April?, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



521 



ceive sufficient training in tlie public presenta- 

 tion of their ideas, whether those ideas be 

 original or borrowed. Most advanced scientific 

 students in our colleges are obliged to attend 

 and take part in seminars or conferences, at 

 which their colleagues and teachers are sup- 

 posed to criticise any scientific papers that may 

 be presented. So far as my experience goes, 

 the criticism is apt to be almost wholly as to 

 scientific accuracy, with but little thought of 

 several other points that are of vital impor- 

 tance. I fear teachers and professors are too 

 apt to tolerate poor order, poor English and a 

 ' dead-and-alive ' manner of speaking, thinking 

 the unfortunate beginner will gain wisdom by 

 experience. 



Judging from my own experience and the 

 comments of others, I would say that our 

 scientific workers often fail to carry their point 

 and to win public sympathy for their work and 

 cause because in their public utterances they 

 do not follow rational lines of procedure. They 

 are very apt : (1) to present an unorganized and 

 apparently unrelated series of facts — their plan 

 is rambling ; (2) not to choose and emphasize 

 the important points, probably because of lack 

 of training in measuring the comparative worth 

 of facts ; (3) to use poor and inexcusable Eng- 

 lish ; (4) to speak in a dazed sort of way, as 

 though they themselves were not thoroughly 

 convinced, as yet, of the truth of their results ; 

 (5) not to address the audience, a map or a 

 blackboard under their influence being as in- 

 spiring as the audience, and much less embar- 

 rassing ; (6) not to divide their time so as to 

 complete their presentation within reasonable 

 limits, thus causing weariness and restlessness 

 on part of audience ; (7) not to make good use 

 of illustrative material in the way of maps, 

 diagrams, specimens, lantern slides, etc. 



Now the remedy for these serious failures 

 that few men can outgrow seems to me to be 

 largely in the hands of our college and scientific 

 school teachers, and I would like to see a plan 

 adopted in college seminars that would not 

 allow a student to appear before his colleagues 

 and masters until his plan of procedure had 

 been censored, along the lines I have suggested, 

 by some one of experience in public utterance. 



The student should also receive criticism 



after his paper, so as to bring out the weak 

 points in his argument or manner, thus min- 

 imizing the possibility of an equal failure at 

 his next appearance. Such criticism does not 

 kill individuality, but strengthens it, and cer- 

 tainly gives the student a greater confideuce in 

 and respect for his teachers. Should our col- 

 leges and scientific schools uniformly adopt 

 such a method of training, our scientific gath-er- 

 ings ten years hence would not be so largely 

 composed of specialists and those who attend 

 from duty and witli considerable sacrifice. It 

 would also be much easier to secvire public sup- 

 port for scientific work were more of our lead- 

 ers able to win the interest of the public, with- 

 out becoming merely 'popular lecturers,' by 

 whom scientific accuracy is apt to be sacrificed 

 for the sake of impressiveness. 



Such work as I have suggested for our teach- 

 ers takes much time and energy and seems at 

 first not to pay ; but immediate returns are not 

 always the best, and there is no work on the 

 part of a teacher that can give greater satisfac- 

 tion in the long run than that which has helped 

 beginners to make the most of their latent 

 powers. 



Richard E. Dodge. 



Teachers College, 

 Columbia University. 



A remarkable sun-dog. 

 The appended diagram is an attempt to record 

 the appearance presented by a rare and remark- 

 able ' sun-dog ' seen at Hamline, Minnesota, at 

 9:50 a. m., on February 10th. It was a very 



c ;-• ^ m h> -id 



e\. Hovixor^. 



