The Days of a Man C1910 



the money already paid would be refunded. I men- 

 tion these little matters because similar affairs in 

 America are always cheerfully financed by the local 

 hosts of a formal convention, and free transportation 



Tiresome is usually fumished by the railways. 



pedantry Among thc various memoirs presented at the 

 Gratz meeting, one by Dr. L. Rhumbler, teacher in a 

 gymnasium in Wiirttemberg, was the worst scientific 

 paper I ever heard. It consisted mainly of a proposi- 

 tion to make generic names of animals and plants 

 more useful by loading them with prefixes giving 

 specific information as to the nature of the organism 

 concerned, together with its geographical distribu- 

 tion. Thus, taking one of his own examples, our 

 Swallowtail Butterfly, Papilio turnus, would become 

 Ylpapilia eturna, the y standing for insect, / for 

 Lepidoptera, the feminine ending a for invertebrate, 

 while e indicates America. 



Rhumbler had been allotted twenty minutes for 

 his discussion. When he had consumed an hour, I 

 raised a point of order; the time for the next paper on 

 the program had long since passed, and I had come 

 to this particular section in order to hear it. But the 

 speaker was indignant at the interruption and kept 

 on to the bitter end, when it transpired that the 

 authors of all the memoirs scheduled to follow had 

 meanwhile left the room. 



As the Congress closed, the municipality gave us a 

 formal banquet, an elaborate affair approved by the 

 elite, who attended in force. My part it was to 



The green tcspond to the toast of " Das grune Land von Steyer- 



^^itil fnark" (the green land of Styria). After merited 

 praise of the countryside, I referred to the rumors 

 of war then rumbling in Europe, although no land 



I 306 1 



Styria 



