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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



WEAL THY SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGA TOES. 



THE appearance of Sir John Lub- 

 bock's remarkable book on " Ants 

 and Bees" lias awakened some inter- 

 esting discussion as to why there are 

 not more such authors, and why, espe- 

 cially, we have no representatives of 

 the class in this country. Sir John 

 Lubbock is a man of wealth, who could, 

 if he pleased, " enjoy " his liberal 

 means that is, spend his time in dig- 

 nified idleness or elegant amusement ; 

 but he finds his pleasure, on the con- 

 trary, in all kinds of hard work, and, 

 although he takes abundant relaxation, 

 he never wastes an hour. The " Scien- 

 tific American " remarks that we have 

 a wealthy, idle class of men, who have 

 no need to labor with hand or head, 

 and who are free from every care. 

 But, impelled by fashion, hundreds of 

 such young men are to-day scouring the 

 Adirondacks, or shooting the rapids of 

 the St. Lawrence, and boring themselves 

 to death in quest of amusement, because 

 " it is quite the thing, you know." 

 Here is the- material from which natu- 

 ralists a :d independent investigators of 

 nature ought to be recruited in this 

 country. 



To such men Sir John Lubbock has 

 set a noble example. Something much, 

 indeed, is to be first of all allowed to 

 genius, but more is to be allowed to a 

 dominant purpose, and the unremitting 

 assiduity which is pleasurable when 

 there is a cultivated interest in the sub- 

 ject. There is an all-sided activity in 

 this case which is quite remarkable. 

 To begin with, Sir John Lubbock is by 

 profession a banker, and so thoroughly 

 a man of business as to be not only a 

 successful money-maker, but a leading 

 reformer of the English banking sys- 

 tem. His important work in this direc- 



tion is thus well summed up in the 

 " Whitehall Eeview " : 



He has made two great landmarks in the 

 history of banking which will always be 

 associated with his name. One of these is 

 the bank holiday ; the other, the institution 

 of the clearing-house of country hanks, by 

 which the benefits long known in the city 

 of London were extended to all parts of the 

 country. All the honors that the banking 

 world could confer upon him have been lib- 

 erally bestowed. He is the president of the 

 Institute of Bankers, with its two thousand 

 members, and holds the peculiar and remark- 

 able position of honorary secretary of the 

 London Association of Bankers. He is thus 

 , the medium between the banks and the Gov- 

 ; ernment, and the chosen exponent of the 

 : views of hankers in relation to Government. 

 ' Then, he has instituted a system of examina- 

 I tion for bankers' clerks corresponding to the 

 | civil-service examinations. Sir John was a 

 ', member of the Internationa] Coinage Com- 

 mittee appointed by Government, and he is 

 j the author of a great variety of papers in 

 financial literature. 



And yet all this is but the subordi- 

 nate and incidental part of Sir John 

 , Lubbock's work. He is pre-eminently 

 1 a scientific investigator, and it is as 

 such that he will be chiefly known in 

 the future. A sagacious, patient, plod- 

 ding observer of minute phenomena, 

 he is at the same time a comprehensive 

 original thinker, and had made a world- 

 wide reputation by his researches into 

 prehistoric archaeology before he en- 

 tered upon the systematic study of the 

 social hymenoptera, the results of 

 which are but just published. 



If, now, we press the question why 

 there are not more such men, particu- 

 larly in this country, in the ranks of 

 science, and helping forward its work, 

 it will be an evasion to answer that it 

 is for lack of native capacity or the 

 talent for such labor. We have plenty 

 of this good mind running to waste 



