March 3, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



241 



We can scarcely refrain from suggesting, in 

 the present depleted state of our Treasury De- 

 partment, that all revenue laws should be con- 

 structed for "spirit" attachments. 



G. D. Harris 

 Cornell University 



ALTERNATE BEARING OF FRUIT TREES 



In view of the heightened interest in the 

 alternate bearing of fruit trees and in fruit 

 bud formation it may be interesting to quote 

 the following jaassage from the Magazine of 

 Horticulture for 1847, volume 13, page 438. 

 The note was written by Charles M. Hovey, 

 editor of the magazine, author of several well- 

 known horticultural works, and often called 

 the father of the American strawberrj', after a 

 visit to the Pomological Gardens at Salem, 

 Massachusetts, of Robert Manning, one of the 

 most thorough and accurate students of horti- 

 eultui'e in the early days when amateur interest 

 in fruits ran high : 



Passing a Baldwin apple tree in full bearing, 

 Mr. Manning stated that it was one on which he 

 tried the experiment of changing the bearing 

 year. It is well known that tlie Baldwin only 

 bears every other year. To obviate this was the 

 object of Mr. Manning ; and, in the spring of 

 1846, he spent nearty two days in cutting off all 

 the blossoms. It had the desired effect; this year, 

 the tree is completely loaded with fruit. This 

 experiment is valuable, for it shows that, in a 

 large orchard, when the trees, by chance, nearly 

 all fruit the same year, any number of them can 

 be made to fruit in the alternate year simply by 

 the labor of destroying all the blossoms. 



Harold B. Tukey 

 N. Y. Agricultural Esperiment Station, 

 Geneva, New York 



THE WRITING OF POPULAR SCIENCE 



To THE Editor op Science: In looking 

 through the "List of One Hundi'ed Popular 

 Books in Science" prepared by the Washing- 

 ton Academy of Sciences for the guidance of 

 libraries with limited income, one is struck by 

 the number of foreign books. There are 

 thirty-five British authors, two French (Fabre 

 and Maeterlinck) and one German, (Einstein) ; 

 that is, in searching for the best books on the 



various sciences, regardless of nationality, it 

 was found necessary to go abroad for 38 per 

 cent, of them. 



This is curious since in writing for Amer- 

 ican readers an American author has a decided 

 advantage in that he understands their point 

 of view and can use more or less local illus- 

 trations and comparisons and make allusions to 

 familiar things, whicli are important factors 

 in the popular presentation of scientific ques- 

 tions. 



In spite of this natural handicap on the 

 foreign author, British books form more than 

 a third of this carefully selected list, so it is 

 evident that the British are doing better work 

 in the popularization of science than we are, a 

 conclusion that is confirmed by a comparison 

 of imported and domestic books in publishers' 

 catalogues. We have in this country, for 

 instance, nothing to compare in style of writing 

 and attractive illustrations with the "Outline, 

 of Science" edited by Professor J. Arthur 

 Thomson, which is now being published in 

 parts at 1 shilling, 2 pence, as was Wells' "Out- 

 line of History." I may add that Science 

 Service, which has been scouring the country 

 for a year for popular science writers, has been 

 obliged to go to England for them in many 

 cases. 



This is difficult to account for since our 

 American schools give much more attention to 

 the sciences and to the teaching of English 

 composition than do the British schools and, 

 since we have such an abundance of fluent and 

 facile writers in fiction and journalism and 

 since we have a wider reading public than any 

 other country. But it is questionable whether 

 the interest of the American people in scien- 

 tific questions has kept pace with the growing 

 importance of science in human life. In fact 

 some say that science is losing ground in popu- 

 lar esteem. For instance, Dr. Alfred H. 

 Brooks, of the U. S. Geological Survey, said in 

 his recent presidential address to the Washing- 

 ton Academy of Sciences : 



I venture the opinion that there is to-day rela- 

 tively less popular knowledge of science and less 

 interest in its methods and achievements than 

 there was a generation ago. 



This is a discouraging statement in view of 



