74 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb., 



repetition suppressed. If one but consider ; an account of the 

 morphology of the tadpole's skull is as difficult to set forth well as the 

 creature of a boy's story. Yet you read "Treasure Island" between 

 London and York after a nice decision between it and the current 

 Truth, and Long John Silver sticks in your mind, not to be rid of, a 

 permanent possession. Yesterday you read a description, many pages 

 long, of a new genus, anxious on the details, comparing and weighing: 

 to-day you are running round to the library to read again an important 

 point that failed to impress itself. This happy art of presentment 

 comes not by grace or by knowledge ; but by patience and 

 labour. 



Next, from the words and phrasing much also may be learned. 

 To those unversed in the analysis of sentences, many lines of 

 Stevenson seem whimsically peculiar, full of deliberate abnormality. 

 But let such examine the easy transition from idea to idea, the 

 orderly progression of the exposition, and they shall see how the 

 words and phrases are chosen and arranged for the simple purpose of 

 presenting the ideas in the directest and shortest fashion, which also 

 is the intention, although not the achievement, of scientific writing. 



Stevenson and Science. 



For the mention of Stevenson a sturdier excuse than our need 

 of the qualities of his style may be found in his excursions into the 

 province of natural science. Of these, two are memorable ; the essay 

 " Pulvis et Umbra" in "Across the Plains," and a poem entitled 

 " The Woodman " in the New Review for January. 



The essay, and we commend it to all readers who do not know 

 their Stevenson, is an attempt with a strongly ethical basis to express 

 a monistic "idea of man's relation to the universe, and to contrast 

 with it his kinship to the dust, his thought of duty, and his ineffectual 

 effort to do well. The essay is so short and so well-knit that quota- 

 tion from it is not advisable. It is however interesting to note that 

 while Professor Huxley in his Romanes lecture (see Natural Science, 

 vol. iii., p. 62) laid down that the cosmic process was not only non- 

 moral but immoral, Stevenson reads in it " a bracing gospel." 



The poem, published last month, is practically an account of the 



struggle for existence among plants in the tropics, and much of it 



might be a paraphrase of Dr. Rodway's essay on the struggle for life 



in a Guiana forest that appeared in our columns. We quote a few 



lines : — 



I saw the wood for what it was — 

 The lost and the victorious cause ; 

 The deadly battle pitched in line, 

 Saw silent weapons cross and shine ; 

 Silent defeat, silent assault — 

 A battle and a burial vault. 



