A. No doubt to some extent, but the plates are not of that expensive character that would deter a pirate. My chief safeguards are that the Messrs. Appleton are very powerful publishers, and could afford to undersell a rival, and that there is a kind of tacit understanding among the larger publishers in America that the books published by one should not be pirated by another.
Q. If Messrs. Appleton were not high-minded people they would still have a difficulty in pirating your book, because they would find a difficulty in getting the plates, you having the whole of the plates?
A. Yes; but that would apply equally to other publishers. The plates have to be produced in England and paid for in England, and a book that pays for plates in England would pay for them in America. They could not perhaps produce the books so cheaply as they now do if they had to produce the plates.
Q. Is your circulation larger in America than in England?
A. I could not say so. I have been assured over and over again that it is very large.
Q. I fancy your books are not books much read in circulating libraries; they are more books which people would study, are they not?
A. My first book that related to the Alps and glaciers might have got into the circulating libraries; but I do not remember to have seen any of my more strictly scientific works in them.
Q. (Dr. Smith.) We are right then in supposing that you object entirely to the legislature interfering by any enactment with your books, and that you prefer to make your own bargain with your own publisher?
A. I should like to be able to express to you the strength of my objection to any such interference. I hold my right to my own intellectual work to be at least as sacred as is the right of my excellent friend, whose propositions have been discussed here, to Abinger Hall.
| DRINKING-WATER FROM AGRICULTURAL LANDS. |
By J. A. JUDSON, C.E.,
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS, FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC.
LITTLE as it appears to be appreciated, there is to-day no question of sanitary science of greater vital importance than that of the quality of the water-supply entering into the daily domestic economy. The requirements and refinements of modern civilization demand not only a plentiful but a profuse supply of water, and at a moderate cost—facts long ago recognized and acted upon. While enormous capital and the best engineering talent have been very generally called upon, both
