240 WRITING AND CONSERVATISM 



room for publishers, and bootmakers, who next to the 

 former inflict the greatest misery on unoffending 

 mortals.* 



He insisted always on a high degree of accuracy in 

 his pupils, greatly to their benefit in after years, and 

 advised them always to write down their ideas and 

 record any interesting observations. He would often 

 himself copy pages out of a book which he did not 

 possess, for possible future use. 



Don't give way to the desire of self-advertisement. 

 Depend upon it your opportunities will come of them- 

 selves. But it is a good thing to write down one's 

 thoughts, theories and inventions, though it may be 

 years before one uses them. What I put into my 

 article " Migration " was sketched out and in part 

 written one night at Brussels, at least 20 years before 

 I had the chance of putting it into the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica ! " f 



As to writing and tearing up what one has written, 

 I take that to be the only way of doing good work — 

 and even the practice I have had for fifty years does 

 not save me from that kind of thing. What I wrote 

 on Gilbert White for the " Diet, of Nat. Biogr." must 

 have been written and rewritten three or four times 

 at least, some passages perhaps less often, but others 

 more. % 



. . . What I mean by " revision " — about which 

 you inquire — I can best explain by stating my own 

 way of proceeding. I write, rewrite, and again rewrite, 

 everything I intend for publication — beside reading 

 aloud to myself all I have written between the 2nd and 

 the 3rd writing — and again after the 3rd writing is 

 done. It is a tedious business, and apparently not 



* Letter to J. A. Harvie-Bro\vn, September 26, 1905. 

 t Letter to C. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, March 23, 1901. 

 X Letter to R. Holt- White, October, 1899. 



