448 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
among a few of the highest scientific individuals in 
this country, and whose names alone would ensure 
success to any measures they deemed it expedient to 
adopt. This plan consists in the formation of a new 
society, composed entirely and exclusively of the 
élite of science ; and into which no member should 
be admitted, unless his reputation was already esta- 
blished by his writings, or unless he delivered to the 
society an original paper, certified as being entirely 
his sole and whole composition *; his calibre would be 
then known, and his admittance or rejection decided 
upon by ballot. Associates would also be admitted, 
chiefly selected from distinguished foreigners: the 
subscription would be comparatively small, so as not 
to operate asa pecuniary objection. The number of 
members would be very limited, so that not more 
than two, or, at most, three, in each department of 
the physical sciences, would be admitted. When 
the society consisted of about thirty or forty, 
new elections would only take place when vacancies 
arose from death or otherwise. Such are the main 
* It may appear singular that such a certificate should be 
necessary, but the ingenious author of the “ Reflections, ” 
however ably he has exposed most of the frauds of science, 
seems yet to be unacquainted with one, which has been exten- 
sively practised of late years among naturalists. It is for an 
unscientific individual to get some “ friend” to write a paper 
for a journal or a society, describing his discoveries, and to 
which his name is appended as the author. We know, from 
personal knowledge, several instances of this fraud. The most 
remarkable, however, are those that have been practised upon 
the Linnean Society; in whose Transactions are two papers 
on ornithology, bearing the name of one whont we happen to 
know can scarcely write his own name. 
