P R E F A C E. 



TIIIS Catalogue is intended to serve as an Index to the Titles and Dates of 

 Scientific Papers contained in the Transactions of Societies, Journals, and other 

 Periodical Works which have been published from the beginning of the present 

 century to the end of the year 1863. 



The need of some serviceable key to the vast body of scientific matter contained 

 in Periodical Publications has been keenly felt by the cultivators of Science ; and 

 the utility of various Catalogues, Indexes, and works of like purpose which have 

 at different times been produced has been thankfully acknowledged. For the most 

 part,- however, these works differ in scope and plan from the present, or apply to a 

 different epoch. The most notable is the Index Commcntationinn of RETJSS, which 

 extends to sixteen quarto volumes, and took twenty years in publication. That 

 li'reat work is not limited, like the present Catalogue, to Scientific Papers ; but, 

 i \\ the other hand, it applies only to Transactions of Societies, and while it com- 

 prehends the contents of those Transactions from their commencement, it reaches 

 hut a short way into the present century. Other Catalogues are devoted to special 

 branches of knowledge; such are the IBlblloyrapliw Zooloyi<r cl (lcoloyi<r of 

 AGASSIZ published by the Hay Society, and the admirable Bibliothecu- Zooloyico 

 of CARUS and ENGKLMANX. 



The present undertaking may be said to have originated in a communication 

 from Dr. Joseph HEXRT, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to the Meeting 

 of the British Association at Glasgow in 1855, suggesting the formation of a 

 Catalogue of Philosophical Memoirs: this suggestion was favourably reported on 

 by a Committee of the Association in the following year. The Committee recom- 

 mended that the contemplated Catalogue should embrace the Mathematical and 



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