11 
ments, appear in a most deliberate manner, months often elapsing 
between the time the manuscript is written and the time the printed 
bulletin appears, and not unfrequently the conditions which called it 
into being or the emergency which it was expected to meet has come 
and gone while the manuscript was yet in the hands of the state printer 
awaiting a slack time in his office when it could be taken up and pub- 
lished. The daily press can scatter information broadcast over the land 
within the space of twenty-four hours and, within a week, place it in 
the hands of every person who takes even the most isolated weekly 
paper. But the trouble here is that the condition of the press is such 
that few people who deal with facts or desire absolutely reliable state- 
ments go to the public press to find them. No one unhesitatingly 
expects either truthfulness or exactness from this source. In fact, the 
greater the exaggeration, the more sensational and flippant an article 
can be made, the more likely it is to appear in the columns of our daily 
papers and the more widely will it be copied. Even if the author take 
the precaution to prepare the manuscript in the most careful manner, 
it will likely present itself at his breakfast table the next morning in 
his favorite paper dressed up and, though with no intent to wrong, yet 
edited in a way that would cause the ashes of Darwin to become rest- 
less in their seclusion, while the author would be totally unable to ree- 
ognize his production. 
The agricultural press, while affected in this way to a far less degree, 
still offers a wide field for improvement. The situation would be less 
serious but for the fact that an occasional entomologist, mistaking noto- 
riety for a reputation, rushes into print on every possible occasion, and 
in as many widely distributed publications as possible. While it may 
be thought very desirable by college presidents and their lieutenants, 
the station directors, to have men of this sort about them, there is no 
more unfailing indication of a lack of the first elements of a scientific 
man than for him to go about seeking a newspaper reputation. If he 
wishes to do this, well and good; but he had better let science alone. 
Newspapers are published for the profit that is to be gained thereby. 
They are printed to sell, and the editors and publishers, like all other 
business men, must offer for sale what people will buy and pay for, and 
not what may be always pleasing to even their own tastes. But the 
scientific man has no business to pander in this respect to the tastes of 
the worst instead of the better elements in public desire, and if he can 
not be true to his calling where he is, let him go elsewhere or find 
another, for these two are utterly incompatible. 
Of all the ill-matched and mismated combinations possible, that of 
science and politics is the worst. If there is a single element common 
to both, it certainly has never been introduced into this country, if, 
indeed, its habitat is or ever has been discovered. Yet the attempt 
to harness the two together is becoming altogether too frequent im 
experiment stations. Not long ago an assistant of mine applied for a 
