2 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



aid of which we have already spoken. It is obviously impossible for 

 a scientific monthly to emulate the daily newspaper, to retain paid 

 correspondents in every city of the globe, or to send a special com- 

 missioner on a roving tour. But with the goodwill of our colleagues 

 Natural Science may easily be made a bond of union, and a means 

 of communication between naturalists of our own race in all parts of 

 the world. Not that we would in any way pass over foreign labourers 

 in the same field ; but if we can make our summary of British 

 Scientific Progress fairly complete, then our Journal will be of all the 

 greater use to those who have not had the rare good-fortune to be 

 born Britons. 



But it is not our only object to retail the results of investigation, 

 and to summarise the news of the world of Natural Science. We do 

 not merely wish to review scientific progress ; but we hope to assist 

 it. And in this hope we have polished our shield bright, and set our 

 lance in rest. May all shams and bugbears, when they see themselves 

 mirrored as they truly are, sink to the nothingness of which they are 

 made ; and may the more enduring obstacles to progress be, if not 

 shivered, at least a little shocked by our onset ! Of course this will 

 gain us enemies as well as friends ; but that is the more evidence of 

 success,, and, after all, we hope our enemies will not be very bitter, 

 since we attack principles not persons, measures not men. It is in 

 pursuit of this aim that we open our columns to those whom authority 

 seems to treat too hardly, even if we do not always agree with them 

 ourselves. It is not always the popular view that is the right one, 

 and the history of Science shows too many instances of folly becoming 

 wisdom, for even an editor to feel his judgment infallible. 



F.R.S.— F.L.S.— F.G.S.— F.Z.S. 



The Royal Society is again under fiie. At the Anniversary 

 Dinner the President himself deplored internal but obvious evidences 

 of its decay, and a correspondent of The Times was not slow to take up 

 the tale. His article, which appeared on December 2, emphasises 

 Lord Kelvin's words and adds some exceedingly outspoken criticisms. 

 The Society is falling, he says, more and more into the hands of biolo- 

 gists, while workers in other branches of science no longer lay their 

 papers before it but before those societies specially interested in their 

 subjects. The cause of this lies, he maintains, " in the excessive 

 influence of a small body of permanent officials, in the practical 

 eff^acement of the non-official council, and in the consequent govern- 

 ment of the Society by cliques instead of by the com.mon-sense of the 

 scientific community at large." As the autocrats in question he 

 denounces the Dons of Cambridge (Trinity College) and the Pro- 

 fessors of South Kensington. The " undue preference " shown in the 

 disposal of the Government grant next receives his censure. Espe- 

 cially does he blame the Solar Physics Committee for drawing money 



