340 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov.. 



opportunity of perusing them all. The truth is that, in their zeal 

 and devotion, the labourers at natural history do a great deal of work 

 that is not wanted, of work that has been already done, and of work 

 that is premature. It is, perhaps, almost impossible to place any 

 check upon the performances of the incompetent, but were all that is . 

 done of vital importance, the want of any order or method in 

 presenting it to the world would still involve a prodigious waste of time^ 



It is far easier to point out the evils than to suggest practical 

 and feasible remedies. At the risk of being thought rashly pre- 

 sumptuous, I venture to hint at the possibility of a division of labour 

 among the leading scientific societies. Without any restriction upon 

 the pleasant variety of subjects discussed at their respective meetings,. 

 they might be willing to enter into an amicable concert in regard to 

 printing and publishing. By way of illustration, one could imagine 

 that under such a system the Entomological Society would only issue 

 papers treating of insects, which is, I believe, in a great measure its 

 existing practice ; the Zoological Society would content itself with 

 essays on the rest of the animal world, and the Linnean would deal 

 only with the science of the vegetable kingdom. This particular 

 apportionment of work is not intended for a substantive proposal, but 

 merely for an explanatory suggestion. There would be other societies 

 to consider, other plans to debate, and many inherent difficulties only 

 to be met by compromise. The Microscopical Society, for example,, 

 would naturally say that its work essentially lay in all departments, 

 and could not reasonably be confined to one. Though this would be 

 true of its work, it need not perhaps affect its publications. Such a 

 society might take over the invertebrates from the Zoological, trans- 

 ferring to that and to the Linnean those microscopical investigations 

 which concern the vertebrate animals and higher plants. If only the 

 general idea of the division of labour were accepted, it would be 

 derogatory to men of science to suppose them incapable of devising 

 efficient means of reducing the principle to practice. One might hope 

 that, if a beginning were made, either in this country or in any other, 

 the merits of the system would soon be widely appreciated, and 

 concerted action be taken not only among the societies of a single 

 nation, but among those of a continent. 



There would still be the unfathomable deluge of miscellaneous 

 zoological writings spread over books of travel and over countless 

 magazines issued by private enterprise. But upon many or all of 

 these the force of good example and of public opinion might be ex- 

 pected gradually to operate. No one need be alarmed that the 

 proposed concentration of subjects would result in too much narrow- 

 ness of mind, for there will certainly always be a residuum of 

 magazines aiming at a kind of fragmentary omniscience, giving some 

 information on every possible subject, that every possible customer 

 may find some scientific scrap to suit his favourite taste and. 

 particular desire of knowledge. 



