1890.] Editorial. x 747 
After the performance he stood, evidently listening for a reply; 
none came, and, without another note, he disappeared, to be seen 
no more. 
The partridge is about one-half the size of our grouse, and 
resembles it in plumage and style of flight. It seems a little 
strange that the time of incubation should be four weeks, while 
the grouse and the domestic hen sit only three weeks. A 
nest that I found in Iowa in 1874—on the ground—seemed 
rather small and too deep, the sixteen eggs being piled one upon 
another for three layers, at least. I was told that they were all 
sure to hatch. 
Our eastern partridge are plump, fine-looking birds, but there 
are two varieties in California, the “mountain” and the “ valley 
partridge," more beautiful than ours. 
EDITORIAL. 
EDITORS, E. D. COPE AND J. S. KINGSLEY. 
[^ and the newspapers form the staple of the reading of 
the American people. Serious books which treat of matters 
of fact have fewer readers; and exact or scientific books fewer 
still. In the estimation of some people this is an unfavorable 
state of affairs, and speaks ill for our intellectual condition. We 
take a somewhat different view of it. The newspapers treat 
mainly of matters of fact, and they are only worthy of complaint 
when they give undue prominence to trivial matters, and to the 
evil that men do, and not enough to those events which make 
for human development and progress. This criticism may be 
justly applied to many newspapers. Also there is fiction and 
fiction. A class of French fiction, which has imitators in other 
countries, on pretence of being "realistic," is evil and only evil, 
and should be, in our estimation, like the * Kreutzer Sonata” of 
Tolstoi, excluded from the mails. But much fiction is instructive, 
both in the facts of human character and in those of nature, and 
is of great utility as conveying much truth, sugar-coated, to the 
unsuspecting reader. Besides, were fiction abolished the number 
