“x 
550 Editors’ Table. [June 
quired by any education, to discriminate between the false and 
the true, always appropriating the former and rejecting the latter, 
a love of the marvellous, and a power to quickly assimilate the 
erroneous. The work must, of necessity, be largely a compila- 
tion, for an intellect capable of producing the work would be 
lacking in the imaginative side, and could not possibly evolve it 
in its entirety from its inner consciousness. It must be able to 
trace results from no adequate cause. The syllogism must be 
ignored. There must be a realization of the magnitude of small 
things, and a capacity to tear a given statement from its sur- 
roundings and set it forth in all its nakedness, without regard to 
the incongruity of its new position. To all these points must be 
added a proper modicum of self-esteem, a conviction that all the 
so-called leaders of science are totally wrong, and that the author 
alone is infallible. 
uch a man as we have drawn would produce a perfect work ; 
but where shall he be found? Several times we have thought 
ourselves on the right track. We have turned over page after 
page fully persuaded that the desired work was before us, or, at 
- least, that the author was capable of producing it; but, alas! it 
is like the American epic, it has yet to be written. The man 
who described six new genera and thirteen new species of thun- 
der and lightning gave promise, but, unfortunately, he is dead. 
Who of the living will rise and fill the gap time can only decide. 
The prize offered for the successful work is a large one,—Im- 
mortality, along with Pedro Carolino, the author of “ English as 
she is Spoke.” The candidates are many, but, so far, all have 
shown lucid intervals, or have evinced a disinclination for the 
task, and have turned to less laborious fields just as they had 
- aroused a hope that here was at last the long-looked-for wonder. 
When he comes he will receive an ovation from the world of 
science, which is tired of being told that clams travel on the 
ottom of water-areas by means of suction through their open 
shells; that the hippopotamus was designed to dredge out the 
channels of tropical rivers; that the strongylus is a parasitical 
action of the intestines ; that the bill of the woodpecker has a 
force of bill proportionately to a twenty-ton trip-hammer ; that 
the Mound-builders used the British inch in laying out their 
earth-works ; that the Anglo-Saxons are the ten lost tribes of 
Israel; t the SA originated in a cold climate Borne, 
