aided him, and know the difficulties that were to be contended with, and a good deal concerning the negotiations. The purpose was to have a series of books written by the best men of the time, in all the various sciences, which should treat of certain small divisions of the sciences that are in states of rapid growth—giving to the public, in popular form, the highest and latest results; and it was proposed, as a means of achieving this end, that there should be an international arrangement, which should secure to authors certain portions of profits coming from translations, as well as profits from originals at home, and the hope was that some publisher might be obtained who would remunerate these authors of the highest type at good rates, so as to induce them to contribute volumes to the series. Well, this attempt, after much trouble, succeeded. A number of the leading scientific men of England, France, and Germany, were induced to cooperate. A publisher was found, or rather publishers here and elsewhere, to enter into the desired arrangements; and an English publisher was found who offered such terms to authors in England as led men in the first rank (and I may mention Professor Huxley, and Professor Tyndall, and Professor Bain, and Professor Balfour Stewart, and a great number of others) to promise to write volumes. These men, I know, were reluctant, as busy men, with their many avocations, and their incomes to get for their families, would naturally be, and were induced to enter into the scheme only on its being made manifest to them that they would reap good profits. The English publisher offered a twenty per cent, commission on the retail price, paid down on first publication, and for every subsequent edition paid six months after date; and there were certain smaller percentages to come from abroad. Now, the English publisher proposed to give those terms, knowing that it would be impossible for him to get back his outlay unless he had a number of years in which to do it. He had to stereotype, he had to pay at once these sums to authors, and he had to publish the books at a cheap rate; for, by the way, I ought to have said that part of the plan was that these books should be sold at low prices: I may instance a volume of four hundred and twenty pages for five shillings. These terms would, I take it, have been absolutely out of the question had there been such an arrangement as that under which the publisher, instead of having many years to recoup himself, would have had rival editions to compete with in the space of three years. I do not, however, put that as an opinion. I have taken the precaution to obtain from Mr. King, the publisher, a definite answer on this point. This is the paragraph of his letter which is specially relevant: "Authors can have no difficulty in proving that this" (meaning the system which I told him was proposed) "would be most unjust to them, a confiscation, in fact, of their property; but I, from a publisher's point of view, should like to declare that the terms on which my firm have undertaken the 'International Scientific Series' would be impossible on such a limitation." Now here, then, we have a series of highly valuable books, I
