1 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



SCIENCE AND POETKY 



Br Dr. CHARLES W. SUPER 



ATHENS, OHIO 



IN the year 1910 there were published in the United States, in round 

 numbers, 13,500 books. This was an increase of about 2,500 over 

 the preceding year. The total for Great Britain was nearly 21,000 for 

 the same biennium. The German output was over 31,000 volumes, the 

 variation between the two years being small. But compared with 1900 

 these figures represent an increase of nearly 6,000 volumes. The total 

 number of book publications now reaches about 150,000 volumes an- 

 nually, although in some countries pamphlets are also reckoned as books. 

 In 1910 there were issued in the United States and Great Britain nearly 

 5,000 volumes under the head of fiction, poetry and the drama, the lat- 

 ter country slightly exceeding the former. To these should be added 

 many translations, cheap reprints of novels of a more or less standard 

 character, and a large number of plays, mostly comedies that are per- 

 formed in every village, town and city from one end of the land to the 

 other. Besides, a great quantity of both prose and verse never appears 

 in book form. One can hardly take up a popular periodical without 

 finding in it some of each, while many contain little else. Furthermore, 

 a great many articles and even books are so permeated and even vitiated 

 by the personality of the author when professedly dealing with facts that 

 they may properly be relegated to the domain of fancy. Their contents 

 pass through the mind of the reader, leaving hardly more residuum 

 than the smoke that goes up a chimney. We need also to remember that 

 the enormous output of the religious press is largely occupied with ques- 

 tions of a more or less theological character as distinguished from prac- 

 tical Christianity, and is so colored with the views of the writers that it 

 may be classed under the head of imaginative literature. We may make 

 the same statement of almost all history dealing with periods more re- 

 mote than two or three centuries. Hardly any two writers agree as to 

 the reliance that should be placed on the so-called original documents; 

 and there is no way of deciding the points at issue. Even subjects of a 

 strictly scientific character appear to need the touch of the magic wand 

 of the writer endowed with a vivid imagination to make them popular. 

 In this kind of literature the French occupy the foremost place. Such 

 books as Mace's "History of a Mouthful of Bread," Verne's fantastic 

 stories, Figuier's "World before the Deluge," and others, have been 

 translated into almost all modern languages and sold in great numbers. 

 When we take into account this enormous mass of printed matter, to 



