FOREWORD 



BY 



Professor ARTHUR KEITH, F.R.S. 



AS I read over the manuscript pages of these essays, 

 by my friend Morley Roberts, there came back to me 

 the memory of a night in London, when I set out from a 

 scientific meeting to guide a provincial colleague to his 

 hotel through streets obliterated by a blinding November 

 fog. The way was familiar to me, yet in the end the 

 stranger from the country proved the better guide, for it 

 was he who ultimate^ took us straight to our destination. 

 By the mere use of his map-fed imagination my friend had 

 mastered the details of London better than I had done after 

 years of residence. Imagination with him had turned the 

 dry and dusty maps, plans, contour-lines and guide books of 

 a great city he had never seen into a living realit}', in which 

 he could find his way with confidence, and even offer help 

 to befogged citizens. In these essays by Mr. Morley Roberts 

 we have a parallel case. He has not lived, toiled, and 

 earned a livelihood in any one of the multitude of quarters 

 into which the bewildering City of Modern Science is 

 sharply divided. Yet by the sheer force of his imagination, 

 one which is at once intimate, intuitive, accurate, and vivid 



