Even suppose the _Britannica’s_ editor should argue that the foregoing biologists are not of the very highest significance and therefore are not deserving of separate biographies, how then can he explain the fact that such _British_ biologists as Alfred Newton, William Yarrell, John G. Wood, G. J. Allman, F. T. Buckland, and T. S. Cobbold, are given individual biographies with a detailed discussion of their work? What becomes of that universality of outlook on which he so prides himself? Or does he consider Great Britain as the universe? As I have said, the foregoing notes do not aim at being exhaustive. To set down, even from an American point of view, a complete record of the inadequacies which are to be found in the _Britannica’s_ account of modern science would require much more space than I can devote to it here. I have tried merely to indicate, by a few names and a few comparisons, the insular nature of this Encyclopædia’s expositions, and thereby to call attention to the very obvious fact that the _Britannica_ is _not_ “an international dictionary of biography,” but a prejudiced work in which English endeavor, through undue emphasis and exaggeration, is given the first consideration. Should this Encyclopædia be depended upon for information, one would get but the meagrest idea of the splendid advances which America has made in modern science. And, although I have here touched only on medicine and biology, the same narrow and provincial British viewpoint can be found in the _Britannica’s_ treatment of the other sciences as well. IX INVENTIONS, PHOTOGRAPHY, ÆSTHETICS In the matter of American inventions the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ would appear to have said as little as possible, and to have minimized our importance in that field as much as it dared. And yet American inventors, to quote H. Addington Bruce, “have not simply astonished mankind; they have enhanced the prestige, power, and prosperity of their country.” The _Britannica’s_ editors apparently do not agree with this; and when we think of the wonderful romance of American inventions, and the possibilities in the subject for full and interesting writing, and then read the brief, and not infrequently disdainful, accounts that are presented, we are conscious at once not only of an inadequacy in the matter of facts, but of a niggardliness of spirit. Let us regard the Encyclopædia’s treatment of steam navigation. Under _Steamboat_ we read: “The first practical steamboat was the tug ‘Charlotte Dundas,’ built by William Symington (Scotch), and tried in the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802.... The trial was successful, but steam towing was abandoned for fear of injuring the banks of the canal. Ten years later Henry Bell built the ‘Comet,’ with side-paddle wheels, which ran as a passenger steamer on the Clyde; but an earlier inventor to follow up Symington’s success was the American, Robert Fulton....”