January 21, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



knowledge, the hard fossils of what were 

 once stimulating thoughts. In the ancient 

 world the Bleusinian mysteries were with- 

 held from the crowd and knowledge was 

 the possession of a few. Do the latter day 

 priests of science desire to imitate the at- 

 tendants of the old Greek temples and con- 

 fine their secrets to a few of the elect by 

 the use of a formalism which is the mere 

 abracadabra of speech? Among certain 

 scientific men there is a feeling that scien- 

 tists should address themselves only to 

 fellow scientists, and that to become an 

 expositor to the unlearned is to lose caste 

 among the learned. It is the siirvival of 

 the narrow spirit of the dark ages, before 

 modern science was born. There are not 

 many, however, who dare confess to such 

 a creed, although their actions may occa- 

 sionally endorse it. On the whole, modern 

 science is nothing if not catholic in its 

 generosity. ' To promote the increase of 

 natural knowledge and to forward the ap- 

 plication of scientific methods of investiga- 

 tion to all the problems of life ' was the 

 avowed purpose of the greatest of the phi- 

 losophers of the Victorian era. 



There are those who are full of a similar 

 good will, but they fail in giving effect to it 

 because they are unable to use language 

 which can be widely understood. In its 

 very infancy geology was nearly choked 

 with big words, for Lyell, the father of 

 modern geology, said, seventy years ago, 

 that the study of it was ' very easy, when 

 put into plainer language than scientific 

 writers choose often unnecessarily to em- 

 ploy.' At this day even the publications 

 of the Geological Surveys of the United 

 States and the Australian colonies, for ex- 

 ample, are occasionally restricted in use- 

 fulness by erring in this respect, and as I 

 yield to none in my appreciation of the 

 splendid service done to geology and to 

 mining by these surveys, I trust my criti- 

 cism will be accepted in the thoroughly 



friendly spirit with which it is offered. It 

 seems to me that one might almost say 

 that certain of these extremely valuable 

 publications are ' badly ' prepared be- 

 cause they seem to overlook the fact that 

 they are, of course, intended to aid the 

 mining community in the first place and 

 the public, whether lay or scientific, only 

 secondarily. From a wide experience 

 among those engaged in mining I can 

 testify that a large part of the literature 

 thus prepared is useless to them and that 

 no one regrets it more deeply than they, 

 because there is a marked tendency among 

 this class of workers to appreciate the 

 assistance which science can give. Take, 

 for example, a sentence like the following, 

 extracted from one of the recent reports of 

 the U. S. Geological Survey. "The ore 

 forms a series of imbricating lenses, or a 

 stringer lead, in the slates, the quartz con- 

 forming as a rule to the carunculated 

 schistose structures, though occasionally 

 breaking across laminte, and sometimes the 

 slate is so broken as to form a reticulated 

 deposit." This was written by one of our 

 foremost geologists and, when translated, 

 the sentence is found to convey a useful 

 fact, but is it likfely to be clear to anyone 

 but a traveling dictionary? A thoroughly 

 literary man might know the exact mean- 

 ing of the two or three very unusual 

 words which are employed in this state- 

 ment, but the question is, will it be of any 

 use whatever even to a fairly educated 

 miner, or be understood by those who pay 

 for the preparation of such literature, 

 namely, the taxpayers? An example of 

 another kind is afforded by a Tasmanian 

 geologist who recently described certain 

 ores as due to ' the effects of a reduction in 

 temperature of the hitherto liquefied hy- 

 droplutonic solutions, and their conse- 

 quent regular precipitation.' These solu- 

 tions, it is further stated, presumably for 

 the guidance of those who wield the pick, 



