220 Editors’ Table. [ March, 
‘It is just that every man should be valued at his true worth, 
and should have the opportunity of securing a just valuation at 
the hands of his cotemporaries. Mental products are prime ele- 
ments in this valuation; so are labors undergone, and sacrifices 
submitted to. Intellectual products are unquestionably property, 
and he who attempts to pass off the results of other men’s labors as 
his own, is as much a thief as he who picks a pocket, or burglari- 
ously enters a house. Now when nomenclature represents original 
ideas, the two conditions of equity and convenience are fulfilled. 
From this we draw the conclusion, that it is well for producers of 
ideas to create nomenclature, and that non-producers should 
avoid it. 
The habit of giving credit to others for their ideas is a concom- 
tained by the mutual pressure of iriterests; and knowledge of 
each other’s work is readily obtained through easy intercommu- 
nication. Right is a natural element which develops under 
agitation, and perishes by neglect. All interests contribute to it. 
No one desires to be thought to plagiarize ; but where credit for 
the ideas of others is not given, plagiarism may be suspected. 
Hence in some cases, pride, if not benevolence, will prompt to 
justice. It is indeed true that the same ideas occur independ- 
ently to different men in different places. But it will always be 
difficult in these days of wide and ready distribution, for the 
later producer to know or show how much he may not have been 
influenced by his predecessor in the field. 
The comparative isolation of some of the centers of scientific 
production in the United States, and the small number of persons so 
occupied in many of these localities, renders us especially liable to 
the faults implied in the above remarks, and this in spite of the fact 
that, for our population, -we hold as a nation, a very respectable 
position in the world of scientific work and thought. Whether it be 
from the lack of international competition on this continent or not, 
national pride does not yet seem to be sufficient to induce many 
Americans to credit their countrymen with their productions, but 
will attach them too often to foreign names, or will reproduce them, 
as though absolutely new. A striking instance of this regardless- 
ness occurs to us in the quadruple nomenclature of the geologt 
cal formations of the center of this continent. After Dr. Hayden, 
supplemented by Mr. King, had named and classified the geolog'- 
cal horizons of the West, Major Powell, in order to have “a new 
slate,” proceeds to ignore the greater part of this work, and names 
an extensive series of them over again. Soon after, Mr, King, assum- 
ing the rdle of a palaogeographer, names the great inland lakes 
which successively occupied tracts of our continent. Of course 
the sediments of these lakes had already received names, which 
are of necessity applicable to the bodies of water which deposited 
