102 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 2 



word is stamped with the mark of originality. Now such things as 

 these have no relation to either scientific research or the diffusion of 

 truth. They are, purely and simply, bids for the cheapest" sort of 

 notoriety, and will stand, if indeed they stand at all, in future as 

 monuments of condemnation for whoever has been instrumental in 

 their creation. The probabilities are, however, that they will be 

 cast aside and disappear as of no value whatever and be eliminated 

 precisely as any other impediment. After all, this whole matter of 

 the separation of the truth from error and falsehood may be likened 

 to a huge system of sifting screens, each screen perhaps representing 

 a decade of time. All of the work of human intellect is thrown into 

 a hopper and the mass begins to be shaken downward. Gradually 

 mistakes, misstatements, jealousies, and all of the results of human 

 frailties, the dross if you please, is discarded and finally at the bot- 

 tom Ave have the net results of scientific research. Your success in 

 life as investigators will depend not so much on the bulk that is 

 thrown into the hopper and the noise and dust arising therefrom as 

 upon how much of this pure fact at the bottom of the screens you 

 can yourself lay claim to. I will show you in a moment how the 

 identification may be made. This matter of proper credit as between 

 superior and "subordinate has several times been discussed by this 

 body, always, as it seemed to me, with a too narrow view of the 

 subject, making it something of a personal matter. I do not wish 

 to discuss it in this way, as the question does not seem to me to be 

 definitely understood. 



Perhaps I can best approach the matter by offering an illustration. 

 You may become estranged from your child ; you may disinherit him, 

 disown him and refuse to recognize him in every legal way. He may 

 even be adopted by another. But still the blood of his father and 

 mother alone will flow in his veins. Their ancestry will be his an- 

 cestry, and no law in the universe can make it otherwise. Now every 

 original, unprejudiced observation made is the child of one mind and 

 one pair of eyes, and these alone can be held responsible. There is 

 here a certain entirely natural proprietorship that cannot be either 

 stolen, given away or .disowned, any more than a child can be disas- 

 sociated from its ancestry. Whoever attempts to destroy this respon- 

 sibility commits a crime, not against individuals, but against science 

 itself, and no crime against science, which is only another term for 

 truth, goes ultimately unpunished. Not only is this true with the 

 original observation itself but all others following thereafter, whether 

 contradictory or confirmatory. 



When we come to the subject of publication, we are dealing with 



