16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been done. It was so skillfully managed that lie could not refuse 

 the tribute without seeming churlish. He therefore accepted it, 

 and applied it to extending his researches in descriptive sociology. 



Of the many visits which Mr. Youmans made to England, now 

 and then extending them to the Continent, one of the most impor- 

 tant was in 1871, for the purpose of establishing the International 

 Scientific Series. This was a favorite scheme of Mr. Youmans. 

 He realized that popular scientific books, adapted to the general 

 reader, are apt to be written by third-rate men who do not well 

 understand their subject ; they are apt to be dry or superficial or 

 both. No one can write so good a popular book as the master of a 

 subject, if he only has a fair gift of expressing himself and keeps in 

 mind the public for which he is writing. The master knows what 

 to tell and what to omit, and can thus tell much in a short com- 

 pass and still make it interesting ; moreover, he avoids the inaccu- 

 racies which are sure to occur in second-hand work. Masters of 

 subjects are apt, however, to be too much occupied with original 

 research to write popular books. It was Mr. Youmans's plan to 

 induce the leading men of science in Europe and America to con- 

 tribute small volumes on their special subjects to a series to be 

 published simultaneously in several countries and languages. 

 Furthermore, by special contract with publishing houses of high 

 reputation, the author was to receive the ordinary royalty on 

 every copy of his book sold in every one of the countries in ques- 

 tion, thus anticipating international copyright upon a very wide 

 scale, and giving the author a much more adequate compensation 

 for his labor. To put this scheme into operation was a task of 

 great difficulty, so many conflicting interests had to be consid- 

 ered. Mr. Youmans's brilliant success is attested by that noble 

 series of more than fifty volumes, on all sorts of scientific sub- 

 jects, written by men of real eminence, and published in England, 

 France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, as well as in the United 

 States. 



A word is all that can be spared for other parts of our friend's 

 work, which deserve many words and those carefully considered. 

 His book on Household Science is not the usual collection of 

 scrappy comment, recipe, and apothegm, but a valuable scien- 

 tific treatise on heat, light, air, and food in their relations to every- 

 day life. In his Correlation of Physical Forces he brings together 

 the epoch-making essays of the men who have successively estab- 

 lished that doctrine, introducing them with an essay of his own 

 in which its history and its philosophical implications are set forth 

 in a masterly manner. In his book on the Culture demanded by 

 Modern Life we have a similar collection of essays with a simi- 

 lar excellent original discussion, showing the need for wider and 

 later training in science, and protesting against the excess of time 



