428 COERESPONDENCE. 



e PLAN OF A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



BY DR. JULIUS FRIEDLANDER. 



The daily increase in every department of the sciences by the con- 

 stant labors of learned men in all parts of the world, resulting in an 

 extensive amount of new researches and speculations has become so 

 large, as to make it impossible for any student of science to keep 

 progress with it. Annual reports on each department have been ac- 

 cordingly felt for many years as an indispensable necessity. The 

 reports on chemistry by Berzeliusand Kopp ; on botany by Wikstrom ; 

 on zoology by Froschel and others; and those famous ones by the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science are specimens of 

 such annual reviews. Still these reports but incompletely satisfy the 

 want that is felt. If a philosopher who is about to undertake a new 

 investigation, to study nev/ phenomena, to establish a new hypothesis, 

 or to contrive a new apparatus, wishes to know what has been pre- 

 viously done in the same direction, he has a very laborious undertak- 

 ing before him, and is obliged to rely upon manuals and encyclopedias 

 merely, unless he has a very extensive library. If he has the latter, 

 he is still in want of a general index. Everyman engaged in learned 

 pursuits is constantly appealed to for information as to where this dis- 

 covery may be found or that experiment detailed. 



Many researches are commenced in different parts of the world, 

 and experiments instituted, which have been already pursued and 

 tried many years before, and consequently much valuable time is 

 lost from ignorance of the sources of information whence a knowl- 

 edge of what has been previously done might have been acquired. 

 The want of a general encyclopedic account of all that has been pub- 

 lished on the natural sciences has been long felt, and attempts would 

 have been made to supply this want, could the heavy expense of such 

 a work been covered by private individuals. The literature of natural 

 science is so extensive and diffused through so many periodicals, 

 transactions of academies and learned societies, encyclopedias, and 

 other publications, that v/hen we desire to have access to it we cannot 

 iind it in one place, but must visit Berlin, Vienna, London, and Paris, 

 besides various private libraries, and moreover be a bibliographer as 

 well as versed in the sciences. 



It certainly seems in character with the objects of the Smithsonian 

 Institution to promote the publication of such a work as is required, 

 and nowhere is its necessity so much felt as in America, and in this 

 Institution, to which such frequent reference is made for the informa- 

 tion such a publication would furnish. 



In accordance with the expressed desire of Professor Henry, the 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I will now proceed to trace out 

 the plan of such a work: 



In the first place, I should prepare a general complete bibliograph- 

 ical index of all the memoirs, periodicals, society transactions, ency- 

 clopedias, and other collected publications which treat of physics, 

 chemistry, mathematics, and astronomy, as far as I should be enabled 



