PREFACE. 



THE necessity for saying something by way of Preface for the 

 Twenty-Third time renders the formality increasingly difficult 

 with every added year. Fortunately, we do not regard the ceremony 

 as a " formal " one, but as a sort of annual hand-shaking between the 

 Editor and his wide-spread staff of contributors, and still wider and 

 immenser crowd of readers. Twenty-three years is a fair period in 

 which to test the right of such a magazine as SCIENCE-GOSSIP to a 

 literary existence. A good many able competitors and co-adjutors 

 have come and gone ; others are still coming and going. There is 

 ample room and verge enough, for a " Struggle for Existence," and 

 a " Survdval of the Fittest " among popular scientific journals as well 

 as among other and lower organisms. 



This has been a Year of Reviews. The history of almost every 

 notable undertaking — scientific, artistic, and literary — has been retro- 

 spectively surveyed for fifty years past. The Queen's Jubilee has 

 been the opportunity of casting up our national intellectual accounts. 

 In no department of progress has faster running been made than in 

 Natural Science, not only in discovery, but in the revelations of new 

 laws, and the growth of a new philosophy. Still more important is 

 the fact, that scientific study and research have now become the 

 recreation and " hobby " of thousands of men engaged in monotonous 

 businesses and hard manual labour, to whom they come to add 

 blessed sweetness to their lives, and make them worth living for. 

 It is with no small satisfaction we find that SCIENCE-GOSSIP has 

 been the means for nearly a quarter of a century of inter- 

 communication between such men. Their number is increasing, and 

 consequently the function of this journal is more necessary at the 

 close of the present year than heretofore. 



