3 o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to observe for the public he joins the clan of ' poet-naturalists/ who, 

 as John Burroughs has said, ' hold the eye close to the facts and will 

 not be baffled/ It must be confessed that very seldom are they baffled. 

 The judgment of the editors referred to, therefore, is that the middle- 

 man should be abolished, in so far as he is merely an interpreter. As 

 for the poet-naturalist, he will cease to appear scientific when the 

 middle men are abolished. 



This means a distinct invitation to investigators to become their 

 own interpreters, an invitation which will come to most of them with 

 a distinct shock, if not as an absurdity. Taking it seriously, however, 

 and waiving its absurdity for the moment, what is there in the way of 

 accepting the invitation? 



The readiest answer to this question is that it would be a waste of 

 time, and under the present conditions the answer seems true. The 

 investigator's chief concern is his investigation; and he does not see 

 how it can be benefited by any information he may give to the public. 

 If such a benefit is not evident, the invitation should be declined; for 

 to accept it under these circumstances is to strain after a little cheap 

 notoriety. 



But the invitation involves a change of conditions, a change in the 

 policy of editors, on the one hand, and of investigators on the other. 

 If under the new conditions it can be made to appear worth while to 

 accept the invitation, what is there still in the way? It is not to be 

 expected that investigators in general will undertake to learn the art 

 of popular writing, or will take the time to exercise it if they do not 

 need to learn it. The only thing asked for is a simple statement, in 

 terms that intelligent, but non-scientific, persons can understand, of 

 the nature and bearing of an investigation. This would be authori- 

 tative, and would be used, so our friends, the editors, assure us, not 

 only in checking the wild vagaries of the reportorial imagination, but 

 also in bringing to the public a large amount of information which no 

 reporter could discover. Emphasis is to be laid upon the bearing of 

 an investigation, for, naturally, this is the point of vital interest to the 

 public, and the point of importance, as I shall show later. For ex- 

 ample, I might describe in perfectly simple English the results of some 

 experiments I had performed with evening primroses or with pigeons, 

 and people would simply wonder at the things that amuse some men; 

 but if it were added that these experiments have a bearing upon the 

 origin of species and upon heredity, the investigation at once assumes 

 a dignity and an importance that even the public will be quick to 

 appreciate. 



One sees repeatedly in the public press joking, if not sneering, 

 allusions to the immediate subject matter of some investigation, which 

 seems insignificant or even ridiculous to the uninformed, when, in fact, 



