But, turning to the popular but accurate scientific article, we may ask what purpose it serves. Should its object be to supply the deficiencies of a defective general education, to provide an easy introduction to science? Doubtless such articles or lectures have served such a purpose; Faraday himself, as we know, was won over to science by the blandishments of Mrs. Somerville, and there is more than one case where the current of a man’s life has been definitely changed by a lantern lecture. It is, nevertheless, a mistake to suppose that the attentive perusal of a number of popular science articles is equivalent to a scientific education, a mistake which is unfortunately very common. The fact is that the scientific treatise and the popular science article, so far from being rivals, serve entirely different ends, and may be read with profit by the same man. Broadly speaking, the function of the popular science article is to present science in its humanistic aspect. It should, while dealing with as definite a scientific problem as the author chooses, hint at the relations between this problem and the other interests of mankind. Very often these relations are implicit in the subject; such subjects are, in fact, usually chosen, and for that reason. But there is another type of article which has for its object the exposition of relations which are not obvious, and this exposition may be the result of a genuine and valuable intellectual effort on the part of the writer. Such articles are really essays in criticism and are not essentially different from the best type of literary criticism. Some of the best articles of this kind--some of those by W. K. Clifford, for example--are as truly “research” work as is the technical paper. A third type of article may, either by way of history or by way of logic, show the position occupied by a given theory or fact in a scheme of knowledge. This type is usually of more interest to the scientific student than to the general reader, since a general acquaintance with the whole subject is presupposed, and in this connection it is interesting to note that a powerful plea has recently been made for the more effective endowment of the teaching of the history of science.