1887] Editors’ Table. 549 
Here on the white, sea-drifted shore 
Thy feeble, fluttering life I scan; 
Thou tellest the lesson o’er and o’er,— 
Thou art the history of man. 
BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI. 
Laura F. Hinsdale. 
EDITORS’ TABLE. 
EDITORS: E. D. COPE AND J. S. KINGSLEY. ` 
Why does not some master-mind arise and give us a complete 
work upon unnatural history? Such a treatise is a great desid- 
eratum, for its publication would be a great boon to the scientific 
world. Were there such a work in existence no doubt Congress 
could be induced to make a liberal appropriation and furnish 
copies gratis to all who should apply for them. The saving this 
would afford to publishers and the relief it would vouchsafe to 
readers and editors would be inestimable, for then that innumer- 
able throng longing to get their names and their lucubrations in 
print would have no excuse for existence ; all their “ discoveries” 
would be forestalled. No more would audiences be bored with 
fanciful theories of the way in which the ancient Egyptians carved 
all the Pyramids out of solid rock; nor would editors be com- 
pelled to wade through manuscripts proving “ incontestably” that 
albinos were always the result of fright in the pregnant mother, 
because albinos are most abundant in rabbits, and every one 
knows that rabbits are the most timid animals in the whole 
world.— Q. £E. D. : 
As was intimated in the opening sentences, a complete unnat- , 
ural history requires a master-mind and abilities of no common 
order. There*are, it is true, many works which fall but little 
short of perfection in this line; but, still, a careful search reveals 
lapses which ruin them as complete encyclopædias of misinfor- 
mation. Usually the failure arises from the fact that the author 
is utterly unconscious of the nature of the treatise he is pro- 
ducing. He works in sober earnest, thinking to surprise the 
whole world; and he would do so were it not that in an evil 
hour he allows a few really credible facts to creep in. The 
qualifications necessary are an instinctive ability, not to be ac- 
L. XXL : 37 
