Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892

Here is science before it became modern - a window into 1892, when researchers still mixed anthropology with animal observation, when electricity in horticulture seemed revolutionary, and when treating rattlesnake bites with permanganate of potassium sounded perfectly reasonable. This supplementary issue of Scientific American gathers dispatches from the edge of known knowledge: descriptions of jerboas in Berlin zoos, debates over prehistoric remains, speculation about animal languages. Some articles foreshadow breakthroughs that would reshape the 20th century. Others reveal a charming confidence in ideas that time would erode. For readers who delight in tracking how knowledge transforms - who enjoy seeing what intelligent people believed before they knew better - this supplement offers a particular pleasure: the past's science, preserved in amber, waiting to be examined with modern eyes.