1894- NOTES AND COMMENTS. 413 



periodicals of little importance, or not easy of access." Now, in the 

 first place, it is not for compilers of catalogues to judge whether a 

 periodical is, or is not, of " little importance." The importance of an 

 article, or of a note for that matter, is decided by its importance to the 

 individual who wishes to consult it ; it cannot be valued by the clerk 

 who transcribes. In the second place it is the experience of most 

 of those who have to consult periodicals, that they can find in one 

 or other of the great libraries in London practically everything 

 they wish to consult. Judging by our own experience of the 

 " Catalogue of Scientific Papers," published by the Royal Society, 

 the rich collections of scientific serials at Bloomsbury, and the still 

 richer collections stored in the Natural History Museum at South 

 Kensington, could not have been consulted very carefully by the 

 compilers. 



Turning to foreign publications of the same nature, we find that 

 the more convenient " Bibliotheca Historico-Naturalis " of Engelmann 

 (1846), the " Bibliotheca Zoologica " of Carus and Engelmann 

 (i860), with the continuation now publishing under the editorship of 

 Taschenberg, reaches a far higher level of completeness in the special 

 subject v/ith which these volumes are concerned. The reason for 

 this is seen in the fact that the German compilers have a special 

 knowledge of the subject upon which they work, and take infinitely 

 more pains to render their work perfect. Only a year or so ago Dr. 

 Taschenberg himself paid a special visit to this country to consult the 

 rarer English publications in order to minimise, as far as possible, 

 the number of omissions. 



These catalogues, if they are to be compiled at all, should not 

 suffer from the neglect of periodicals " of little importance or not 

 easy of access," and we sincerely hope that the Royal Society of 

 London, if it attempts the publication of a Catalogue such as it 

 proposes, will use the experience gained by their acknowledged 

 failure, will model their work on Engelmann, Carus, and 

 Taschenberg, both in completeness and size, and make their part 

 of the proposed Catalogue worthy of the subject, and of the money 

 which must be spent upon it. 



Records of Scientific Literature. 

 We have often referred in these pages to those books known 

 as Records of Scientific Literature, which have for object th& 

 assistance of the systematic scientist, by cataloguing and arranging 

 the vast flood of papers and books published during the year on 

 scientific subjects. It is our intention, in an early number of 

 Natural Science, to bring together a list of the more important 

 of these valuable time-savers, to show, in the first place, what has 

 been and is being done in this direction, and, in the second place, 

 to bring before the notice of would-be compilers, the importance 

 of some international action as proposed by the Royal Society in 



