to be read and reckoned with, and are just as much part of the self-styled literature of science as are their magna opera. This would not be worth a complaint were it inevitable; but that is just what it is not. If only scientific people in general could be got to care a little about these things, and if only their opinion could be organized and brought to bear more directly on the evil-doers, improvement would soon follow. The fact is that we are too content to muddle along, and what is everybody's business is nobody's business. Hence the student fresh from college, or while still a pupil, is set to attack some problem in science, which, with the help of his professor, he solves in a satisfactory manner. Then he must print, and here, too often, the help of the professor seems to be lacking. The student has had next to no training in the composition of scientific articles and none in the preparation of work for the press. He does not know how to find the previous literature, and when found he does not know how to quote it. Having no experience in the use of other men's writings, he does not know what to insert, what to omit, or what faults to avoid. He is, perhaps, a good draughtsman, but his media have been pencil and paint, and he has no idea how to do black-and white work for the photo-engraver. He begins with a title in the style of the eighteenth century, that takes up three lines and leaves you in the dark as to the contents of his paper. Full of enthusiasm and imbibed knowledge, he either plunges into his subject without explaining what his subject is, or else he introduces it by a lengthy 'history,' mostly copied from the last worker that preceded him. He ends with a nicely rounded period, but you search in vain for a summary of his results.
One cannot be hard on the poor young fellow, who doubtless will do well enough in time; but one can protest against the nonchalance that permits this state of things. There are two sources from which a remedy may spring, and to each we herewith make appeal. First, let the colleges provide instruction in the technique of authorship, just as they provide it in the technique of research. This will not help to swell the flood of publication, too great already; rather it will diminish it, by entailing more rigorous preparation on would-be authors. Let the student be taught the conventional rules that govern the formal aspect of his science, just as he is taught the laws of chemical combination or dental formulae. In zoology and botany, for instance, he should be taught the rules of nomenclature, or at least those generally followed, and taught how to write the names of animals and plants in the accepted manner. He should be made to study the classical memoirs of great masters from the noint of view of presentation—of manner rather than of matter. And even then he should not be turned loose on an unwilling public, but should be practised in writing and drawing for the press, in proof-correcting and so forth. The examiners of doctoral theses should consider their style and arrangement no less than their contents, and, if necessary, should insist on formal alterations being made before they give permission to publish. So much for the universities. The second source of help lies in the editors, whether of independent periodicals or of publishing societies. The editor has, by tacit agreement, great powers. But in the case of publications devoted to pure science, those powers often seem to be very little used. There is a prejudice against interfering with an author's statement of his case; for here the substance is regarded as everything and the form as nothing, and an editor fears lest, in re-shaping the form, he may hack away an essential portion of the substance. This delicacy is likely to be more appreciated by the author in question than by his readers. The editors of purely scientific publications labor, of course, under a peculiar disadvantage in that both the contribution and the publication of matter are voluntary of-
