LORD BIRKENHEAD'S BOOK

Taranaki Daily News, 12 May 1930, Page 9

LORD BIRKENHEAD'S BOOK

LITERARY PIRACY ALLEGED

PROFESSOR SEES OWN WORK

PORTIONS SEEM ORIGINAL

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.

Rec. 5.5 p.m. London, May 11. A curious intriguing position has arisen out of Professor J. B. S. Haldane’s criticism of Lord Birkenhead’s book “The World in 2030,” which was reviewed in the cables on April 13. Professor Haldane, writing in a weekend review, says: •■When I read the book a strange feeling began to oppress me. Certain phrases were oddly familiar; where had I seen them before? Finally I solved the mystery; they were my own!”

Professor Haldane sets out in halfcolumn measure certain parallel expressions from Lord Birkenhead’s book and from his own work, “Daedalus, or Possible Worlds,” of which this is typical: Lord Birkenhead says: “They arc minute bodies, so small that if a hen’s egg were manifested to the size of the world one of the genes would Jie on a fair-sized writing desk.” Professor Haldane’s book says: “If we magnified a hen's egg to the size of the world we could still get a gene into a room or even on a small table.” After giving several similar instances side by side, Professor Haldane adds: — “The resemblance is more striking when I add some excerpts from essays supposed to have been written by undergraduates, one in 1930 and the other in 1978. Altogether I counted 44 coincidences in the two documents, 'though I dare say the list is-incomplete.” He concluded with a semi-jesting reference to psychic control, adding; “Between the psychically inspired passages there are portions —in one case of not fewer than 23 pages —which appear to be original. Whether these original passages are worth the book’s price, 12s o<l, I do not attempt to decide.”

When Lord Birkenhead’s attention was drawn to. the criticism he replied he had nothing to say at the moment, but proposed, to reply in due course.