2 Second Decennary of the Naturalist. (January, 
We must again return thanks to our contributors, whose zeal 
and generosity have made the magazine what it is. From the 
first our articles have been given freely, out of love for the cause 
of science, and a desire for its free progress. 
We have, in moments of discouragement and financial distress, 
felt sorely the want of proper material support from a people 
numbering upwards of forty-four millions, and of so much gen- 
eral intelligence and culture as ours; but so rapid has been the 
diffusion of, science among the masses, even since the foundation 
of this journal, that we feel confident of ample support in the 
future. That the magazine has not been fully sustained pecunia- 
rily may have been partly its own fault. Our critics tell us that 
it has not always been sufficiently “ popular.” We have endeav- 
ored to educate a public sentiment in behalf of the study of pure 
natural science for its own sake, and have sought to instruct rather 
than to amuse our readers. But the worst times, we trust, have 
been passed, and we confidently hope, with the new year we are 
entering upon and the encouraging auspices of the new arrange- 
ments begun last year with the present publishers, to excite a 
more decided enthusiasm among lovers of nature in the thorough 
success of a journal devoted to their interests. 
As it is, the future of our journal is in the hands of persons of 
scientific culture. It is to the friends of liberal education, — to 
those who would advance the means of diffusing a knowledge of 
the methods of right thinking and working in science, which 
has still to encounter obstacles on all sides, from the ignorant and 
uncultivated as well as from even the cultivated littérateur or 
poet, trained in all directions except one, that of scientific modes 
of thought (witness Carlyle’s late utterance respecting the theory 
of evolution), — it is to the friends of the best culture, which em- 
braces scientific as well as classical and technological learning, 
that we would appeal for aid and support. 
The study of science teaches us how to make nature minister ~ 
to our wants. We learn the lesson from the study of nature that 
man’s progress in intellectual grasp, and increase in moral force, 
have depended on the gradual improvement of his body. His 
mental and moral advance is in a ratio corresponding to his ob- 
