240 WRITING AND CONSERVATISM 



room for publishers, and bootmakers, who next to the 

 former inflict the greatest misery on unoffending 

 mortals.* 



He insisted always on a high degree of accuracy in 

 his pupils, greatly to their benefit in after years, and 

 advised them always to write ' down their ideas and 

 record any interesting observations. He would often 

 himself copy pages out of a book which he did not 

 possess, for possible future use. 



Don't give way to the desire of self-advertisement. 

 Depend upon it your opportunities will come of them- 

 selves. But it is a good thing to write down one's 

 thoughts, theories and inventions, though it may be 

 years before one uses them. What I put into my 

 article " Migration " was sketched out and in part 

 written one night at Brussels, at least 20 years before 

 I had the chance of putting it into the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica ! " f 



As to writing and tearing up what one has written, 

 I take that to be the only way of doing good work — 

 and even the practice I have had for fifty years does 

 not save me from that kind of thing. What I wrote 

 on Gilbert White for the " Diet, of Nat. Biogr." must 

 have been written and rewritten three or four times 

 at least, some passages perhaps less often, but others 

 more. % 



. . . What I mean by " revision " — about which 

 you inquire — I can best explain by stating my own 

 way of proceeding. I write, rewrite, and again rewrite, 

 everything I intend for publication — beside reading 

 aloud to myself all I have written between the 2nd and 

 the 3rd writing — and again after the 3rd writing is 

 done. It is a tedious business, and apparently not 



* Letter to J. A. Harvie-Brown, September 26, 1905. 

 t Letter to C. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, March 23, 190L 

 X Letter to R. Holt-White, October, 1899. 



