GENERAL OBSERVATIONS: ON KEEPING ONE's OWN COUNSEL 655 



practical man who is generally clamoring to have his own selfish 

 needs satisfied without much consideration for the research 

 worker. He thinks it enough if the scientific man's salary is 

 paid quarterly, yet there are more important obligations than 

 payment of salary. The number of scientific men who deliber- 

 ately steal from their fellows is few, I should hope, yet a half 

 dozen glaring instances of this sort of iniquity have come to my 

 knowledge in recent years and lead me to believe that his dis- 

 reputable kind must be always wandering about. The scientific 

 man must, therefore, protect himself as best he can not only from 

 this class but from that much larger class who have some ideas of 

 their own, which, however, require the stimulus of another's 

 speech to render them fertile, and who seldom trace their in- 

 centive to its real source, or give any thought to it. We are 

 all more or less of this sort, and while protecting our own discover- 

 ies should also avoid receiving what properly belongs to another. 

 These remarks lead naturally to the following piece of 

 advice, viz., when you are with men working independently in the 

 same field or with their friends — keep your own counsel. You 

 may talk freely with them on apparatus, technic, the last 

 novel, or any subject on which you are not working, but never a 

 word on what you have discovered, or are now doing ! It is time 

 enough for them to know when you publish to the world what 

 you have discovered. Conversely, a dehcate sense of propriety 

 should lead you to avoid trying to discover what the other man 

 has done, or is doing. In other words : Don't talk shop with 

 visitors. Any other course is suicidal. Nor should visitors be 

 allowed to wander freely about experimental houses, laboratories, 

 or grounds since an inoculated plant or animal may speak plainer 

 than a man on a house-top. Cases are known where even the 

 reading of a paper in advance of its publication has given another 

 man opportunity to lay fraudulent claim to priority of discovery, 

 with resulting loss, recrimination and bitterness. For this 

 reason papers detailing important discoveries should not be read 

 before societies until they are actually in type and ready to 

 appear. It is not a good plan even to tell what you contem- 

 plate doing. Do it, rather than expatiate on it, and when it is 

 done then quickly make it available to every one. 



