. Nor must we overlook the important contributions to algology contained in his earlier monograph on the Conjugatae (1858), and investigations on Nostocaceae (1863), Chara (1871), Acetabularia (1869), &c. De Bary seems to have held aloof from the Bacteria for many years, but it was characteristic of the man that, after working at them in order to include an account of the group in the second edition of his book in 1884, he found opportunity to bring the whole subject of bacteriology under the influence of his genius, the outcome being his brilliant Lectures on Bacteria in 1885. De Bary’s personal influence was immense. Every one of his numerous pupils was enthusiastic in admiration of his kind nature and genial criticism, his humorous sarcasm, and his profound insight, knowledge and originality.

Memoirs of de Bary’s life will be found in Bot. Centralbl. (1888), xxxiv. 93, by Wilhelm; Ber. d. d. bot. Ges. vol. vi. (1888) p. viii., by Reess, each with a list of his works; Bot. Zeitung (1889), vol. xlvii. No. 3, by Graf zu Soems-Laubach.

(H. M. W.)

DEBENTURES and DEBENTURE STOCK. One of the many advantages incident to incorporation under the English Companies Acts is found in the facilities which such incorporation affords a trading concern for borrowing on debentures or debenture stock. More than five hundred millions of money are now invested in these forms of security. Borrowing was not specifically dealt with by the Companies Acts prior to the act of 1900, but that it was contemplated by the legislature is evident from the provision in § 43 of the act of 1862 for a company keeping a register of mortgages and charges. The policy of the legislature in this, as in other matters connected with trading companies, was apparently to leave the company to determine whether borrowing should or should not form one of its objects.

The first principle to be borne in mind is that a company cannot borrow unless it is expressly or impliedly authorized to do so by its memorandum of association. In the case of a trading company borrowing is impliedly authorized as a necessary incident of carrying on the company’s business. Thus a company established for the conveyance of passengers and luggage by omnibuses, a company formed to buy and run vessels between England and Australia, and a company whose objects included discounting approved commercial bills, have all been held to be trading companies with an incidental power of borrowing as such to a reasonable amount. A building society, on the other hand, has no inherent power of borrowing (though a limited statutory power was conferred on such societies by the Building Societies Act 1874); nor has a society formed not for gain but to promote art, science, religion, charity or any other useful object. Public companies formed to carry out some undertaking of public utility, such as docks, water works, or gas works, and governed by the Companies Clauses Acts, have only limited powers of borrowing.

An implied power of borrowing, even when it attaches, is too inconvenient to be relied on in practice, and an express power is always now inserted in a joint stock company’s memorandum of association. This power is in the most general terms. It is left to the articles to define the amount to be borrowed, the nature of the security, and the conditions, if any,—such as the sanction of a general meeting of shareholders,—on which the power is to be exercised. Under the Companies Act 1908, § 87, a company cannot exercise any borrowing power until it has fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the act entitling it to commence business: one of which is that the company must have obtained its “minimum subscription.” A person who is proposing to lend money to a company must be careful to acquaint himself with any statutory regulations of this kind, and also to see (1) that the memorandum and articles of association authorize borrowing, and (2) that the borrowing limit is not being exceeded, for if it should turn out that the borrowing was in excess of the company’s powers and ultra vires, the company cannot be bound, and the borrower’s only remedy is against the directors for breach of warranty of authority, or to be surrogated to the rights of any creditors who may have been paid out of the borrowed moneys.

A company proposing to borrow usually issues a prospectus, similar to the ordinary share prospectus, stating the amount of the issue, the dates for payment, the particulars of the property to be comprised in the security, the terms as to redemption, and so on, and inviting the public to subscribe. Underwriting is also resorted to, as in the case of shares, to ensure that the issue is taken up. There is no objection to a company issuing debentures or debenture stock at a discount, as there is to its issuing its shares at a discount. It must borrow on the best terms its credit will enable it to obtain. A prospectus inviting subscriptions for debentures or debenture stock comes within the terms of the Directors’ Liability Act 1890 (re-enacted in Companies Act 1908, § 84), and persons who are parties to it have the onus cast upon them, should the prospectus contain any misstatements, of showing that, at the time when they issued the prospectus, they had reasonable grounds to believe, and did in fact believe, that the statements in question were true; otherwise they will be liable to pay compensation to any person injured by the misstatements. A debenture prospectus is also within the terms of the Companies Act 1908. It must be filed with the registrar of joint stock companies (§ 80) and must contain all the particulars specified in § 81 of the act. (See Company.)

The usual mode of borrowing by a company is either on debentures or debenture stock. Etymologically, debenture is merely the Latin word debentur,—The first word in a document in common use by the crown in early times admitting indebtedness to its servants or soldiers. This was the germ of a security which has now, with the expansion of joint stock company enterprise, grown into an instrument of considerable complexity.

Debentures may be classified in various ways. From the point of view of the security they are either (1) debentures (simply); (2) mortgage debentures; (3) debenture bonds. In the debenture the security is a floating charge. In the mortgage debenture there is also a floating charge, but the property forming the principal part of the security is conveyed by the company to trustees under a trust deed for the benefit of the debenture-holders. In the debenture bond there is no security proper: only the covenant for payment by the company. For purposes of title and transfer, debentures are either “registered” or “to bearer.” For purposes of payment they are either “terminable” or “perpetual” (see Companies Act 1908, § 103).

The Floating Debenture.—The form of debenture chiefly in use at the present day is that secured by a floating charge. By it the company covenants to pay to the holder thereof the sum secured by the debenture on a specified day (usually ten or fifteen years after the date of issue), or at such earlier date as the principal moneys become due under the provisions of the security, and in the meantime the company covenants to pay interest on the principal moneys until payment, or until the security becomes enforceable under the conditions; and the company further charges its undertaking and all its property, including its uncalled capital, with the payment of the amount secured by the debentures. Uncalled capital if included must be expressly mentioned, because the word “property” by itself will not cover uncalled capital which is only property potentially, i.e. when called up. This is the body of the instrument; on its back is endorsed a series of conditions, constituting the terms on which the debenture is issued. Thus the debenture-holders are to rank pari passu with one another against the security; the debenture is to be transferable free from equities between the company and the original holder; the charge is to be a floating charge, and the debenture-holders’ moneys are to become immediately repayable and the charges enforceable in certain events: for instance, if the interest is in arrear for (say) two or three months, or if a winding-up order is made against the company, or a resolution for winding-up is passed. Other events indicative of insolvency are sometimes added in which payment is to be accelerated. The conditions also provide for the mode and form of transfer of the debentures, the death or bankruptcy of the holder, the place of payment, &c. The most characteristic feature of the security—the floating charge—grew naturally out of a charge on a company’s undertaking as a going concern. Such a charge could only be made practicable by leaving the company free to deal with and dispose of its property in the ordinary course of its business—to sell, mortgage, lease, and exchange it as if no charge existed: and this is how the security works. The debenture-holders give the directors an implied licence to deal with and dispose of the property comprised in the security until the happening of any of the events upon which the debenture-holders’ money becomes under the debenture conditions immediately repayable. Pending this the charge is dormant. The licence extends, however, only to dealings in the ordinary course of business. Payment by a company of its just debts is always in the ordinary course of business, but satisfaction by execution levied in invitum is not. This floating form of security is found very convenient both to the borrowing company and to the lender. The company is not embarrassed by the charge, while the lender has a security covering the whole assets for the time being, and can intervene at any moment by obtaining a receiver if his security is imperilled, even though none of the events in which the principal moneys are made payable have happened. If any of them has happened, for instance default in payment of interest, or a resolution by the company to wind up, the payment of the principal moneys is accelerated, and a debenture-holder can at once commence an action to obtain payment and to realize his security. At times a proviso is inserted in the conditions endorsed on the debenture, that the company is not to create any mortgage or charge ranking in priority to or pari passu with that contained in the debentures. Very nice questions of priority have arisen under such a clause. A floating charge created by a company within three months of its being wound up will now be invalid under § 12 of the Companies Act 1908 unless the company is shown to have been solvent at the time, but there is a saving clause for cash paid under the security and interest at 5%.

Trust Deeds.—When the amount borrowed by a company is large, the company commonly executes a trust deed by way of further security. The object of such a trust deed is twofold: (1) it conveys specific property to the trustees of the deed by way of legal mortgage (the charge contained in the debentures is only an equitable security), and it further charges all the remaining assets in favour of the debenture-holders, with appropriate provisions for enabling them, in certain events similar to those expressed in the debenture conditions, to enforce the security, and for that purpose to enter into possession and carry on the business, or to sell it and distribute the proceeds; (2) it organizes the debenture-holders and constitutes in the trustees of the deed a body of experienced business men who can watch over the interests of the debenture-holders and take steps for their protection if necessary. In particular it provides machinery for the calling of meetings of debenture-holders by the trustees, and empowers a majority of (say) two-thirds or three-fourths in number and value at such meeting to bind the rest to any compromise or arrangement with the company which such majorities may deem beneficial. This is found a very useful power, and may save recourse to a scheme or arrangement first sanctioned under the machinery of the Joint Stock Companies Arrangement Act 1870 (Companies Act 1908, § 120).