METHODS 201 



their atomic weight. Mcndclecf was the first to publish, but Newlands 

 had independently arrived at the same conclusions. At the meeting at 

 which he read his paper, a critic rose to inquire sarcastically whether 

 Mr. Newlands had thought of arranging the elements in alphabetical 

 order. If this man had been a referee under modern conditions, would 

 Newlands's paper have been published? 



I therefore suggest that any person who has really taken the trouble 

 to make observations or experiments, and feels certain after reading 

 the relevant hterature that he has something new, should write up the 

 results, submit them for publication, and brave the referees. You, the 

 author, always know more than they do, otherwise it would be they 

 who would have written the paper. 



There is, however, a gap in the means provided for scientific 

 pubhcation. A trivial observation may not seem worth pubhshing. 

 It may be far too small to make a subject for a paper, and even too 

 small for a letter to Nature. If, however, there were many observations 

 all of the same kind it would be realized that the observation was no 

 accident, but a real natural phenomenon. In writing this book, I 

 have often wished that there had been a central register where I could 

 find, on standard postcards, casual but authentic trifling observations 

 on the hfe of a frog. For example, one observation that frog-spawn 

 had been found in Norfolk in August could be considered a freak 

 event. If, however, in thirty years, there had been seventeen observa- 

 tions, all in the Eastern Counties, it would have started a train of 

 thought that might have led — who knows where? Sometimes authors 

 succeed in inserting minor observations in the midst of other matter. 

 For example, the account of aquatic insects in the food of hibernating 

 frogs appears in the almost verbatim reports of the proceedings of a 

 symposium on endocrinology. It was quite out of context there, and 

 I only found it because I happened to be reading the proceedings. The 

 author and the editor had been wise enough to allow an irrelevant 

 observation to stand in the final printed page, thus enabling me, by 

 luck, to lift it into a place where those concerned with the feeding 

 habits of the frog, but not with endocrinology, may hope to fmd it. 



The Technique of Keeping Animals in Captivity 



The skill often shown by the amateur pet-keeper is probably not 

 easily communicated to anyone else, and in this respect resembles that 

 of the gardener. It is nevertheless true that there is a reservoir of 



