Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/314

308 to observe for the public he joins the clan of 'poet-naturalists' who, as John Burroughs has said, hold the eye close to the facts and will not be baffled' It must be confessed that very seldom are they baffled. The judgment of the editors referred to, therefore, is that the middleman should be abolished, in so far as he is merely an interpreter. As for the poet-naturalist, he will cease to appear scientific when the middle men are abolished.

This means a distinct invitation to investigators to become their own interpreters, an invitation which will come to most of them with a distinct shock, if not as an absurdity. Taking it seriously, however, and waiving its absurdity for the moment, what is there in the way of accepting the invitation?

The readiest answer to this question is that it would be a waste of time, and under the present conditions the answer seems true. The investigator's chief concern is his investigation; and he does not see how it can be benefited by any information he may give to the public. If such a benefit is not evident, the invitation should be declined; for to accept it under these circumstances is to strain after a little cheap notoriety.

But the invitation involves a change of conditions, a change in the policy of editors, on the one hand, and of investigators on the other. If under the new conditions it can be made to appear worth while to accept the invitation, what is there still in the way? It is not to be expected that investigators in general will undertake to learn the art of popular writing, or will take the time to exercise it if they do not need to learn it. The only thing asked for is a simple statement, in terms that intelligent, but non-scientific, persons can understand, of the nature and bearing of an investigation. This would be authoritative, and would be used, so our friends, the editors, assure us, not only in checking the wild vagaries of the reportorial imagination, but also in bringing to the public a large amount of information which no reporter could discover. Emphasis is to be laid upon the bearing of an investigation, for, naturally, this is the point of vital interest to the public, and the point of importance, as I shall show later. For example, I might describe in perfectly simple English the results of some experiments I had performed with evening primroses or with pigeons, and people would simply wonder at the things that amuse some men; but if it were added that these experiments have a bearing upon the origin of species and upon heredity, the investigation at once assumes a dignity and an importance that even the public will be quick to appreciate.

One sees repeatedly in the public press joking, if not sneering, allusions to the immediate subject matter of some investigation, which seems insignificant or even ridiculous to the uninformed, when, in fact,