1 What the Philosophy of Biology Is Not
DOI: 10.4324/9781003441809-2
Michael Ruse met David Hull at the first ever Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Pittsburgh in 1968 (Ruse 2010). Ruse, then a doctoral student, attended the plenary session on the philosophy of biology, at which Hull delivered a paper entitled “What the philosophy of biology is not”. In the paper, Hull enumerated the inadequacies he perceived in recent forays into the philosophy of biology and argued that—to correct the philosophy of biology’s course—greater familiarity with the actual work of biological science was necessary. Ruse left Pittsburgh inspired and encouraged by this call to arms. By 1974, both he and Hull had published books that would effectively launch the professionalphilosophyofbiology(Ruse 1973; Hull 1974). “What the philosophy of biology is not” would become the professional philosophy of biology’s manifesto (Hull 1969).
The fledgling profession benefited greatly from its association with the dominant biological research programs of the era, namely those constituting and contributing to the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (MES). However, lingering effects of this initial alliance today may be hindering the philosophy of biology from productively engaging with developments in biology and the history and philosophy of science since the 1980s. Indeed, it seems that the “map” of the living world drawn by the allied hands of the MES and the professional philosophy of biology may have been confused with the territory. In this chapter, I argue that a more pluralistic philosophy of biology is
necessary to take the diversity of today’s biological sciences seriously, a diversity leveraged recently in calls for a “rethinking” of evolution theory (Laland et al. 2015). I contend that this pluralism would permit new vantage points on biology, its history, and its territory, while continuing to affirm the importance of evolution in contemporary biology. To do so, I first briefly trace the history of the professional philosophy of biology, its productive associations with the MES, and the growing resistance to this association emerging from within biology and philosophy in recent decades. Next, I argue that the dominance of the MES in biology and the philosophy of biology should now be conceived of as an illicitreification, a concept developed in the work of philosopher of science Rasmus Winther. I argue that his work on scientific representation and “map thinking” offers strategies for the philosophy of biology to avoid illicit reification and to embrace the diversity and richness of evolutionary and biological approaches beyond the MES. Finally, I will give some reasons why such a pluralism need not discourage attempts to conceive of a single shared biological ontology, and how history can be used as a resource in this regard.
1 The Professional Philosophy of Biology: A Philosophy of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis
While philosophers of biology since the 1970s have tackled topics from across the biological sciences, the clear focus of the professional philosophy of biology has been on evolution theory. Evolution’s mechanisms, causes, explanations, definitions, theory structure, and relationship to other corners of biology and the natural sciences have taken centre stage in conferences and publications. Recent surveys of the profession’s flagship journal, Biology & Philosophy (started by Ruse in 1986), bear this out. Two surveys found that between 35% to 65% of articles between 1986 and 2015 centred on evolutionary topics (Gayon 2009; Pradeu
2017), and differently calibrated bibliometric analyses concluded that there is a one-in-three chance that any paper in the Biology & Philosophy corpus would focus on evolution (understood as the combination of the topics: evolution, individuality-altruism, and species-ecology) (Malaterre, Pulizzotto, and Lareau 2019).
This focus on evolution in the professional philosophy of biology has been intentional, especially in its earliest decades.1 In his manifesto, Hull sought to rally a new community of philosophers who were informed by the work of biologists,2 unlike—he argued— those who had philosophized about biology earlier in the 20th century.3 Reflecting back on the dawn of the discipline, Ruse writes:
Too often biology had been taken as something different—a “narrative science” or some such thing—and too often, “different” was equated with “second-rate.” We Young Turks— Hull and I were the introductory text writers for a group— showed that if you turn from reading only popular books on the fossils and look at what real biologists do—genetics—a different, although more familiar (to the logical empiricists), type of picture emerges. Perhaps biology is not so very different (meaning second-rate) from the physical sciences.
(Ruse 2019, 3)
Genetics was “what real biologists do”. By the late 1960s and early 1970s both biology and society were enraptured by the implications of, and possible interventions in, the recently discovered structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and how the “genetic code” inscribed thereon illuminated organisms’ phenotypes and their evolution. Genes had been central to biology’s theoretical framework since the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis in the 1940s. Largely due to the early mathematical modelling of Ronald A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright, and the later integrative work of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, and Ernst Mayr, the MES integrated population-level thinking, Mendelian genetic inheritance, and Darwinian natural selection into a theory of biological evolution. It
was this theoretical synthesis (whose name came from Julian Huxley’s 1943 book Evolution:TheModernSynthesis) that animated institutional biology in the 1960s and 1970s as the professional philosophy of biology began, and which characterized “what real biologists” do in the “Century of the Gene” (Keller 2002).
The later architects of the MES purposefully presented evolutionary theory as a single, unified theory for biology.4 Ernst Mayr’s social endeavours (the founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the journal Evolution) created a cohesive, institutionalized research community grounded in bigger-picture Darwinian evolutionary theory (as opposed to mere molecular biology). His writings between 1942 and 1963 also increasingly emphasized the centrality of natural selection and adaptation to evolutionary theory (Gould 2002, 531–541). The latter editions of Theodosius Dobzhansky’s GeneticsandtheOriginofSpecies (1941, 1951) show a similar progressive narrowing of focus towards natural selection and adaptation, and away from other contributing processes of evolutionary change, more readily acknowledged in its first edition (1937) (Gould 2002, 524–528).
Dobzhansky’s (1973) dictum—“nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”—perfectly summarizes the MES’s unitive power for biology as a discipline. Biological subdisciplines from systematics, to morphology, to palaeontology, to zoology could be brought together by the MES since all of life (its diversity and its diversification) is explained by the evolutionary processes which constitute the MES.
Thus, as Darwin’s central arguments performed in the theory of the Origin, the modern causal mechanisms serve as the focus, uniting many different areas of biological thought, and conversely throwing explanatory light into all sorts of different corners … Paleontology, biogeography, embryology, systematics, instinctive behavior, and other disciplines are all brought beneath the umbrella.
(Ruse 1982)
It is important to highlight that what is meant by “evolutionary processes” in the MES have been understood to be exhausted by the sum of gene-centric processes of natural selection, drift, mutation, recombination, and gene flow. To push the point a bit further, by adding a premise articulated by Lynch (2007), we get the following syllogism:
1. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution (Dobzhansky 1973).
2. Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of population genetics (Lynch 2007).
3. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of population genetics.
All the qualities of diverse species of organisms—their apparent purposiveness, their unique developmental pathways, their particular physiologies—are fundamentally the result of the mathematicallydescribable, deterministic, lawlike processes that shape gene frequencies in populations: the set of mechanisms which account for the origins of those species and their adaptations, articulated by population genetics.
1.1
depiction of the structure of evolutionary theory (1982, 115)
Figure
Ruse’s
Source: Reproduced with permission from Michael Ruse.
According to Betty Smocovitis, the story of the MES is a story of the emergence, unification, and maturation of the central science of life – biology – within the positivist ordering of knowledge; and […] a story of the emergence of the central unifying discipline of evolutionary biology (complete with textbooks, rituals, problems, a discursive community, and a collective historical memory to delineate its boundaries).
(Smocovitis 1996, 7)
So, at its conception, thiswas the biology that would be the subject of Hull and Ruse’s philosophy: a biology with evolution at its core, and evolution specifically articulated within the MES.
Douglas Futuyma has recently enumerated what he believes to be the most important tenets at the heart of biology from the MES perspective (2017). These, he argues, have remained largely unchanged since the establishment of the Synthesis in the early 20th century:
1. The basic process of biological evolution is a population level, not an individual-level, process that entails change not of the individual organism, but of the frequency of heritable variations within populations, from generation to generation.
2. Heredity is based on “genes”, now understood to be DNA or RNA. DNA sequences transmitted in eukaryotes’ gametes are not affected by an individual organism’s experiences. Cultural inheritance has long been recognized, but insofar as it affects biological evolution, it does so by affecting natural selection.
3. Inherited variation arises by individually infrequent mutations; they are random in that their phenotypic effects, if any, are not directed towards “need” … Without question, organisms have diverse homeostatic properties that buffer fitness against many environmental or genetic destabilizing events; but the
maintenance of function depends on stabilizing or purifying natural selection.
4. The frequencies of hereditary variants are altered by mutation (very slightly), gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection. Directional or positive natural selection is the only known cause of adaptive change. Natural selection is not an agent, but a name for a consistent (biased, non-random) difference in the production of offspring by different classes of reproducing entities.
5. Species of sexually reproducing organisms are reproductively isolated groups of populations that arise by evolutionary divergence of geographically isolated (allopatric) populations. Species evolve gradually, so not all populations can be classified into discrete species.
6. Large phenotypic changes of the kind that distinguish higher taxa and occur over long periods of time evolve gradually, as Darwin proposed, i.e., by the cumulation of relatively small incremental changes.
(Futuyma 2017, 2)
Tenet #3 in Futuyma’s list illustrates well how biological phenomena beyond the gene-centric, population-level MES are nevertheless cast in its light. While fully admitting that “organisms have diverse homeostatic properties that buffer fitness against many environmental or genetic destabilizing events”, it is ultimately the combination of random genetic mutation and biased population-level natural selection that guarantee the “maintenance of function” (2).
In “What the philosophy of biology is not”, Hull lays out a simple positive program for the philosopher of biology attuned to the MESinflected biological sciences:
[A] philosopher might uncover, explicate, and possibly solve problems in biological theory and methodology. He might even go on to communicate these results to other philosophers, to scientists, and especially to biologists. He
might show what consequences biological phenomena and theories have for other sciences and for philosophy or to show what consequences other sciences and even philosophy have for biology.
(Hull 1969, 178–179)
In addition to clarification, translation, and advocacy, Elliot Sober would later add that the philosophy of biology also had a sort of defensive vocation, namely to help biology face not only the conceptual “turmoil from within”, but also “threats from without” such as creationism (1992, xvii). Michael Ruse’s 1982 book DarwinismDefendedis an early example of this, wherein he argues that the MES provides biology with a unified mechanical-reductionist front against outer and inner turmoil.5
It is important to note that this professionalization of the philosophy of biology was taking place during a more general professionalization of the history and philosophy of science (HPS) in the 1950s and 1960s, which included the establishment of HPS departments at universities like Princeton (1961) and the University of Toronto (1967) (Rupik 2019, 20). Setting something of a paradigm himself, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) exemplified how the history and philosophy of science could be done in tandem and inspired the investigation of revolutions through the history of science, like, for instance, the Darwinian Revolution. Ruse facetiously recollects that, “as if preordained by the God of the Calvinists”, both he and Hull were well-positioned to bring this historical consciousness to their fledgling philosophy of biology, with Hull putting together a collection of primary texts tracking the reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution (1973), and Ruse spending a sabbatical to research and publish The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1979).6 While neither Hull nor Ruse completely bought into Kuhn’s program, there does seem to have been a conviction that the MES was a modern apotheosis of the Darwinian Revolution, and that their philosophical work was in its service (Ruse 2009).
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This Interesting Model Cableway was Built by a Boy for Play and Experimental Purposes: The Principle by Which the Weight of the Car is Compensated in Single and Multiple Systems is Indicated in the Diagrams Above Cars Propelled by Sail Rigging or by a Small Battery Motor may Also be Used
A model of the compensated cableway, as shown in the page plate, or on a smaller scale, may be made by a boy of fair mechanical skill. For experimental purposes the detail may, of course, be refined to a high grade of workmanship, if desired. The size and dimensions of the parts need not be proportioned precisely as shown, but may depend more or less upon the materials available. The track cable should be made of galvanized-iron wire, the compensating cable of fishline, and the towers of 1-in. stuff, the width of the pieces making up the A-frames being increased in proportion to the height. Grooved pulley wheels, set in housings fixed to the top of the A-frames, carry the compensating cable. These may be made of wood, built up in three sections, to provide a flange on each side of the cable groove. The A-frames should be joined strongly at the top, and braced to anchors, sunk into the ground as shown. The hooks from which the track cable is suspended are made of heavy wire, bent so as not to interfere with the H-frame hanger supporting the car, and looped around the cable. Various types of hangers may be devised to house the two pulley wheels which ride on the track cable. A simple H-frame hanger is shown in the detail sketch in the page plate. The grooved pulley wheels are set on bolts, and a heavy wire is bent and set through the center block as a support for the car. For experimental purposes, or even for play, when it is not desired to make a more elaborate car, a
wooden block or other object of sufficient weight may be used as a load. An interesting feature of the work, especially for a boy, is to devise a realistic coach model, as suggested in the sketch. A wooden block forms the base, and the roof and platforms are made of sheet metal. The windows and doors are painted on the metal. The inventive boy may, of course, build a car with a hollow metal or wooden body, and weight it properly to provide the necessary load.
The motive power is provided by means of a cord, or traction cable, carried around two large grooved pulleys, mounted in supports fixed to the landing stages at each end of the cableway They are made of wood, a suitable groove being cut around the edge with a saw, and smoothed with a small round file, or sandpaper wrapped over a round rod. The traction pulley is turned by means of a crank, set on the bolt which is used as an axle. The traction cable must be drawn sufficiently taut to provide the necessary pressure on the grooved pulleys, or it will slip. Rosin applied to the pulleys and the cable will tend to prevent this.
The Car is Propelled by the Wind Action on a Sail Controlled Like the Main Sheet of a Sailboat in Tacking. The Trigger Device Releases the Sail, Reversing the Course of the Car
If the frames and other fittings have been properly set up, the cableway will support a sail car, shown in Fig. 7, or a two-cell electric car, driven by a small motor, as shown in Fig. 8. The sailing-car arrangement is often feasible, since a stiff breeze is common in gorges, cañons, narrow valleys, or even in ravines where such a cableway might be set up. The hanger is an H-frame having the grooved pulleys bolted in it, and further reinforced by small blocks at the ends. A braced frame, supporting a deck on which a mast is set, is suspended from the hanger by four curved wires, as shown in the side view, Fig. 7. A sail with boom and gaff is supported by the mast. It is arranged to be shifted around the mast, which is accomplished automatically at the end of a run, or “tack,” by means of the trigger device shown in the top view. The sail is controlled in relation to the wind much as is the main sheet of a sailboat. The car can be operated in this manner only at right angles to the direction of the wind, or nearly so. For play purposes, a boy stationed at each end of the cableway can shift the sail, but the trigger device shown makes this unnecessary. A rubber band is attached to the boom, as indicated in the top view, and a cord and wire are arranged to engage a trigger A stop for the trigger is fixed to the A-frame so that it is sprung when the car reaches the end of the run. The rubber band reverses the sail, the car having been set on the cable originally so that the forward end is in proper relation to the wind.
The Electric Car Is Self-Contained and may be Reversed Automatically, if the Motor Is of the Reversible Type, by Contact of the Lever with the Stop Fixed to the A-Frame
The electric car is especially interesting in that it provides selfcontained motive power by means of a battery of dry cells, and a motor belted to the hanger, as shown in Fig. 8. The hanger is of the H-frame type with heavy blocks between the sidepieces to provide for the small grooved driving pulley set on the axle of one of the larger pulleys. A wooden deck, supported by four heavy wires set into the center block of the hanger, carries the motor, and the dry cells are fixed under it. The motor is of the small reversible battery type, and should be provided with a reversing lever. This will make it possible to reverse the car when it reaches the end of its course. The motor and cells should be disposed so as to balance, tests being made for this purpose before setting them in place finally. A cord or small leather belt connects the drive pulley of the motor with the proper pulley on the hanger. These pulleys should be in line, and that on the hanger should be five times the diameter of the one on the motor shaft. The power is shut off at the end of the course by a shut-off switch which strikes a stop crank attached to the A-frame. When the reversing lever and stop are used, the stop crank is unnecessary. A nonreversing motor can be made to drive the car in a reverse direction by removing the belt from the motor pulley and replacing it to make a figure-eight twist.
¶When babbitt metal is heated some of the tin and antimony in it is burned out, making it unsuited for use in machinery bearings, and similar purposes, after several heatings. The oxidation of the metal is indicated by the formation of a scum on the surface.
A Miniature Fighting Tank That Hurdles Trenches B EDWARD R. SMITH
Among the engines of war in action on land, probably none has created greater interest than the now famous “fighting tank,” which, according to reports, pours out missiles of destruction on the enemy from armored turrets, and crawls over trenches, shell craters, and similar obstructions, like a fabled giant creature of prehistoric ages. The tank described in this article, while not as deadly as those on the battle fields of Europe, performs remarkable feats of hurdling trenches, and crawling over obstructions, large in proportion to its size. The model, as shown in the heading sketches, is full-armored, and has a striking resemblance to these war monsters. The turret is mounted with a magazine gun, which fires 20 projectiles automatically, as the tank makes its way over the rough ground. The motive power for the tractor bands is furnished by linked rubber bands, stretched by a winding drum and ratchet device, on the rear axle, as shown in Fig. 1. When the ratchet is released, the rear axle drives the fluted wheels on it, and they in turn drive the tractor
bands, as shown in the side elevation, Fig. 6 The wire-wrapped flywheel conserves the initial power of the rubber-band motor, and makes its action more nearly uniform.
The tank will run upward of 10 ft. on the rubber-motor power, depending on the size and number of the bands used. The gun is fired by a spring hammer, actuated by a rubber band. The trigger device is shown in Fig. 1. The pulley A is belted, with cord, to the front axle. Four pins on its inner side successively engage the wire trigger, drawing it out of the gun breech B, and permitting another shell to drop into place. As the pulley revolves, the trigger is released, firing the projectile. This process goes on until the motor runs down, or the supply of shells is exhausted.
The tank is guided by the pilot wheel, shown in Fig. 1. The sheetmetal armor, with its turret, is fitted over the mechanism, and can be removed quickly. It bears on angles bent up, as detailed in Fig. 2, to fit on the ends of the wooden center crosspiece of the main frame, and is held by removable pins at the ends of this frame. While the rubber motor is easy to make and install, the range of the tank can be increased by using a strong spring motor, the construction otherwise being similar.
The construction is best begun by making the wooden frame which supports the armor. The perspective sketch, Fig. 1, used in connection with the working and detailed drawings, will aid in making the latter clear. Make the frame C, as detailed in Figs. 5 and 6, ³⁄₈ by
1³⁄₄ by 11 in. long, with an opening cut in the center, 1 in. wide, 1 in. from the rear, and 1¹⁄₄ in. from the front end. Make the crosspiece D
³⁄₈ by 1³⁄₄ by 5⁷⁄₈ in. long; the gun support E, as detailed in Fig. 4, ³⁄₈ by 1⁵⁄₁₆ by 6¹⁄₄ in. long. Shape the support E as shown. Fasten the frame C and the crosspiece D with screws, setting the piece D 5³⁄₄ in. from the front, and its left end 3 in. from the side of the frame, as shown in Fig. 5. This is important, as the fitting of the other parts depends on the position of these wooden supports.
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Perspective Sketch, Showing the Arrangement of the Parts, with the Armor and the Tractor Bands Removed, and Details of the Gun Mechanism and the Armor
The drive-wheel axles are carried in sheet-metal hangers, F, shown in Figs. 1 and 5, and detailed in Fig. 6. These hangers also carry bearing wheels, G, Fig. 1, which are held between the hanger F and a metal angle, as detailed at G, Fig. 6. These wheels are cut on a broomstick, and mounted on nail axles. The metal for the hangers F is drilled as shown, and bent double at the ends to make a strong bearing for the drive-wheel axles. The upper portion is bent at a right angle and fits over the top surface at the end of the crosspiece D, and is fastened to it with small screws or nails. Cut the stock for the hangers 2 by 6³⁄₈ in. long.
Next make the sheet-metal support H, Fig. 1, for the flywheel, the rim of which is wrapped with wire to give it added weight. Cut the stock, as detailed in Fig. 6, 1³⁄₄ by 4³⁄₁₆ in. long, and notch it to form the spring arrangement, which holds the flywheel so that the belt will be tight. The other sheet-metal support may then be made also. Cut the stock for the front support J, for the rubber motor, 4¹⁄₈ by 3³⁄₄ in. long, and shape it as shown in the detail, Fig. 6. Make the support K from a piece of sheet metal, in general shape similar to that used for support H, the dimensions being made as required, and no spring arrangement being provided. Drill these metal fittings, as indicated, for the points of fastening, and mark the places for the holes in which shafts or axles run very carefully.
The driving mechanism can then be made, as shown in Fig. 1, and detailed in Figs. 5 and 6. The driving shafts and their parts, as well as the pulleys, can be turned in a lathe, or made from spools, round rods, etc. Make the front axle L, and wheels, joined solidly, 5³⁄₄ in. over all, the grooved wheels being ³⁄₄ in. thick, and 1⁷⁄₁₆ in. in diameter. Wires are used as bearings for shafts for the driving axles. If the rear axle is turned in a lathe, it is cut down to the shape indicated, thinner at the middle, to provide a place for the cord connected to the rubber motor. The grooved pulley and the fluted drive wheel at the winding-key end, shown in Fig. 5, are then cut
loose; the drive wheel on the other end is cut loose, forming three sections, mounted on the wire axle, one end of which is the winding key. Ratchet wheels, M, are fitted between the ends of the center section and the adjoining pieces, the ratchet wheels being nailed to the center section and soldered to the wire axle. Pawls, U, are fitted to the inside of the two end sections, as indicated in Fig. 1 and in Fig. 5. When the rubber motor is wound up on the drum, the tractor bands are gripped until it is desired to start the tank on its trip. Then the power is communicated from the drum, or center section of the axle, to the drive wheels by means of the ratchet wheels, acting on the pawls.
Mount the hangers F on the center crosspiece D, fitting the axles of the drive wheels into place. Make the weighted flywheel, and mount it on its shaft, as shown, lining it up with the pulley on the rear drive shaft. Fit the supports J and K into place, setting spools for the rubber-motor cord in place, on wire axles. Arrange the belt from the flywheel to the drive shaft, and connect the rubber bands for the rubber motor as shown. Fasten one end in the hook of support J, and pass the winding cord through the spools, and fix it to the drive shaft. The device can then be operated with the fluted drive wheels, bearing on strips of wood for tracks.
The tractor bands N are fitted over the drive wheels, as shown in Fig. 6. They are built up of canvas strips, on which wooden shoes are glued and sewed, as detailed in Fig. 5. The stitches which reinforce the gluing are taken in the order indicated by the numerals. The pilot wheel is 2 in. in diameter, and sharpened at its circumference. Make a metal shell, O, for it, as detailed in Fig. 6.
Solder the shell to the double wire, which supports the wheel and gives it a spring tension to take obstructions nicely. The wire is fastened to the crosspiece D, as shown in Fig. 5.
The gun and its mechanism can be made handily before the support E is fixed into place at the front of the crosspiece D. Shape the magazine P from sheet metal, making it 2⁵⁄₈ in. high, as detailed in Fig. 4. Make the gun Q from a piece of sheet metal, as detailed, cutting the metal to the exact dimensions indicated. Mount the magazine and the gun, and arrange the wire hammer R, and the rubber band that holds it. Fit the pulley A into place on its axle,
supported by a small block of wood. Belt it to the front drive-wheel axle, as shown in Fig. 5, after the gun support is fastened into place with screws. Make the projectiles of wood, as shown, and the fighting tank is ready to be tested before putting on the armor.
The armor is made of one deck piece, S, Fig. 3, into which the covered turret is set, and two side pieces T, as detailed in Fig. 2. Make one left and one right sidepiece, allowing for the flanges all around, to be bent over and used for riveting or soldering the armor together. The bottom extension on the sidepieces is bent double to form an angle, on which the armor is supported, where it rests on the top of the hangers F. The turret is fitted to the deck by cutting notches along its lower edge, the resulting strips being alternately turned in and out along the point of joining, as shown in Fig. 3. When the armor is completed, it is fitted over the main frame, the gun projecting from the turret. Small pins hold the ends of the armor solid against the ends of the main frame C, so that the armor can be lifted off readily. The various parts of the fighting tank can be painted as desired, care being taken not to injure the points of bearing, on the axles and pulleys, which should be oiled. Silver bronze is a good finish for the exterior of the armor, which may be decorated with a coat of arms.
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Plan and Side Elevation of the Interior Mechanism, with the Armor Removed, and Details of the Metal Fittings, the Ratchets, and the Tractor Bands
A Neat and Economical Baby Crib Made from a Clothes Basket
A Few Sticks of Wood and a Clothes Basket Make a Convenient Cradle for the Baby
A clothes basket on a simple but strong wooden frame, mounted on castors, makes a cradle which is as convenient and sanitary as many which are sold for five times its cost. It is light enough to roll out on the porch without difficulty, and may be padded and fitted with pillows until the most exacting mother is satisfied. The basket and frame should be painted, preferably some light color. The whole cost,
not including pads or pillows, should not be over $2.50.—A. Switzer, Denver, Colo.
