118 Notes and News. ie 
est care should be taken to prevent its degeneration into a mere temporary 
fad or to be made ridiculous at the hands of exponents who are unfitted for 
their task. 
The writer has always maintained that a lecture or an article can be 
scientific without being tiresome or unintelligible to a popular audience. 
In other words scientific facts can be presented in popular language with- 
out losing any of their force, but the man who does this must know, in the 
first place, what he is talking about. 
As Mrs. Walter says ‘‘the superficial student is apt to shun the trained 
ornithologist’s method” and “to balk at his standard of thoroughness.” 
The inevitable result is to throw discredit upon the whole field of popular 
ornithology. 
It would seem that those responsible for the activities of ornithological 
clubs or classes could do much to check such tendencies as Mrs. Walter 
has referred to. 
The desire to have a lecturer at every club meeting and the natural 
necessity of cutting down expenses leads to accepting those who are only 
too anxious to appear on the lecture platform for little or no compensation 
and whose stock in trade consists of mere anecdotes and time worn facts. 
Better by far have one good speaker a year who is capable of speaking from 
personal experience and research and devote the other meetings to discus- 
sion of local observations under the direction of one who appreciates the 
difference between painstaking scientific field work and careless superficial 
observation. 
The injurious element would thus soon be eliminated and the high 
standard of the study preserved. 
Quality in popular ornithology is the need of today rather than quantity. 
—W.S. 
