Discoveries, when once communicated to the world, become public property: they are thrown into the common stock for mutual benefit; and it is only in the case of debatable opinions, or of any recent and unconfirmed observations, that it really interests the world that authorities should be quoted at all. In the language of a highly valued friend, when writing upon another subject: —- “The advance state of science is but the accumulation of the discoveries and inventions of many: to refer each of these to its author is the business of the history of science, but does not belong to a work which professes merely to give an account of the science as it is; all that is generally acknowledge must pass current from author to author.”***
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***Brett’s Principles of Astronomy.
John Lindley, An introduction to botany (1832).
