1887.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 229 
EDITORIAL. 
With the close of the year there comes a proper and welcomed opportunity 
to express our thanks to the multitude of friends who have favored us with 
their contributions and their patronage the past year. We have been especi- 
ally pleased and placed under obligation to those who have been kind enough 
to say that the JouRNAL has been constantly improving in their estimation. 
When things run a little unsatisfactorily, and our readers are far less likely to 
know it than we are, it is of great value and encouragement to be favored 
with a voluntary note of commendation. We also feel under obligation to 
those who have given us kind suggestions relative to points in which their in- 
terest could be more largely stimulated by some action on our part. Perhaps 
the most gratifying fact is this, that during the year not a single growl or ill- 
natured comment of any sort has reached us. This is, doubtless, better treat- 
ment than we have deserved, and it goes to the credit side of our account with 
every friend and patron of the JOURNAL. 
It would not be modest for a scientific periodical trusting to intrinsic merit 
for support to give way to the holiday whim of making great promises for 
the new year; not that our contemporaries who indulge in this custom are 
insincere at all, but that all experience shows it better to do and not promise 
rather than to promise and not do. 
Propriety, however, will permit us to say that Professor Osborn is ex- 
pected to continue in editorial charge, at least until the return of Professor 
Romyn- Hitchcock from Japan next August, and that contributions will 
meantime be made by the latter. Beginning with the January number, Mr. 
Chas. W. Smiley becomes a partner with Mr. Hitchcock in the ownership of 
the JouRNAL, and will manage its business aflairs. This gentleman has, for 
a number of years past, been connected with the United States ish Commis- 
sion. He has edited and published a dozen volumes or more under the 
guidance of the late Professor Baird, and is well known in college circles as 
one of the editors of the Alumnz Record of Wesleyan University, from 
which college he graduated in 1874. Mr. Smiley is not a microscopist, but 
is interested in economic science, having been elected Vice-President of that 
section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its 
last meeting. ~** 
According to our rule, all subscriptions expire with this number, and in 
each case the fact will be emphasized by a pink wrapper. A few exceptional 
subscriptions run over into 1888, and we should now be glad to have these 
extended to the close of that year. In sending in your renewals for 1885S, you 
can make us doubly glad by adding the names and addresses of your acquaint- 
ances who own microscopes, and to whom it might be a mutual advantage 
for us to send a copy of the JourNAL. Every little courtesy of this sort helps 
to cement our friendships al] around. It is too trite to say that the resultant 
successes of the JouRNAL react in improvements upon those who render 
the aid. 
This, then, is about all we have to say upon the topic which is uppermost 
in the minds of all managers of periodicals. We have now so much to thank 
you all for that the garments of the beggar do not fit us. We appreciate your 
kind support, and have tried to merit it. 
O 
Science and freedom.—It would be difficult to utter anything new on 
the topic of original research, and especially on the duty of encouraging it 
and the values which result from its pursuit. Professor Agassiz asserted 
that the study of natural science, by requiring its devotee to study for himself 
