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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



RANDOM REMARKS OF A LADY 

 SCIENTIST. 

 To the Editor: I am a lady scientist, 

 and I suppose you will think it very 

 rude in me to intrude what I think into 

 the grand affairs of a great scientific 

 magazine. But I really must say to you 

 that it is very shameful of you to en- 

 courage Mr. Starr Jordan to indulge his 

 fiendish delight in depreciating feminine 

 science — Karyokinesis. I feel his at- 

 tack bitterly, for after passing an ex- 

 amination — equal to that described by 

 Monsieur Arago in his Autobiography, 

 during which a bright young man of 

 more than usual assurance even for a 

 Frenchman was so put upon by old Mr. 

 Monge, the mathematician, that he 

 fainted and had to be carried out past 

 Mr. Arago and the other gentle- 

 men in the antechamber on a shut- 

 ter — in astronomy, geology, chemistry, 

 physics, meteorology both in the past 

 perfect and future indicative, mathe- 

 matics and sociology, I obtained my 

 present position as copyist at $480 per 

 annum in the Direction of Science, Di- 

 vision of Karyokinesis. 



I do not believe at all in this ex-post- 

 facto theory of abolishing time and 

 space, which is unconstitutional, any- 

 how, because it is forbidden by the Dec- 

 laration of Independence and is im- 

 perialism. Now, I am going to take Mr. 

 Starr Jordan up, word for word, and 

 show that he is simply ridiculous. 



Telepathy is a pure science. It is 

 pure because it was a woman who in- 

 vented it. No man could ever have had 

 the sense to get up such a science. A 

 man's intellect is fatally defective. You 

 positively can not make it comprehend 

 that if everybody stops doing drudgery 

 because the world is an oyster, things 

 will go on just the same, if not better. 

 I know there are exceptions, but such 



exceptional men are really, speakiag 

 psychologically, women, and may for 

 convenience of reference be called Unter- 

 menschen; and probably Mr. Alexander 

 Dumas, fils, was describing one of these 

 gifted minds in his charming moral 

 story where Count Petit LavellSre de 

 Chateau-Bourbon capers about the 

 sleeping-apartment of Madame Revoca- 

 tion de la Tour de Nesle on all fours 

 like a spaniel, with her real point-lace 

 handkerchief in his mouth. 



Compare the delicate suggestiveness 

 of this beautiful picture with the coarse 

 vulgarity of a vile Scot's lord at a card 

 party when his partner, the Viscountess 

 Smith, played the wrong card. "You 

 old bitch," roared the noble (!) lord, 

 "what did you play that card for?" And 

 then, recalled to his environment by the 

 look of astonishment on her ladyship's 

 face, he blurted out: "Your pardon's 

 begged, mum. I thought I was speak- 

 ing to me wife," just as though that 

 poor woman was his 'chum.' 



Of course, at this stage of scientific 

 expansion it is impossible to rear every 

 man as an Untermensch, as we should be 

 able to rear him were we in possession 

 of the universities, and like he is reared 

 in the seraglio by the eunuchs and the 

 ladies of the harem so quaintly pictured 

 by Lord Byron, a man of strong Turkish 

 characteristics, in his sweet tale of Dob 

 Juan. When, however, advancing civ- 

 ilization has discredited the vague and 

 unsatisfactory principle of evolution or 

 the survival of the fittest or force sci- 

 ence for the immediate and visible prin- 

 ciple of Karyokinesis, or egg science, 

 which depends on hatching and not on 

 principle, however, then the strange no- 

 tion that the meaning of childhood i* 

 to give time to live through the history 

 of the race will be discarded, and it will 

 be openly taught that a child goe* 



