242 NATURAL SCIENCE. 



June, 



author maintains that one in each country ought to be sufficient. 

 Thus, he says the Royal Society pubUshes biological papers which 

 ought to go to the Linnean Society, with the result that the contri- 

 bution is issued with a series on wholly different subjects ; the younger 

 biologists do not obtain the paper unless they can afford the heavy 

 expense of buying the Phil. Trans., while it is freely distributed to the 

 Fellows of the other society, the majority of whom have no interest 

 in the subject, and are unable to appreciate its importance. "This," 

 says the Free Lance, " is worse than casting the children's bread 

 to the dogs, for at least the dogs could digest it and benefit by it ; we 

 simply cast their bread away." The essayist maintains that we have 

 the same confusion all round : several societies or journals are doing 

 the work that one ought to do, and the resulting pecuniary waste and 

 administrative inefficiency has grown to such an extent "that the 

 chaotic rule of the Heptarchy was almost orderly compared with the 

 state of things now existing in the domain of science." 



To find the way out of this darkest scientific England the author 

 proposes to proceed on the waste-not-want-not lines, and thus to 

 rescue the younger scientists at present submerged beneath the deluge 

 of innumerable journals. He would have the Royal Society cease the 

 publication of memoirs that come within the scope of the specialist 

 societies, and confine itself to the work of indexing and abstracting 

 literature, attending to the business and educational work of science, 

 and acting as Universal Bibliographer. Each other society should 

 confine itself rigidly to its own sphere, and not encroach on that of 

 its neighbour. The Zoological Society should give up its system 

 " of flagrantly robbing the Linnean Society " by publishing zoological 

 papers "of high scientific importance," and confine its attention to 

 feeding the animals at the Zoological Gardens. The Microscopical 

 vSociety should publish only on microscopes and microscopic 

 appliances, while all the smaller provincial journals, and those 

 not connected with any society, such as the Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopical Science, the Annals of Botany, &c., should promptly cease 

 to exist. Against the unfortunate botanists who founded the last- 

 mentioned journal the " Free Lance " runs his most furious tilt ; 

 he regards this as the mere "wanton extravagance of publication," 

 and as " the most wanton and inexcusable instance of journalistic 

 disorganisation that could be found." The local societies and 

 their journals he proposes should be all affiliated to the London 

 societies in a general federation, compared with which we fear the 

 feat of the great Cape Amalgamator was but child's play. The idea, 

 however, is a good one. 



In all this there is, it must be admitted, a distinct measure of 

 truth ; and the author states the points with such vigour and incisive- 

 ness that he may be excused for exaggerating the evils of the case. 

 Everyone who has seen much of the working of the English scientific 

 societies has felt the same difficulties, while recognising also that as 



