Editorial Comment. 201 
quainted with the rudiments of the science. Otherwise they will 
be only blind leaders of the blind and will meet the traditional 
fate of such leaders and such led. 
We take the following from the ‘‘Mineralogists’ Monthly” 
for January, 1892. As this periodical has reached its seventh 
volume we think it should have outgrown its childhood and be 
incapable of perpetrating such enormities and of misleading those 
-among its readers who know no better than its editor. 
“Among other specimens we observed a six-sided prism of quartz which 
we were told by its owner was ina plastic state when taken out of 
the quarry. This gentleman showed us the portion of the prism he had 
cut off before the crystal hardened which it did very soon after being 
exposed to the air.” 
“We (the contributors of the note) are not sufficiently versed in the 
mysteries of mineralogy to be able to say positively whether a quartz 
crystal, however pure or impure,can be dissolved or made plastic by the 
action of strong acids except the powerful hydro-fluoric.” 
Again we read: 
“A Passaic stone-cutter has a curiosity, a petrified rat, found in a block 
of brown stone. While preparing a six-foot block his chisel sank into a 
cavity The workmen thought it strange and laughingly advised him to 
examine it, suggesting that it might contain a diamond or a nugget of 
gold. He peered into the hole and was astonished on finding a petrified 
animal resembling a rat. Every part was well preserved. Experts are 
sure that it isarat. The little creature’s anatomy had remained perfect 
for all the period since the formation of the stone. Every claw, tooth 
and vertebra was present and well preserved. The skin had lost its hair 
and time had dried the form slightly but petrifaction had preserved it 
in its dark prison.” 
The stone-cutter’s astonishment was justifiable, but there is 
cause for greater astonishment in the fact that at the present day 
an editor of a so-called scientific magazine can be found who 
is willing to publish such stuff. All editors get more or less of 
this sort of rubbish and while these stories may pay in a sensa- 
tional newspaper they are utterly out of place, not to say dis- 
graceful, in the columns of the cheapest scientific journal. Of 
what value is an editor if not to winnow out such chatf from the 
wheat? It is fair to presume that in this case the editor knows 
more than would be inferred from the extracts given above, 
Otherwise he would scarcely assume the position of conductor of 
the ‘‘Mineralogists’ Monthly.” But if he desires success in the 
field on which he has entered we counsel him to aim at a higher 
standard and to be more critical over the matter that he chooses 
for insertion. Otherwise even at fifty cents a year his periodical 
will ‘‘take in” rather than ‘‘be taken in.”’ 
