NATURE AND BOOKS. 29 
time some new discovery is made by a foreign observer, 
which necessitates a complete revision of the subject ; 
and so having shifted the contents of the book about 
hither and thither till he does not know which is the end 
and which is the beginning, he pitches the much-muti- 
lated copy into a drawer and turns the key. Farewell, 
no more of this; his declining days shail be spent in 
peace. A few months afterwards a work is announced 
in Leipsic which ‘really trenches on my favourite sub- 
ject, and really after spending a lifetime I can’t stand 
it’ By this time his handwriting has become so shaky 
he can hardly read it himself, so he sends in despair for 
a lady who works a type-writer, and with infinite patience 
she makes a ‘clean manuscript of the muddled mass. To 
the press at last, and the proofs come rapidly. Sucha 
relief! How joyfully easy a thing is when you set about 
it! but by-and-by this won’t do. Sub-section A ought 
to be in a foot-note, family B is doubtful; and so the 
corrections grow and run over the margin in a thin treble 
hand, till they approach the bulk of the original book— 
a good profit for the printer; and so after about forty 
years the monograph is published—the work of a life is 
accomplished. Fifty copies are sent round to as many 
public libraries and learned societies, and the rest of the 
impression lies on the shelves till dust and time and 
spiders’ webs have buried it. Splendid work in it too. 
Looked back upon from to-day with the key of modern 
thought, these monographs often contain a whole chest 
of treasure. And still there are the periodicals, a century 
of magazines and journals and reviews and notices that 
have been coming out these hundred years and dropping 
to the ground like dead leaves unnoticed. And then 
there are the art works—books about shape and colour 
and ornament, and a naturalist lately has been trying to 
