Scientific Memoirs

Abstract

IT is refreshing to meet with this series. Not that the contents are novel, though recent things are not lacking. It is the aim of the series which is stimulating. Our students are gradually being degraded into a reliance upon text-books for nourishment instead of being brought up on a study of scientific classics. It was not ever thus. Time was when text-books were almost unknown, and knowledge of science had to be acquired by a study of original sources. The more modern craze for, and reliance upon, examinational tests has altered all that. Nowadays a man must know a little bit of every branch of the rapidly extending circle of sciences in order to take a county scholarship or a degree. And text-books spring up by the dozen to supply the very special wants of any newly created examination. It is possible, and it is to be hoped, that the new regulations in the University of London will tend to remedy this state of affairs. Much greater stress is to be laid upon a knowledge of recently published work, and the habit of mind that is so induced is bound to be a healthy one. We wish, too, that for the less recent work men were more encouraged to put text-books on one side and study some one branch at least in the original memoirs.

Scientific Memoirs.

Edited by J. S. Ames Fifteen volumes, prices varying from.60 to 1.00 dollar, each. (New York: American Book Company, 1898 to 1902.)