50 • NATURAL SCIENCE. July. 



guided him in the establishment of these additions. Considering 

 himself bound by a resolution passed at the Brussels Conference of 

 bibliographers, to which we have previously referred, he has accepted 

 without question all the indications furnished by Mr. Dewey in the 

 book published by him. " No one," he says, " can accuse me of 

 making innovations in a field that has already been explored and to a 

 •certain extent cultivated, or of bringing disturbance into a classifi- 

 cation, conventional, it is true, but of which the principle must be 

 admitted in its integrity and without contest for future time." But 

 when he proceeded beyond the tracts already traversed by Dewey and 

 was upon unbroken ground, Mr. Baudouin did not break loose from 

 all restraint and act as an irresponsible innovator ; on the contrary : 

 " For these additions," he says, " I have impregnated myself as well as 

 I could with the publications of Mr. Dewey, and the principles which 

 have guided his representatives in Europe. For those parts of which 

 he foreshadowed the possible subdivisions, I have blindly followed 

 his indications, sacrificing my private opinions with the sole object of 

 arriving at an international agreement. For the rest, whenever 

 possible, I have respected the original idea which has ruled over the 

 establishment of this classification in its entirety." Even when 

 making subdivisions which, it might be thought, bore no relation 

 whatever to Dewey's work, Mr. Baudouin has not forgotten what had 

 previously been accomplished. The numbers which he has adopted 

 have not been taken at random, but have been suggested by their use 

 in other parts of the Dewey classification. He has, moreover, used 

 numbers in a similar sense in different parts of his own divisions. It 

 is obvious that this method is of considerable assistance to the 

 memory, and is far superior to the absolute want of agreement which, 

 as Mr. Hoyle has shown, obtains in the schemes put forward by our 

 ■ distinguished countrymen. 



There is one sentence in Mr. Hoyle's paper on which we would 

 lay special stress. " The Royal Society's classification fails," he says, 

 " largely because it is the result, not of practical experience, but of 

 a j^n'on consideration." This point is emphasised in a letter which 

 we have just received from Dr. Charles Richet, the editor of our 

 esteemed contemporary, the Revue Scientifiqne. He regards it as the 

 chief merit of the Dewey system that it has not been framed in 

 accordance with purely scientific and philosophical ideas, but as 

 the result of the experience of practical librarians. It may further be 

 pointed out that a system which is frankly arbitrary is, for the 

 purposes intended, superior to one that is charmingly philosophical. 

 For our " little systems have their day," and what may seem 

 admirable in the year of grace, 1896, is not likely to be regarded with 

 anything but ridicule by our descendants in 1996. Nature, moreover, 

 as we constantly have reason to regret, does not appear to have been 

 constituted in accordance with our philosophical categories ; to take 

 but a single instance, one already hinted at by Mr. Hoyle — what 



