188 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
Without conceit in the past, without fancy of the future. 
For to assume is to presume. 
A healthy dissatisfaction is not the same as discontent. 
Accept not for true on the bare assertion. Verify. 
For it is usually ignorance which keeps people content with the worse; 
or, in the pithy word of Shakespeare, “There is no darkness. but 
ignorance.” ; 
The summary of the section says that it deals with such subjects as: 
The Spirit of Search, The Need for Inquiry, Difference, and Continuous 
Oneness of Man. I shall take the summary at its word, being unable 
to find that it actually deals with anything whatever. The third section 
deals largely with disease, such as cancer, and has numerous pictures 
that are quite intelligible. 
How are books like this allowed to come into existence? What sort 
of person, possessing any education whatever, will perpetrate such 
tommy-rot? Here are 324 pages of letter-press, printed on first-class 
paper, and bound as well as the average book of today. ‘There are 
322 line drawings and half tones, and several plates in color. And the 
total value of the book is less than nothing by the value of the materials 
used and the work consumed in its production. Science is neither mys- 
ticism nor scissors-work. Popular science, of course, must be dependent. 
upon research work, and in that sense be parasitic, but it does not 
consist of making dozens upon dozens of clippings and tying them to- 
gether by a few ill-phrased sentences. 
I have just received a book by an Englishman, prominent anon the 
anti-vivisectionists, who maintains that science is responsible for the 
woes of the world. . This creation of Mr. Trumbull’s makes me believe 
the anti-vivisectionist, at least to the point where I wish science had 
never invented the printing press, or for that matter even a language 
and alphabet. CARROLL LANE FENTON. 
