156 NATURAL SCIENCE [March. 



ever and wherever he can, and then dumping his heterogeneous 

 contributions into the common hodge-podge. How are we ever to- 

 extricate ourselves from such appalling confvision ? The ambition 

 to be prolific rather than sound is a peril against which we seem to- 

 have no protection at present. And yet, if I mistake not, there is a 

 growing sentiment against such traffic in science, which will eventu- 

 ally make it plain that ambition in that direction spends itself in 

 vain. A dozen or more dumps a year, with as many or more retrac- 

 tions, corrections and supplements, is only a modest-sized ambition. 

 Conclusions are palmed upon the unsuspecting reader, and then,^ 

 without compunction or apology, reversed from day to day or from 

 month to month, or, worse still, in an appendix subjoined, so that it 

 may be seen how little it costs to be prolific when one day's work 

 cancels another." 



Dr Whitman casts about for a remedy. He sees that every 

 worker cannot have Darwin's industry and reserve, but he 

 thinks that something might be done by training students in 

 laboratories to work on definite problems in co-ordinate groups,. 

 " each performing his mite in conjunction and relation with the- 

 others of his group." Such a method of work would, he points out, 

 be of advantage not only to science but to the workers themselves,, 

 for instead of working in a cloistral and jealous seclusion, they 

 would be brought into active and mutually helpful relations, and 

 enabled to draw from one another the best that each could give. 

 This happy result is to be brought about in great measure by com- 

 bining instruction with investigation in the various scientific labora- 

 tories. We grant that teaching is as valuable to the teacher as ta 

 the taught, but we are a little doubtful whether this introduction 

 of socialism into scientific investigation would not tend to check 

 individual enterprise and to slacken actual advance by taking away 

 the spur of competition. The remedy, it seems to us, is to en- 

 courage so far as possible the idea that one solid piece of work is 

 worth more than a dozen driblets, to look with suspicion on the 

 prolific pamphleteer, and to continue to cast ridicule on that worse 

 than ridiculous nuisance — the preliminary noticer. Let us insist 

 upon exactness of description, accuracy of drawing, correctness of 

 reference, lucidity of style, in short, upon all those qualities that gO' 

 to stamp a scientific monograph as classical. 



The Placentation of Perameles 



The full account of Mr Hill's discovery of a true allantoic placenta 

 in the marsupials Perameles ohesula and nasuta, published in the 

 Quart. Journ. Micro. Science (vol. xl., pp. 885-446, plates 29-33), is 

 one of the most important of recent contributions to zoology. The- 



