1896. INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF SCIENCE. 49 



of London, on July 14 and following days, will probably spend 

 much of its time in discussing what system of numerical indexing can 

 be applied to the multifarious subjects of modern science, and since, 

 so far as our experience goes, the majority of practical scientific men 

 are not likewise practical bibliographers, we venture to think that 

 Mr, Hoyle is doing a public service in furnishing this concise 

 exposition of the Dewey system, and in showing how the substitutes 

 hitherto proposed are found wanting from the practical point of view. 

 In justice, however, to the compilers of the various schemes issued 

 under the auspices of the Royal Society, it should be pointed out that 

 these were merely intended to serve as a basis for discussion ; and 

 perhaps nothing worse should be said of them than that their com- 

 pilation was a waste of time, since the basis of discussion ought 

 properly to have been the Dewey classification itself. Moreover, the 

 conflict between our contributor and the members of the Royal 

 Society Committee is a very unequal one ; for Mr. Hoyle has had 

 more practical experience of the Dewey system than perhaps any- 

 body in England, whereas the very distinguished gentlemen whose 

 names are attached to the schemes which the Royal Society has 

 submitted for criticism are the last people in the world to claim for 

 themselves an acquaintance with practical bibliography in general, or 

 with the Dewey system in particular. 



It would be easy for us to add to the criticisms which Mr. Hoyle 

 has already made, and to show many more points of inconsistency 

 which the schemes offer, both with one another and with the Dewey 

 system itself ; but our space is too valuable to discuss propositions 

 which it would never be possible to uphold seriously against some of 

 the competent librarians and bibliographers who have been appointed 

 by their respective governments to attend the Conference at Burlington 

 House. Instead of criticising the details, we prefer to contrast this 

 characteristically English mode of proceeding with the methods 

 adopted by an eminent foreign bibliographer. For it is — is it not ? — 

 a thoroughly English custom to appoint a man who has spent his life 

 in one branch of study to conduct skilled operations in an entirely 

 different field. There is no doubt that, from the point of view of 

 the newspaper public, the man who has got his first in the school of 

 litercB humaniores at Oxford, will write a better leading article on, say, 

 the potato disease than your mere biologist ; but the journalistic 

 method of getting up a subject in an hour or two, with the help of a 

 few books of ready reference, is not the one that commends itself to 

 the professed scientific worker. A better method is that followed by 

 Mr. Marcel Baudouin, of the Institut International de Bibliographie 

 Scientifique de Paris, the editor of La Bibliographie Scientijiqiie, Les 

 Archives pv. de Chinirgie, and the Revue dcs Instruments de Chirurgie. In 

 the Revue Scientifique for May 30 he publishes various additions to, and 

 further subdivisions of, the Dewey classification, so far as it relates 

 to medical science. The following are the principles which have 



